Project Cars [PS4, XO]

[Shortbread]

Interesting...

http://a.pomf.se/zmtxsa.gif

http://a.pomf.se/vngjqp.gif

 

[AlNom]

Looks like derped shadow filtering.

 

[Shortbread]

Looks like derped shadow filtering.

Hopefully these anomalies (lower precision shadows, amongst some other things) will get resolved before release... as of now, the Forza series still looks like the crown jewel in the XB1 racing game scene.

 

[novcze]

Game is 60fps in vast majority of cases. I'm currently reading pCARS dev forums, and team boss Andy Garton is very pissed that Eurogamer got the old build and focused so much on worst case scenarios [that will be better in final code].

Eurogamer updated their article:

"
UPDATE: It's come to our attention that the build of Project Cars used as the basis for this article was not intended by the developer Slightly Mad Studios for technical analysis. We weren't aware of this, which was the unfortunate result of some miscommunication on our part with the game's publisher. It was an honest mistake and it is not our intention to misrepresent the game, so we've unpublished the videos that form the basis of the article.

We'll be able to bring you a full analysis of a more advanced build of the game in the coming weeks.

We'd like to apologise to our readers and to Slightly Mad Studios for this unintentional misrepresentation."

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Holy crap! How have I never seen that??

I have monitors arranged like this at work. I have three now but here's how I started modestly with just two:

Spoiler

 

[AlNom]

Looks like a Zelda dungeon map. :O

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Looks like a Zelda dungeon map. :O

Busted!

 

[Cyan]

Project Cars is looking to be a bit of a stinker on consoles. Sim racers need a consistent 60fps and it seems that only the PC version will be able to provide that.

I do find it funny that DF spend 90% of the article explaining how the game is a sack of excrement in the performance department then make a statement like 'Turn 10 and Polyphony have serious competition'. They quite obviously don't.

I can't see any reason why an Xbox owner would even consider Project Cars when we have Forza. It's still the gold standard in console sim racing.

PCars could turn out to be very good on PC though.

I don't know what condition Assetto Corsa is in now. Last time I played it (more than 6 months ago) the vehicle handling was absolutely spot-on. With a G25 wheel it felt very authentic.

It was very basic looking, but I couldn't give a rats ass about the graphics if the gameplay and framerates are solid.

It seems that they analysed an old build but Digital Foundry articles are very influential so they could lose some sales if those numbers were true. They still have time to redeem themselves, but 60 fps displayed in a perfect consistent manner is necessary for a sim racer these days, if not playing becomes a chore and it's not fun.

 

[DieH@rd]

Holy crap! How have I never seen that??

AMD supports vertical splitscreen. I think Nvidia does not.

 

[RobertR1]

I'm so getting this! Saw the tracklist and it's awesome. I hope the game owns and gets forza and gt to step up.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

AMD supports vertical splitscreen. I think Nvidia does not.

Not just vertical anymore either. They now support mixed orientation setups on select cards.

So I can finally do my 20" (portrait) - 30" (landscape) - 20" (portrait) mode in games. Of course, they finally put in that capability when I got an Nvidia GPU for this generation. Needless to say, I'll likely be going back to an AMD GPU just for this.

Regards,
SB

 

[Cyan]

AMD supports vertical splitscreen. I think Nvidia does not.

Another reason why I prefer AMD/ATi GPUs.

Holy crap! How have I never seen that??

Well, it's quite common these days. Many PC displays can be rotated vertically at will, they have a special bracket meant for that. A friend of mine who has a master race PC showed it to me days ago.

Was reading this: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2015-project-cars-performance-analysis

And, is it just me, or are the graphics really bad compared to the likes of Forza or DriveClub?

I mean PGR4 had better trackside detail in 2007:

And does anyone have a car list? Can't see it on their website

I don't know about the cars yet, but the final track list has been published!

30 unique locations and 110 different courses.

http://www.projectcarsgame.com/locations.html

 

[(((interference)))]

Great selection of circuits!

The only issue I think will be the car list, which will probably be slim compared to the likes of Forza/GT and will skew towards high end exotica and race cars rather than more humble machines.

See, I love driving hot hatches, ricer cars, muscle cars, sport sedans and lower end sports cars (ie. attainable cars!) in my sims.
Mainly so I can see the differences in how cars your friends have, or cars you see you on the street, drive.

All I've been playing in Forza 4 for the last year or so (I got to level 30 or something and stopped playing the campaign as I'd advanced to races with only race cars and exotics) is hot laps of the Hockenheim Short in as many different cars as possible, recording my best times (and comparing them with the Sport Auto test times for that vehicle).

The depth of a driving sim really comes to the fore when you can have fun just driving different cars on the same 2.6 km track with no opponents whatsover.

 

[Cyan]

All I've been playing in Forza 4 for the last year or so (I got to level 30 or something and stopped playing the campaign as I'd advanced to races with only race cars and exotics) is hot laps of the Hockenheim Ring in as many different cars as possible, recording my best times (and comparing them with the Sport Auto test times for that vehicle).

And in doing so, did you find out if Forza 4 is realistic enough compared to the real thing when it comes to lap times using the same cars than the Sport Auto magazine? Just curious...

 

[(((interference)))]

You can see all 730 Hockenheim Short lap times here and do your own experiments if you like:
http://fastestlaps.com/tracks/hockenheim_short.html

I get pretty close to the Sport Auto times- about a second slower in most cases (and I'm a pretty average driver in Forza). I only do about 5-6 laps in each car so could prob get closer to the actual times If I tried.

Here are some of my times with the Sport Auto times and % diff so you can see it's pretty close.

You'll notice I tend to be significantly slower with higher power RWD cars as I tend to oversteer around the circuit in them (which isn't the fastest way to drive, but I'm not skilled enough to keep the tyres within their grip limits).

Some Spanish sim enthusiast did a post which also went into this and he got a 1.4% average difference on the 12 cars he tested:
http://fastestlaps.com/articles/real_life_vs_forza_motorsport_4.html

So even Forza 4 (which is not considered a true sim by many) is already very accurate, and I'm sure some of the newer sims (and PC sims) will be better.

 

[DieH@rd]

Great selection of circuits!

The only issue I think will be the car list, which will probably be slim compared to the likes of Forza/GT and will skew towards high end exotica and race cars rather than more humble machines.

pCARS list of cars is fully focused on motosport and nothing else. For fans of sim games, this is IMO great list of cars and tracks.

 

[Arwin]

Yeah, that's a good list, if a bit much for a forum thread. Will be nice to do some comparisons of some of the tracks that are in most of the games, with the same wheel driving a few different game engines with similar cars and setups.

 

[Metal_Spirit]

Strange. Have you guys read this?
http://gamingbolt.com/project-cars-...cpu-to-offload-tasks-game-utilizing-amds-eqaa

How come both major console versions are about the same, both process audio in the same way, but Xbox requires the usage of the 7th CPU core (that as far as we know is not available yet on the PS4) to (according to the article) fix the problem of becoming CPU limited.

How is this possible when PS4 runs the same at a superior resolution, has less available cores and less CPU speed? GPGPU? If so, why is that is not applied to Xbox One too?

Or are they using GNM on PS4 and going more low level than Xbox One?

 

[djskribbles]

The article is referring to comments posted by SMS in the comments section of the DF article. This is what they said:

The preview was based on an older build of the game and several of its observations are unfortunately either wrong or due to bugs or items which have subsequently been addressed by the development team during the finaling process. Notably:

- The level of Anisotropic filtering was increased from 4x to 8x on both consoles, significantly improving the general image quality and sharpness of the road.
- Both consoles are set to use motion-blur at the equivalent of the PC medium setting – the differences seen on PS4 were due to bugs which were transient with on-going optimisation and not because PS4 uses object based motion-blur.
- The shadow differences highlighted were largely down to the various slope-scale DX11 issues we had at this time - many WMD users had reported these on PC builds and we were able to fix these bugs to more closely align the shadow rendering across platforms.
- The build reviewed was also lacking some significant "render bridge" camera work, which significantly improved frame pacing and the general feeling of smoothness especially when cornering.

In the article it is mentioned that Project Cars on Xbox One is using post-process anti-aliasing which is equivalent to the PC's higher FXAA settings. This is incorrect, the Xbox One version uses MSAA, or more precisely AMD's EQAA (Enhanced Quality Anti Aliasing) with 8 fragments and 4 samples, which is equivalent to MSAA 4x on PC.

Just to add to our previous comments:

- In the older build that was analysed it was possible to become CPU bound with very high numbers of AI, maxing out all 6 cores on XBox One. However, Microsoft had recently opened up 50% of the 7th core to developers : in later builds the development team was able to offload work such as the audio mixing, engine sound synthesis and detailed grass generation onto this core, fixing this problem of becoming CPU limited.
- Tracks that had water elements (sea/lakes etc) in the analysed build used an expensive cube-map method for reflections leading to inconsistent frame rate. In late March this was addressed with us switching over to use a screen space reflections method - A WMD community member did some comparison benchmarks on PC when this new technique was introduced:

"B967/B968

Azure Coast 62.5 fps/82 fps +31%
Azure Circuit 61.5 fps/ 73 fps +19%
Laguna Seca 55 fps/76 fps +38%
Sakitto GP 61.5 fps/86.5 fps +41%
Nürburgring GP 57.5 fps/76.5 fps +33%

Looks identical visually, big improvement."

The relative scaling there applied equally to the console versions.
--

If you incorporate our above corrections to the article, these points and some more general optimisations that have subsequently been worked on, it's easy to see why we might feel this review isn't very representative of what the development team has achieved.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

How come both major console versions are about the same, both process audio in the same way, but Xbox requires the usage of the 7th CPU core (that as far as we know is not available yet on the PS4) to (according to the article) fix the problem of becoming CPU limited. How is this possible when PS4 runs the same at a superior resolution, has less available cores and less CPU speed? GPGPU? If so, why is that is not applied to Xbox One too?

If you look at the source of this story it's from the comments section on Eurogamer's article. I couldn't find the comment in question so take it with a pinch of salt unless you can a) find it and b) attribute it to somebody who knows what their talking about!