I gave Jack Spade's another go, but this time I actually bothered to do the research on what exactly the FFB settings in the menu are supposed to do and how the FFB clipping widget works, so it took me about 30 minutes again, but... What a blast! Still though, I stand by my opinion, default settings should be good out of the box, it's 2017, people want to play and not spend hours fine-tuning settings. All this personal preference thing is just regressive, all it does is allows the devs to take the lazy approach and not bother about default FFB, because we got them used to all these forum discussions where people just cooperatively determine the more or less optimal settings. And the whole "personal preference" thing is also kind of exaggerated. What everyone strives for is the most informative FFB with the strongest effects without clipping. Rant mode: off. There are still some things I find inconsistent, like how this vintage Aston has a really heavy wheel, while other old cars have a kind of loose feel to the steering. I think we could benefit from something like setting up gain per car like Assetto has. That said, the way you enter corners in such a type of car is spot on in CARS 2, you brake to shift the weight to the front, turn in and then continue to make the car turn with the throttle... It's basically like Richard Burns Rally taught me. Comparing to AC, it's got a better and more controlled feel to it, since in AC powering over a corner always has this huge risk of getting into a slide that you won't be able to catch (I think I need to adjust my slip FFB setting though), yet in CARS the FFB is so responsive, that you really need to combine the oversteer with some sloppy weight transfer not to be able to control it. It's almost like... rFactor 2 or AMS. It's weird, the more I play this the more learn to understand the game and enjoy it. And even considering the issues it has, it's still a more consistent release than any other relatively new tittle. I mean, Raceroom was considered very bad when it launched, Assetto had some huge following with it's initial driving experience, but the racing part was a disaster on launch day and even something so renowned like rFactor 2 is still kind of unfinished. Anyway, who's got an idea for the best starting career vehicle? That R32 really hurts my ears.
I always liked Ginetta's, so I started with the Ginetta Jr. Big fun ! Even while AI is good but very inconsistent, depending on track.
Yeah AI is still showing behaviour from CARS 1. If I set them moderately low (cause I'm slow apparently), they seem to match my pace, except guys at P1 and P2, they always seem to have some crazy boost going on. They also all suck at Bathurst and the more opponents you set in a race the bigger the carnage. I think this track generally sucks with AI in all sim except maybe rF2 and AMS. This brings me to a general conclusion on modern sims. You know what we are victims of? Damn Gran Turismo and Forza. The moment one Japanese dude decided it would be a good idea to put a million cars and tracks in one game, the whole marketing changed. You could probably have a sim developed in a shorter time with better racing quality, if the devs weren't forced to include hundreds of cars and dozens of tracks. Honestly, considering this hobby is supposed to be about being fast and consistent, about mastering corners and getting into setups, while I do appreciate variety and the amount of stuff I get for my money, I would prefer if there was less of it, but the whole experience was tighter. Out of the whole 180+ something cars in CARS 2, I would probably be happy if the game only included the 10-12 rides I am actually interested in, if that meant they would all behave in a consistent manner and the AI could drive them well. Same goes for tracks. Yaeh, I did a race on 288 GTO on Bathurst... Ridonkeulous! I shouldn't be allowed to do that. Who in their right mind would race such a crap on such a technical track? Well I did, but that does not mean you're supposed to. And the experience with the AI kinda does justice to reality - it's a bad idea and it should end badly, but then again, here I am complaining about something that should not work, not working. We're spoiled and should be punishe, probably by being forced to race GP Legends exclusively for a month... Then again, I would probably like that. As soon as I sober up, I'll get on to that Ginetta snorefest. On the flip side, I hate how CARS 2 spoiled me with them nice graphics and on-throttle oversteer that is controllable. Assetto now feels cumbersome. Here is a few additional notes on physics aspects that few people talk about. So CARS 2 engine heat management - I blow my engine more then I would like on cars that should not suffer from it. Here is why: trading paint with AI and random failures enabled will do that often. By comparison, Assetto has engine failures by over-reving - downshit to quick in a car with a flat engine and it will happen. Raceroom... yeah screw ups on revs cause engine damage, but it's gradual. No idea about AMS, but it's the only sim where, if you screw up your footwork, you can end up in neutral, CARS 2 shifts gears, but you end up at max revs on screw-ups and have to lift. Weird, but I never tested it on a real car, because moneys. How it should be ideally? Screwed-up shift should cause gearbox grinding and eventually lead to loosing gears, engine damage should only occur when extreme redlining happens and should be gradual, unless you really overdo it, say shift from 5th to 2nd without braking. At the same time, it should be dependent on the engine, you could probably lose a cylinder or two initially or maybe leak oil or coolant. So far no driving sim ever has modelled cooking of coolant before engine failure, not to mention fluid leaks. Yeah, I need to go to vintage flight sims for that. Mig-3 dorifto-take-off action here I come!
Are you kidding me? For project cars 2 we have again study 700 pages Jack Spades ffb settings to get it to work? Good that I read this before I fire up PC 2 to for the first time and get frustrated with the force feedback settings again and search the Internet for the answer. Ok, I'm chilled ... Let's see
No we don't. The settings have 3 sliders now and 3 "flavours" plus a custom one, where a text file is read by the game and that text file basically contains all that unintelligible nonsense CARS 1 tortured us with. What Jack did, was just provide us 6 files that you can just put in place of the custom-settings file and you get another "flavour". Out of the box, I'd recommend using "inforamtive" ffb, keeping gain at 100, lowering the volume a bit, raising the tone and adding some effects. Test with a good car like the X-bow or something up to the standard. Honestly, the FFB is pretty good. You don't feel all that road texture Assetto spoiled us with, but there is a lot more feel in cornering, if everything is set properly.
Ok, thanks! I just drove 2 laps at Bathurst with the Mercedes AMG GT3, wtf, no words, I am 100% disappointed. It looks and sounds as bad as PC1 on my PS4. Unfortunately I did not buy it at Steam otherwise I would request a refund now. Damn, I felt into the trap again.
mmaruda ia absolutely right. the more time i play PC2 more i enjoy plaing it. Some cars sound really good, too. Like the NSX GT3. FFB feels really good now.
Two laps...? And then you are judging ? Btw: I had pCars1 when I was still on PS4 and it never looked bad, on the contrary. I agree that not all cars sound great, but there are very good ones (5.1 surround system here).
What I experienced is, that carsounds onboard are quite good of what I drove, being far from 180 cars. External sounds on the other hands, let your ears bleed. Sounds very artificial and almost no Doppler effect. That's why I very seldomly watch any races. I'm driving with some good headphones in stereo.
Yes only two laps it was enough too get an impression how PC2 looks and sound like. I think the texture of the tarmac is still the same like in PC1. It looks totally artificial with all the tire marks going across the track at any section. The graphics reminds me of to the one from Dirt4. For me it looks somehow cartoonish this new look. The sound of the Mercedes AMG GT3 sounds artificial as well.The shifting noise is much too exaggerated. Do you know the sound mod from Fonsecker? He made the Mercedes sounds great. I tested the Audi is LMP 1 as well. The sound is somehow better but also not very nice balanced. I drove it at Spielberg. It's again the same kind of tarmac with the same kind of texture. I prefer the graphics and texturing in RaceRoom much more. The animated guy in the box dancing around showing me the way is funny and looks childish. Another big problem was that I just got 30 FPS, I tried everything from low to ultra and it didn't help. I also tried the optimized game settings from the Nvidia. The ffb feels like the one in European truck simulator. I looked into several videos explaining how to set up the force feedback for the Fanatec CSW. for me the force feedback is not even close to the one from asset corsa or RaceRoom. For instance, the new graphics from WRC 7 made me smile, great detailing texturing and atmosphere. Last year WRC 6 was a disaster. I expected the same wow effect from project cars 2. It's simply not what I expected after all that hype. I requested a refund.
This is one of the things I never did like with the Pcars franchise. While the graphics are often lauded, I have never cared for them. Each of the different sims has their own 'style' and that certainly shows here. However, Pcars has an overall look that I just dont find attractive. SMS has seemingly gone to the EA school of learning and made everything shiny and plastered a bunch of bloom all over. The end result is an aesthetic that is highly synthetic and artificial. The aesthetic appears as though it is taken from the lens of a camera, rather than the human eye.
The only thing not on its place on the graphics side are the trees imo. But we talked about that before. Cartoonish..nah...I'm also driving AMS, which is the cartoonish one to me, by far. I do agree with @fischhaltefolie on the sound department, but since I rarely watch replays, and never use another view than cockpit, the sounds don't bother me much. On the other hand, the rare replays I watched were pretty nice as far as the environment goes. The marshalls on the track side look and move deceivingly real, good work there. FPS are always 60 or more (GTX980ti on triple 27" 144Hz BENQ monitors). Agree about the animated lollypop man, he's not really moving around on a natural way LOL. I do NOT agree however on the FFB side, but as said before, despite the small amount of sliders you still need some time to find the right settings. The FFB I got on my CSW V2 is better than AC's and gives me all I want to feel from the car/track. I like my FFB settings in R3E too, as I do in AMS and rF2. They are all different though and the pCars2 version is at the same level to say the least. The sad side is that I found several issues (on of them was already patched). There is a shifting issue with the H-shifter implementation (of which SMS says it has been done for authenticity reasons (which is pure BS imo), some 50 cars have the steering wheel offset ( for the same reason) and the only way to change that (get the dash gauges where they belong) is using Ctrl-K and the A / E keys (in my case) to adjust. Sadly these settings are not saved. Also the seat settings per car sometimes reset to default, so you have to reset them each time. These are only a couple of issues, there are more and I do hope they are going to be patched very soon.
I don't own Pcars 2 but the funny thing about the skid marks in Pcars 1 is that they were in the wrong place... Often I would find myself getting confused by them as they are simply not on the racing line. I think that general aesthetic some of you don't like is that hyper-realistic post-processing. At first I liked it but after Raceroom and AC I longed for something more crisp and simple. The British tracks mysteriously look like during sunset at any hour of the day. I hope they have toned this approach down in PCars 2... They used this approach because of the initial "wow" factor. Like presetting TVs in showrooms with over-saturation. But overall from videos it's looking very very good.
I am about at 12h so far of driving CARS 2. I really like it. I like the FFB and how the tyres feel. I even like the AI though they are either too fast for me or too slow, really slow in the rain. The rain does feel nice and while it does not feel like you need to be slower, at lest by the feel of it, there is definitely more slidy action going on. I basically went back to the exact settings Random Callsigns presented in the vid I linked earlier on and I think they are very good, better then Jack's. You feel the road noise where you should, kind of like rF2 or Raceroom and not all the time, it's kind of realistic - normally you feel that with your butt, cause if cars had this in the wheel, driving in my country would probably cause your wrists to explode. In any case, while the FFB may not be super-impressive, it's good and most importantly, rather then feel you constant vibrations so you can be in awe of the road texture, it focuses on telling you what the tyres are doing and that makes those four-wheel power-slides in older cars something like bread and butter to go fast. Reminds me of the Formula Vintage in AMS. Now to for the bad stuff. The audio is annoying me more and more. Tyre sounds are too loud, especially on braking, I constantly think I am locking my wheels when I am not. Your car is significantly louder in replays and the suspension sound is almost silent. Sometimes the Engineer also gets muted for no reason. But it's hardly as annoying as the graphics. Stuff around tracks feel flat when you look at anything further, reminds me of GTR2. There is some noticeable detail pop-in even on ultra settings and the trees are kind of like... Warcraft! But probably the most annoying thing of them all is the damn shimmering of everything. I even tried supersampling and aliasing is all over the place, no idea why they even bothered to put it in there, since there is no increase in quality, only a huge performance hit. Light bloom is also overdone. I don't know, maybe the game is meant to be played in 4K or something. Considering GFX cars prices (thanks Bitcon, you butt!), it's not viable to upgrade at this point only for one game. It really makes you think, when AMS looks more natural. But anyway, I think this is a good sim and the complaints are mostly from the Assetto Corsa crowd, who have been spoiled by it's driving feel. To me AC still has some weird physics issues and CARS 2 actually falls more in line with the classic feel of ISI Motor engine games and how they handle physics. What people who complain don't see, is that we finally got a sim, that actually does it all - weather, animated pit crews, night, more tracks than anything else, kind of a good damage mode, both visual and technical, flat-spotting, tyre degradation, multi-class racing, online ranking, a built in crew chief, dynamic track condition. Hell, even rFactor 2 doesn't do half of this stuff. And honestly, 2 hours is nothing to rate the game. I am at 12 and still discover new stuff I either like or don't. We'll see what comes with updated and further development.
30 hrs now and still finding new and exciting stuff Btw: SMS is going to change the H-shifter behaviour, yeey... Accidently chose the kart to drive on the Mercedes ice track....and it works ! You get some wet tires and the kart actually behaves like what I remember about some kart/ice race experiences I had several years ago. This is very nice. Then I tried the kart on RX tracks too. You get the same tires but you really want some suspension...but it is fun, though not really realistic. I really hope the shifter kart gets included again... And the missing Caterhams, and...and...
Just a general question about the sounds of cars and games. Does manufacturers actually care about the sounds of their cars? Have you tried the Nissan GTR3, I mean .... You don't have to be a sound engineer to create something like this, totally off. I'm working for a company who is doing advertisements and print campaigns for different car manufacturers. Clients are always super critical and picky. But in terms of the sounds of their cars in games it seams they don't care that much. Is it up to the studio how much effort they put into the sound engineering?
Agree on the sound of the Nissan GTR GT3 and the Nismo, must be the worst and least realistic sounding cars in pCars2.
So I picked the "you are insane" combo: Nord vs Lotus 49 - something I was doing on a regular basis in Assetto to improve. With recent FFB fiddling that I am now very happy with, I have to say, it just feels right. Contrary to the old GP Legends concept, you do have tons of grip (relatively speaking), but at the same time you feel the tires being on edge and you ride that accelerator constantly to just get a bit more angle, but at the same time, if you overdo it, the FFB is there to help you and it does so immediately, no delays, no input lag, no guesswork, so basically correcting properly is no big deal and you can feel confident with your driving. Oversteer becomes a friend instead of an enemy, just remember to treat your friends with respect. In any case, it kind of felt like doing the same in Raceroom with something like the Greenwood Vette. The difference here between CARS 2 and Assetto is that in Assetto, you feel like this car isn't meant for this track and it's more then you can handle, and one that wheel starts spinning opposite to the corner, you basically have a very small time window to react. In Assetto you basically have to be cautious with each corner, don't overdoo it, since it's unlikely you'll save it. In CARS 2 you can be as aggressive as you want to. It's not really a question of having more grip, as I was entering each corner at roughly the same speed as in Assetto, but you get so much more sense as to what the tires are doing, that you can ride the limit in a fairly confident manner. This is not to say that I didn't spin, of course I did, but watching replays I found that nearly in all cases one of the tires had a serious loss of grip, either due to curbs, surface or it basically lost all contact with the tarmac, because I screwed up the weight transfer. Comparing the two, I can say that maybe it's all simcade in CARS 2, but you have more of a sense of being in control than in Assetto and that is actually more fun. So lets talk FFB again. Since I also did some comparisons. When playing something like Assetto, you have this awesome feeling of feeling the texture of the road under your fingers that you don't get anywhere else. That includes a real car (unless you live in a post-communist country and drive on something that wasn't built in the last 4 years). The way Raceroom for example provides that road texture feel is through vibration. The way Assetto does it is through wiggling of the FFB. Going down a straight and flooring it, Assetto will move your wheel constantly, sometimes by a large amount, so you never have this feeling of having a lot of grip, unless you drive something modern and with downforce. However, in Assetto, you also have very little lateral grip, I'd say less than any other sim, and that includes rFactor 2 on a green track with cold tyres. I won't judge how it should be, I don't race cars for a living. However, probably my all time favourite FFB is in AMS and guess what, you don't get a lot of road texture feel in there. You feel flaws in the tarmac where there are some and guess what, it's the same in CARS 2. I actually did a comparison on Monza and found the bumps on the straight before Parabolica are very consistent between what CARS 2 has and what is in Patrick's mod for AMS. What surprised me even more, was when I took CARS 2 to classic Monza in the Lotus again and there are certain places where there are visible cracks in the road and crossing them actually gives you that feeling in the FFB. To sum up, I got used to the FFB in CARS 2 and I do think it's great for what it's supposed to do - tell you what the car is doing and it's in line with what I have in AMS and Raceroom. Maybe one is better then the other, but they are all functional. At the same time, Assetto gives you a more pleasurable experience of driving, but I feel like it is lacking in helping you get out of tricky situations - I feel like there is input lag (I am using the render max frames ahead tweak), so it's definitely something to do with my monitor or how my system is set up, perhaps I should try using the USB ports in the back of my rig? So anyway, your mileage may vary, but it terms of oversteer and feeling the moment of regaining grip, all other sims (including CARS 2) behave better in this regard. In any case, I hereby announce that the FFB in CARS 2 is good. Period. Whoever doesn't agree, needs to spend some time with the settings and the FFB widget. Pro tip, the fact that you don't get any clipping, does not mean it's all good, there are 6 meters there, set one slider too high and it will delete some effects, even when no clipping is shown. Which again brings me to pointing out that simracers are expected to play with that FFB too much, especially that there is no definitive scientific method of determining proper setting, other then "set everything as high as you can, but avoid clipping", which I found will not be helpful at all in CARS 2. Another thing I would like to mention is the AI. I actually like them more and more. Sure, you have to set the difficulty to your liking with each particular car and track combo, and for some reason, it's always very low for me - maybe I should drive more modern stuff. But at the same time, I can see them behaving correctly when side by side, I can see them trying (and quite often succeeding) in taking back position, which I actually find to be a major fault in all other sims, once you pass them, they aren't immediately back at you, but they do that in CARS 2. I took that Lotus to classic Monza again and started at the back of a 22 car pack. First two corners was basically passing slow dudes, but then some racing started. I immediately found 2 corners where I could use some high speed powersliding to get a faster exit and after 5 laps I was about 10th. I actually like how the difficulty is set up here. In Assetto or Raceroom, low difficulty means they don't go full throttle where they should, including straights, but in CARS 2 they are slower in corner and by slower, I mean they take a very cautious and grippy approach, so getting that back end out a bit will give you the upper hand. However, I don't think they suffer from tyre or engine degradation. At about 7th lap, my engine was going all yellow and I noticed that I cannot go flat out on straights, because I was already redliding at 5th gear. But guess what it forced me to do - go into the setup and adjust my gear ratios! And this is something that I am completely in awe with when it comes to CARS 2. In most sims, I rarely touch the setup unless something is really wrong, I am causal in this sense, I mostly try to adapt and accept being slower. However, CARS 2 has this funny way of encouraging you to fiddle with the setup - it poses problems a real drive would face (like engine overheating or brakes locking up to soon) and it give you this Q&A style engineer that can help you understand what does what. If I was to name the best feature in the game, this is it and I do hope devs take notice and take this approach. On the flip side, the sounds still irritate me sometimes and the graphics are just... well bad. Antialliasing seems to do nothing or very little and even forcing some serious power consuming tricks in the drivers does nothing at all. The shimmering of the trees and shadows and that stupid pop in, which becomes more and more noticeable with each lap is beginning to drive me mad. I think that CARS 1 looked better! The trees are probably the worst offenders, they should have done high resolution flat trees like Assetto does. Instead of those cartoony bushes. That said though, driving on the Nord in Autumn at 3 pm looks exactly like what was outside my window at the time in terms of colours and lighting. I'd say that at this point I am actually sold on CARS 2. It is worth the money and it is a good game, it just requires some time to set up correctly and come to terms with some of it's drawbacks. It's not a revolution and not not the second coming of Jesus, just a new sim that does what it is supposed to do quite well with some room for improvement. Even if someone hates it for this or another reason, think of it this way, it's a step up in many aspects of the genre and something that will force other devs to stop being content with the compromises they made and get to work. You think I am wrong? Not more than a year ago, rFactor 2 forums had some discussion about fixing rain and adding puddles and all this aquaplaning thing being near impossible to model, guess what 397 are doing now? Here's a big encouragement hug to all the guys working on GTR3.
FFB is VERY subjective. I think the PC2 out-of-the-box FFB is very good but of course in addition to the subjectivity is the person's wheel. I think anything new sometimes causes unrealistic expectations, or a comparison to something we are comfortable with. Now that I've had AC, R3E, rF2, AMS, etc. for quite a while I never go back into the FFB settings anymore. Same will be with PC2, once I stop focusing on chasing the perfect FFB (there isn't a perfect!) I will race instead of tweaking. I probably spent 40 hours playing with the FFB setting in PC1, in PC2 I'm happy after a couple of hours - even though I eventually ended up with the same settings I had after first 20 minutes of starting PC2. I've tried the Immersive and Raw flavors in addition to the Jack Spade files, very little tweaking necessary. I'm using a Thrustmaster TX, and feel the FFB is as good as any other sim I own. One sim may be a little better than the next in one area and vice-versa but overall PC2, AC, R3E, rF2, AMS all feel very good with my wheel.
For me my T300 F1 Wheel with the medium Spade Settings really work great. I feel what i have to feel. Tarmac, Breaking and wheel spin. Everything is there in a good strongness. AI: not so bad. I can not tell much about to be honest. I did a 10 Lap-Race (with information lap - what a feeling) in the 2016 Bentley yesterday in Portimao with a 25 cars grid of GTE, GT3 and GT4. Was fun on 80 % strength. Had a little Dogfight with a Horacan and did not recognize any big faults of him. And the inboard sound of the Bentley is defenetly better in my ears like every other Bentley i drove so fasr on the PC.