A lot has been said about Slightly Mad Studio’s Project CARS 2 since the first trailer was leaked at the end of January. Some people had nice things to say and others had not so nice things to say, it is a heavily discussed topic amongst the community.
However, what can be said for sure is that the second release of Project Community Assisted Racing Simulator is being highly anticipated. After official announcements, a Q&A with Ian Bell, head of Slightly Mad Studios, on GTPlanet and an interview with Andy Tudor, Creative Director at Slightly Mad Studios, over at Red Bull Games, here is a summary of what we know so far
General Info
Project CARS 2 is the next iteration of the crowdfunded racing game series Project CARS by London-based Slightly Mad Studios. It was announced shortly after the release of the first game and has been in development ever since.
Slightly Mad Studios is aiming for a release towards the end of the year, possibly in September. The game will feature over 170 cars and the largest selection of tarmac, as well as ice and dirt tracks on consoles. It will launch on Xbox One and “Scorpio”, PS4 (Pro) and PC. A release on the Nintendo Switch has pretty much been ruled out.
Do more with the same
Project CARS 2 will offer VR, 12K, 21:9 and, finally, triple screen support from day one onwards. It is even being worked on PSVR support too, but as of right now, official support cannot be confirmed.
The minimum specs for computers are also available already:
CPU – 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400, 3.0 GHz AMD Phenom II X4 940
GRAPHICS – DirectX 11 graphics card such as Nvidia GTX 470, ATI Radeon HD 5770
MEMORY – 4Gb RAM, 1Gb VRAM
OS – 64-bit Windows Operating System
NETWORK – Continuous internet connection
SOFTWARE – Steam
Performance on the currently available consoles, PS4 and XB1, will be similar as before. That means that the Xbox version will still run at 900p and 60fps instead of 1080p 60fps. SMS’s goal is rather to “do more with the same” through various optimisations of code, which will give the game a lot more headroom in terms of available resources.
Also, the AI has drastically improved, since it has been constantly worked on over the last years. Aggression has been reduced and SMS hope to offer a very streamlined, don’t-worry-about-settings experience in single player races.
Audio is being improved as well, thanks to a “new fMod revs based system” that Project CARS 2 now uses.
One of the stand out features, according to SMS, will be the LiveTrack 3.0 system, which will allow for dynamically changing track conditions based on the in-game weather. For example, puddles will not always be at the same place, rather they will form where the water runs, as they would in real life too.
Content
Ian Bell stated in the GTPlanet forums that all the newly added tracks in Project CARS 2 will be laser scanned or drone scanned using a “new trick drone scanning method”. It does not work as traditional laser scanning but is supposed to offer similar, if not in some places even better, results.
Some old tracks, including the famous and tremendously long Nordschleife, have now been scanned too.
More historic tracks will be added too and all tracks can be driven on at any time of the year and day, made possible by Project CARS 2’s furtherly improved weather system
Most of the cars will be carried over from the original Project CARS, so we can expect around 50 completely new cars. These will also include models from the big manufactures that were being missed in the first title. Some of the old cars will receive a re-work and all of them new audio though.
Aside from the fictional liveries, “enough” real ones have now been licensed too.
After the first iteration of Project CARS offered support for the eSports community and could establish itself as a standard in the scene, Project CARS 2 is now moving even greater focus towards it and is making it one of the main selling points for the game.
Apart from yet to be announced “revolutionary” features in the eSports department, it is already public knowledge that Project CARS 2 will include various directing, broadcasting and streaming capabilities that will allow for easy, TV quality race streams to the community.
Moreover, there will be an extensive player ranking system allowing for the best possible matchmaking. It will track data when participating in online races and will form your “Competitive Racing License”, which is made up by three categories: “Seniority”, being your play time, “Racecraft”, being your behaviour on the track, and “Success”, being your results.
On-track behaviour will be marshalled through “new Payback and Rulebook systems”. Punishments will be taken in the form of either extra time, or extra positions. This way, the risk of one incident causing another one, e.g. a slow-down penalty, is supposed to be eliminated.
The collection of stats in races has also been reworked, after the original Project CARS just could not deliver in that area for some people.
So, although there is still a lot to come, there is also a lot to look forward to already. Watch this space for future announcements and news in the Project CARS universe.
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