Project Cars: Nicolas Hamilton's Blog

Every now and then Nicolas Hamilton (Lewis's younger brother) will be posting a blog based on his findings with the handling and physics within Project Cars, I will post his blog here as and when he updates it.

Nic's Blog: 13th November 2012

Hey guys,

Ok so this is my first post for my blog, obviously I am new to Project CARS, so you may have to bare with me a little.

Firstly, I just want to say how fantastic I think the game is already and it is only at Pre-Alpha. I have played racing sims for about 5 years, having grown up with GTR, GTR 2, RACE, RACE 07 etc, and I can already see that this project is going to be a successful one. The graphics and detail are great so far, I have played around with the different weather conditions, and the coolest thing I have found is night-time at (Suzuka) where everything is lit up.

What you will notice with me is that I am a perfectionist, if I do not like something then I will tell you my honest opinion. I may make comments that you do not agree with, but this is me just being honest and I think that is what is needed for this game to be the best it can be.

My main focus for this post is going to be the ‘Asano X4 Touring ‘car and comparing the BTM and SETA tire mods.

When I first started playing the game, I drove the ‘Asano X4 Touring’ car, and I was instantly impressed with how realistic it was in terms of visuals, the cockpit is fantastic and the attention to detail is great.

BTM

This mod was present when I first started driving the game at ‘Besos GP’, and I was very impressed by the level of grip that it was producing. I was making lots of different setup changes to get the car how I wanted, and I got it so perfect that I found 1.4 seconds between my first setup and my second one. I was very impressed with how the different changes I made accurately changed the car to what I wanted. I felt that the car was great because you could brake late, so late that you could pretty much brake all the way into the apex of the corner and then get on the power with plenty of traction. I set the car up so that it was very ‘pointy’ on the front, and was stable on the rear for when you got on the power. All I changed was front and rear ride height, as well as front and rear camber. I set a laptime of 1:37.9

I then realised that the car was so ‘hooked’ up and had so much grip, that it was starting to become unrealistic because there were no movements from the car and no feeling from what it was doing, but it was still great to drive.

SETA

When I first drove this tire, I felt that the car had now become pretty much undrivable to where it just was not realistic. It started to become unpredictable mainly under braking and in high speed corners making corners that are usually taken 'flat' not 'flat' anymore. This was generally down to the lack of traction on the exit of corners and lack of grip and stability at high speed. All of this should have the opposite effect as the more downforce you have on the car, the more grip you have at high speed.

I think to improve this, the tire needs to produce more grip for traction when exiting a corner and more grip for stability at high speed, but also give the real feeling of the car moving underneath you, when being on the limit and on the limit of the tire should give you the feeling that you could not have gone any quicker through the corner. I have also noticed that most of the Kerbs at 'Besos GP' are very slippery which in some respects are realistic, but the lack of grip when using them in the dry, feels how they should be in the wet.

Having said all of this, I made changes to the setup and found a way to make the car ‘ok’ to drive but even with as much grip as possible on the rear of the car, it always wanted to oversteer and drift. This is all good fun, but if I was driving the car in real life, I would think the car was trying to ‘kill me'.

This all depends on what market we are aiming at with Project CARS as there are people that just enjoy driving a games and do not use all of its features, you get people that know nothing a out racing but want to have fun, and then you get the ELITE group of hardcore sim races who range from racing drivers, to people who just love Motorsport. This means that all of the cars need to be as realistic as possible, but also as consistent as possible with how it handles.

I have also done laps in the 'BMW Z4 GT3' car, and have found that the tire acts in a different way compared to the 'Asano X4 Touring' car. Obviously, it is a different car and so it willl handle differently, but the tire seems to have more overall grip in high speed which is better, but with the same lack of traction on the exit of corners but is easier to control. I find myself using the lack of traction to 'steer with the rear' of the car through the corner, which is good fun to drive and is the quickest way at the moment, but still is unrealistic.

Overall I think that the SETA tire mod is the correct way to go, as it is more realistic, it just needs to be fine tuned, which to me is most important at the moment.

I hope no one sees this as negativity as I love the game, this is all just what I feel could make the experience even better.

Thanks guys,

Nic