The PC2 World Classic SeriesPS4

[Hun200kmh]

Right, I've been mulling this for long now, to the point that even I became doubtful that it would ever be done. But here it is, the

PROJECT CARS 2
WORLD CLASSIC SERIES
​

The concept is simple:​

• Long races (from 90 to 120 minutes, depending on track and discipline), with Free Practise (10 minutes) and Qualifying (10 minutes)​
• Classic cars​
• Variable weather (with one exception: Indianapolis). 4 slots each race, as follows:​
  • slot #1 random
  • slot #2 light fog
  • slot #3 random
  • slot #4 light cloud
• Day-Night-Day cycles (but only in races classified as "24h")​
• Single or multiclass depending on Discipline​
• AI cars in the grid​
• Human players must all use the SAME car. AI will be from same class or multiclass (in 24h-styled events only)​
• The car to be used by us humans is decided by me for event 1. After that, the next car to be used will be drivers' choice as set in each event's post-race debrief (more on that below)​
• Setups free​
• Car damage set to "Visual Only" (but engine damage ON so nobody gets smart with their setups)​
• ABS allowed (but that's the only driving assist you'll get)​
• Manual Pits​
• Tyre wear will be accelerated, fuel consumption ON (obviously)​
• Penalties set to ON (specific settings may vary depending on track)​
• Scoring system will be like the F1 of old: 9-6-4-3-2-1 (not set in stone this, any alternative systems can still be considered). AIs are irrelevant for the scoring, you can finish a race in 3rd, but if 1st and 2nd are AI-driven you'll get the 9 points anyway.​
• Races will be held during weekends, we will try to do them at least every two weeks. Saturday is probably the best day to do this (I'm receptive to time-of-day suggestions). But in each event the drivers present will convene after race (call it post-race debrief) and set the date and time of the following race. Which will, of course, published here for all non-attendants.​

I think I covered everything important. Now for the list of events (still under construction and any suggestions are welcome). For now they are listed in (per track) alphabetical order, the final order of events will be later refined.

1. Bannochbrae / Vintage Touring GT-A - (human) players must drive the Porsche 911
2. Bathurst 24h /Group A
3. Brno/ Vintage Touring GT-B
4. Daytona Road Course 24h/ Vintage Prototype B
5. Fuji / Vintage F1-B
6. Hockenheim Classic / Group 5
7. Indianapolis/Vintage Indycar
8. Le Mans 24h/LMP900
9. Le Mans Vintage 24h/Vintage Prototype A
10. Monza Classic / Vintage F1-C
11. Nurburgring Nordschleife 24h / Group 4
12. Road America/ Can Am
13. Rouen Les Essarts / Vintage F1-D
14. Sakitto 24h / Group C
15. Spa Francorchamps / Vintage F1-A
16. Spa Fancorchamps Historic 24h / Vintage Touring GT-C
17. Texas Motor Speedway / GTO
18. Watkins Glen 24h / GT1

Order of events:

• single seater events in red
• 24h events in dark blue if using prototypes
• 24h events in orange if using GT Cars
• daytime events in green

DONE (2024/05/11)

1. Bannochbrae / Vintage Touring GT-A - (human) players must drive the Porsche 911 - DONE


NEXT UP (2024/06/02, PLEASE SAVE THE DATE)

2. Watkins Glen 24h / GT1 - (human) players must drive ...............



REMAINING (DATES NOT SET)

3. Bathurst 24h /Group A
4. Fuji / Vintage F1-B
5. Texas Motor Speedway / GTO
6. Daytona Road Course 24h/ Vintage Prototype B
7. Spa Francorchamps / Vintage F1-A
8. Hockenheim Classic / Group 5
9. Le Mans Vintage 24h/Vintage Prototype A
10. Spa Fancorchamps Historic 24h / Vintage Touring GT-C
11. Rouen Les Essarts / Vintage F1-D
12. Brno/ Vintage Touring GT-B
13. Sakitto 24h / Group C
14. Monza Classic / Vintage F1-C
15. Road America/ Can Am
16. Nurburgring Nordschleife 24h / Group 4
17. Indianapolis/Vintage Indycar
18. Le Mans 24h/LMP900

​

 

[GTP_RPREGO]

Amazing Mario!
Count me in, it's.gonna be an incredible championship.
I suggest not counting the 3 worse results
for scoring, to allow some freedom in schedule.

 

[half_sourly]

I'd be up for this. I could do with some discipline required for a longer race and avoiding AIs. Do you need a scorekeeper?

 

[Hun200kmh]

Yes I do, please and thank you! 👍

Any suggestion on start hour? I have Saturdays as my (mostly) free day in every week, so I can race at pretty much whatever hour, but for others it may not be that easy so I'm still waiting to hear from others.

 

[half_sourly]

Around 5pm UK time would probably work best for me.

 

[Hun200kmh]

Half, usually Sat. 5 PM is a good hour, however tomorrow neither raeggee nor Ricardo can play during the afternoon/evening, a family birthday is happening. Would you be able to race tomorrow night, at 9.30 PM?

 

[half_sourly]

That will be fine.

 

[half_sourly]

Are we on then for tonight? Is there enough interest, or is it worth checking who from the usual crowd can join?

 

[Hun200kmh]

We're definitely ON, half, although the attendance is low compared to what we were used to, we have 6 racers so far.

1. Half_Sourly
2. Flat_Twelve
3. raeeggee
4. Duarte (using my "Hun" account)
5. Ricardo
6. jmPrego

Ricardo and Raegge will be a bit late but they have told me they'll skip FP and quali. Consideringh this and also the late hour we will race, tonight we will do a 1hour race (so, shorter than the 90 to 120 minutes length I wrote about in the OP), but simulating a 15 hour race so we will start the race at dawn and end it race under the moonlight (unless there's fog ).

One other thing that I may still weak is the "random weather" setting because yesterday I tried a thunderstorm setting and Bannochbrae is one of those tracks in this game that become undriveable when soaked (from experience I know Hockenheim classic and Donnigton are the same).

I will check again this afternoon if 1 slot of light rain between two sunny ones might be just interesting but as I said if the tracks becomes to much of a chore I will make it a dry race through and through.

So, here goes, tonight we're having the

1 HOUR OF
BANNOCHBRAE

​

Settings as above posted, although the weather will NOT follow the default setting of 4 slots (random-fog-random-light cloud).

Race simulates a 15 hour period. If by any chance rain does show up it will be light and quick.

Car to be used is the Porsche 911 from the "Vintage GT-A" class.

There will be practise and qualifying (15 minutes each to compensate for the length of the track)

Lobby will be opened and invites will be sent at 9.30 PM (UK time)

AI cars will be set to 80 (skill) and 100 (aggression) they're competitive but (mostly) predictable.

Any questions just ask.


PS - ANyone wanting to enter this needs only to state their interest and I'll send an invite. If we're not friends on PSN just send a friend request there to the PSN user FLAT_TWELVE.

Oh and you guys still racing Pcars2 on mondays, namely ...
@IfAndOr
@richroo
@xeronima
@Oldbass47
@beachboy6658
@Zolon32

... do consider it, although a bit late (I know I know) it has a slightly different flavour to our monday races but should still be fun.​

​

 

[IfAndOr]

I've been meaning to say that it's a nice looking championship Mario. 👍

I might be there. Then then again I might not. The weekends tend to be my Netflix nights. And you know me and long races, although 1 hour isn't too bad. I might be a surprise last minute entrant but it's best not to hang around for me.

 

[half_sourly]

Results from Round 1 at Bannochbrae.

Practice

Qualifying

Race

Standings

 

[Hun200kmh]

Great race everyone. Shame that in this VGTA class the Jaguars have so much more speed than everyone else, that made them a lot more difficult to get rid of (unless you got some distance immediately after overtaking, chances are you would be rear-ended while braking into the first corner after the overtake).

I decided to get rid of any rain because this track - an already difficult/demanding one - can become unbearable with wet patches. This made for a very intense/quick paced race from start to finish. No tyre changing was ever needed, same with fuel. A proper workout for both arms and brain!

As for my race (quick recap now ) I started from the back and my first couple of laps were a total mess, I think I was last at the end of lap 2, and it was all entirely my fault! After that I refocused I clawed back into contention. One good thing about long races is that nothing is final, you have time to recover and others have time to have their own blunders!

In any case, I reached 3rd at about half-race, with Duarte in the lead almost 40 seconds away, interestingly followed closely by an AI Jaguar. I managed to reduce that gap throughout the remainder of the race (Duarte in "management" mode I assume), closest I was was near 10 seconds. Overtook that Jaguar for second, and finished the race in that position. Meanwhile noticed @half_sourly and raeggee climbing up through the field (and complaining about Jaguars, something we all did, especially @GTP_RPREGO, who had several run-ins with them ).

Funny story is that the "lead Jag", still in third but closely followed by half and raeggee, pitted for fuel at the end of the last lap of the race (therefore proving that he was a moron, something we all knew already), thus granting them 3rd and 4th at the end (and making it a 1-2-3-4 human finish!)

Now, about the Series Calendar and therefore, about the next race.

I worked through the list of races and although I don't want to postpone Bathurst much (we are racing with the real date and that means the closer we get to summer here is the closer we get to winter in Australia), I think we should have a propotype race before what we got in that alphabetical order. Also, I don't want both Le Mans and both Spa races to be consecutive. Finally I want the last three races to be Nordschleife /Indianapolis / Le Mans, heritage and epicness wise nothing beats those 3!

SO ... and with all that in mind here's the final order of events:

• single seater events in red
• 24h events in dark blue if using prototypes
• 24h events in orange if using GT Cars
• daytime events in green

DONE (2024/05/11)

1. Bannochbrae / Vintage Touring GT-A - (human) players must drive the Porsche 911 - DONE


NEXT UP (2024/06/01, PLEASE SAVE THE DATE)

2. Watkins Glen 24h / GT1 - (human) players must drive the ..........



REMAINING (DATES NOT SET)

3. Bathurst 24h /Group A
4. Fuji / Vintage F1-B
5. Texas Motor Speedway / GTO
6. Daytona Road Course 24h/ Vintage Prototype B
7. Spa Francorchamps / Vintage F1-A
8. Hockenheim Classic / Group 5
9. Le Mans Vintage 24h/Vintage Prototype A
10. Spa Fancorchamps Historic 24h / Vintage Touring GT-C
11. Rouen Les Essarts / Vintage F1-D
12. Brno/ Vintage Touring GT-B
13. Sakitto 24h / Group C
14. Monza Classic / Vintage F1-C
15. Road America/ Can Am
16. Nurburgring Nordschleife 24h / Group 4
17. Indianapolis/Vintage Indycar
18. Le Mans 24h/LMP900



In the post-race debrief the drivers present convened on the next Classic Endurance (Watkins Glen with the GT1 class) happening Sat June 1st, and that date is settled (bar any unpredictable difficulty). Ideally the race will happen earlier in the evening but we'll get to that closer to the date.


One thing left to decide is what car will be used by us human racers. The GT1 class and (all its cars) is well known in this group, so all suggestions welcome. As a reminder, here are the cars available:

This Series will last all year, is very loosely organized and destined to gather like-minded people that enjoy online racing and some banter. So, and again, I'll keep on calling everyone from the monday group (and anyone else possibly interested, of course) to join up. Namely:

@IfAndOr
@richroo
@xeronima
@Oldbass47
@beachboy6658
@Zolon32

PS - @GTP_RPREGO Ricardo, don't know if you noticed my conversation with half in the post-debrief moment, but your suggestion that the 3 worse results are thrown out has been accepted. It will be done like this: the scoring will go on as inormal until the final 3 races, and only then (starting with the Nordschleife race) the worse results will be discounted from everyone's total.

PPS - @half_sourly , again thank you for taking care of the scoring and laptime sheets we all so like to have available! 👍

 

[GTP_RPREGO]

Hello! Very hard race yesterday, those jaguars were driven by an AI programmed with Satoru Nakajima and Pastor Maldonado videos...

For the next one I vote for this beauty

 

[IfAndOr]

Good to see everything went well. I got back in quite late after an evening bike ride, made a bite to eat and Netflix won out to watch while eating it. 🙂

Excluding the Jags it seems, can I ask what were the thoughts on the behaviour of the AI at 80/100? I know they can be divisive but I might consider adding them to the upcoming Monday series to fill up the grid.

 

[half_sourly]

Fine for the most part but

• In some corners their braking points are way beyond real drivers'
• In some corners their braking points are way too early or they brake where we don't (example at Bannochbrae before the town chicane)
• Sometimes they randomly slow down, example the bumpy bit after the left under the bridge - although once you know this you can use it to your advantage
• They don't always respect your space side by side.
• They bumped me off twice in braking zones.

What I took from driving against them last night was that you'd need to practice against them under the same conditions to understand those quirks which is a pain as it adds preparation time on top of the usual getting used to the track and car combination. We'd also (for this classic series) need to know which cars Mario plans to give the AIs to help us set up such practice.

 

[Hun200kmh]

@GTP_RPREGO Ricardo, your preference is noted and will be taken into account. IIRC the Ferrari wasn't top of the class (that would be the Mercedes or the Toyota) but was still a good car and easy to drive. It is definitely an option.

To all, it has come to my attention that raeggee and Ricardo have a conflicting schedule for the next June 1st (Saturday). So I'll ask if there's any problem with keeping that same weekend but moving the Watkins Glen race to Sunday (June 2nd), sometime during the afternoon, early evening.

@half_sourly that's a thorough analysis, I will add some inconsistency in their behaviour but that is almost entirely ironed out with the aggression level at 100. I came to understand, after many tries, that the "agression" level isn't really about "agression" but about skill, whereas the "skill" rating is simply about speed in a straight line. Meaning the skill rating does affect the laptimes but it is the aggression level that makes the AI cars more competent and therefore more predictable. Still there's the issue of them braking impossibly late to some corners and that's what causes the greater problems because if they're following you close when approaching one of these corners its an almost certainty that they'll bump you.

So yes, some practise of racing AI is a definite advantage, it allows you to understand when to wait, when to attack and how to defend. Those of us that invested their time in custom races and career mode will certainly feel more at ease around AIs than those that didn't.

@IfAndOr Paul, I'm not sure AIs are really needed in shorter races, not if you still have a group of 6 to 8 drivers used to compete in close proximity. With races of about 10 laps a group like that will never feel bored and the on-track action and fights will always be plentiful. But you can test this one week and get the group's feedback on it.

 

[Hun200kmh]

Right, so I tried a quick race under heavy rain at Watkins Glen. And I have good news, the Glen never gets so soaked that you can't drive anymore. A bit like the Nordschleife, some puddles do form but they are few and clearly visible, so we just have to adjust our driving to avoid them.

That said, this doesn't mean we will have rain at WG. It just means we might have it. Because I really want to explore one of this game's neat features, the "random weather" setting.

So today I did some "experimenting" with this Random Weather feature. Because online it would be very time consuming I tried it in offline mode. And it was quick and simple. Set the first weather slot to be random, start the race, check the weather, pause, quit, restart, check the weather, pause, quit, restart, etc ... you can see it here:



Now, don't hurt your eyes and drain your patience trying to get all the 12 race/start weather settings I got in under 2 minutes. I did that job for you and these are the results:

• Clear
• Heavy fog with rain
• Clear
• Fog with rain
• Medium cloud
• Heavy cloud
• Clear
• Overcast
• Clear
• Light cloud
• Overcast
• Heavy fog with rain

I don't know (obviously) if there's any bias in this game towards any kind of settings when you pick random (I suspect they take out the most extreme ones) or indeed if the race settings affect the odds of us getting particular slots. In any case, The settings for this offline race were pretty much what I'm planning to do come race day. 5 AM, current date (meaning May), Watkins Glen.

In any case, working on these 12 successive results we get some interesting data:

4 * Clear (that's one 3rd of the results)

3 * Heavy fog or "just" fog with rain (one 4th of the results are wet, and all of them with fog also ... hmmm, could it be the 5 AM setting)

And then 5 * "cloudy settings"

2* Overcast
1* Heavy Cloud
1* Medium Cloud
1* Light Cloud

Make of this what you want, but if this sample means anything then the chance of a dry race start is greater than a wet one. But still the chance of a wet start is very real.

And that's how I like it so I'm definitely going with the random setting for 1st and 3rd slots (as intended from the start).

A bit more infoon this second race of the series. It will be run next Sunday June 1st, in the evening (exact hour still under consideration). And it will again last one hour, with previous 15 minutes session for Free Practise and Quali. AI setting still being considered, will try to find a balance that makes them challenging (we dont want slow road blocks) but not impossibly fast. Also don't want them to behave like maniacs bumping us off the track in every other corner.

Thoughts shared, let me hear yours!

 

[IfAndOr]

Nice experiment. 🙂
As something of a PC2 weather geek that's something I've never tried. I've often wondered if the random setting is linked to the time of year, or even time of day. It'd make sense since you wouldn't want snow in summer for instance, and maybe it gives a higher chance of worse weather in winter.


Are you syncing the weather to the race or running it via the timer? If you were to use the latter you could get 5 or maybe 6 weather events in an hour.
For example - Since it continues to roll over using after the sequence as completed, x5 with random, LF, LC, MC, would give you a 36 minute spell of known dry weather mid race with random weather at the beginning and towards the end (giving slightly shorter spells of possible rain). It would also probably switch to a light fog spell again right at the very end.

You can of course ignore all the above. It's just that you triggered my brain into thinking all the permutations. 😄

 

[Hun200kmh]

Update on my "random weather" testing. This time I set a race with 4 weather slots, made it so I could tell the slots clearly apart, so it was CLEAR /RANDOM / CLEAR / HEAVY FOG. Set the race to 40 minutes and set the weather progression to "60x", meaning weather slots would change every minute.

My aim was to understand if the "random" slot, once picked by the system for a first time, would then be always the same every time it came up IN THE SAME RACE, or if it would continue to be random. This is important because if I set a race with random weather slots I want to know if the first choice made by the game will then be THE choice, threfore allowing us some prediction on what would happen throughout the race.

Here's the result of todays test:

​

So, and keeping in mind that slots 1, 3 and 4 are fixed, for this race the game filled slot #2 (set to random) with, in consecutive order, the following settings:

• Overcast​
• Fog​
• Clear​
• Heavy fog​
• Light Rain​
• Rain​
• Overcast​
• Fog​
• Clear​
• Heavy fog​

So, 2 out of 10 choices were wet, but most interestingly, the game didn't stick to the setting that it chose for the first time, so everytime a random setting slot showed up, it remained random (therefore unpedictable), not following the same setting as before.

With this in mind, I may revise slightly the Watkins Glen race, going for a 1st weather slot set to random, and all others dry (maybe clear, maybe cloudy, hazy or foggy, but dry in all cases). However, I will (in a 60 minutes race) go for a 5X setting on weather, meaning the slots will change every 12 minutes. So, in fact, the race will go on like this:
0 to 12 minutes - random
12 to 24 minutes - some dry setting
24 to 36 minutes - some dry setting
36 to 48 minutes - some dry setting
48 to 60 minutes(end of race) - random

either one of the random slots (or none; or both) can be wet or dry, it'll be up to the game to decide.

Cheers all!

EDIT - Didn't see your post before ending to write mine (I started it a couple of hours ago but let it unfinished because ... real life happening ). All I can say is that great minds think alike! (this said very humbly of course )