New to PC2 - which version to start with?

  • Thread starter Brego
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I may have just found 1 car that I can control easier with a controller than with a wheel (although it may be down to the strength of the ffb)

The 1974 Jaguar E-Type V12 Group 44 (Vintage GT A)
 
For some reason I can't seem to find the like button :P

In all seriousness - for me pCARS is all about the racecars, there are plenty of other games majoring on street cars. In terms of cars my only request would be to fill out some of the historic racing classes. More CAN-AM especially!
Yes but none of those games are project cars which is my favorite racing game and the one that i wanna drive my street cars in, unless your telling me to go play need for speed :yuck:.

:(
 
Yes but none of those games are project cars which is my favorite racing game and the one that i wanna drive my street cars in, unless your telling me to go play need for speed :yuck:.

:(

I guess this is where SMS can't really win - if the next one makes me totally happy you won't be and vice versa. FWIW though, I'm not including the P1 GTR as a road car (among others, the Vulcan & FXX-K especially) - those trackday specials absolutely should be in.

My biggest objection though is to anyone wanting Rallycross out. It doesn't need to be the main event at all, but it's high octane circuit racing and now that the work has been done it needs to stay in and be expanded slightly (couple more historics to race with the Escort)
 
It astonishes me from time to time how quickly many of us forget what it was like to start in driving games...

It's easy to say 'drop the road cars' when you already have had probably what, at least two or three years playing, but imagine the dilemma a newcomer to racing games faces if SMS actually followed that advice!

For starters, you can't really go to other games to get 'warmed up', to learn the basics because you immediately have to unlearn most of that in PC2! But provide a decent selection of low power daily drivers, and the beginning player has plenty of choice of cars that are not going to be spinning him around and crashing 24/7. And at least he is learning basic car control on the same tire and handling model he will be using when he moves up to faster, more powerful race cars.

Ir's easy to fall into the trap of wanting the game to be ONLY what we like. But for it to grow, it has to be what starting players like ALSO..!
 
You need a wheel to drive any type of car to its 100% full capabilities in just about any sim. Kind of a pointless statement when it's the reason why FFB wheels exist in the first place.
That is not true. There exist other "sims" such as Dirt Rally where you literally don't need any wheel to make the most of your car capabilities. Hell even the first assetto was another borderline example of this depending on the car. I'm actually world apart faster with the controller than with the wheel in such games, specially on dirt rally. Why is this?, because dirt rally is perfectly programmed to be played on a controller, whereas pc1 and 2 is not.

It is not that a videogame is about cars but the way it's been designed what actually matters the most when finding out whether a wheel is better or not than the controller, and project cars 1 and 2 are the most obvious examples of a wheel been straight away mandatory to be use, as the way it was designed to be literally screams for it. Not to mention when we jump in factory cars in this game.

Nevertheless, with my settings, driving roadcars in PCARS2 is only about as challenging as a typical console racing game...and plenty more than satisfying and enjoyable enough
I can't buy that. And I have been a pad player for so long, and been through every single driving game that came out since nineties. I also play driveclub, gotham, forza, assetto, old wrc games for the ps2.., everything you may think about when it comes to racing games where the controller is way superior to using a wheel, and pc1 and 2 ain't defintiely one of them. I mean I know what it is playing with a controller good enough too, and have experience enough to dial it up (if possible) when I find a game that doesn't go along well with a pad, and man, again, pc1 and 2 is definitely one of those. Why?, because it hasn't been made to be played with one. It's just that simple
 
TBH, rally games are perfect for the pad because they involve a HUGE amount of lock to lock and countersteering, and being able to do it on a pad in a fraction of the time a wheel can do it gives pad players the impression that the pad is the controller of choice. But the truth is, you aren't driving... The game is smoothing your inputs and allowing you to do things humanly impossible on a wheel...

Is that what you want? The game helping you drive, or do you actually want to know that your achievements are YOUR achievements? If you want to know it was you, you can't drive a pad...
 
Back to starting out....

I started my career mode with Karts, and I do not see how to change to anything else now. The paradigm is so different from GT that maybe it is there and I don't see it, but... for example the only option to enter on the calender is the kart race, and I don't know how to get to "select a car to drive/race with" or "select a new career path" or whatever. Sorry if it is too much of a noob question, but I've been on GT since version one.
 
Back to starting out....

I started my career mode with Karts, and I do not see how to change to anything else now. The paradigm is so different from GT that maybe it is there and I don't see it, but... for example the only option to enter on the calender is the kart race, and I don't know how to get to "select a car to drive/race with" or "select a new career path" or whatever. Sorry if it is too much of a noob question, but I've been on GT since version one.

Have you finished the season? Once you start a season in a discipline you have to complete it before you can change to a new one.

Alternatively you could start a new career - you can have multiple drivers/careers running at the same time which you can switch between using the Manage Drivers (I think) screen.
 
TBH, rally games are perfect for the pad because they involve a HUGE amount of lock to lock and countersteering, and being able to do it on a pad in a fraction of the time a wheel can do it gives pad players the impression that the pad is the controller of choice. But the truth is, you aren't driving... The game is smoothing your inputs and allowing you to do things humanly impossible on a wheel...

Is that what you want? The game helping you drive, or do you actually want to know that your achievements are YOUR achievements? If you want to know it was you, you can't drive a pad...
That's easy to fix in the dirt games they give plenty of wheel options but I always recalibrated the wheel to the point where my arms are about to touch/cross and set that as full lock or you can use the mode/Dpad button combo on t300 and set lock to 360ish it works fine :)
 
@fernandito -- If you think the PCARS games are the most obvious examples of a wheel being mandatory, you apparently have not played any sim that does nothing to accommodate analog stick steering, reading the input as if it was the X axis of a wheel. Some PC sims never bothered to do any more than that.

You can try recreating that experience in PCARS if you want, with steering sensitivity at 50, and speed sensitivity and controller damping set to 0. But that's not the default setting, and speed sensitivity and controller damping were implemented explicitly to accommodate steering with an analog stick on a controller. PCARS may not be the best at it, but by definition, these games are made to be playable with a controller. It's just that simple.


@simsimsheree -- That's not how this stuff works.

Steering with an analog stick seldom means you can actually steer lock to lock in an instant. That's only if the game applies raw X-axis input to the simulated steering rack, as I explained above. The smoothing you refer to (a.k.a. damping/dampening) is a necessary accommodation to account for the type of control an analog stick offers compared to a wheel. An analog stick is just not suitable for raw, direct steering input. I suggest thinking of an analog stick as a relative directional input. Left on the stick does not mean, "full lock to the left." It means, "turn the steering wheel to the left."

The purpose of this accommodation is to mediate between the player and the virtual steering rack to output the player's intended steering input. For example, anyone who knows anything about race driving knows better than go full lock into a corner with the front tires skidding. It's not worth forcing all players to avoid that beginner mistake with careful use of the analog stick. That's stupid. So you get something like speed sensitivity, which allows the player to hone in on their intended steering angle.

That's only "helping you drive" if you don't know any better. I know to avoid understeer from excessive turn-in (speed sensitivity). I have a fairly smooth and controlled driving style (controller damping). I know how to take advantage of self-aligning torque to find the right countersteer angle (opposite lock help). It's really not as difficult as accomplishing the same things with direct, unassisted steering on an analog stick. Not even close.

If the "help" enables me to drive the car more like how I would in real life or with a wheel -- and allows me to focus on my line, speed, available traction, the stuff that really separates faster and slower drivers, not steering basics -- as far as I'm concerned that "help" makes the experience more authentic, not less.
 
@fernandito -- If you think the PCARS games are the most obvious examples of a wheel being mandatory, you apparently have not played any sim that does nothing to accommodate analog stick steering, reading the input as if it was the X axis of a wheel. Some PC sims never bothered to do any more than that.

You can try recreating that experience in PCARS if you want, with steering sensitivity at 50, and speed sensitivity and controller damping set to 0. But that's not the default setting, and speed sensitivity and controller damping were implemented explicitly to accommodate steering with an analog stick on a controller. PCARS may not be the best at it, but by definition, these games are made to be playable with a controller. It's just that simple.
I think I've heard that one before. I mean no way

That's easy to fix in the dirt games they give plenty of wheel options but I always recalibrated the wheel to the point where my arms are about to touch/cross and set that as full lock or you can use the mode/Dpad button combo on t300 and set lock to 360ish it works fine :)
For rally action, despite you are already very accomodate for a 360º lock (it's just too twichy), I'd recommend you a fixed one of either 540 or 620. It's what they have been using since the eighties (540º), and is widely considered the most convenient since then for gravel action. For the older rally cars from 1960-70, just go real too and fix either a 720º lock (the legendary McRae Ford Scort, and the opel kadet too had 720 for instance), or even 1080º for the likes of the lancia fulvia or the mini : - D. It's worth the experience.

I think rallycross, at least the modern ones also go for 540º lock.

Just try it and see. I play rally games such as dirt rally with a controller, in which I definitely find it way superior to the wheel, but sometimes I use the wheel with them just for the sake of it, and found the 540ºmark the best out of all, just like real rally drivers seem use too.
 
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They might have been using 540 since back in the day but back when I started driving with a wheel 900deg was unheard of they would lock to lock just as your arms crossed Colin mcrea and toca were pretty good back then even need for speed games played nice :) anyway the point of that ramble was 360 isn't to bad for me and atm the crew2 I have to run @ 300deg and irl I cant drive so i'm used to gaming wheels not real wheels ;)
 
^ok heh we all have our preferences. Just without wanting to derail the thread, I'd like to post this video not with the goal of seeing the steering lock used in the wrc cars from the 2000 onwards (you'll see it's 540º, and the car behaves godly as you're about to see), but just for the mere enjoyment of watching good suicidal racing ending on succes. None can match the skill of rally drivers:


That was Mc'Rae on the 2000-2001 Focus. A car way superior to the Scort in what it comes to corner taking on gravel. I think it was my favourite rally era back then, along with of course the banned Group B, in which the mark of absolute superiority can be set on this one:


Ari Vatanen with the glorious unforgettable Peugeot 405 T16 (godly modified for this gropup of course, sporting 800Kg to 800Hp = madness made manifest), a car by the way I had the honour to enjoy for more than 15 years, until 2001 I sold it.

This all is what I call true drivers : - D.

Glorious past is glorious, and when cars were truly beautiful. Will never happen again I' afraid.
 
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