Q&A with Slightly Mad Studios: Ian Bell [Read OP]

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David Brooks
@IanBell @The_American

Sorry if this has already been asked/answered

Saved (named) set ups?

One of my biggest frustrations with pcars1 is that I never know what set up I actually have active on the car. This is especially true for online races. For example, I'll join an online gt3 race knowing I have a great set up for the Bentley from the career mode racing I was doing, but then they set the track to one that wasn't part of my offline career series and I have no idea if i remembered to save my set up to all tracks. Chances are I end up trying to race online with the default set up and get owned.

Also I would prefer to be able to save multiple set ups per track for the same car, e.g. a wet vs a dry set up

Thank you
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Anyone know if this has been answered elsewhere?
 
Hi,

I had some good fun playing Project Cars 1 with about 250 hours counted by the game (it could get to 350 counting the time on the menu) and I am pleased at your work, even with the lows and highs. I am looking foward to PC 2 and I am a very likely costumer of yours, so here are some questions @The_American @IanBell (sorry if there are too many).

1) The controller settings... That affects the wheel users too.. Speed Sensitivity, Brake Sensitivity, Steering Dead Zone... I had lost some serious time to set them up for being able to drive (on a PS4 controller). They do a real difference, but they completely lack instructions. I had to look in the internet for a decent setup, and there was a lot of trial and error because of a lack of information about them. So, this is not a question, but rather a request, could you please make these options more simple and write an instruction manual about these things? In the end, these settings are personal, so finding a good "stock setup" for these settings is not the best approach. Clarifying here helps a lot!

2) Is there any possibility that we can feature an opponent selector feature? What I mean is exactly like the PC mod "Custom Grid Tool" (http://forum.projectcarsgame.com/sh...om-Grid-Tool-Custom-Grids-for-Solo-Quick-Race), but coming with the game and not as a MOD.

3) Will low and mid HP road cars be "boosted" and harder to drive? What I mean is, in PC 1 we have a 400 and something HP special Lancer version, while the regular Lancer does 300 HP normally. We have hatches with 200 or even 300 HP, while the regular versions are 100-200 HP. Almost every Road C1 and C2 are in this same way. Also, these cars are strangely hard to drive. It is quite strange that some GT3 cars are easier to drive than any Road C1 car, even using real assists. Will this change in PC 2?

4) Have you guys ever thought about this: Using adjustable air restrictors in almost every road cars, so you can have two modes of use at the same car: One with maximum perfomance and no air restriction. And a second mode that uses the air restrictor to match a class, so "Road A, B, C, D..." could be equalized just like a real GT3 car is. Why not?

5) This is just a small detail but it bothers me a bit. I have noticed that in both fog and haze the clouds dissappear from the skys. However, fog is usually a phenomenom where a cloud is passing by very close to the ground. It usually happens when the sky is cloudly, and thats why there is even an option to feature with rain, right? So, the sky should be clouldly while in fog, not clear. I noticed that the weather had some changes, is this detail got fixed?

Thats it, thank you!

EDIT:

6) Also noticed that in PC 1, the AI doesnt know when the race is going to end. They stop when their tires are over, but they dont think on a big scale. So, if your tire is going to endure 10 laps, and your race are going to have 15, most human players stop at laps 7 or 8 for a reason, while the IA only stops at 10. Sometimes, this can get really bad for the AI, since the tires can endure 10 laps and the race lasts 12, making them to stop and pit close to the finish of the race, which is not wise at all. Will this be different in PC 2?
 
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CorvetteConquer
My biggest controller concern is the sensitivity of the R3 stick. For my settings, you accelerate by pressing the stick up. Except, it only began accelerating at about 33% up. Not fun. If I feather the throttle, about 1-5% up, I expect acceleration to begin. I know Ian has worked extensively with controllers and wants to optimize them. Maybe you have had experience with throttle control and steering inputs...
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This one less of a pCARS issue and more a hardware issue with controllers. If you very gently try move the sticks you will very likely notice that they have a small area in the middle where they move freely, with barely any resistance.

You will also notice that this small movement won't cause any input to be registered. The reason for this is very likely that on the driver level vendors implemented a deadzone for the above hardware fault. I say this because when you use a X360 pad on Windows XP with third-party drivers, you can fully disable the deadzone of the sticks on these controllers, but then due to their small free movement you will be really hard pressed to find their center position, making it impossible to travel in a straight line with a car for example. In my testing I could replicate the sticks' original behavior on WinXP with a deadzone of 18-20%, meaning that with X360 pads you lose this amount of the total range of the sticks, regardless of the platform, which will actually include usable range as well, I assume because the vendors wanted to be sure there will always be a clear center and manufacturing processes can introduce a variability in how precise these sticks are. The sticks of my specific X360 pad worked really well with 10% deadzone under WinXP and at that point they had noticeable more range and as a result precision compared to the official drivers.

Now, I'm talking about an X360 pad here, but I don't know what you actually use. I tried PS2, PS3 and PS4 pads as well, their sticks always had a deadzone, no matter what. I assume the XBONE controller is the same as well. If you are on the PC what I would actually recommend if you want to stick with a controller (pun very intentional) is to get a Steam Controller. I have one and the amount you can tweak its behavior is out of this world, it has no competition in this regard. It specifically has a setting to counter the built-in deadzone in many softwares, so that input will be registered from the sticks right where you want, with potentially no clear center if you overdo it.

All that said however, I really don't recommend using one of the sticks for breaking and accelerating. The reason is that ideally with some cars you want to do both at the same time for short periods in the braking zones, which is impossible with a single stick of course. Due to the above detailed deadzone issue, without a Steam Controller are losing precision anyway.
 
Ryzza5
Hardest thing is choosing, but hopefully drone scanning makes more tracks a bigger possibility - being so far away from everyone might not help however.

Hard to pick between Adelaide, Philip Island, and some other great locations though. The new Tailem Bend circuits look interesting too http://www.thebend.com.au/
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Oh yeah! I almost forgot about The Bend.
Us Aussies beg you @IanBell. Please bring another Australian track to pCARS 2 as a DLC. Would love Adelaide Street circuit, Gold Coast Street circuit, Phillip Island, Sandown, etc.. Even one of these suggested circuits in a DLC us Aussies and the rest of the world will love! :)
 
So I just read through all the answers. Thank you very much for your time here Ian, The Owl and The_American, it's really appreciated.

Seeing how successful the suggestion for Interlagos was, I'd like to know if there's any chance that we'll see the Autodromo di Pergusa (Enna Pergusa) in pCARS 2 eventually? It's one of my all time favorite tracks due to its deceptive simplicity, I enjoyed it a lot in Test Drive: Ferrari Racing Legends.
 
LGee19
Oh yeah! I almost forgot about The Bend.
Us Aussies beg you @IanBell. Please bring another Australian track to pCARS 2 as a DLC. Would love Adelaide Street circuit, Gold Coast Street circuit, Phillip Island, Sandown, etc.. Even one of these suggested circuits in a DLC us Aussies and the rest of the world will love! :)
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All good suggestions! Phillip Island plus a street circuit would get my vote hopefully with the circuit I most want - the classic Longford Street Circuit in Tasmania (a bit like an Australian version of Bannochbrae).

A question for @IanBell or @the American - a lot of us, myself included, don't have a lot of time for either practise or setup so race the cars offline and online using the default setups - have you made sure that the cars in PC2 come as standard with good default setups for those of us who prefer to race that way?

PS thanks to Ian and all the others who have commented, clarified and given us information on PC2.
 
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The_American
Game "mode" i can answer more easily.

Track/Vehicle questions i cannot answer easily as i cannot "leak" these details. Our Marketing team is strictly in charge of that information.
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Regarding the driver rating system, how do you decide which driver is at fault in a collision? Is it always the one that's behind or does the system penalizes both drivers equally, no matter what?

I know you said that can't tell us specifics about tracks and cars, which I can understand, however can you maybe tell us how you choose which track licenses you go for? I assume general popularity comes first but you have any priorities beyond that?
 
How does SMS go about sourcing cars?

Where does your team start looking or start phoning?

What continent have you all, found most of the cars for PC1 & PC2?

Do to the success of PC1, have car manufacturers and race teams wheeled cars to your "door step" to include in PC2?
 
HardRock
Regarding the driver rating system, how do you decide which driver is at fault in a collision? Is it always the one that's behind or does the system penalizes both drivers equally, no matter what?

I know you said that can't tell us specifics about tracks and cars, which I can understand, however can you maybe tell us how you choose which track licenses you go for? I assume general popularity comes first but you have any priorities beyond that?
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Bilateral assignment, equally. We had some ideas about 'fault' assignment but it woulda been correct only 85% of the time (so wrong 15% of the time). Figure we'd do it like New Jersey car insurance.

05XR8
How does SMS go about sourcing cars?

Where does your team start looking or start phoning?

What continent have you all, found most of the cars for PC1 & PC2?

Do to the success of PC1, have car manufacturers and race teams wheeled cars to your "door step" to include in PC2?
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There's a guy on our team...he's got this massive Rolodex. Some of these companies we've been working with for years so they know us. Yeah, success on past games gives us momentum going into the negotiations for this game. So it's not just the car data, they also offer some time with their factory drivers to help fine-tune the vehicle behavior. I think they know we're super-serious about physics (much as we can be, some bugs will always be there and then you got CPU/memory limitations of the consumer machines)....so they appreciate the length we go to try and bring that experience to the general public. They also hook us up with sound recording sessions. Y'all see some articles soon about our relationship with these companies.
 
The_American
Bilateral assignment, equally. We had some ideas about 'fault' assignment but it woulda been correct only 85% of the time (so wrong 15% of the time). Figure we'd do it like New Jersey car insurance.


There's a guy on our team...he's got this massive Rolodex. Some of these companies we've been working with for years so they know us. Yeah, success on past games gives us momentum going into the negotiations for this game. So it's not just the car data, they also offer some time with their factory drivers to help fine-tune the vehicle behavior. I think they know we're super-serious about physics (much as we can be, some bugs will always be there and then you got CPU/memory limitations of the consumer machines)....so they appreciate the length we go to try and bring that experience to the general public. They also hook us up with sound recording sessions. Y'all see some articles soon about our relationship with these companies.
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Fantastic! Thank you.

As I mentioned in another thread, loads to reveal these next 6+ months. ;)
 
@IanBell @The_American One of the things that bugs me is when it's at night, pitch black track, AI has no headlights but drives as if it's daylight. Is there anyway you guys have found around this issue? Say, imagine an AI car (with headlights) crashes, at night, and breaks said lights. Will he go slower until he repairs them or will he just switch on "night-vision"?
 
The_American
Bilateral assignment, equally. We had some ideas about 'fault' assignment but it woulda been correct only 85% of the time (so wrong 15% of the time). Figure we'd do it like New Jersey car insurance.
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Awesome, good to know. I honestly think that is the best way to go, as otherwise penalties of this kind could always be disputed. This way all parties will be incentivized to avoid contact at all costs.
 
TexasTyme214
@The_American I'm not sure if this has been asked, but will engine performance be affected if the engine is too hot or too cold? Currently, we can run low radiator until the cows come home without paying for it on track or in the pits.
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Really? Not on PC with full damage turned on. See many blown engines during races due to restricted radiators. Is this a PS4 specific issue? Seems strange that you wouldn't have the same damage we get on the PC side......
 
F1Racer68
Really? Not on PC with full damage turned on. See many blown engines during races due to restricted radiators. Is this a PS4 specific issue? Seems strange that you wouldn't have the same damage we get on the PC side......
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I don't mean radiator on zero, but you can get away with the 10-20% range often in GT/LMP stuff. This definitely isn't true in older cars or high boost turbo cars (where 100% radiator allows you to exploit high boost).
 
I may have already asked this on the pCARS official forum site, but are we going to have more granular time options - x1 to x60 time simulation in increments of one (much like Gran Turismo) and support for non-standard timed race durations (e.g. 1h40m, 2h40m as in IMSA, or, say, 1h30m, 5h00m or - as in Petit Le Mans, 10h00m) - on pCARS 2? I'd like to have much more flexibility in simulation rate and timed race length than pCARS 1.

And will there be new BMW M6 and (current version) Audi R8 LMS GT3 cars as well in pCARS 2? Or will that be discussed at a later date?
 
The_American
Timed Race duration is a clock now HH:MM in increments of 5 minutes up to 24:00

(Can still do laps up to 999 laps also)

Time acceleration choices: "x2, x5, x10, x15, x20, x25, x30, x40, x50, x60"

GT3 class we are already in double-digit for vehicle count including all the major brands. You'll be fine ;)
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Damn. I can't do the Bathurst 1000 laps. :lol: Glad it's incremented by 5 minutes though. Will race time be the same? E.g. Quarter to 6 for the B12hr.

Would have liked it to be 0-60 in fairness for time acceleration. Is there a reason why this isn't the case?
 
TexasTyme214
I don't mean radiator on zero, but you can get away with the 10-20% range often in GT/LMP stuff. This definitely isn't true in older cars or high boost turbo cars (where 100% radiator allows you to exploit high boost).
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We've reviewed radiator efficiency...with damage enabled you're gonna blow engine quickly if you trim that down. Checking on the heating influence on power/torque curves..not sure..I don't play sissy "no damage" mode.

Oh also, we finally broke out the front vs rear brake duct settings. Been waiting since 2010 (Shift 1) for that! It's in game now.
 

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