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

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@IanBell @The_American

In PC1 if you did a race by number of laps and had chosen 3 or 4 different weather settings, it seems those weather settings would only cycle through one time each. However, if you did a race using time instead of lap numbers, those weather settings would cycle through several times. Will this be changed in PC2 so both timed and lap races will only cycle the weather through one time each?
 
@IanBell @The_American

In PC1 if you did a race by number of laps and had chosen 3 or 4 different weather settings, it seems those weather settings would only cycle through one time each. However, if you did a race using time instead of lap numbers, those weather settings would cycle through several times. Will this be changed in PC2 so both timed and lap races will only cycle the weather through one time each?
This has been answered by @The_American somwheres, think its one of his first 10 or so post.

EDIT: Maybe it was Ian.

EDIT 2: Maybe someone else will have better luck finding it, whoever posted it started it by explaining how the weather was divided up in PCars1 ... Ive looked but I cant spot it.

EDIT 3: Memory served me wrong this was said in the general discussion:

"
Hi... It's quite difficult to set up the weather system for sure.. But really didn't find any bug...but you have to learn to set it up properly..

That was in the official support forum...i recomend to read it an try it out... Hope it helps you like it did to me:


This has been posted by Elmo (written by a development weatherman) on the official forum about how the weather system is supposed to work.

===================================

Internally weather system we have is actually quite robust in how it can receive weather forecast information.

The way it works is that you can feed it a condition and how long that condition will last for. With that information it will create a timeline that will playout. It works basically on a 24 hour clock.

Saying all that we did not expose all this functionality to the player because frankly we thought it was a little bit of overkill..
(As you all know PCars was a co-operative development and I think we forget a little how a simple menu like this can be confusing to people only buying the game anew.)

Ok so when you look at the screen the first option you can see is a menu item called weather slots
Here you can select between 1 and 4 slots.
Using these slots, the race setup will feed a weather timeline into the weather system.

Each slot represents what the weather will be at the top of every hour with slot 1 being the race start time slot 2 race start time +1 hour and so on. We repeat this cycle over a 24 hour period.

For example we setup a system with 2 weather slots one rainy one clear and the race time at 2pm.
Race setup will feed a timeline to the weather system something like this:
at 2pm weather will be rainy and it will be like that for 40 mins.
at 3pm weather will be clear and it will be like that for 50 mins ...
at 4pm weather will be rainy and it will last 53 mins...
at 5pm weather will be clear and it will last 35 mins ..

What this will do is when you start the race it will be raining and will so for the first 40mins.
Then at 2:40pm the weather will start to clear up and by 3pm it will be fully clear and stay that way till 3:50pm and so on.
(note the time the weather would last for is random, it was thought exposing info like this would again be too much information)

Ok so that's all simple enough. Now where it gets a little confusing


Somewhere along the development process people wanted to decouple the weather from the day and night cycle.

So for example they wanted the weather to be changing a lot but have the time of day to stay the same.

So what we did was decouple the weather timeline progression (Weather Progression) from the day night (Time Progression) .
This meant for example you could have the weather speed at 60 i.e 1 second equals 1 min but time of day at real time.

So in the example above
if we had the weather progression at realtime it would take 40 mins for the weather to start to transition to rainy.
But if we set it to 60 it would only take 40 seconds.

Then later in the project it was proposed that instead of the weather timeline being a time based thing people wanted it to happen based on how the race progressed..
So a new option was added to the Weather progression slider called "sync to race"
So the way it works is each slot would represent a proportion of the race, so if we had 2 slots they would represent the the first and second half of the race , if 4 slots then each quarter of the race.

So again taking our above example it would mean the following.
The Start of the race as always rainy and the end of the race would always be clear.
e.g If you had a 2 lap race you would start of raining and the time the leader went started the second lap the weather would be clear."
 
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I did ask this before but I would like to try again. As the carlist expands, will there be a number-based/performance system that further classifies cars within their classes (a la Forza and GT specifically)?
 
I would like to ask a question for Ian, the American or anybody who has played Project cars regarding FFB.

I've been playing R3E a fair bit recently due to its inclusion of VR. The FFb is imo very good.
There are improvements to the handling in Project Cars 2. The FFB though from what i can gather is pretty much the same just that you have easier way to dial it in & due to improvements in tyre & handling it feels greatly improved.
R3e seems to use effects, additional to the physics to enhance the immersion & information.
So the question is will Project Cars 2 have anything like these effects?
 
We've been busy, challenging week. :)

EDIT:

I would like to ask a question for Ian, the American or anybody who has played Project cars regarding FFB.

I've been playing R3E a fair bit recently due to its inclusion of VR. The FFb is imo very good.
There are improvements to the handling in Project Cars 2. The FFB though from what i can gather is pretty much the same just that you have easier way to dial it in & due to improvements in tyre & handling it feels greatly improved.
R3e seems to use effects, additional to the physics to enhance the immersion & information.
So the question is will Project Cars 2 have anything like these effects?

Not sure if you're saying that our FFB is the same as R3E or if it will be the same as PC1. We do not aim to replicate others FFB, we tend to follow the logic that the forces should come from our physics and without any aids from masks or other external effects. The FFB has been improved immensely, it's still receiving a lot of work on a weekly basis and the constant feedback from our partners/pro drivers/WMD2 have been very valuable in order to achieve this, so you can expect a great experience when it comes out.
 
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Of the cars not making into the next game, is it reasonable to assume that rosters like the GT3 class will be cleaned up and "updated?"

12C replaced by 650
SLS replaced by AMG

Or can we expect to have multiple GT3 cars from the same manufacturer like in the first game?
 
We've been busy, challenging week. :)

EDIT:



Not sure if you're saying that our FFB is the same as R3E or if it will be the same as PC1. We do not aim to replicate others FFB, we tend to follow the logic that the forces should come from our physics and without any aids from masks or other external effects. The FFB has been improved immensely, it's still receiving a lot of work on a weekly basis and the constant feedback from our partners/pro drivers/WMD2 have been very valuable in order to achieve this, so you can expect a great experience when it comes out.

Thanks for answering. To clarify I meant essentially the same as pcars 1 relying on the physics only. For me i think that's a little disappointing as not everything can be synthesised through the physics.
 
Oh then you will be very surprised :)

Gear shifts, engine vibrations are possible? Also certain things like under-steer can benefit from being enhanced? Just my opinion of course. For me immersion is really important, i'm more interested in that than coming first in a race or getting the fastest time.
 
Gear shifts, engine vibrations are possible? Also certain things like under-steer can benefit from being enhanced? Just my opinion of course. For me immersion is really important, i'm more interested in that than coming first in a race or getting the fastest time.
Oh so it's more of rumble effects you're looking for rather than FFB. There's will be various hints you will receive under those circumstances, from visual effects to physics driven audio hints and also there will be feedback given to you via rumble and/or FFB.
I can tell you that i was just testing an "American beast" and i could clearly sense how much it wanted to kill me through my CSW V2 :)
 
This has been answered by @The_American somwheres, think its one of his first 10 or so post.

EDIT: Maybe it was Ian.

EDIT 2: Maybe someone else will have better luck finding it, whoever posted it started it by explaining how the weather was divided up in PCars1 ... Ive looked but I cant spot it.

EDIT 3: Memory served me wrong this was said in the general discussion:

"
Hi... It's quite difficult to set up the weather system for sure.. But really didn't find any bug...but you have to learn to set it up properly..

That was in the official support forum...i recomend to read it an try it out... Hope it helps you like it did to me:


This has been posted by Elmo (written by a development weatherman) on the official forum about how the weather system is supposed to work.

===================================

Internally weather system we have is actually quite robust in how it can receive weather forecast information.

The way it works is that you can feed it a condition and how long that condition will last for. With that information it will create a timeline that will playout. It works basically on a 24 hour clock.

Saying all that we did not expose all this functionality to the player because frankly we thought it was a little bit of overkill..
(As you all know PCars was a co-operative development and I think we forget a little how a simple menu like this can be confusing to people only buying the game anew.)

Ok so when you look at the screen the first option you can see is a menu item called weather slots
Here you can select between 1 and 4 slots.
Using these slots, the race setup will feed a weather timeline into the weather system.

Each slot represents what the weather will be at the top of every hour with slot 1 being the race start time slot 2 race start time +1 hour and so on. We repeat this cycle over a 24 hour period.

For example we setup a system with 2 weather slots one rainy one clear and the race time at 2pm.
Race setup will feed a timeline to the weather system something like this:
at 2pm weather will be rainy and it will be like that for 40 mins.
at 3pm weather will be clear and it will be like that for 50 mins ...
at 4pm weather will be rainy and it will last 53 mins...
at 5pm weather will be clear and it will last 35 mins ..

What this will do is when you start the race it will be raining and will so for the first 40mins.
Then at 2:40pm the weather will start to clear up and by 3pm it will be fully clear and stay that way till 3:50pm and so on.
(note the time the weather would last for is random, it was thought exposing info like this would again be too much information)

Ok so that's all simple enough. Now where it gets a little confusing


Somewhere along the development process people wanted to decouple the weather from the day and night cycle.

So for example they wanted the weather to be changing a lot but have the time of day to stay the same.

So what we did was decouple the weather timeline progression (Weather Progression) from the day night (Time Progression) .
This meant for example you could have the weather speed at 60 i.e 1 second equals 1 min but time of day at real time.

So in the example above
if we had the weather progression at realtime it would take 40 mins for the weather to start to transition to rainy.
But if we set it to 60 it would only take 40 seconds.

Then later in the project it was proposed that instead of the weather timeline being a time based thing people wanted it to happen based on how the race progressed..
So a new option was added to the Weather progression slider called "sync to race"
So the way it works is each slot would represent a proportion of the race, so if we had 2 slots they would represent the the first and second half of the race , if 4 slots then each quarter of the race.

So again taking our above example it would mean the following.
The Start of the race as always rainy and the end of the race would always be clear.
e.g If you had a 2 lap race you would start of raining and the time the leader went started the second lap the weather would be clear."
This may have been posted earlier, but I'm wondering if all our purchased car packs will transfer to p2? Eg..lotus 40 etc.
 
@IanBell and the crew, being that you all have created SMS prototypes, open Wheel racers and stock cars. Are there other in house vehicles the team are developing?

Like a from scratch FR, MR, RR GT3/GT4/GT5 or "historic"-type touring car or Caterham type road car.

Also, looking at the cars other games have, is it best to have one version/variant of a car from all marques of cars, multiple versions in varying years or one model that covers various racing disciplines?
 
Yep. We have them on the 416 as well. You feel them through chassis vibration. You DON'T feel them yanking your wheel out of your hands. Simple physics tells you that up and down movement of a tire/wheel/suspension does NOT translate to rotational forces in your steering wheel.

There is a big difference between wheel hop "rumble" (vibration felt through the chassis) and bump steer from say a large pothole (plenty of those around Ontario as well ;) )

I must say in MY car (1997 Corsa without power steering) if i hit a pothole or any irregularities at all,my wheel gives me a yank...
 
I know drifting isn't that much of a thing in PCars and there were a lot of people who attempted to drift using the cars such as the Rocket Bunny 86/BRZ, Mad Mike's MX5, etc. but for my question @IanBell:

Any comment on drifting in Project CARS? And will there be more Japanese/Asian tracks given that Sakitto and Zhuhai are now in PCars2?

Thanks in advance for answering. Loved Shift 2 and PCars by the way.
 
Not only that, people are trying to turn this into a wishlist thread..., P.S. that's why there is a Wishlist thread
Does anyone know if our purchased cars will be transferred over to p2? ...that's purchased cars! ... Eg.. Lotus 40, ford mk4 etc. ..someone posted that it had been answered in an earlier thread. But didn't stipulate if it was yes or no...I hunted and cannot find anything.
 
Does anyone know if our purchased cars will be transferred over to p2? ...that's purchased cars! ... Eg.. Lotus 40, ford mk4 etc. ..someone posted that it had been answered in an earlier thread. But didn't stipulate if it was yes or no...I hunted and cannot find anything.

Most of the cars in PCARS 1 will transfer into the second game. We don't know which cars
 
Ian- any comment on the garage mode?

With such awesome designers on the team it would be nice to have a great garage mode to show off those shiny cars.
Just to piggyback off that. Will there be a favorites column? In PC1, we got to see the car and track we use the most. Just wondering if there is a favorites list in each category.
 
Has it been confirmed that there will be manual control in the pits? I thought I heard that somewhere but I'm not sure if it's true.
 
What does it mean manual control in the pits? That means I can steer freely and have to control throttle/speed at the pits entering in en route to the pit box and exiting the pits?

That is correct. Ian has said that you will have the option to let the Ai take over for you also incase you are not comfortable driving through the pits on your own.
 
What does it mean manual control in the pits? That means I can steer freely and have to control throttle/speed at the pits entering in en route to the pit box and exiting the pits?
You will also have to hit your markers in the pit box. Ian mentioned, the pit crew may have to move your car if you miss your marks.
 
Cannot wait for this!

@IanBell I think I've read that AI will probably have flashing lights for overtaking, there will also be pace laps and formation laps IIRC...

Is there a possibility that there could be waving flags at marshalling points for situations and working signalling lights around tracks? That would be a nice immersion!

Also just crossed my mind; will blue flags for AI work better in the situation that you're a faster class and the AI is made aware of that?
 
Hi @IanBell I got a question about online championships.

What if someone disconnects in the middle of an online championship race? Will they still be able to rejoin while the car ghosts around the track similar to F1 2016?

Thanks in advance.
 
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