Players looking to get a hands-on with Project Motor Racing well in advance of its launch in November can now apply for the Factory Driver Program testing phase — but to be accepted you’re going to need a very specific set of skills…
Firmly emphasizing that the Factory Driver Program (FDP) isn’t early access or a beta, Straight4 Studios is looking to canvas the opinions of players and drivers on the game’s cars themselves by way of a series of multiple choice questions in a verbal rating system.
That means it’s going to need people who know what they’re talking about, hence the application process. S4S is looking for a spread of drivers from top-tier esports racers down to those whose talents orient more around setups than driving them fast. It’s also after people who don’t sim-race all that much but have some real-world experience across all tiers of amateur and professional racing.
The application process isn’t all that onerous, but does require some information about your PC setup — and yes, it’s PC-only for the time being — and what racing gear you use. There’s also that dreaded cover letter, asking why you want to be involved, and a radio button to check if you were part of the WMD program for the Project CARS series…
Once accepted you’ll be part of a special tier of drivers who get access to new builds of Project Motor Racing before they go live, and able to test out all new content well in advance of Joe Q. Public.
In return though, you’ll need to feed back your impressions to the S4S team who will use all of the data and comments gathered to refine the vehicles before they make it into the public builds — including mods.
That’s done through a special “Factory Driver Program Portal” which asks you a variety of questions about various aspects of each car you drive. There’s 40 questions in total, basically constructed like a five-point Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree scale, covering five different categories.
S4S is labeling these categories as Authenticity, Car Setup, Dynamic Track, Endurance Racing, and Finding Speed, which is a little mysterious for now but we’re sure all will become clear to successful applicants. Along with giving your rating on each point in each category, there’s a comment box for each question too.
Responses are weighted and fed into a black box which generates the score for each car in each category, allowing S4S to quickly determine if anything’s awry with the vehicle in order to address it for further iterations before it’s finalised and pushed out to the public.
Other FDP testers will also be able to see the scores for each car, so that the whole program can keep an eye on the state of any particular vehicle at any time. The comments are also part of the feedback, and will be summarized by an LLM for the team’s perusal.
The Factory Driver Program for Project Motor Racing is open for applications now, only for players on PC at present though the possibility of console players being involved in the future isn’t excluded. There’s no closing date, and notably the FAQ states that FDP “will be available for all current and future projects at Straight4 Studios”…
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