The latest update for Project Motor Racing is now available, bringing some tweaks and community requested features ahead of the festive season.
It’s no secret that PMR has had a tumultuous time since its disappointing launch back in November and, while down on staff, Straight4 Studios has continued working to rectify the situation. The latest effort is the fourth post-launch patch, named 1.5.0.3.
The headline feature of this patch is the addition of the very highly requested Radar System. Absent at launch, this is one that’s a vital aid for clean racing in online multiplayer, giving an at-a-glance look of the position and attitude of vehicles around you.
Now activated by default the radar indicator can, like other HUD elements, be repositioned to a convenient location on your screen, although its size cannot yet be reduced.
Another point of major contention for PMR were the egregious track limit and penalty systems. This has been addressed with “improved track splines” on all circuits to improve the threshold for off-track detections and subsequent penalties.
Our early experience is that the ever-present two-second penalties for running wide or being pushed off the road have seemingly been consigned to the bin now, replaced with track limit warnings, which should ease some of the frustrations. Penalties are now applied using a system not too dissimilar to iRacing whereby the player must hand back time gained after leaving the track and gaining an advantage.
At launch the AI in PMR were not the best when it came to racing the player, often simply ignoring the presence of your car and driving into you. Each update has tweaked the AI behavior, and this patch offers the biggest improvements, with a focus on improving the AI’s actions when racing close to the player.
Elsewhere there are a raft of improvements to stability and performance optimisations, online lobbies, increased customisation for game pads and camera settings, including a globalized FOV and FOV adjustment for external views.
While it’s had a difficult start to life, we’ve seen quite a bit of activity from S4S to deliver improvements to PMR, with items on the recent short-term road map being ticked off already in a matter of days. We’re not expecting much more over the Christmas/New Year break, but keep your eyes on GTPlanet for all the latest.
Contributed by MagpieRacer.
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