It's a Sure Thing, Project CARS Will Be Released This Week!!!

Call in sick, send your wife and kids off to her mothers, stock up on Red Bull, Mountain Dew and Doritos, because Project CARS comes out on the 7th! The long, long wait is finally over, and Project CARS will be released onto the great gray pavement of public release! Multiplayer rooms will be brimming, arcade racers crying and all the naysayers will have nothing left to say. The greatest racing game of all time will be officially released, get your pre-order now!

PKW Racing on Watkins Glen in Formula Gulf on Wet Tires!!

This is a recording of the first PKW Racing event of the new year! We have played some other games, but this was our first run in Project CARS of the year!

I was able to win this race, although there was some trouble after a couple laps. I kind of felt bad starting in first place, but we didn't have a qualifying run so luck of the draw put me there.

Not sure why we were running on wet tires, must be some kind of bug in this current build. It was pretty crazy though! The tires were running super hot pretty much the whole race, and it was interesting at times to keep the car on the road! Lots of down force helped, though.

It was a close race! Paulbfc and Kamalski were running with me, along with some AI at roughly 60%. I think I accidentally bumped Kamalski off the road towards the end of the race, but until then he was right there with us! Could have been a different result if it weren't for my blunder. Paulbfc was less than a second behind me when we crossed the finish line. It was an awesome race! Very aggressive, but mostly clean.

If you're looking for a group to run with, check us out here:
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/pkwracing

Blowing Up an Aston V12 Vantage GT3!!!

I really was driving like a complete hooligan during this race, bumping the walls, bumping other cars, way too aggressive for such a tight track. I shouldn't have been so surprised when my engine blew up. After the first couple laps, I had mostly secured myself 7th place, and toned it back a bit, but not before nudging the wall one last time.

My temperature started immediately rising, I made it around almost exactly one more lap, and at 143 degrees, my car gave out. You can see the external damage much better in the spectator view.

Moral of the story, don't drive crazy, and watch your gauges!

BeamNG.Drive Game Review

When I played the game with my X-360 controller, I thought it was neat. The damage physics, the way the suspension moves, the way the body rolls with bumps is just amazing. This game has the best soft-body physics I've seen in any game. When I really fell in love with the game, as you can see in the above video, is when I hooked my Logitech G27 up to it. Wow! The off-road handling is fantastic with a wheel. In my mind, this game is the spiritual successor to the original 1nsane. Of course it doesn't have any of the game modes (it is in alpha) but I've never had this much fun driving off road in a game before. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes driving off-road, and has an FFB wheel laying around. You dont need a G27 to enjoy the game, even a $50 Driving Force Pro would work great with it.

In addition to all the above, the game has a strong, and quickly growing mod community. The first video I have listed below uses a Crown Vic police car mod that I downloaded from the official game forums.



The next video shows all the officially supported vehicles in the game, and the mods available for them.



So if you don't have the game yet, you owe it to yourself to check it out!

Project CARS Artificial Intelligence at 100%, as of Build 887

For a long time, the AI in Project CARS was not one of it's strong points. AI were rather slow, and made a point of ramming into the player controlled car, as well as each other. Thankfully, that's now starting to change! It used to be virtually impossible to play with the AI at 100%, but they are now shaping up, holding a decent line, not murdering the player at every opportunity, and still pretty quick! Below are some video's I made (same race, different views) to show how the AI is behaving now. There's still room for improvement, but they are vastly improved over how they used to be. Enjoy!

Spectator View

Helmet View

Driver View

Project CARS Now Runs Great on Surface Pro 2!

A while back I did a video of Project CARS running on the Surface Pro 2, and it ran, but only barely, on on the least detailed track in the game. I always felt like I could get the game to run better... just wasn't in the mood to install such a large program on my tablet again... until now. :)

My first video this time around was on California Highway, at 1080p with 6 cars on the track, and it ran pretty good!I recorded this video with my iPhone.



Still, I wasn't fully satisfied. The frame rate seemed a little low, and from outside the car, the framerate dropped significantly. As I was making the above video, I remembered that running the game in 720p when I had my 560Ti greatly improved the performance, so why wouldn't that work now? Sadly, on the Surface Pro 2, it's not as simple as just dropping the resolution in game. The Surface tablets put a black border around the game when you do that. I looked online for a bit, and the best solution I found was to set the desktop resolution to 720p, and then launch the game at 720p. It's a bit of annoyance, but if you wanna play Project CARS on your tablet, it's worth it. You can also install beta drivers for the Intel HD card directly from Intel, but I didn't want to bother with that. Below is my first video on the Surface Pro 2 at 720p, with rain and lightning, running great. This video was also recorded with my iPhone 5S.



After this, I got ambitious. I asked myself, what if I plugged my Logitech G27 into the Surface Pro 2, and ran a full grid of cars? Would it work? A rather impractical question, as the whole point of the Surface Pro 2 is being mobile, something the G27 is not... but I still had to know. Setting things up so that you could see my G27 setup, and the Surface Pro 2 screen together wasn't easy, but I did it! The picture quality is terrible, and if you want to see whats going on in the race, you pretty much have to view in full screen, but for demonstration purposes, this video works pretty well. There were 43 cars on the track during this video, and the Surface Pro 2 handled it fantastically. No input lag, no FPS spikes, just a smooth, clean drive.


I was sad the game didn't run well enough to use FRAPS to record it... but wait, maybe it does? For my final Surface Pro 2 video, I decided to try recording a race with FRAPS, just to see how well it worked. The framerate does drop with FRAPS, but it's still manageable. For this race, the grid is full of 38 cars. The AI was turned to 25%, and the player's AI car was placed in the back of the pack, to overtake as many as possible. Again, the game runs awesome!



This will be my last video on the Surface Pro 2 for promotion of the game running on this platform... at least until the official release of the game. You may see more Surface Pro 2 video's of Project CARS popping up here and there though, as I'm traveling. I'll be in Miami for a week during Christmas break, so one or two might pop up then as well.

Hope you enjoyed this article as much as I did making it! I bought my Surface Pro 2 used from Amazon, you can find a link to it on the left, as well as a link to the G27 which I also bought there.

Project CARS Build 859 - E30 M3 at California Highway with Actual Logitech G27 in Picture

I did a video similar to this for BeamNG.Drive, and is was pretty popular, so I decided to do the same thing for Project CARS. Not only do you have the standard driving view, but you can see me manipulating the wheel in real time on the second view. I recorded the second view with my iPhone 5S.



This video is a first attempt for me, picture-in-picture-in-picture! Not only do you have the standard driving view in the corner, but you can also see me manipulating the wheel in real time on the second view.

BeamNG.Drive - '99 Crown Vic Police Cruiser at East Coast, USA - Logitech G27 Picture-in-Picture

This video was for a request on a Steam listing of this video:
http://youtu.be/bEA7rJuLwGQ

In this video I use the '99 Crown Vic mod to simulate responding to a police call on the map East Coast, USA.

I dubbed in a police siren, as well as police chatter from the game Need for Speed Most Wanted.

I also included a picture-in-picture view of myself manipulating the G27 to control the game.

Be sure to like the video, and subscribe!

BeamNG.Drive - Logitech G27 Picture-in-Picture - Touring Small Island in the 4x4 Manual Pickup

I decided to blog about a different kind of driving game today, a rather unique game, with a funny name, BeamNG.drive! I see a lot of people asking about the Logitech G27 on the BeamNG forums, and how it works with this game, so I decided to show you first hand! I have a picture of my hands physically on the G27 as I drive around the island. I must say, it works great! As you can see at the beginning of the video, I'm in manual mode with automatic clutch. Since this video I figured out how to enable the clutch, and it makes it even better!

The steering ratio of the truck is quite large... but that's probably pretty accurate. The game handles INCREDIBLY well with the G27, faaaaaaar better than it does with my XBox 360 controller. I could never get a vehicle to go straight with the 360 controller, but with the G27 it's quite fun.

Anyone remember 1nsane, the old offroad game from Codemasters? With the G27, this game reminds me of that. I can't wait for them to further flesh out the game with missions and a campaign mode, it's gonna be awesome!

Project CARS - Zero Assists vs. All Assists - Side by Side Video Comparison

For this video I decided to compare no assists to all assists. Personally, I always drive with no assists, or real assists (with everything turned off) but decided I wanted to show people the difference between the two.

Many people seem to think Project CARS is an arcade game, or a simcade, but that's simply not the fact if you drive it as intended. Yes, the game does have a very dumbed down version of driving to make it accessible to everyone (I was actually quite surprised how easy the assists make everything) but when you turn them all off, it's a whole other ballgame.

I chose this track because I'm very familiar with it. I chose the car because I find the Caterhams to be the hardest cars in the game to drive with zero assists. If you brake too hard, you will wipe out, guaranteed. And that's exactly what I like to do... brake too hard at the last second. So it's quite a challenge without ABS. With all assists turned on, it might as well be a Civic Si. Driven by your grandmother.

So anyway, next time you think Project CARS doesn't look very realistic, just remember, not everyone drives with the pro settings. I'm no pro... but that's still how I choose to roll.

PS. The input monitor's were a nice touch, but they track the cars inputs, not the user inputs. So on the All Assists side, most of the time that it shows me modulating the gas or the brakes, I'm actually just holding the go pedal down to the floor. And of course, I'm never using the clutch, which the game shows. Kinda wish they only showed the user input, not the assists input.

Don't Miss Out, Remember to Pre-Order Project CARS!

This is by far the best simulator ever made. Best graphics, best physics, best weather, best controls, best interface, you name it. There's a reason this game has been in development so long... it's to make it perfect. I became a backer quite a while ago, and I started actively participating in the development of the game around build 500, and it's been awesome to see the improvements made in the game. I recently uploaded a comparison of my first video of California Highway at Build 531, and currently at build 811. I remmeber when I used to think the game was amazing at build 531, but at build 811 it's so much better.

I can't recommend this game any more highly. This is the driving game I've always wished existed. I rememeber when night time driving was a huge deal, but this game has set the bar incredibly high with the fantastic weather options available. At the time of this review, not all the cars are finished, but the ones that are have impeccible physics and handling characteristics. Speaking of cars, the selection is fantastic. There are cars available all the way from a lowly 50cc kart to the 6800cc AMG Red Pig, and many cars even more powerful. Even better than the fantastic car list, is the remarkable track list! There are 44 tracks, with over 100 configurations, no game has ever beat that on release day!

But enough of my babbling... let the game speak for itself. You can find the complete car and track list at the bottom of these video's.













Complete Car List:


Complete Track List:



You can buy your own G27 from Amazon here:
http://amzn.to/1sfHy5v?

Purchase pCARS for PS4 or XBOne here:
http://amzn.to/1sMwUW8?

Project CARS - Complete Replay Camera Preview

In this video I thought it would be cool to do just a short lap, and show you all the replay cameras available. The drive was done during a thunderstorm to show how the different effects look in each view. As you can see, there is still a bug that doesn't show the windshield wipers during replays, and the instrument cluster lights aren't on when they should be, but this will be fixed before release.

The view order goes:
1. Drivers View
-- This is recorded while I'm driving, so its the view you get as the player of the game.

2. Interior View
--This view is from the center of the car, kind of looking over the drivers right shoulder.

3. Helmet View
--This is a favorite of many. It replicates the view from inside the helmet, , simulating the line of focus of the driver and looking towards the apex of corners.

4. Roof View
--A look from a roof mounted camera. A neat view not commonly seen on YouTube.

5. Chase View
--This is what most old-time racers are used to. This view one one of the most common views before cockpits were accurately rendered in the majority of racing games.

6. Spectator View
--This is my personal favorite for watching replays, primarily because I've already seen the inside of the car while driving, so I like to see the beauty of the car in motion after my race.

7. Front Bumper View
--This is the other most popular vintage racing view before cockpits were common. I think many people still use this view anyway.

8. Hood View
--This view is from a camera mounted on the hood of the car. Similar to front bumper camera, but higher, and with part of your view obstructed by the hood.

9. Cockpit (Drivers) View
--This is the same as the drivers view, only recorded from the replay. The next camera will be the drivers view (again) to show the differences between the actual driving view, and the replay view. The driving view has many more pieces of information on it, and the interior animations work properly.

10. Drivers View
--Again, this view is what the game looks like while I'm driving, it is not recorded form a replay, but while I'm actually turning my lap. I included this view again to show the contrast between the replay cockpit view, and the drivers cockpit view.

Project CARS Build 825 - SuperKart at Nordschleife - pCARS Glued to the Road? No Way!

This video is my official rebuttal to all the comments that vehicles in Project CARS are essentially glued to the road. Watch this video, and you will clearly see that they are not! Many times my little kart with no suspension was ready to fly off the road and into the dirt, or wall, or a tree....

Of course this is an extreme example, but sometimes extreme accusations require extreme responses to counter the prejudice.

Nobody said that Ayrton Senna or Michael Schumacher's driving was unrealistic because their cars stuck to the road. Granted, virtually nobody with pCARS is that good, but why is it, that when people who own Project CARS make tens if not hundreds of laps around a circuit to make a good looking video, you claim it's because the game is too easy, and assume it can't possibly have anything to do with the driver? This 9 minute video took me over an hour to make. I had to adjust my driving in several ways to get that kart around the track without wrecking. You don't see all the times I wrecked... you only see the final product. And in the case of this final product, I think it's a lot more apparent that it wasn't an easy ride, compared to cars with a full suspension where you can't tell what's going on underneath the drivers view.

It's Race Night, and I'm Ready!!

I got a new Logitech G27, so lets roll!! It dropped to $205 on Amazon, so I had to grab it, and good thing I did! It's already jumped back up to $229.99, which is still a great price, but I like mine better. Here's a video of unboxing the G27.

I had bought one before, but it was used (VERY used) and the calibrating gear in it was bad. I should have returned it, but I tried to fix it, and it didn't work out. Don't buy a used G27, unless you're personal friends with the person you buy it from. The wheels online are usually sold after the calibration wheel inside is broken, that's why they're cheat. The wheel works... but will lose calibration after anywhere from 2 hours to 2 minutes, depending on how bad it is.

I had been using my Driving Force Pro with my old G27 pedals, and it was good, but I really missed the clutch and shifter. I saw that these were down to $205 on Amazon, and decided to grab it! I'll be selling my modified DFP now, and the parts from my old wheel to help fund the new one.

As I said in the video, the price on these is VERY volatile. This is still one of the better prices I've seen it at though, so I'd still recommend jumping on it before they raise the price again! The price I see most often is $240 or higher.

You can buy your own G27 from Amazon here:
http://amzn.to/1sfHy5v