Major Project CARS v2.0 patch incoming to improve performance, AI & more - Team VVV

News Major Project CARS v2.0 patch incoming to improve performance, AI & more

News

Martin Bigg

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Game: Project CARS

Platform: PC, PS4, XBox One

Publisher: Bandai Namco

Release Date: 06/05/2015

This week's announcement of Project CARS 2 hasn't gone down very well with some players, to say the least – not only has it only been six weeks since the release of Project CARS, but there are still many unresolved issues plaguing the game. At this point, announcing a sequel was borderline insulting to some, even if it's still potentially years away from release. The fact is, announcing Project CARS 2 now was far too soon.  

While this has left some fans understandably concerned how this will affect on-going development of the first Project CARS game, Slightly Mad have assured us that work will still continue enhancing and existing the existing game. Part of this will of course include future patch updates, and Slightly Mad have now released details on what we can expect from the next update for all formats. 

Bringing Project CARS up to v2.0, it's looking like quite a substansial update, with improvements to the performance (the Xbox One version is said to be getting a 17% frame rate improvement in extreme conditions), AI and controls along with a host of fixes, as reported by the community. 

A release date for the 2.0 update hasn't been disclosed yet, but it's safe to say it's probably still a few weeks away, unfortunately – Slightly Mad are in the process of final testing, so it hasn't yet been approved by Sony or Microsoft. 

You can find the full details of the Project CARS 2.0 patch below:

Performance Improvements

PC – up to 5% frame rate improvement when using Ultra settings

Online & Community Events

Multiplayer search filter ‘Skill’ now finds games based upon certain lobby game configuration criteria. For example, “Pro” setting now searches for Full Damage, Auto-start Engine, Forced Cockpit, Mechanical Failure, and so forth.

Online – Ensure that vehicle light repairs are synchronized in MP races so that repaired headlights are visible by other racers.

Xbox One – fixed an issue that at times would prevent a player from establishing full connectivity when leaving a lobby and trying to reconnect to it.

Controls – All platforms

Adjustments made to the gears system, to prevent gears being skipped under certain conditions. This addresses an issue where gears would at times jump straight down to 1st, potentially causing engine blowouts.

Added support for the use of all active controllers for menu input. You can for example now use a steering wheel to race, and a gamepad to control the menus and photo mode.

Fixed an issue in Force Feedback calibration that would prevent a player from setting “Soft Clipping (Half Input)” back to 0 after modifying it from the original value.

Controls – PS4

Thrustmaster T100 Force Feedback improvements.

Added a Motion Sensor controller profile.

Enable support for USB keyboards to be used for in-game controls.

Controls – Xbox One

Built in protection to prevent unsupported controller devices from crashing the game.

Implemented accelerator vibration on the gamepad right trigger to indicate when and how much the tyres slip under acceleration.

Physics & AI

Slowed down the AI opponents in the rain when using racing tyres, to make racing against them better balanced.

Adjusted wear of Slicks and Rain tires to more realistic levels where needed. Typically GT/LMP/Formula cars will get slightly more than a full fuel load on soft or default slicks (depending on fuel load amounts).

Adjusted tyre temperature sensitivity on several cars.

Improvements to AI navigation to lessen collisions during cramped race starts, improve detection of other cars during cornering, and improve clean overtaking

Reworked the AI’s fuelling logic during qualifying sessions where no refuelling is allowed, so that they don’t always fill up the fuel tanks and negatively impact their qualifying ability. The AI will now deliver far more competitive lap times during qualifying.

The AI will now pit as soon as possible when low on fuel to prevent them running out of fuel and retiring from the race.

Fixed an issue that prevented bump starts from working properly on some cars. An example case – with gears and clutch set to manual, take an Ariel Atom out on Brands Hatch. At the first right hander, stall the car, ignition on, 2nd gear, roll down the hill up to about 15kph and drop the clutch. The car will now bump start. Exact conditions for a successful bump start will vary slightly by car.

Fixed an issue that prevented the AI from pitting within the final 3 laps of a race

Improved the AI’s efficiency in pit timing when needing to change tyres due to weather conditions.

Pitting, tuning, setups

Fixed an issue where wet tyres were fitted too long before the rain starts, causing excessive overheating and wear on the tyres.

Fixed an issue where flat tyres were fitted to the car during a pit stop, by ensuring that the tyres are correctly inflated.

Reworked the brake bias display information so that changing the values is more intuitive.

Tracks

Performance optimisation pass done on: Brands Hatch layouts, Cadwell layouts, Oulton Park layouts, Bathurst, Azure circuit, and Zolder. This helps improve the overall smoothness when racing on these tracks with large grids of cars.

Fixed an issue where a pit crew character would at times appear floating above the race track on various tracks.

Road America – fixed an issue where a line of grass line appeared in the air near a concrete barrier.

Brno – fixed an issue where cars would at times start in the same grid positions, fixed garage six to prevent the AI from getting stuck on the right side wall when exiting the garage spot, fixed an issue when running more than 20 cars in a race would cause the car in 21st to slide into the pits.

Laguna Seca – improved the AI performance as they were running too slow in some sections.

Bathurst – fixed a render issue with shimmering edges in parts of the track.

Career

Added a new RUF RGT8 GT3 contract to ensure that the player can enter the RUF GT3 series on contract renewal and not just when starting a new career.

Fixed an issue where skipping the session during a race caused the player to move up in the session results.

Vehicles

Group 5 cars – adjusted the gearshift timing tolerances to fix an issue with the gearing when pausing and restarting a session.

Aston Martin Vantage GT3 – tuned engine lifetime and brake cooling parameters for better accuracy.

McLaren F1 GTR – modified the default setup and reduced front bump steer to improve straight line stability, fixed an issue to ensure that the car’s specific HUD motec display is used

Ford GT40 MK4 – Reworked in several areas to improve handling and match the real car closer – Bump stops settings exposed in setup with better tuned setup defaults, increased wrap around stiffness of the tire carcass, rebalanced base vs tear grip, rebalanced player vs AI rain performance against the AI.

General

Fixed an issue where the player position would at times change to last when player crosses the starting line during rolling starts.

Fixed an issue that could cause the game to crash while watching a saved replay.

PS4 – fixed an issue that required the game to first restart after installing an in-game DLC before the DLC would be available for use.

PC, Oculus Rift – added Oculus 0.6.0.0 SDK support, enabled positional tracking in non-helmet player camera views, implemented initial menus and HUD support, auto reset player view position at the start of a race, and disabled all non-VR-friendly scripted pre-race camera sequences.

Updated the achievement “I am the 5%” to ensure that it can be achieved in non-Pro-modes as well.

GUI – fixed an issue where the controls configuration arrows in Options would not respond correctly to mouse input when attempting fine adjustment.

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