*******C.A.R.S - Community Assisted Race Sim*********

Soldato
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So if it is free on launch but paid for DLC what is the advantage of paying at all for it now bar early access?

i've just read through some of the T&C's and aside from early access to the game access to the forums you get paid for your contribution to the game, which can be as simple as voting in polls on the forum or as complex as submitting code to them

hopefully i'll be able to get this on the weekend once ive checked this over with my dad

terms and conditions: http://wmdportal.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/WMD_Terms_And_Conditions.pdf


*edit*
also, becoming a team member gets your name in the game, which is pretty cool :)
 
Soldato
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So thanks to a forum post by Remco my crashes are now fixed (turns out the version of PhysX that I didn't know I had installed was wrong, uninstall/reinstall and it now works \o/)

So, first some basic wheel setup, then check graphics options for both single screen and triple screen (1920x1200 or 5760x1200 as appropriate), this is on a ~3.8GHz Core 2 Duo with a 5850, 4Gb ram etc...

And then some lappage, my thoughts so far:

Graphics -- Mixed bag imo, car models are very shiny, but really aren't as good as the initial screenshots in game (with my hardware at least) and at triple screen even turning some things down to low/off it wasn't great with just one car on track.

But shinyness is the main thing for them, reflections are amazing, polygon counts are good, but texture details of things like the decals isn't amazing.

Tracks are again shiny, but don't seem massively detailed. Grass is another step down, then trees/barriers/off-track stuff which aren't particularly impressive imo, but then I've always argued that stuff doesn't need to be great in a sim.

Overall the graphics are very nice, better than rFactor/LFS/iRacing quite easily.

I do still wonder how much detail I'd have to lose to have a decent number of cars on the grid (20+ really, iRacing handles 35+ without too many problems).

Sound -- Not sure what the fuss is about here, tried 3 cars and it doesn't amaze me, but it does the job which is all that matters to me :p

FFB -- simply put it's useless, but they have said there's a massive update coming here so hopefully it'll get better.

Tracks themselves -- I don't know Imola (iirc that's what Bologna is supposed to be) very well but Watkins Glen I do from both video's/races and iRacing (which lets face it are silly accurate) and I can only assume that the guy who made the version for this has never been to or watched a video of the glen.

Also not sure if there's a complete lack of bumps or whether that's the FFB being useless.

General driving feel -- bit meh frankly, it's far from awful but it's not a patch on the big sims like LFS/rFactor/netKar/iRacing (iRacing and netKar are a step above LFS/rFactor which are a step above this)

Overall thoughts -- It's got promise but they need to do a fair bit of work to the physics/feel before it'd tempt me away from iRacing, I'll keep trying the new builds though and see how it goes.

EDIT: Almost forgot, triple screen and general controller setup, iRacing has this nailed, C.A.R.S is a far far from getting it nailed... :p
 
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Soldato
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Find it quite funny that people are still comparing a pre-alpha build of a new project to games that have been retail and refined for years:rolleyes:

It's the Shift 2 engine tweaked, which itself is the Shift engine tweaked, it's hardly like it's brand new code from the ground up, hence why they're able to release anything so early in the dev cycle and call it a 'pre-alpha' (of an engine that has been developed with a huge budget for several years...)

It's not like I'm writing it off either, simply comparing it to the competition as it is today, I even state in a few area's that this is clearly going to change as time goes by.

And hell, I'm a contributer to the project, I can do what I like :p
 
Man of Honour
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FFB -- simply put it's useless, but they have said there's a massive update coming here so hopefully it'll get better.

This really puts me off.

In Shift 1 anthe FFB and wheel controls were rubbish and never fixed properly. You could get the game semi playable with a lot changes to the wheel settings in and out of the game.

Then along comes Shift 2 with exactly the same problems when playing the game with a wheel. The default setting are worse than the first game and are still as bad now.

Now we have C.A.R.S. The developers have produced 2 full games to retail and are now asking the community to help fund a new project and their first effort has rubbish FFB.

HOW?????

Do they not have a G25 or G27 steering wheel to test the game on? Or do they think that all cars handle like a barge and you need to counter steer to get any vehicle to travel in a straight line?
 
Soldato
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This really puts me off.

In Shift 1 anthe FFB and wheel controls were rubbish and never fixed properly. You could get the game semi playable with a lot changes to the wheel settings in and out of the game.

Then along comes Shift 2 with exactly the same problems when playing the game with a wheel. The default setting are worse than the first game and are still as bad now.

Now we have C.A.R.S. The developers have produced 2 full games to retail and are now asking the community to help fund a new project and their first effort has rubbish FFB.

HOW?????

Do they not have a G25 or G27 steering wheel to test the game on? Or do they think that all cars handle like a barge and you need to counter steer to get any vehicle to travel in a straight line?


give them time.. what the hell.. the game is due for release on DECEMBER 2012.. seriously.. long way to go.. and its all community driven don't worry people will not like it and it will be sorted..
 
Man of Honour
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give them time.. what the hell.. the game is due for release on DECEMBER 2012.. seriously.. long way to go.. and its all community driven don't worry people will not like it and it will be sorted..

They've had time.

Two full release games Shift1 and Shift2 was plenty of time to get FFB right while they were developing and patching those games.

Do you actually think they've thrown all the development work that went into those two games into the bin and started again from zero?

They have a full and complete game engine that they are tweaking and building new cars and tracks for. Essentially they a now modding Shift 2 into a game that PC sim racers would spend money on. This is why they can release a build of the game over a year before it's due for release.

What's even more staggering is these guys developed GTR and GTR2 which had great FFB and wheel settings straight out of the box.

There's simply no excuse.
 
Soldato
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It's the Shift 2 engine tweaked, which itself is the Shift engine tweaked, it's hardly like it's brand new code from the ground up, hence why they're able to release anything so early in the dev cycle and call it a 'pre-alpha' (of an engine that has been developed with a huge budget for several years...)

It's not like I'm writing it off either, simply comparing it to the competition as it is today, I even state in a few area's that this is clearly going to change as time goes by.

And hell, I'm a contributer to the project, I can do what I like :p
iRacing is just the NR2003 engine tweaked, but you wouldn't compare the 2 would you?
 
Soldato
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They've had time.

Two full release games Shift1 and Shift2 was plenty of time to get FFB right while they were developing and patching those games.

Do you actually think they've thrown all the development work that went into those two games into the bin and started again from zero?

They have a full and complete game engine that they are tweaking and building new cars and tracks for. Essentially they a now modding Shift 2 into a game that PC sim racers would spend money on. This is why they can release a build of the game over a year before it's due for release.

What's even more staggering is these guys developed GTR and GTR2 which had great FFB and wheel settings straight out of the box.

There's simply no excuse.

we'll speak after release :D
 
Soldato
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pathetic aint it

I really don't get the problem.

A piece of software has been released publicly, are we not allowed to discuss it in any way? to compare it against it's future rivals?

I'm not saying that it will never be as good as it's decently developed competition, simply comparing where it is now to where it needs to be, imo.

What else is there to say about it, should we just not post in this thread again until the end of 2012?
 
Man of Honour
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Wait for the FFB update this coming week, meant to be very good then.

I hope so.

I really want this game to be good and succeed.

But after reading about poor FFB in the first publicly released build the red mist decended. It's a fundemental thing to get right with a driving game, especially ones that claiming to be a sim. Shift and Shift 2 failed big time on the FFB frint.
 
Soldato
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I really don't get the problem.

A piece of software has been released publicly, are we not allowed to discuss it in any way? to compare it against it's future rivals?

I'm not saying that it will never be as good as it's decently developed competition, simply comparing where it is now to where it needs to be, imo.

What else is there to say about it, should we just not post in this thread again until the end of 2012?

why not grab an alpha build of iracing. a build that was stil over a year away and compare it this build.

yea thought so. its pathetic to compare this to a 100% completed game!
 
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