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Community Assisted Race Simulator (CARS) WAS in Development


Ryzza5

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More news and GREAT NEWS! below :)

 

The past two weeks here at WMD have been as busy as ever, including the usual exciting mix of new content previews, important development milestones and lots of great community interaction.

 

Just in case you missed some of the stuff happening in all departments of development and this busy community of ours, you can find a little recap of the most important stuff below.

 

And if you want to go back even further, the last updates can be found here.

 

 

Development News

 

Project CARS has raised more than one million Euro of community funding - Click Here

 

Support for tweakable Force Feedback config files has been added - Click Here

 

To go along with that, the first draft of Andrew Webber's Force Feedback Guide has been released - Click Here

 

Stepan Vondrak has released the "Road to Multiplayer Quick Race" plan, showing the tasks that need to be completed for the first multiplayer features to kick off - Click Here

 

Furthermore, Stepan has also posted another multiplayer-related update - Click Here

 

Mark Adams has posted a little update to answer the many Nürburgring Nordschleife requests - Click Here

 

Our member PLM5 has come up with a great new overcast lighting setting using the TweakIT tool that has now been included in the latest builds - Click Here

 

Fixes & Updates

 

An UI issue has been fixed within the TweakIt tool - Click Here

 

The track cutting issues at Badenring Historic have been fixed - Click Here

 

Simon Reed has added track maps for various circuits - Click Here

 

Speed-sensitive FOV sliders have been added - Click Here

 

Lots of tasks have been performed in preperation of the multiplayer & ghost racing modes - Click Here

 

Doug Arnao has checked in a new AIW for Sakitto - Click Here

 

Updated load curves for the Formula A sounds have been checked in - Click Here

 

Content Previews

 

Sakitto continues to come together, including new paddock objects, reworked kerbs and much more - Click Here

 

Mihal Jeschke continues to do major work at Besos as new previews show - Click Here

 

Work on the Caterham Classic has started - Click Here

 

Vincent Dambreville has created some very stunning liveries for the BAC Mono - Click Here

 

Jan Frischkorn has started adding the community-painted Caper Stock Car liveries to the game - Click Here

 

Ralph Hummerich has added plenty of great-looking underbody details to the Caterham SP/300.R - Click Here

 

Mihal Jeschke has made very good progress with the Porsche curves area at loire 24 - Click Here

 

The 2012 Formula Rookie is nearing completition in the hands of our busy vehicle arts team - Click Here

 

Vit Budin has made great progress with the stock car helmet as first previews show - Click Here

 

Furthermore, Vit has also been busy modeling the 70s helmet - Click Here

 

Lots of progress has been made to the Harrison Pike Raceway, including first-ever night previews - Click Here

 

Michal Beran & Tomas Trlica have started building the Memphis Oval - Click Here

 

David Rezac has continued working on Belgian Forest as new previews show - Click Here

 

Dave Flynn has been busy adding more and more trackside & pitlane objects - Click Here

 

The interior of the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X FQ-400 continues to come together - Click Here

 

Gustavo Oliviera has shown off plenty of stunning Pagani Huayra previews - Click Here

 

Current Polls - Please Vote!

 

Cast your vote in the Stock Car Livery painting contest - Click Here

 

Other

 

Lukas Macedo has created a nifty little tool to edit the FFB profile .xmb files - Click Here

 

benobro has created an easy to use poll site where you can enter and vote for your favorite cars to be included in pCARS - Click Here

 

Colargol59 has released joint map templates for several cars to assist our busy painting community - Click Here

 

Abdellah has created a cool Ayrton Senna menu background that is now available for download - Click Here

 

Also, remember to participate here

 

Check out the weekly Hotlap Competition and vote for next week's pairing - Click Here

 

Help tweaking the FFB files - Click Here

 

Submit your ideas on how to use the WiiU controller - Click Here

 

Create a skin for the leaderboard - Click Here

 

Check for new polls to vote on in the polls forum - Click Here

 

Submit your ideas for the Driving School - Click Here

 

Find good AI settings by using the sliders - Click Here

 

Spot corners in which the AI is slow - Click Here

 

Contribute to the Performance Reference Index - Click Here

 

Fill out the pCARS member survey - Click Here

 

 

That's it for this week, have fun checking out all the material and make sure to join the discussions yourself!

 

The links above are for WMD team members only. If you´re a free user and want to follow the development of Project CARS as well as enjoy regular development builds, simply click here to pick a tool pack and join the fun!

 

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Eleven different Fords to be available in Project CARS

 

London, May 30, 2012: Slightly Mad Studios are proud to announce they have signed a licensing agreement with the Ford Motor Company that will allow eleven iconic Fords to be included in the company’s WMD-powered Project CARS title.

 

Project CARS players will get to choose from eleven famous Ford models within Project CARS, ranging from powerful muscle cars and iconic sports car racing machinery to modern street & racing cars.

 

1966 Mustang 2+2 fastback (foundation trade dress for 1966 Shelby GT350)

 

The 2+2 Fastback was one of the first Mustangs that helped build the iconic name Ford’s range of Mustang models has today.

 

Powered by a Ford 289 K-Code V8 engine putting out 274hp, the car was also the base for Carrol Shelby’s GT350 model.

 

1967 Ford MK IV

 

Better known as the GT40, the MK IV was the fourth evolution of Ford’s legendary sports car racing challenger. Powered by a seven-liter V8 engine, the car went on to win both the 1967 Sebring 12 Hours & Le Mans 24 Hours in the hands of Bruce McLaren, Mario Andretti, Dan Gurney & AJ Foyt.

 

1972 Escort RS1600

 

The RS1600 was the sport version of Ford’s Escort Mark 1 that was build from 1968 through 1974. Powered by a 16-valve Cosworth BDA engine, the car featured a sport suspension and strengthened bodyshells that made the RS 1600 a long-time favorite for amateur racing & rally drivers.

 

1980 Capri (Group 5 – Team Zakspeed)

 

Built by Team Zakspeed, the Group 5 version of the Ford Capri was one of the most extreme Ford race cars ever built. Powered by a twin turbo-charged 1.4 liter Cosworth BDA engine, the car predominantly raced in the Deutsche Rennsport Meisterschaft, being driven by legends such as Klaus Ludwig & Hans Heyer.

 

1988 Sierra RS500 Cosworth (Group A)

 

Designed to the FIA Group A regulations for touring cars, the Sierra RS500 Cosworth successfully competed in the 1987 World Touring Car Championship where it narrowly missed out on winning the title. The car also proved to be very successful in national series such as the DTM where it clinched the title in 1988.

 

1997 Mustang Cobra (SCCA Trans-Am)

 

The Ford Mustang Cobra has made the Trans-Am history book as the series’ most successful race car of all time. The car completely dominated the 1997 season, winning all 13 poles & races.

 

Built by Roush Racing, the Cobra weighed 1400 kilograms, using a pushrod V8 engine & five-speed gearbox.

 

2012 Fusion NASCAR Stock Car

 

The Fusion is Ford’s weapon of choice for NASCAR Sprint Cup, helping the Ford Motor Company to two runner-up titles in America’s most popular form of motorsport in 2008 & 2012.

 

The Fusion stock car weighs 1700 kilograms and is powered by a mighty V8 engine built by Roush Yates, putting out more than 850hp. The car is being driven by famous NASCAR superstars such as Carl Edwards, Matt Kenseth & Gregg Biffle.

 

2012 Focus ST

 

The 2012 ST is the all-new top range model of Ford’s Focus model range. Powered by a 2.0-liter twin-cam 16-valve EcoBoost four cylinder engine that provides 247hp, the Focus sprints from 0-60 in just 6.5 seconds.

 

To go along with the impressive performance, the car is equipped with plenty of sport features such as aluminum pedals, Recaro sport seats as well as Ford’s Sport-Steering system.

 

2012 Focus ST (BTCC)

 

The Focus also has a presence in the British Touring Car Championship as Redstone Racing campaigns the Ford Focus ST touring car built to the Super 2000 regulations.

 

The car showed lots of promise in the early parts of the 2012 season as Mat Jackson was able to clinch two race wins at Donington Park & Thruxton.

 

2013 Falcon FG (Australian V8 Supercar Car of the Future)

 

Ford is one of two manufacturers involved in the hugely popular Australian V8 Supercar series. For 2013, the series will be switching to a new platform of cars, designed to be more cost effective and to offer better safety features.

 

The Falcon FG will be Ford’s challenger starting with the 2013 season as the company will try to add to their five manufacturer titles clinched in Down Under since 2003.

2013 Ford Shelby GT500

 

Bearing the name of the late Carroll Shelby, the GT500 is the most powerful factory-made Ford Mustang ever built.

 

Powered by a supercharged 5.8 liter V8 engine putting out 650hp , the GT500 exceeds a top speed of over 310kph. The raw power is controlled by the finest technology as the car is equipped with Brembo brakes and Bilstein suspension.

 

 

The Fords will be available to drive in Project CARS later this year. WMD members will be able to take a virtual test drive once first versions of the cars have been completed by using the regular development builds of Project CARS. To shorten the waiting time, WMD members get to follow every aspect of the car development process on the WMD forums, from the first steps to the finished car out on track.

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Noticed a discussion on the poly count used in pCARS in the Chatbox archive with no definitive answer. Since the devs post in the forums more often than I do it was naturally pretty easy to find an interesting discussion on the matter.

 

Original thread here. I've just multi-quoted the interesting dev comments (not showing all the user questions that the devs are responding to):

 

 

We're working to roughly 200,000 polys for the top Lod exteriors and an additional 50K or so for cockpits.

 

Actually a fun stat is that we are running more polys in the suspension here that we had for the whole car in GTR 2002.

 

And by a long way. :) A few cars have more polys in the suspension than an entire S2U car.

 

You'd be surprised, really. The current generation of consoles are ace polypushers. We've done some tests on them with ultra-high polycount cars and they cope reasonably well. The real issue is memory. When you start quadrupling the polycount, the mesh data size goes up accordingly and that simply won't jive with a system that only has 512Mb to play with. There'd be little left for environments, sound, game systems, etc...

 

You'd be surprised, a typical SHIFT 2 car took 3 man months and that will no doubt go up a fair bit for this project with the high detail LODX addition.

 

The time needed to finish a high detail car is around 5 manmonths.

And that does not even include Audio and Physics.

Modelling time is pretty analogue to the polycount. So a 200k poly model takes around 4 times as long as a 50k poly model.

Texturing takes roughly twice the time, mostly because of more UV mapping.

Most other tasks don't depend much on polycounts.

 

GT5 & Forza4 only have a very limited amount of cars modelled with 200k+ polys.

And these are only used in GUI, Photomode and Autovista.

You can be sure that the ingame models (those you see on track while playing) are sub 40k polys for highest LOD.

 

It's important to remember that the games consoles have graphics hardware which is many years out of date now, so it would be disappointing if a PC using the latest hardware could not beat the consoles in terms of quality.

 

Showing one car at high quality levels in a special setting or only in a photo mode where you can take time to render ultra high quality images is fine, but doesn't compare to having that quality in game while you play. And as somebody else mentioned, having 5 specially upgraded cars and 195 crap ones doesn't really make you feel good about paying money for it. (note : values 5 and 195 picked out of thin air !)

 

LODX = 200k - (only used for GUI, photomode, etc.)

LODA = 50k - High detail LOD (0-10 meter)

LODB = 20k - Mid distance LOD (10-60 meter)

LODC = <2k - Far distance LOD (60-500 meter)

CPIT = 50k - 1st person cockpit (basically same detail level as LODX, but optimized for game use)

 

A race of 40 cars with 200k poly makes a total of 8 Millions poly. At 60 fps it makes half a billion poly per second. Isn't that a bit too much?

 

You never use the highest LOD version of a car for ALL the cars ... even on the grid, you would only use that one for the nearest few, and then progressively lower LODs for the others.

Also, the 200K is the LODX which would not normally be used on track.

 

So in practice your 40 cars might well be (if you were at the back of the grid) :

 

CPIT : 1 x 50k = 50k

LODA : 4 x 50k = 200k

LODB : 25 x 20k = 500k

LODC : 10 x 2k = 20k

 

total 770k

 

Obviously these are just picked out of the air, but give a flavour for what you might expect.

 

Yes, you can have bolts and rivets with 100+ polys.

 

Seriously though, more polys allows more details obviously. But you also tend to "overdetail" things then.

We found that the amount of work to finish a car is pretty analogue to the polycount, i.e. 4 times the polys, 4 times the work.

The question then is: Is it worth having so many details?

 

Indeed, there comes a point where the additional polys aren't discernable in game and their only reason for being there is chest beating.
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