The Project CARS games are racing simulators designed to give players the best racing experience from a game – hands down. Where the game differs from arcade racers is that players are able to customize and tailor the experience to their particular driving style. They can even modify their cars to deal with inclement weather and specific track conditions so that they are as prepared as possible to win any and every race.
The original game was released in May 2015 and received generally high praise, selling 1 million copies in its first month. But it became clear that there were many changes that could be made when developing a sequel, so we wanted to chat to Chong about what had been done to improve the game both aesthetically and mechanically.
GameSkinny: Many thanks for giving us this interview. Let’s cut to the chase: I’m sure our readers and fans of Project CARS are eager to know what is new in Project CARS 2 – so could you tell us?
GS: That sounds interesting. So, what does that mean?
We’ve also added a feature called LiveTrack 3.0 which is a continuation of our environmental conditions technology. So, every track has a living breathing environment. Like I said, it’s not just a graphical trick, it is a simulation of environments. The end result of that from a gameplay perspective is that the way you drive and what you experience when you are driving changes considerably with these changeable conditions.
If you’re driving while it is daytime and you have accelerated time on and suddenly the sun goes down and you are driving in the dark, the track will get cooler and that will affect the way you brake. The way that you would have been driving around the track will shift. But that can go from anything from whether someone has gone off and pulled gravel onto the track to whether puddles have formed after rainfall. It affects all aspects of the game’s physics and gameplay.
GS: It sounds like it’s a never-ending learning curve, where you have to know how your car behaves in certain types of weather just to be able to get by! So what does “Anywhere” mean?
GS: Ice racing?! That’s an interesting one! Other than the dynamic weather, how else have you gone about improving the realism of the game?
GS: And what about the driving system? Have you made any changes to that from the original Project CARS?
GS: One thing I need to ask is what have you done to make Project CARS 2 more accessible? I mean, I love racing games of any sort, but I’m not a driver, nor do I have much of an interest in cars. Am I going to feel daunted by a number of settings and variables you need to understand to make the experience more enjoyable?
There are a lot of help systems which we feel make it more accessible. You can then turn up the AI in new ways. You can control their speed and aggressiveness separately. So if you want take things a bit easy, you can turn them right down so they don’t bother you that much or if you want to really test how fast you can drive, you can turn their speed up but keep their aggression down so that they aren’t trying to nudge you off the track etc. Our goal was to make it quite accessible.
I should mention that we put a lot of time into revisiting the gamepad controls. So, underneath the hood, it is still a full simulation but we’ve laid driver help on top of that and given players the ability to customize the game for their own experience – whether it is casual or very serious racing.
GS: So to what lengths did you go too to get the cars looking, feeling, and sounding right?
GS: Are there any cars that you wanted to get in the game but for some reason couldn’t?
We also asked all the car manufacturers to have their drivers test the game as well. We spent a huge amount of time scanning and getting CAD data for the cars, even getting technical data from cars as they went around a track which we then compared to data from in-game.
GS: Speaking of cars, what is your dream car and is it in the game?
GS: Finally, what would you say has been the hardest part of the development of Project CARS 2?
GS: Well, Rod, thank you very much for talking to me today. Sounds like Project CARS 2 has come on leaps and bounds from the first game! I wish you all the best with this game and I hope that becomes as successful as the first!
You just have to stick to your guns, remain confident and work really hard. But that’s always the most challenging thing is. Finishing a game, polishing it, getting the efficiency of the engine working well. Always chasing better and better performance with the game engine because you are pushing it to the maximum. If you aren’t pushing the technology, you are not trying hard enough.
