You can choose from 16 different race clusters, and it feels a little odd to instantly have the choice between a Mercedes SLS AMG in the touring series, a Formula racing car, and … a go kart like the ones you take your kids to ride in on a Friday night.īut it took only a few races to establish the Go Kart circuit as one of my favorites in the game. I’ll confess to being a little skeptical of the inclusion of go kart racing in Project Cars. I ran it smoothly on a 3.4 i5 4760 with 8 GB and an nVidia GTX 660 and got the results you see here.
Project Cars makes the case that there are still new types of realism that graphics can help us to experience in-game.ĭespite the beauty, the PC specs for the game are also pleasantly achievable: 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400/3.0 GHz AMD Phenom II X4 940 chips, an nVidia GTX 260 or ATI Radeon HD 5770 card, and 4 GB of RAM are enough to make it go.Įven the recommended specs aren’t quite top-of-the-line: 3.5 GHz Intel Core i7 3700/4.0 GHz AMD FX-8350, an nVidia GT600 series or AMD Radeon HD7000 series, and 8 GB of RAM. I used to think there was a limit to how much PC graphics could improve a racing game for anything except the beauty factor. The late-afternoon sun in Dubai can be blinding, and the English fog can actually affect the way you see and plan upcoming corners. The other weather acts as a surprising factor even when it doesn’t affect the track. Early versions of Project Cars were overly touchy during wet-track conditions, but the final version gets that balance just right, at least versus the dry-track version. Scattered sunbeams aren’t the only things to like about the weather. Project Cars may not be the best racing game ever, but it’s one of the best cloud sims in the genre. They respond to the position of the sun and refract light in real time. Light wispy ones drift by in higher winds, and puffy ones fill the sky in heavier cloud conditions.
The clouds alone caused me to stop in the middle of one track to watch them. The look of the sun on a cloudy day is different than on a partially cloudy one, and fog adds just the right of obscurity to distant objects. Rain not only changes the lighting and reflection on the vehicles, but the drops also splash and run on your windshield.
The landscapes shimmer with intricate detail, the dynamic reflections in the hood of your car are mesmerizing, and even the detailed, leather-clad arm of your driver is hard to look away from as you downshift into a turn.īut the weather effects are the best I’ve ever seen in a racing sim, and I’ve driven in almost all of them. The graphics in the PC version of Project Cars are stunning.
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