YouTube’s ‘Racing At Home’ has shared a new comparison video between Project CARS and Project CARS 2. While Project CARS 2 is said to be running great on the PC, we can clearly see that there isn’t any noticeable graphical upgrade between these two titles. Okay okay, that’s an exaggeration and we are pretty sure that under the hood the game features more advanced graphical effects than its predecessor. However, the visual difference is minimal at best.
Not only that, but in the final comparison segment – with the formula cars – we can easily notice a big hit to reflections. Now we don’t know whether the game’s Time-Of-Day is to be blamed here or whether there will be an option to further increase the quality of reflections in the final build, however reflections are not that ‘strong‘ in Project CARS 2.
Do also note that Project CARS 2’s build is currently WIP, so things may improve over the next couple months. We also don’t know the settings that have been used (though we can assume that both of these games were maxed out).
Either way, even though Project CARS 2 looks great, it’s that much different – visually – than its predecessor. This shouldn’t surprise us as Project CARS is one of the most beautiful racing games to date, however we were hoping for a pretty noticeable graphical jump and not for some ‘enhanced‘ visuals.
Project CARS 2 releases on September 22nd.
Enjoy!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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I made the video. Both time of day and date are set equal en every segment. (You can look at the sun height and position in the last segment). I guess now it also affects what kind of season the date is linked (in winter you have snow i.e.), so atmosphere might be different and thus affects the sky that much.
“however we were hoping for a pretty noticeable graphical jump and not for some ‘enhanced‘ visuals.”
Why ? It’s on the same console generation, a game that has to run at 60fps (or around that). What major grahpical leaps can they make ? Besides, it’s a PC sim, trying to compete with the likes of Assetto Corsa and also other pure sims. Making it very grahpically demanding isn’t a good idea at all. This is a game that people are going to run on Triple screen setups, 4k, VR etc, and they’re going to prioritize framerate too.
Also, the graphics are better. Significant things I’ve noticed :-
– All vegetation is 3d now. This looks better in most cases, more consistent and also allows for different seasonal looks.
– Particle rendering : particles like rain, smoke and dust are now lit and shadowed properly. This is a big graphical boost, especially at night. The headlights catching dust looks great.
There are plenty of other small improvements. About the reflections – I’m really not sure pCars 2 is running on max there. I’ve seen lots of videos with this reflection problem, but then I’ve seen other videos in which there are full reflections, including reflections of cars on your car. Watch videos with max settings and analyze them.
its only a 1080p video, you’re not gonna get a very good comparison
The main difference I noticed was them having substituted Yokohama advertising on crash barriers for the original game’s Nvidia-sponsored ones!
Humour aside, much of the subtle iterative improvements will be difficult to determine here due to the awfulness of YouTube’s inherent limitations.
We are using the same build, same Ultra settings, although he (my friend from the same site) plays at 4K and I do at 2K. I guess the main difference here is that you are watching a storm scenario with cars, and my comparison has no cars to reflect. Idk, it was weird for me too, I checked time and date because I couldn’t believe the difference, but there it is.
why is the road soaking wet inside the tunnel in PC2?
Because it looks cool! 🙂
Must have been a leak
Road textures, rain effects, and motion blur are all 100x better in PC1.