Project Motor Racing, the spiritual successor to Project CARS, launched last November in—and I take no joy in saying this—a terrible state. The game ran poorly, crashed regularly, looked unremarkable, and drove disjointedly. There was nothing about it to recommend, and it was clear that the racing sim needed much more polishing before it was ready for the public. How much more polishing? About four months, it turns out, because a big 2.0 patch for the game launched today and it really has transformed the experience.
Sure, the bar was low to begin with, but everything about PMR is better now, to the point that those who got on with Project CARS in the past should seriously consider picking it up if they didn’t back in November (or, more likely, refunded it), for its current sale price of $30.
One of the biggest, but thankfully not only changes, is apparent immediately after firing 2.0 up. The user interface, which previously felt like a placeholder—and a barely functional one at that—has now been given a complete overhaul. It’s not the prettiest UI I have ever seen, but it’s far less busy, much nicer to look at, and clearer to navigate.
The game now better communicates which option you’re highlighting, which is really important so as to not, say, accidentally restart a completed session. (Unfortunately, there’s still no confirmation after selecting such options, and there really should be!) PMR’s menus now behave better across the board, and are more comfortably scaled for smaller or further-away displays. Developer Straight4 Studios tells us that the UI was one of the biggest points of friction for the player base since launch, prompting this impressively quick turnaround.
Performance seems more consistent as well now. It’s still not perfectly smooth; changing views or resuming from pause can occasionally cause hitching. But, I was still able to run the game on mostly maxed settings, at 1440p, and achieve a stable 90 frames per second that was only really broken when many cars were on screen at the same time. I’m content with that, since my RX 9070, Ryzen 5800X3D PC is hardly a beast. This was my first time firing up PMR since the week it launched, so I’m sure previous patches have had a hand in the progress here.
The biggest improvement, UI aside, is the new tire model that has been incorporated in some vehicle categories. Straight4 recommended I try out the 2000s N-GT class first, as it’s a great representation of all the tweaks the team has made in the interest of driving feel. I was going to do that anyway, because it’s probably my favorite collection of cars in the roster.
The Viper Competition Coupe I sampled on Sebring was definitely nicer to drive. The “stickiness” of pad steering that I complained about at launch is all but diminished, and there’s clearly much more confidence at the player’s fingertips to steer with the throttle. (So long as you’re not doing it on the first lap—PMR is not kind to cold tires.)
The main point is that you’re now afforded more warning before breaking traction in an unsalvageable way, which totally changed how I drove. I was having a great time almost immediately, something I would’ve never said on day one. Let’s hope these physics improvements make their way to every class without much delay.
There is still a little roughness around the edges. I noticed some light graphical bugs with the sky as I lapped Sebring, which manifested as shimmering clouds. FSR upscaling still doesn’t really work in this game, at least on my machine, resulting in pretty severe ghosting trails. And I wish track limit penalties were a bit more reasonable. But it’s clear a ton of work has gone into getting PMR to this state, and it was well worth it.
There’s plenty more here that I haven’t dug into. The career mode now gets real-world sponsors; there are new, super-nerdy widgets for the HUD that detail the innerworkings of the powertrain and ECU; track art, foliage, and environmental lighting have seen a lift; and AI has been further balanced, just to name a few other touch-ups. The result is the game Straight4 and publisher Giants should’ve launched in the first place, or at least allotted themselves the time to finish. Project Motor Racing’s 2.0 update is live now on all platforms.
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