A different kind of racing game

Project CARS goes where other racing games fear to tread. From an unconventional initial funding method and a unique community-driven development, right down to its very structure this is a racing simulator like none that has come before.

Its creator, Slightly Mad Studios, has bucked trends at seemingly every step of a build cycle that's spanned more than four gruelling years. Those involved have been constantly spurred on by a ferocious, unflinching belief derived from the project's giant, energetic and hugely invested community.

Project CARS' core structure blazes a fresh trail from that traditionally found in console racing giants like Gran Turismo (Sony) or Forza Motorsport (Xbox). For a start, gone is the grinding ladder system where only victory will open up new series and races, and prize money better machinery.

Gone as well are the countless city cars you wouldn't choose to race for real, even if the alternative were a Boris bike. Diminished too are the usual arcade options, road cars and mini-games, normally included to ensure the title reaches the casual gamer apparently obsessed with Top Gear and drifting.

Be prepared for big grids of proper race cars, rather than a bunch of street racers

This is not a driving game, it's a racing one.

Project CARS focuses on the very minutiae of motorsport. From the inclusion of essential free practice sessions and the correct application of flags, through to multi-class racing and its intriguingly specific series regulations, it's all there.

This feels like a simulation of motorsport the likes of which has never been seen before on a console.

So why then, at a time when blockbuster game budgets are steadily overlapping those of small movies, has SMS committed to such a narrow target area? After all, racing-games stalwart Codemasters stopped short of doing this with Grid AUTOSPORT, while Turn 10 (Forza creator) and Polyphony (GT mastermind) would never countenance bringing sharp focus to such a niche area of the digital driving arena.

The creative director of Project CARS, Andy Tudor, says SMS has always aimed to be a credible alternative to the behemoths of the genre. And he's supremely confident that its vision is the right one.

His fervent conviction is backed up by the views of more than 80,000 race game fans that have signed up to the project, which initially required them to invest and since has allowed, through its World of Mass Development portal, regular weekly access to new beta models of the game.

"We have been working on the game for a long time and we've all grown up playing loads of racing games," Tudor tells AUTOSPORT of his development team. "Every game that we see coming out, we look on their forums and read the comments, and they all seem to ask for the same kinds of things.

"The players have all matured in the same way that we have. They look at Forza and Gran Turismo, which are seen as the benchmarks for racing on consoles, and they feel like they want to take it to the next level.

"If you look at SMS's previous games on the Need for Speed Shift series, Project CARS is very much a spiritual successor to those, but also bringing in the stuff we did in the past with [PC sims] GTR and GT Legends.

"So it really is an amalgamation of all of our expertise and what the fans are actually asking for and bringing that to the consoles. That hasn't really been done before.

"It would have been pretty dangerous for us to have made these decisions without including the fans, which is why we had the community involved from day one."

You can start right at the bottom in your career mode, but you don't have to

The tiered membership of the crowd-sourcing project helped significantly to raise the target figure of €3.75million required to create Project CARS, and because of this, as well as the reasons above, the game's fans are also its pillar investors. Throughout the development of the project, their views and their desires for the game's direction were keenly felt.

"When we originally came up with the concept of Project CARS, we put a very broad vision document on the website: 'This is the game we want to make, these are the features we want, we want to have a wide variety of motorsport... etc.' But we didn't specify," explains Tudor. "The community kind of took it from there. They have steered us the whole way.

"There are some things that didn't make the cut, like rallying, for example. We wanted to include rallying, but in the end we put it to a 'community' meeting and they responded by saying, 'We would rather you concentrated on the asphalt-based mainstream stuff'.

"The community drew the line for us."

That "mainstream stuff" Tudor refers to is actually a wide-ranging collection of racing exotica, and covers pretty much every area of modern motorsport. While licenses are not all-encompassing at the moment, and miss the obvious Porsche and Ferrari monikers, there is serious machinery included from Mercedes, BMW, Ford, Renault, Aston Martin and Audi.

And the categories in which they appear span the full gamut of GT racing, junior and senior single-seaters, prototypes and some interesting diversions into tin-tops, touring cars and historic stunners. In all there are more than 80 different cars (all accessible from load) available at launch and 110 beautifully rendered and laser-scanned locations.

These include Le Mans, for which SMS has obtained an official license it intends to exploit further, and Indianapolis.

The community has even played a role in this content. "They've been instrumental in actually making the game and assets," says Tudor. "They've made many of the liveries for the cars, they've voted on which cars they want to see in the game.

"They've given us their favourite tracks. They've given us a real insight into what wheels they use, what resolution they run their PCs at.

"Somebody asked the other day, 'Are you confident at how online is going to work on day one?' And we're like, 'Yeah, because we've had online working for over a year now!' People have been playing the game and running seasons and organising events on weekends, just like the real-life events.

Racing-game community has played a big role in key decisions surrounding the title

"That confidence I referred to all comes from the community being on board and telling us what is wrong on a daily basis and us fixing it over time. In the end you get to a point where everyone is happy with it."

Project CARS has been subjected to no small amount of hype ahead of its release, finally scheduled for tomorrow (Friday, May 8) in the UK. But from what we've seen so far in the beta versions on PC and console, this is a racing simulation that has a fair chance of living up to its protracted build-up.

It will need to. Following two aborted launches, having initially been set to hit the shops back in the autumn of 2014, that loyal fan base (more of which later) has been asked to exercise considerable patience.

The expectation is that they won't be disappointed. The graphics, which SMS claims run at the holy grail of 60 frames per second at 1080p resolution on the next-gen consoles, are quite astonishing, particularly with the dynamic weather turned up to the max.

What's more, the weather can be mapped to a day in history, so if you want to, you can recreate the dramatic precipitation from the early stints of last year's Le Mans 24 Hours. All with 44 other cars on track.

Rarely do racing games as pretty as this one play out quite so well once the controller is in your hand. But this delivers on its promise, though admittedly Project CARS is better with a steering wheel.

As much emphasis was placed on the handling and racing aspects of the game as all its other parts. The game's SETA tyre model ensures grip gradients during the tyre's life, so not only can you satisfactorily judge adhesion levels when the track is dry or in changeable weather conditions, but also when your tyres are falling away. All crucial information during racing.

And those races are more about racing to reduce/increase gaps than blasting Out Run-style past brainless sprites. Overtaking opportunities are hard-earned and joyfully relished against fiercely intelligent AI.

Once again, this has been achieved through user feedback, but in this case of a more professional kind - drivers from all levels of the sport have assisted in the development of Project CARS.

"Nicolas Hamilton was still posting until very recently," says Tudor. "Oli Webb similarly has changed teams recently, but he's played a big role. We got Ben Collins on board because he hates racing games. We hired him and said, 'You tell us exactly what is wrong and we will fix it'. That worked great, he loves it now.

"We are also getting more racing drivers coming on. Audi drivers Rene Rast and Andre Lotterer both played Project CARS as practice for the recent Silverstone WEC race."

Elements like rallying were shelved to focus on getting the racing absolutely right

Talk of a sequel may be premature, and there are already stories in the gaming press about details surrounding crowd-funding for Project CARS 2. However, Tudor likes to see this game more as a developing platform, in a similar way that Destiny works on the PS4, or World of Warcraft does on PCs.

"There's the buzzwords of 'games as service', where you download a game and then a year later you are still getting updates," he says.

"I think players will be really pleased with the way that we expand the game after launch. Such that they will still be playing it for a long time to come, hopefully."

Whether they will be is very much down to the post-launch success of Project CARS, and whether it can make the leap from excellent motorsport simulation to genre-defining platform.

If it can, then the game that racing fans say they have always wanted could finally be here to stay.