Digital Foundry: Hands-On with Project Cars

[Administrator]

Thanks to a recent Bandai Namco event, the latest console build of Project Cars is up for analysis ahead of its (still rather uncertain) mid-May launch. Until now, delays upon delays have denied PlayStation 4 and Xbox One owners a firm grasp on what this PC-borne title brings to the racing sim space. Slightly Mad Studios' work is a technical tour-de-force on PC of course - a brutal stress-test for any GPU when maxed out - but on current evidence the results on console are mixed.
As a disclaimer, we're told by Bandai Namco's PR staff that the 19GB build in test here is of 'submission' quality. A final certification pass is ongoing at Sony and Microsoft's offices, and we're still shy of a last word on whether this is what we can expect on launch. At the very least, our captures here show Project Cars in its final stages of development, but as ever, certain points are apt to change as we hone in on its release.
Looking at resolution first there's clearly some work to be done. We were originally promised promised a true 1920x1080 as the target for both consoles, but now we see just an internal 1600x900 frame-buffer in effect on Xbox One - as confirmed by the developer earlier this week. Image quality does suffer in this case, and its post-process anti-aliasing method (which falls close to the PC's higher FXAA settings) struggles to cover all its rough spots. A motion blur effect helps disguise the upscale to 1080p to an extent in motion, but pixel-crawl remains noticeable across chrome highlights on cars, and foliage elements especially.
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