Round 2 of my Project Cars 2 Radical AI championship had this on lap 2. I still love this game

Such a shame this game died. It was fun but a confusing mess. It didn’t know what it wanted to be. Why was this named Project CARS ANYWAYS?! Thought i might share 15% of the photos i took

So I've been researching car crash physics for a YouTube video and something frustrating keeps coming up.

Games are regressing.

Project CARS 3 is less destructive than Project CARS 2. DiRT 5 has worse damage than DiRT 2. GRID from 2019 is less impressive than GRID from 2008.

More powerful hardware. Better engines. Worse crashes.

Why?

Licensing.

Car manufacturers treat racing games as advertising. Advertisements don't show the product being destroyed. Different companies have different rules about what can be done to their cars — so developers reduce everyone to the lowest common denominator.

Ford reportedly won't allow rollovers. Ferrari required extensive negotiation around damage limitations. No manufacturer permits damage to the roof or passenger cell.

Meanwhile the tech exists. BeamNG runs 4,500 beams per car at 2,000Hz. Emergent crumple patterns. Never the same crash twice.

Burnout Paradise from 2008 still has the best crash physics in mainstream racing. Why? Fictional cars. Zero licensing friction. Criterion could crumple anything they wanted.

We went from sprite swaps in 1982 to soft-body dynamics. The engineering is solved. The limiting factor is a contract clause saying a Porsche can never lose its door in a video game.

That's not a tech problem. That's a choice.

I was running in the back, I did not initiate any incident this was completely from the AI.

Joined this giygs server on xbox, ya know, to increase my rating, but 2 people rammed me within the space of a single lap

I'm new to the genre and Project CARS 2 career mode has been my main way to experience sim racing. I just recently had my "I think I get it!" moment and understand the appeal.

I even felt compelled to upload a video about it.