Project Cars 3 im Benchmark-Test : Test |CUP | Specs |Config

tl;dr: With Project Cars 3, the developers want to appeal to a wider audience. The technology is only of limited use in this endeavor, because the racing game requires a fast graphics card, as benchmarks in Full HD, WQHD and Ultra HD show. In addition, the graphics quality is very unstable.

After Project Cars and Project Cars 2, developer Slightly Mad Studios changes its target audience. While the two predecessors trimmed the racing game towards simulation – without turning it into a full-fledged racing simulation – Project Cars 3 is aimed more at the arcade player. No, the newest part won’t be a Need for Speed, but it can be compared to a Forza Motorsport, albeit without Open World.

The graphics quality is changeable

As with its predecessors, Slightly Mad Studios relies on an in-house engine including DirectX 11 renderer, which is said to have undergone some upgrades, for example in terms of lighting. When playing, however, the fluctuating graphics quality is noticeable first, which runs through a large part of the game.

Both cars and tracks change from pretty chic to pretty ugly. The desert drives are not only visually bleak, sometimes the surroundings appear completely blurred. Cities, on the other hand, are shown in much more detail, but there are no real highlights either. The cars are also mixed. Some vehicles only consist of one optical level, while others show a lot of details including sharp textures.

The weather is also changing in the truest sense of the word. The quality is okay in daylight, but the lighting is not particularly pretty. The game, on the other hand, is much nicer at night, and the screen space reflections in particular look pretty in the race. The graphic then throws another shovel in the rain. Throwing water looks pretty strange at times, but apart from that, Project Cars 3 is pretty chic in bad weather.

The graphics menu of Project Cars 3 is kept as simple as possible. There is nothing more than individual options, which are certainly available in a decent number. Neither descriptions nor sample screenshots are available. Comfort functions of any kind are also missing – FPS limiter, up- and downsampling and so on are looked for in vain. The developers even do without graphic presets. In addition, the game must be restarted after changing the resolution. That is simply no longer worthy of a project of this caliber in 2020. At least the graphic details can be changed without restarting, with the exception of the anti-aliasing.

It is also confusing that some options are only fully extended at the “Ultra” level, while others are already at “High” or even “Medium”. This is not a problem if there are at least presets – but without them it is confusing. All the more annoying that some levels of detail are blocked at the maximum and then the details cannot be increased any further. For others, however, this is not the case and after “high” comes “low” again. There is simply no uniform and logical structure in the graphics menu of Project Cars 3.

Presets are missing, options with small steps

As already mentioned, there are no graphic presets in Project Cars 3, but they probably do not need them either, because the individual options do not bring any great leaps in performance anyway. Anyone who switches from “Ultra” to “High”, for example, receives an FPS plus of around 20 percent. The game looks a bit dull, especially at night, but this is a very useful compromise if you want to achieve a higher performance.

Switching all levels of detail to “medium” meanwhile has hardly any effect on the performance, the differences are barely measurable. A larger jump can be seen at “Low”, but the look of the racing game is then just that. If you don’t have enough FPS on “High”, it is best to turn the resolution right away.

There is only SSAA for anti-aliasing

Project Cars 3 does not show any post-processing anti-aliasing in the menu, but one is definitely always active. It doesn’t work very well, especially in low resolutions like Full HD numerous objects flicker annoyingly. In return, there is hardly any blurring. The image smoothness is better in higher resolutions, but is not yet optimal in Ultra HD either.

Alternatively, Project Cars 3 offers supersampling anti-aliasing, or SSAA for short. The settings are “Low” and “Medium”. Which steps are hidden behind it remains the secret of the developers. Due to the relatively low performance costs for SSAA, the values ​​must be rather low. SSAA costs around 20 to 30 percent frame rate on “Medium”.

SSAA is not a panacea for the image stability, but it is good for the game, especially in Full HD. If the graphics card is fast enough, super sampling in 1,920 × 1,080 is worthwhile. From 2,560 × 1,440, however, you should leave the option switched off, because then the GPU already has enough to plow. In addition, the image stability from WQHD is decent anyway, even if it is far from perfect.

On the next page: GPU benchmarks, frame times and a driver comparison