It is not for a full lap. It is when you spin off track. Buy it and see for yourself...

Forza does the same. If you go off track, draft another car, touch another car, or let another car draft you, your time doesn't count properly towards the leaderboards. A 1 hour clean lap will rank above a 2 min lap with a cut corner.

I wonder if the game is this bad on all platforms, or if they figured the Xbox One already had some great driving games (Foza) and they would just concentrate on the others?

I know there were early complains about some graphic optimization, but to drop the ball this bad? But crowd sourcing needs a strong director/producer to keep everything together.

from the reviews I've read the PC/PS4 versions are good but the XBOX ONE version has tons of issues, I want to get this eventually though, but I am thinking getting the PS4 version is probably my best bet?

I just got the game. Early impressions: lol is this a ps4 game... (Only did 2 kart races so far)
It looks pretty bad, menus look very amateurish with hard to read text.
At least it runs very smooth, I haven't noticed any screen tear so far, although the loading times could be better.

I'll give it a proper try on the projector tonight. Good thing there was no demo as I would have skipped it at this point... It will probably grow on me as most racing games do, yet after all the hype it's pretty disappointing tbh. Kart racing in GT6 was much better.

Well at least the text is easily readable on a projector, it doesn't do the graphics much good though.
I played for another 3 hours, finished the kart championship, which wasn't too bad after getting the hang of it. The physics are a bit questionable and the handling is very twitchy, but I guess that comes with karts. 6/10 for kart racing.

Then I got offered an invitational to drive a Bac Mono on Shetterton or something. Hmm, cars do not feel realistic at all. I don't know what's worse, the tendency to start fish tailing after a corner due to the input lag, the brain dead AI driving into you, during qualifying no less, or the almost complete lack of auditory feedback from the tires. You don't know you're actually skidding until you see the nose of the car pointing too far into the corner. Rumble feedback is there but that starts too early, not that helpful.

The sense of speed and distance isn't that great either. I don't use the driving line or other braking cues and normally don't have a problem judging braking distances. In PCars I definitely need help from the signs along the track. Despite PCars being 60 fps, DC has lower input lag, better sense of speed, and is easier to judge distance in.
Anyway after an hour I had the Bac Mono under control, qualified first and won the race. Still not sure if the driving is actually fun. Felt like doing an egg race.

After that I tried out the Nordschleife in a LMP car. That track does look better than the rest so far and is also a step up, albeit a small one, from GT6' rendition. Rain still looks crap, but at least the track becomes reflective which GT6 doesn't do. I had set it up so it started down pouring half way through the race (you can define 4 stages of weather per race), which rendered my car from getting into first to almost undriveable. Too bad the AI doesn't care about rain nor obstacles as after the rain started I had 31 cars ploughing through me, destroying my car. Retry, damage off, can do max 80 on most of the track in the heavy rain, realistic. I wanted to test the difference with full wet tires but for some reason the rain glitched out. Btw AI cars don't care about grass and sand traps either, doesn't slow them down...

Hearing the pit boss through the DS4 speaker is a nice feature, although it scared the crap out of me the first time it happened. "BEEP great first lap BEEP". "Thanks, now I'm in the wall"
Maybe I can improve the handling a bit by tweaking the dead zone. Making minor high speed course corrections with the big default dead zone plus input lag is very tricky.


TLDR: Handling is a big step back from GT6, AI sucks, sound mix is lousy (can't hear the tires, collision sounds are either missing or deafening, sounds like the competition is much closer behind you than they actually are)

It's a challenge and I'm still curious to drive on the tracks I don't know yet, but so far it's a 6/10 game, unpolished, quite rough around the edges. It's the only (attempt at a) sim racer on ps4 currently, so I guess if you can't wait for GT7 you can give it a try. I won't recommend it to any friends though.

I must admit, this has so far been one of the hardest racing games to stay on track. Very steep learning curve, especially without the driving line and the brain dead AI.
It does keep valid lap times though, but it's very happy to invalidate the current and the next lap from halfway down the track. Qualifying in the bac mono took me the better part of an hour thanks to the brain dead AI and random egine blow out failures (that nonsense happens way too often, turned it off)

I never understand why people complain about penalties in racing sims. First GT5 and 6, then Driveclub (not a sim), and now pCars all get marked down because they have a penalty system. Honestly, we NEED penalty systems like this so everyone races clean and honest.

Should we just be allowed to take shortcuts wherever we go and ignore the actual track? This isn't Mario Kart. Also, don't worry about getting your lap invalidated. If you went off the road, it wasn't going to be a good lap anyway.

I heard it has serious control issues on the X1 hopefully they patch those up by the time I get it since I'm not planning of getting a PS4 anytime soon. Anyway I'm more then likely will not get it before Forza Motorsports 6 by then most of the problems and bugs should be patched and hopefully it will have some more tracks and cars that I'm interested in.

Late but fun fact, its the same guys behind NFS Shift that made Project CARS

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slightly_Mad_Studios