"Console Players deserve PC-Style Graphics Settings"

The ability to tweak graphics settings largely remains the domain of PC gamers. Project Cars is proving to be an exception to that, as it will offer players on Xbox One and PS4 some control over various visual effects.

As first discovered by Digital Foundry, these versions include a "Visual FX" settings menu, as pictured below. Tweakable options include post-processing filters, lens flare, rain drops, screen dirt, bloom, and a number of other things you'd ordinarily have to accept as-is when playing on console

In a separate menu dedicated to camera settings, there are also field-of-view settings for each of the different camera angles in the game, as well as options dictating the amount of movement that happens with the driver's helmet.

Speaking with GameSpot, creative director Andy Tudor explained why the studio went out of its way to offer these options.

"Console owners should have just as much right to tailor their game to their particular preferences as PC players," Tudor says, "whether that’s authenticity, visual options, how the camera reacts, accessibility etc.

these consoles are too weak to be picky this time around, its basically low or nothing

The idea is good in theory, but console games are generally made to maximize the hardware itself. Lots of times you can adjust the brightness, which sometimes I do if I'm playing games in the daytime and my game room is sunny.

I can't imagine Sony/Microsoft being too thrilled with the idea of that, media would start coming out of games with people using lower settings than default to gain performance which could hurt their image and make their consoles look worse than they already are.

The only options I want in console gaming are good useful options that make strong appreciable differences offering me actual choice. 720/60 vs 1080/30? That's a dramatic difference I welcome. Offering me the choice to scale back draw distance a smidgen for a few fps here and there is nonsense pussy-footing that has no place in console gaming.

The onus is on the dev to make the game work, not on me to fiddle with settings to get it to work acceptably. When I'm basically doing the devs job of optimisation selections for them that's BS. If I buy a console version of a game I buy it so that I don't have to do that. And while I'm at it the same applies to massive, frequent patches and the like: I used to love consoles because it was just pop the game in and have a solid experience... now there's all this red tape and even the general bar for performance consistency seems to have fallen this generation taking the console experience out of consoles :(

It looks like these options don't affect performance though so I'm happy to have them in. Especially in racing games when the overall way the image is constituted isn't important: exact lighting and framing rarely matter in this kinds of games as they're aiming for realism.

You make a good point.. I believe this may open the door to devs taking the half assed approach and simply throwing "options" in there just to cover it up. It seems console gaming MAY be venturing too far into the PC realm.

wasn't there already a thread on this?

I'm all for it, if it lets me put some damn AF in since developers think fucking chromatic aberration is more important. Speaking of that, we should be able to take that crap out, and other bad post processing.

Or developers could just get good and have their brains screwed on right when choosing what effects to put in a game.

Settings and customization in a closed machine that tends to block off such features. Ironic

Thats hardly a graphics option menu. You normally get half of that in console games.

I'm all for more options. I hope this catches on.

This sounds glorious. Moar.

I thought choosing options is too complex and scary for you guys. I thought it was better that Sony took care of everything for you (including house cleaning). Anyways,,, those are hardly any graphics options but I think that there should be some sort of option to choose between higher res or frame rates.

Why bother, devs would release the game with the highest settings it could handle, so players could only go down from there. Not worth their time.

I read Tweak as Twerk lol

Then be prepared to pay a helluva lot more than $400 for your next console

@Zelda187: what?

I think something that would solve those problems would be to do what Bioshock did in 2007. Offer the user one choice to switch off certain graphics settings to get 60fps. There wasn't a whole list of settings like this describes and it will allow console users to play at 60fps if they wish.

Too hard! Don't confuse the console players with such complicated options! :(

most console gamers don't want options though, they want this:

But the consoles are only bad to people like us who go to forums, read about the industry and specs and compare them. The majority of consumers see them as better than the previous gen and buy them.

Yup, there was.