Welcome to the first in a series of blog posts covering Project CARS. If you haven’t heard about it already, Project CARS is a bit different ;-) Different in the philosophy of freedom that runs throughout the entire game, and different in how it’s being created – by YOU, the gamers!

Project CARS was conceived back in October 2011 (wow time flies!) as a natural continuation of our work on two of racing’s biggest franchises – Need For Speed and Test Drive – and as a return to our roots when we created GTR and GT Legends.

Back when we were conceiving the idea we knew we wanted to create a racing game that covered a wide range of different car types and motorsports, and gave you the freedom to play and experiment with them however you wanted.

We wanted the core driving experience to be the most authentic on the planet and we wanted to provide you with all the features you need to recreate a race weekend as it happens in real life – complete with a dynamic time of day and weather system that not only looks beautiful but challenges your skills and provides strategic opportunities.

And we wanted to connect players together with a variety of online and community features – time trials, events, competitive multiplayer, content sharing, stat comparisons, and more.

That was the goal we set out with… to stand alongside the competition with a fresh new racing game that combined best-in-class features you guys have been asking for and innovations that’ll blow you away – but we knew we were going to need some help. Which is why over the last few years we’ve been helped by a community of passionate and dedicated players like yourselves on our WMD Portal site. They’re people like you that are looking for the next big thing, have been playing games all their life and are finally making the racing game of their dreams. As we’ve said for a while now, this is a racing game for racers, made by racers… it’s your game.

As you may have seen, we’re very excited that Project CARS is going to be launching in November and as you’ll see from these exclusive screenshots here it looks fantastic on PlayStation 4 – it’s definitely something you want to show off to your friends when they visit.

Whether you’re recreating Lewis Hamilton’s fearlessness out on a European racing circuit, searching for that perfect opportunity to break out of a close pack of GT cars, testing your stamina doing a 24h race in an LM Prototype, or simply taking a muscle car out for a drive down the US West Coast, both the cars and tracks are exact 1:1 recreations of the real things.

On the cars that means visually down to the screws that hold the suspension manifold together, physically in terms of recreating the exact handling and performance characteristics, and sonically representing the various roars or purrs or growls that each exhibits. Others may say similar, but they don’t come close to the attention to detail we put in.

When it comes to the tracks too, thousands of reference photos were taken, height information was recorded, laser scans were done, and most importantly real drivers like former ‘Stig’ Ben Collins, Nicolas Hamilton, and Oli Webb trawled over every track giving us inside info on the nuances of every corner, every rumble strip, every bump on the tarmac to ensure they not only look great but feel authentic to play too.

Over the next coming months you’ll be seeing a regular blog here on PlayStation Blog that’ll be diving deeper into more details of the game – cars and tracks, career mode, online modes, social and community features, and a special feature on Project Morpheus.

That’s right, Project CARS will be one of the first games on PS4 to support virtual reality via the Project Morpheus headset. Finally, you’re going to really feel what it’s like sat in the driving seat of a high performance machine as you look around the cockpit, glance left and right as you overtake an opponent, and get an exhilarating sense of speed as you scream down the finishing straight.

So stay tuned and head over to projectcarsgame.com in the meantime for more screenshots and videos.