The remaining guys still regularly lurking this thread probably know me for liking Forza and trying to defend the series if it gets treated unfairly and also for disliking pCARS' tire model "feel". I also like to do lap time comparisons between racing games, which are completely worthless, but I love doing them anyway.
Now, lately our neighbors' wretched kid just total'ed his not-even-close-to-paid-off
Toyota GT86, which inspired me to give that car a go in different sims - stock condition, no assists(it's not even 200HP), on the Nordschleife.
Gran Turismo 6:
The FFB feels a bit stiff and last-gen, but the car is fantastic and compared to other cars it's ridiculous with what you can get away with (well, in general, you can get away with a lot in GT, but here it's really noticable). The suspension is very balanced, responsive yet curbs don't unsettle the thing at all. It has the feel of getting the Kaz-favorite treatment like the Skylines.
Assetto Corsa:
The car feels brilliant, the FFB feels great, the tires seem a bit stiff, but that's normal in AC. Very balanced, responsive and forgiving. You can push it over the edge a lot easier than in GT6, but the balanced setup and user-friendly weight distribution lets the car slide in a natural manner, letting you have some boy'ish fun with it. Braking distance in AC is longer than in other sims and trail-braking - while not feeling unfair - is the hardest thing on the Nordschleife with its height differences that this car has to offer in AC. Easy, natural feeling fun.
Forza Motorsport 6:
This car feels
terrible(!!) in FM6! Godawful, irredeemable and unrealistic. The suspension feels muddy like the car has the suspension from a family car made in (19)86. Even though I have probably more experience with Forza than I have with any other sim, the car was was not only harder to drive in general than in the other games, it was also especially harder to find its limits on the track. I wouldn't call it inconsistent, but much harder to judge what I could get away with and how to counter it. My fastest out of just 3 laps (I had enough! and counting the rewinds in the not-counted laps it was closer to 4 laps anyway) felt slow and almost "careful", yet was as fast as in GT6 where I could push the car more than in the other games.
Project CARS:
[Disclaimer: I'm not exactly a fan of this game and didn't buy DLC on the PC (my DLC money went into rebuying it on PC after the annoying XB1 version), so I only have the Scion FR-S version of the Toyota GT86, which still is more or less the same car. I also didn't try the stock setup and instead used tuning values from projectcarssetups.eu that tried to get closer to the real world suspension setup while making it a bit slower maybe.]
The car and to my surprise the FFB ("classic" config) too felt
fantastic, awesome,
superb. Respensive, not overly stiff or hard, easy to drive and in most cases even, intentionally getting the car into a drift, it does not outright try to kill you like a lot of other cars, tyres and suspension setups in pCARS do. It felt - I have a hard time to believe I'm actually saying this - it felt
as good as Assetto Corsa! The only real differences to me were a) trail braking didn't unsettle the car as much in pCARS as it did in AC, but that might have been nothing more than different brake bias, and b) pushing the car too much in pCARS and more or less drifting it
un-intentionally leads way easier to spinning out and spoils the playfulness you can have with the car in AC. Countersteering just is too hard to get right. It's kinda believable in race car, but not in non-supercar street legal one.
Still, I was baffled and think I might buy some DLC for pCARS if it's discounted in the upcoming Steam summer sale.
Not that it really matters, but my lap times were GT6 8:40.851 ; AC 8:52.553 ; FM6 8:41.966 ; pCARS 8:38.783 ; real world
8:44.90.