I'm sure I'm not the only one that always felt pretty dissatisfied about the visual damage models featured by most racing games. For some reason developers seem to have enormous problems in showing their pretty rides really smashed up. They get some scratches here and there, lose some paint, maybe they even drop a spoiler or a bumper, but it pretty much always ends there, no matter how hard you drive into that brick wall.

Luckily the upcoming Project CARS by Slightly MAD Studios, that will hit the shelves starting this fall for PC, PS4, Xbox One and Wii U is different. The developers went out out of their way to make sure that when you have a crash your car will really reflect it.

To show you what I mean, I picked up the beta, made sure that the visual quality was cranked up all the way, selected a nice oval curse where it's easy to just drive against the traffic to cause some nice metal carnage, and started my destruction derby with some of the most beautiful rides included in the game. Needless to say, the results were unlike anything we've gotten used to with all the Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport of the past.

It's worth mentioning that absolutely no tricks were used to get the shots you'll see below. There are no special settings. All I did was smash the cars up, park them, hit replay (that uses exactly the same models as the game, in fact a few of the screenshots don't even use the replay, since I forgot to activate it), move the camera around and snap away. What you see is what you get.

As a side note, don't mind the stripped down course. It's still under construction so it lacks pretty much everything besides the asphalt and the fences. It does make a great destruction derby field, though.

But without further ado, I leave you with the screenshots, make sure you click on each to see the full resolution.

That's what I'd easily define next-gen visual damage (or maybe I should say "new-gen?" Still, you get what I mean). While it's still not 100% true to life, as it'd be nice to see fully deformed chassis, wheels that come off, and maybe oil leaking on the asphalt, it's definitely much better than what we're used to.

Hopefully Project CARS will show other racing game developers that smashing up a Pagani or a Ferrari with no restraint isn't such a sacrilege and the next Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport won't let our cars come out of a crash looking like a kid pranked us by scratching the paint off the door with a key.