Assetto Corsa | News and General Discussion

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This game looks really awesome. Looks like I'm going to have to invest in a top notch gaming PC and steering wheel set up!
 
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Ooh, I've always loved the 2-Eleven but I've not seen it in any sim outside of Forza 3. I was going to get this anyway (as long as it's a conventional release and not Free to Play or an iRacing pricing model) though.
 
I see pCars and AC as being in two different camps completely.

AC is a full car sim, pCars is aiming to be more of a car "experience" like Forza and GT, but with much better graphics and better handling. So not any of that simcade nonsense, but just... an experience. pCars is stepping up the notch for sure and I love them for it, but I just can't imagine it feeling nearly as good as something like netKar already does. Think that's a good enough wrap-up?
 
Fine. Here, have a cookie.

Now go on the WMDforum and tell the devs what exactly it is that doesnt feel as good in pCARS to you as in NKP already. That would probably help improve things.
 
The main reason for me is that grip levels do not fall off fast enough as slip angle increases. This effect is prominent in console games because it makes them possible to play with the inaccuracy of a controller. The result is a game that lacks the super precise feel of other simulators and is too forgiving and easy to play.

But the new tire model is supposed to solve the grip issues. So we'll see.
 
Lots of new information gathered form a Q&A with Kunos:

http://www.virtualr.net/assetto-corsa-qas-reveal-new-details

No singleplayer mode, competitive racing title through and through, everything's available right from the start, and they're planning on building up the game largely over time, my kind of sim.

This statement from Marco is one of the best summaries of how sim racing should be I've ever read. He makes a lot of great points:

I would like talk a bit about development decisions regarding Assetto Corsa, before answering to some of your questions.

First of all, we really appreciate your comments and we thank you for all your interest in Assetto Corsa. This provides a strong motivation for our team to work at its best. We would also like to thank all the people that continue to support us, and the AC project, by purchasing our existing products. Please, continue to do so.

Reading comments on blogs, forums and your questions here, it seems that people think of us as a big software studio with unlimited resources. We feel proud because it seems that people think we are doing top quality work. Nevertheless we would like to underline that Kunos Simulazioni is a small, independent software house that is not funded by any external investment. We don’t work with, or on behalf of, any financial company and therefore our budget and resources are limited.

Because the community seems to be very kind on our regards, the least we can do is to be honest towards the community. Before discussing features, cars and tracks or how our title will be the “sim to end all sims” as maybe other marketing departments of other software studios do, we would like to explain the reasons behind some decisions, so here it goes.

It’s important to understand what limited resources means. We need to decide very carefully on which aspects of the software we have to focus our production: graphics, physics, licensing, features, the offline and/or online experience, weather effects, and so on. Obviously we can’t put the same attention in all of these aspects together. Gran Turismo 5 is a game that proves that 5 years work and budgets in the range of several tenths of millions of dollars, are not by themselves a guarantee that you can include every feature in existence into a racing game, and create the perfection.

We have a maxim in our office: “everyone wants to race a 24 hour race, driving at night, under heavy rain, with broken suspension and a puncture. But just one time for a try“.

What we have learned, over the years, is that feedback on forums and simracing blogs represents just a minor percentage of the total amount of users and it doesn’t always tell you the truth about what people want to see in a game. We pay great attention and listen to our customers, but when we see how people are using our software, we see various patterns -often vastly different- from what blogs and forums would suggest as normal usage. Here’s a couple of examples that are significative.

As you probably know, Kunos have released, for free, for all registered members – all the add-ons produced for netKar PRO: cars, tracks, features, etc. And a lot of people who didn’t purchase netkar PRO before, during these years decided to buy it to get these add-ons, when a certain car or track as piqued their interest. Well, you would probably be surprised, but the slowest add-on car has sold much-much more copies of the game than the version that introduced weather conditions with aquaplaning, even if that feature was highly demanded from communities and the implementation was not bad at all when it was released, in 2009.

If you are not involved in the simracing community and you read the biggest simracing forums, blogs, and so on, you could think that Grand Prix Legends, Richard Burns Rally and a few other games are the most successful racing games ever. And that -for instance- some modern famous F1 or rally titles are a total sales disaster because people hate them. Well, you already know the truth, don’t you?

Many people think that that the multiplayer and online experience is dramatically important to every racing game. We love online racing too and we participate in various leagues with netKar pro or even other sims occasionally! Still if you count the number of users that play online at any time of the day/week with all the available simulators on the market, and then you also count the sales numbers of all the simulators available, you will notice that the online active users are a tiny fraction of the whole sales, even on purely online dedicated sims. So we’re troubled… where are all these people? Why we can’t see more online active users, than 15-20% of the whole sales of all sims even by the most pessimistic sales projections? Obviously because only a small part of the customers have the time and energy to race online regularly.

For all above reasons, and much more that we haven’t expressed but one can easily imagine, an independent developer needs to determine a strategy, in order to stay alive and be able to produce a new product in a busy marketplace. Our strategy, at Kunos, is not to create what people would ideally like to see in Assetto Corsa, but what Assetto Corsa should include in order to be an enjoyable product that simracers and, why not, normal gamers, would love to use. Because if you think about it, fast driving and racing is fun, so why simulators are not used by more people?

The development of Assetto Corsa is the present and future of our software house and an offer to the simracing community that surely thrives if more simulations are available in the market. We need to give priority to the features that make the driving experience with Assetto Corsa, worth for a larger audience of customers, without compromising and producing an arcade or sim/arcade game. Therefore we need contents, official cars and tracks, hi-quality graphics, a cool entertainment experience and a moddable structure to the software design. All powered by the most realistic physics engine we are able to develop, because that is our trademark and most praised characteristic. We believe that those features will make everybody happy, while having whatever extra feature at the expense of stability or mediocre experience while playing would make probably some people happy and angry everybody else.

So for example, multiplayer? Sure, but it will be one of the features of Assetto Corsa. AC will not have only a multiplayer structure as its core function, like its predecessor. Our original wish list, when we defined the concept of AC more than 2 years ago, included a lot of interesting and cool features. Realistically, today we need to set priorities and give you a great, stable racing experience. We are investing so much, we decided to bet on the simracing community. When AC is released, you will decide whether to bet on us. What will happen after the first release of AC, will also depend on the community stance. If the community stops the religion wars of “my sim is better than yours” and embraces the small number of simulations that exist in the market, then the same market will grow and become healthier. If we are not up to the realistic expectations of the community or the community asks the impossible, then in the future we will see even more arcade driving games.

The community can support Assetto Corsa’s development in the long term, by buying our previous products now, and purchasing AC when it becomes available.

We really hope we’ve been able to transmit you the positive spirit that drives us to write these honest words and hopefully you will read our answers to your questions, from a different perspective than the usual “we want everything and we want it now”.
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I bolded some of my favorite and most important segments.
 
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That was a really good read. It seems like the devs working on Assetto Corsa, have their heads on their shoulders, and really know what they are doing.
 
Question is, how does one become a beta tester? NetKar and Ferrari Virtual Academy were/are my favourite sims in terms of simple pure driving experience, it was a shame that they lacked or were restricted in so many other areas.

Either way, I look forward to playing AC.
 
SimonK
Well colour me very disappointed. I'm not a big online player, never have been, so the fact this is going to be missing a single player mode is very sad for me. :nervous:
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Same here, my connection is too unreliable for me to feel good about paying for an online-only racing sim. In fact at this point the only sim I play online is Simraceway and I get disconnected from most races before they finish, but at least that was free. Even though I have spent some money on it. Oh well!
 
SimonK
Well colour me very disappointed. I'm not a big online player, never have been, so the fact this is going to be missing a single player mode is very sad for me. :nervous:
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They (Kunos) said that single player mode is most important, to the point of focusing their resources into developing content and developing AI.
http://www.virtualr.net/assetto-corsa-qas-reveal-new-details
They went so far as to say that active online players are only around 15% of sales across the industry including console sims like GT5 as well as online based sims.
 
AI is as far as it goes unfortunately:

"Both articles touch on the base features of Assetto Corsa as Marco reveals that the title will not come with a career mode and thus will not have any unlockable content as all cars and tracks will be available for the players from the start."
 
I personally couldn't care less about a career mode, so finding out there wasn't one made me very very excited as it's an indication on what they're focusing on, good all around solid experience in the driving. There's wayyy too much time wasted on career modes it's just not worth it. And there are plenty of other sims that will fill the career mode gap nicely.

I see that as a major positive, not every sim needs every mode. Hell, I even like FVA's Ferrari F1 more than iRacing's Williams and I drove FVA MUCH more than iR, and FVA didn't have multiplayer
 
Great reading, i understand the dev team completely.
Small studios need a strategy and sometimes make hard decision to survive in this big market.

Kunos is really a passionate about car physics, he spent many time to help other people (like me) and giving me solutions for my own racing sim.

I can only expect something good from him.
I wish him and his team good luck for Assetto Corsa project.
 
Yeah I'm really glad you mentioned that jujunosuke. That's one of the main reasons I like Kunos so much, their truly passionate approach. I can't imagine what they'd do if they had a budget like GT's. Great work on your project btw, I'm following 👍
 
Just came from a session of playing NetKar after this thread got me thinking about it, first time I've touched it in a while. Really it is quite incredible, not from any other sim do I get such a feeling of "YES!" when I'm driving. The cars are so responsive and so reactive, you can actually feel connected to the car (something I was having trouble with in Rfactor 2) and it makes such a difference.

If AC can improve on NetKar Pro (which is already the best out there in terms of driving) then it is going to be incredible. It is a terrible shame that such a beautiful driving model cannot be matched with a big game like Gran Turismo but i'l take whatever they have on offer and be glad of it.

I like pretty much all the sims in some way or another but playing this tonight (while listening to a good music album) and just driving around felt like bliss, some of the best simulation driving I've done in a long time.

Drove the Osella and all of the different open wheel cars, at Nordschleife, Mugello and Monaco. I definitely urge anyone who has not bought NKP to buy it. NKP is cheap, it's awesome and it's supporting the development of Assetto Corsa.
 
Bigbazz
Just came from a session of playing NetKar after this thread got me thinking about it, first time I've touched it in a while. Really it is quite incredible, not from any other sim do I get such a feeling of "YES!" when I'm driving. The cars are so responsive and so reactive, you can actually feel connected to the car (something I was having trouble with in Rfactor 2) and it makes such a difference.

If AC can improve on NetKar Pro (which is already the best out there in terms of driving) then it is going to be incredible. It is a terrible shame that such a beautiful driving model cannot be matched with a big game like Gran Turismo but i'l take whatever they have on offer and be glad of it.

I like pretty much all the sims in some way or another but playing this tonight (while listening to a good music album) and just driving around felt like bliss, some of the best simulation driving I've done in a long time.

Drove the Osella and all of the different open wheel cars, at Nordschleife, Mugello and Monaco. I definitely urge anyone who has not bought NKP to buy it. NKP is cheap, it's awesome and it's supporting the development of Assetto Corsa.
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Agree with your post x100,000,000

Exactly spot on.
 
SimonK
Well colour me very disappointed. I'm not a big online player, never have been, so the fact this is going to be missing a single player mode is very sad for me. :nervous:
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neema_t
Same here, my connection is too unreliable for me to feel good about paying for an online-only racing sim. In fact at this point the only sim I play online is Simraceway and I get disconnected from most races before they finish, but at least that was free. Even though I have spent some money on it. Oh well!
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Misread the article folks. Just above your post they said there will be singleplayer because they know not everyone have the time/connection to race online. No worries from this point of view. :)
 
HKS racer
Misread the article folks. Just above your post they said there will be singleplayer because they know not everyone have the time/connection to race online. No worries from this point of view. :)
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To be honest I didn't even read the article, I was just responding to what SimonK was saying... Lesson learned!
 
Well, and it was also a case of cross-semantics.

When I hear "singleplayer" I think of a career mode. 'cause I assume that of course every sim technically has a singleplayer mode in that you can drive offline by yourself, so just adding AI to the mix really doesn't constitute singleplayer to me, just another option, like the bots in Counter-Strike Source.
 
Wardez
Well, and it was also a case of cross-semantics.

When I hear "singleplayer" I think of a career mode. 'cause I assume that of course every sim technically has a singleplayer mode in that you can drive offline by yourself, so just adding AI to the mix really doesn't constitute singleplayer to me, just another option, like the bots in Counter-Strike Source.
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I don't know, I think there's a pretty big difference between driving by yourself and racing against AI. The way I see it (i.e. please don't mistake this for me stating a fact), sims need to give you freedom and games have to give you something to aim for. If the driving physics suck and you have nothing to aim for, you'll go play on a sim instead because there the challenge comes from actually driving. On the other hand, if you have a great sim but you have to spend ages driving a Mini Cooper S before you can afford the Porsche 917K you actually want, it just puts you off. Well, no, it put me off, maybe some people enjoy that.

In other news, I just tried and subsequently bought NetKar Pro. The price is low enough for me to accept the lack of AI and given all the good things I've heard about it I thought I might as well. I'm sure it cost a lot more last time I checked, too.
 
Great move 👍

And yeah, I see what you mean. Progression is of course the meat of any "singleplayer" experience. But in just simple terms, being able to drive by yourself and just do your thing in a racing title is akin to "sandbox" modes in other games.

Some games are based entirely around the sandbox type of gameplay, like Minecraft, which has no goal, but is still a game.

You make your own goal, " I want to see how big I can build this rainbow castle," in Minecraft, so there's your game. And the same can be said for offline driving with no AI, e.g. "I'm going to set the quickest lap time I can, this time without assists."
 
Wardez
Great move 👍

And yeah, I see what you mean. Progression is of course the meat of any "singleplayer" experience. But in just simple terms, being able to drive by yourself and just do your thing in a racing title is akin to "sandbox" modes in other games.

Some games are based entirely around the sandbox type of gameplay, like Minecraft, which has no goal, but is still a game.

You make your own goal, " I want to see how big I can build this rainbow castle," in Minecraft, so there's your game. And the same can be said for offline driving with no AI, e.g. "I'm going to set the quickest lap time I can, this time without assists."
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Indeed, and having AI to race against adds more choice to the sandbox. A career would be nice, of course, as long as there's a sandbox mode with everything unlocked (something I wish GT Legends had), but as long as I have the choice of AI or no AI when playing AC offline then I'm not too worried.
 

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