Stefano and his team where kind enough to answer some questions :-)
1. How extensive will damage be? ( engine damage, clutch damage, brake damage, flat spots on tyres, tyre punctures etc.)?
Mechanical damage is easy to implement and it will be there. The hard part is to find the right balance between damage model and playability. It's quite easy to say "if you treat the gearbox bad it'll brake" but finding the mathematical definitio for "treat bad" is tricky and the risk is waste time on feature that nobody will see (ie. damage is too low) or end up with races full of DNF if you get it wrong on the other side. As with most other features in AC, they'll be in the public version only if we are 100% confident they work and they improve the experience.
2. Will there be any form of car customization (different exhausts, tyre types etc.)?
Aris loves this stuff, we have spoken about it and came out with a plan. But, again, we're back into "when it's done" area.
3. Will there be any kind of multiplayer championship event creator with and if so what can we expect?
Oh surely not. That's what we consider the community's responsability. There is no way we can develop the simulator and these kind of management systems.
4. Can we expect Assetto Corsa to be released for next gen consoles?
I'd love it. But to get to console you need to be backed by a producer and we don't have one and we are not actively looking for one.
5. Where do you think is your advantage over your competition, iracing, rfactor2?
No idea. We do things our way. If we have any advantage I'd like to hear that from the users, we go 200% to do our best work at any part of the software, that's all we can do about it.
6. What is the limit on number of cars in multiplayer?
There is no hardcoded number as we had for netKar. The practical number will be something to discover once the sim is out.
7. Will there be dedicated servers, and possibility to rent dedicated servers?
Our company is not structured to provide that kind of web services. The system will be identical to netKar PRo with a dedicated server software.
8. What option can we expect for creating online tournaments/championships?
This looks a lot like question 3... the answer is the same. Our plan is ot output/export as much data as possible from the server in order to allow 3rd parties to use these infos to manage their leagues.
9. Will you port nKP tracks to AC such as Trento Bondone hillclimbe. Osella hillclimbe and other tracks
No plans for that. I'd rather have the team work on new content than converting stuff from a 2006 simulator. I think running @Aviano with nk graphics when you can run at Monza with AC graphics is quite a silly idea. Anyway, Trento Bondone is so much appreciated that we could plan to bring it in as bonus track, even if we are totally focused on the new -laserscanned- tracks.
10. How have you approached AI development given that this is the first time you are included it.
As I approach everything else, by experimenting and finding what can work and can't work. I am working with a young programmer and we sort of split the development where I went for a more traditional and dedicated approach to race AI and he went for a more university research approach with neural network and all those cool stuff. At the end my code path was the winner and we went with a more traditional approach, so AC's AI isn't going to start WW3 nor hijack a space ship
11. Will data telemetry software be available for windows phone7(8) also?
I don't know. Even if we don't release it, we'll release all the infos to let the community code it by themselves.
12. Is the cost per track higher for laser scanned track compared to traditional track modeling?
There is the cost of the laser scan that adds up. But the development is much more linear and predictable because there is no need to get into the "hm.. from the video this hill looks more hill and this corner looks less corner and this bump looks more bump, the road is too wide, my cousin told me so"
The laser scan is a unquestionable final word to all these doubts
13. Can we expect official DLC from Kunos Simulazioni beside cars or track that will modding community offer.
We have more content license than we can produce right now, so I think additional content from us is a very solid possibility for the future.
14. Will AC have features such as manually starting the car, and other cool features (for Hardcore sim racers)?
At the moment we don't have those and nobody in the team seem to miss those features.
15. What are the main obstacles when modeling tyres?
The main obastacle is that nobody understand what's going and on nobody seem to be able to figure out a consistent and reliable way to test them... so it remains pretty much a black art.
Thank you Kunos Simulazioni
