Eurogamer Italia Announces Assetto Corsa Championship, Starts March 8

[GTPNewsWire]

This is the discussion thread for a recent post on GTPlanet:

Eurogamer Italia Announces Assetto Corsa Championship, Starts March 8
A seven-race series will be kicking off next week, featuring one of the wildest F1 cars ever.

This article was published by Kyle Patrick (@SlipZtrEm) on March 4th, 2017 in the Assetto Corsa category.

 

[Mr SkyyJuice]

Hmmmm.... this may be interesting

 

[ribloGT]

Very interesting...

 

[brockie]

Would love to have Montreal & Adelaide on the PS4 version, may need to get PC out!!!

 

[GT6champNK_69]

Would love to have Montreal & Adelaide on the PS4 version, may need to get PC out!!!

I would love to have all of them in the PS4 version!!!

 

[Ionutgherghel]

Hy there. Can we play the championship without psn on ps4? Or we need to pay playatation network plus. Thanks

 

[Orayani]

Hy there. Can we play the championship without psn on ps4? Or we need to pay playatation network plus. Thanks

This isn't for us. This is a bit similar to that Vegas race they all played under the same room for the huge prize money. Some of the best sim racers take part.

They fly them out to the event.

 

[ALB123]

Did anyone catch any of this - I think it was available to watch on Twitch.

 

[Spitfire77]

Did anyone catch any of this - I think it was available to watch on Twitch.

I just came here to look where we could find info on it. There is an eRacing show that I record from Fox Sports that did some coverage of the Vegas sim race, wonder if they will have it on there.

 

[BrandonW77]

Did anyone catch any of this - I think it was available to watch on Twitch.

Replays are available on their Twitch page. Looks like there's one that's about an hour long, it's an intro and the last 20 minutes is qualifying. I've watched most of it, looks mostly well done but the FPS seems a bit rubbish. They're using a vintage layout for Imola that I've never seen for AC before. And if anyone was bothered by the nVidia and Sparco adverts on Highlands they'll have a coronary when they see this track!



Here's the race, lights go out around the 34:00 mark. Seems like they got the FPS fixed for this stream. These are supposedly some of the best sim racers around and they got all of about 50 meters before a huge crash.

 

[Orayani]

Watching it through the Twitch app itself. The cars seem so slow? Horrible frame rate on the TV host.

 

[ALB123]

Oh, thanks @BrandonW77 -- I was hoping to catch at least a little bit of the action live but I had a doctor's appointment. I'm always at the doctor's office. I haven't started the video yet, but I think I know what version of Imola you're talking about. I had one of the older layouts installed at one point. I figured I would never drive it since we have a modern layout and it's freakin' laser scanned. So why bother with the old one? At least they decided to have everybody drive a nice, friendly car like that Lotus.

 

[BrandonW77]

Watching it through the Twitch app itself. The cars seem so slow? Horrible frame rate on the TV host.

On the preview/qualifying stream the FPS was pretty horrid and that probably makes the cars look slow, lots of people were complaining about it in the chat. I just had a quick look at the actual race stream and it seemed to have proper FPS so they must have got it sorted.

I had one of the older layouts installed at one point. I figured I would never drive it since we have a modern layout and it's freakin' laser scanned. So why bother with the old one? At least they decided to have everybody drive a nice, friendly car like that Lotus.

They're trying to recreate the actual season so they're using all the vintage layouts. I never knew there was on old layout available for Imola, never seen it in the downloads or on any videos, I'd love to have it.

 

[SlipZtrEm]

I think it's safe to say Assetto Corsa is not the platform to use for eSports broadcasts.

That was, in some ways, even worse than the Visa Vegas race that used rF2. Which is saying something.

 

[Cote Dazur]

When trying to watch the race, pressing play, all I get is: error.
What am I doing wrong?

 

[super_gt]

 

[queleuleu]

I think it's safe to say Assetto Corsa is not the platform to use for eSports broadcasts.

That was, in some ways, even worse than the Visa Vegas race that used rF2. Which is saying something.

Is there a market for eSport sim racing? I don't think so. It feels so artificial, forced.

 

[Accro2008]

I think it's safe to say Assetto Corsa is not the platform to use for eSports broadcasts.

That was, in some ways, even worse than the Visa Vegas race that used rF2. Which is saying something.

Have you take a look at another Assetto Corsa race broadcast ?
Like the stuff on RaceDepartement :


It's great to watch, no fps problem, great camera work, great racing etc.

The fault here is more on Eurogamer for the overall poor realisation and choosing "low quality" mods for tracks.

But hey, you seem to have a very biased view on Assetto Corsa, so why not trash talk it once more.

 

[SlipZtrEm]

Is there a market for eSport sim racing? I don't think so. It feels so artificial, forced.

It's a good question. Look at the most successful eSports: they have no direct real-world equivalents.

Real-world racing is struggling to put butts in the seats — I imagine it's doubly hard to convince people to tune into the digital equivalent. The trick, as ever, is getting casuals on-board: have you tried to get someone to watch F1 that isn't already into cars?

IMO, the focus needs to be on the personalities. On-track action is usually pretty uninteresting (and big wrecks, while momentarily entertaining, ruin the stakes for the rest of the race). The top players are all so good that races can become a procession, like turn-of-the-century F1.

A constant feed, be it audio or video (or both) on all involved (and viewer-selectable) could make things better. Get viewers involved. Other eSports tend to fall into 1v1 or team affairs: it's a different beast when we're watching an entire grid of players all duking it out.

Have you take a look at another Assetto Corsa race broadcast ?
Like the stuff on RaceDepartement :

It's great to watch, no fps problem, great camera work, great racing etc.

The fault here is more on Eurogamer for the overall poor realisation and choosing "low quality" mods for tracks.

But hey, you seem to have a very biased view on Assetto Corsa, so why not trash talk it once more.

Those are indeed much better, in terms of commentary and reliable stream quality. The cameras appear to be nothing more than default replay ones, however. "Great racing" is not a credit to the game, but the people taking part. Same goes with the stream quality and commentary — they have nothing to do with AC.

My point is that AC is not a great platform for broadcasting. It offers little in terms of in-built, native features for the viewers. Perhaps the over-eagerness to rush to the game's defence makes that harder to see.

Making a great sim, is a completely different thing than making a great spectator game. As I mentioned above, the big sell is getting people watching who aren't already fans of the game. Sim racing has yet to crack into the eSports mainstream, and this event shows that there's still a ways to go.

 

[Orayani]

The videos from Accro look so much better and get a nice sense of speed.

 

[Cote Dazur]

Thank you, just finished watching. Beside the 2 bad starts, the race after that was interesting, very happy for Hany, such a great and clean driver.

 

[BrandonW77]

It's a good question. Look at the most successful eSports: they have no direct real-world equivalents.

Real-world racing is struggling to put butts in the seats — I imagine it's doubly hard to convince people to tune into the digital equivalent. The trick, as ever, is getting casuals on-board: have you tried to get someone to watch F1 that isn't already into cars?

IMO, the focus needs to be on the personalities. On-track action is usually pretty uninteresting (and big wrecks, while momentarily entertaining, ruin the stakes for the rest of the race). The top players are all so good that races can become a procession, like turn-of-the-century F1.

A constant feed, be it audio or video (or both) on all involved (and viewer-selectable) could make things better. Get viewers involved. Other eSports tend to fall into 1v1 or team affairs: it's a different beast when we're watching an entire grid of players all duking it out.



Those are indeed much better, in terms of commentary and reliable stream quality. The cameras appear to be nothing more than default replay ones, however. "Great racing" is not a credit to the game, but the people taking part. Same goes with the stream quality and commentary — they have nothing to do with AC.

My point is that AC is not a great platform for broadcasting. It offers little in terms of in-built, native features for the viewers. Perhaps the over-eagerness to rush to the game's defence makes that harder to see.

Making a great sim, is a completely different thing than making a great spectator game. As I mentioned above, the big sell is getting people watching who aren't already fans of the game. Sim racing has yet to crack into the eSports mainstream, and this event shows that there's still a ways to go.

So just to recap, the problems with this event were poor stream quality, lack of a focus on personalities, a growing disinterest in motorsports in general, uninteresting on-track action because the players are so good, the streamer choosing to use default cameras instead of custom ones, and a lack of a viewer-selectable feed, and as you said these "have nothing to do with AC". But if any other sim besides AC had been used none of these would have been a problem because other sims have in-built native features that would have addressed all these issues. Ok.

 

[SlipZtrEm]

So just to recap, the problems with this event were poor stream quality, lack of a focus on personalities, a growing disinterest in motorsports in general, uninteresting on-track action because the players are so good, the streamer choosing to use default cameras instead of custom ones, and a lack of a viewer-selectable feed, and as you said these "have nothing to do with AC". But if any other sim besides AC had been used none of these would have been a problem because other sims have in-built native features that would have addressed all these issues. Ok.

That's weird, I don't remember suggesting another sim was better-placed for this event. Can you point me in the direction?

You're combining two different responses, to two different people, about two different things.

All I said in my original comment was that AC doesn't appear to be the platform for eSports. What exactly does the base game offer to make it broadcast-friendly? As an example: T10 tried the eSports thing with FM6, and the first season of ForzaRC was a hash to watch, because the game was obviously not designed around spectating. Some small changes have improved that aspect of the game since, but it has a long ways to go.

As I said, sim racing on the whole has yet to break into the big-times in eSports. Stating AC isn't the platform for it =/= any other title is better-suited.

 

[BrandonW77]

That's weird, I don't remember suggesting another sim was better-placed for this event. Can you point me in the direction?

You're combining two different responses, to two different people, about two different things.

All I said in my original comment was that AC doesn't appear to be the platform for eSports. What exactly does the base game offer to make it broadcast-friendly? As an example: T10 tried the eSports thing with FM6, and the first season of ForzaRC was a hash to watch, because the game was obviously not designed around spectating. Some small changes have improved that aspect of the game since, but it has a long ways to go.

As I said, sim racing on the whole has yet to break into the big-times in eSports. Stating AC isn't the platform for it =/= any other title is better-suited.

Your first comment was that AC is definitely not the platform to broadcast esports, which pretty clearly singles out AC. Since we all know you hate AC it's not hard to put two and two together. You could have said racing sims in general currently aren't up to broadcasting esports in a compelling way, which would have spread the blame across all the sims instead of singling out just one of them, and I would have mostly agreed with that statement.

 

[SlipZtrEm]

Your first comment was that AC is definitely not the platform to broadcast esports, which pretty clearly singles out AC.

This is a thread in the AC section, about an esports event using AC. What other title did you think I'd talk about?

Since we all know you hate AC it's not hard to put two and two together.

Ah, it all makes sense now. Yep, I definitely hate Assetto Corsa. A video game.

You could have said racing sims in general currently aren't up to broadcasting esports in a compelling way, which would have spread the blame across all the sims instead of singling out just one of them, and I would have mostly agreed with that statement.

Which pretty much confirms a sneaking suspicion: it's only okay to criticize Assetto Corsa if you're criticizing everything else too.

 

[queleuleu]

Is there another eSport game which tries to mimic completely real life? Unlike DOTA, LOL, Rocket League, StarCraft..., sim racing games are compared to real life. Even Fifa (the game) takes liberties to make things fun. My eyes constantly point the inconsistencies in a eSport even with racing games.
It's not about AC, GTSport, FM, PC2, the point is people just don't care about racing and cars in general today. And they probably don't want to watch a worse imitation without the adrenaline of real racing.

 

[fatkrakr]

I love sim racing, but have no desire to watch someone else do it.

 

[Cote Dazur]

I love sim racing, but have no desire to watch someone else do it.

Watching that race yesterday was a first for me, since I can race my self I never felt like watching other do it.
But after watching yesterday, I am now looking forward to the next race in Mexico and will, most likely than not, watch it.

 

[ALB123]

Watching that race yesterday was a first for me, since I can race my self I never felt like watching other do it.
But after watching yesterday, I am now looking forward to the next race in Mexico and will, most likely than not, watch it.

That's cool...It's something that I could have playing on my TV as I surf the web and visit my regular web forums, glancing up occasionally to see what's going on. This first race at Imola probably suffered from some glitches that will be resolved and not happen again with future races. I only watched the beginning of the race, or should I say "beginnings"? I couldn't believe the carnage that occurred so quickly, again and again!

Some of those racers are incredibly lucky. Even that last re-start had some pinball action at the start of the race...I wonder why they decided not to re-start once more. You know those drivers must have been super pissed off that they didn't get an additional shot at a clean start.

I'm not certain, but I think I watched about 6 laps. I wanted to skip ahead to the last 5 or so laps, but the link that I used from Brandon's post ended on the 23rd lap out of 60, so I didn't see the finish or who won. I'm sure I'll try to give it a view if I'm home when the next race begins.

 

[Cote Dazur]

@ALB123 the link provided by @super_gt works well and cover everything. I also hope the next one is improved, their is plenty of room for improvement. . But even as it is, I was pleasantly surprised at how much it interested me.
Their is a couple of drivers that I am curious to see how they will fare on the next race.