Assetto Corsa 2 Will be Called "Assetto Corsa Evo", Coming 2024

[Scaff]

but game play features are what keeps folks past 10 second the oh that looks pretty

To be fair the ongoing success of the original AC shows that's not actually true.

 

[Mae Borowski]

I think the 2 missing Hyundai models will be the IONIQ-6 N and the Kona N

I don't see the Elantra N and Veloster N, for example, because it would be more difficult for Kunos to access the cars to scan them than the other two.

The Kona N is more likely since its in FH5 too but I'm not sure about the IONIQ 6 N since it isnt out yet. Maybe itll be revealed as part of the game but I'm not sure

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

The side mirrors reflecting the car instantly caught my eye. Such a minor thing but such a huge step in immersion.

 

[skazz]

Just to check: The Steam Wishlist says the game will be coming in January 2025, and won't take my money before then by the look of things. Will that be when the game releases feature complete or will there be an early access phase like AC1?

 

[xDriver69x]

To be fair the ongoing success of the original AC shows that's not actually true.

The modders creating game play is what keeps many folks playing now along with the absolute most important thing, it is a decade old game with very low system requirements ( An Athlon X2 2.8Ghz ?! ) and nearly free which makes it highly accessible and also highly tunable and customizable. Who could even play AC without mods? I couldn't, it's quite lacking just as is. It didn't even break 5k players until 2020, 6 years after release, because mods. Same with BeamNG

ModLand.net began in 2014 and 5 years ago had massive growth and now has tens of thousand of cars and thousand of mods for BeamNG and a few thousand for AC. A new release can't remotely compete with that unless the community is already modding the game and making it what the community wants before release or on day 1. Just like with Quake superheroes back in the 90s.

5 years ago AC had 20% of the players it has now.

Beam NG has way more players, because it has even more growth and was at only 10% of the players playing 5 years ago.

New and shiny is not so great. Quality game play and features is. It wasn't 20 years ago or a decade ago, and it isn't now. Polished and the community expanding the platform to be what it wasn't at launch is why history shows the consistent pattern that in 5 years, EVO might be polished, and is far more likely than at launch to be ready to impress without unacceptable bugs players will walk away from.

New releases are not giving players what they want for the past decade. It's been hype nonsense and years of bug fixing as of late while folks rightfully and properly go back to what offered them the most choice to play how they want. and has grown with the community creating most of the game for them. Developers aren't bringing what's wanted, and the community more often than not has to fix it.

And if few folks are playing a new $80 release or they are disillusioned by a lacking release, they're likely to go back to the $10-$15 title everyone is playing that offers all the game play elements that the new expensive lacking release doesn't have and promises will be coming at some time in the future, likely when they open modding and the community actually builds the rest of the game.

 

[scottfgtv6]

What’s truly remarkable about AC is the incredible diversity in the way it is used and the different elements of car culture it supports, from circuit racing, to drifting, to rally, to touge, to drag racing, NASCAR and everything in between. Almost “Drivetribe” like – reminds me of the opening scene of the Grand Tour with all the different car cultures driving across the desert brought together by their love of cars.

So, as we all contemplate AC Evo, we all come to it with our own perspective, how will it support the things we love doing in AC? And given that diversity, it’s hard to imagine it will cover it all.

My own perspective is a love of motor racing through the ages, and the ability to race across all eras and all disciplines, and replicate championship seasons and major races. From a collection of over 4600 cars and 1400 circuits, I have over 220 championships built in Content Manager across Formula, Sports and GT, and Touring car categories – some I’ve built myself and some from the modding community.

Around 50 of the 74 seasons of Formula 1 can be created in varying levels of detail, some with individual, high-quality mods of each car in the season, some less so, some with a single high-quality mod/car representative of the season with liveries for each car (think RSS 70, 79, 86, 90, 10, 13). On this forum, @Apocalypse211 has accurately created around 15 F1 seasons across the 80’s, 90’s and 00’s. Pyyer’s F1 track extensions and the VRC FA means we can do the F1 season in real-time.

The AC Le Mans project now has 8 Le Mans 24hr races created with correct liveries and representative grids, some almost exact. I’ve created another 9. Similarly, there are WEC/ICM, DTM, BTCC and ATCC seasons/grids across many years from the 60’s through to today. And of course that’s just a very small sample – many other modders are doing the same to one or more elements.

For me, (and I do compete IRL in a historic Group A Alfetta GTV6 touring car, and in an Alfetta 2L GTV historic sports car) being able to re-create and experience some of the great moments in motorsport, to get some sense of what it was like is just amazing. From Mulsanne in a 917 in 1970, to Senna and Prost at Suzuka, Plato v Menu v Neal at Thruxton, Moffat v Brock or Whincup v Mostert at Bathurst, to driving through the night and winning in the 499P at Le Mans 2023 (incidentally the in-car from car 83 499P was live to Youtube and is fantastic – but what was amazing was how close it was to the AC in car!)

I see AC as more of a living, virtual encyclopedia of motorsport that you can jump into at any time and recreate virtually. And it’s the combination of the base AC game and importantly its openness, CSP, Pure/Sol, Content Manager, and the incredible modding community that has made this possible.

If I had one improvement I’d like to see in AC (other than better AI, and less volatile curbs), it would be adding more depth and functionality to the User Championships/Career building mode to support the user’s ability to build more accurate Championships with a greater ability to include the actual history of the season, and of individual races, including things like custom grids/liveries per race, weather for practice, qualifying and race, better record of results. I know some of this can be done in the current AC career mode (as opposed to User Championships) but it has to be done outside of CM and is bit tedious outside the CM interface.

So how does this relate to ACE? Well, AC started with a broad selection of race and road cars, a selection of race circuits and a couple of point-to-point road sections (and it seems ACE will start in a similar place) but looking at the ACE info to date there are several red flags for me and my own little part of the AC world.

But the positives first:

• It seems the focus on driving physics remains – it will be a simulation – opinion on the pre-alpha has suggested a mix of AC and ACC handling and FFB feel – no bad thing
• The focus on motorsport remains with race cars and circuits in the early access release and an in-built online (iracing style) competition
• It looks great – the graphics do look amazing
• Weather built-in with transition, drying line, standing water modeled, time acceleration etc

The red flags:

• A career mode that locks you into grinding to unlock cars or tracks is of no interest and would be a major disincentive
• The marketplace/car modding/renting (including liveries) model may or may not support building seasons/championships or putting together season grids
• Modding may be very restrictive and impair the ability to create the cars, tracks, and championships – would it even be possible to create an ASR 1991 car pack? Will this fall under the licensing support Kunos has mentioned?
• How easy will it be to create historic/or current track skins? Will extensions be able to be built to cover different layouts and years? Would this fall under the licensing support?
• Haven’t seen anything on custom/user-built championships or careers – all the focus has been on the game providing a career mode.

Now these are just red flags – that is, things of concern given the announcements to date. Of course, there has been very little on modding revealed other than it will be there, and they will seek to limit IP/license infringements. There is very little detail on how career modes will work and whether they will be user customisable.

Will I buy it – of course I will! Will I still need to keep AC and my CSP/Pure subscriptions – well only time will tell, but I expect I’ll be running AC for some time yet.

 

[seco46]

The Kona N is more likely since its in FH5 too but I'm not sure about the IONIQ 6 N since it isnt out yet. Maybe itll be revealed as part of the game but I'm not sure

Well maybe as a first virtual appearance, because here in Granada I have already seen a unit with hardly any camouflage going around as a test (Hyundai and Kia really like to use this area as a test for new cars, it is not the first time I see a new car of theirs with little camouflage going around months before being revealed, another example was the Kia Soul that I saw several on a highway without any camouflage and about 2-3 weeks later Kia presented the model)

 

[RobertHammer]

If there will be ingame currency then for sure you will have to "grind" to unlock or buy cars , so be prepared for that

 

[Apocalypse211]

@scottfgtv6: Amazing post. I agree 100%.

For me the greatest thing about AC is that everything is adjustable so easily. If you think your season is too easy even at AI level 100, well go to the data and add some CD gain to your car and decrease it from the AI cars. Or if it's a turbo car simply reduce the boost of your car. And then you have very challenging season again. With some ridiculously easy tuning that take a minute. The problem with most offline racing titles is that you eventually get too good and then it's kinda "game over". With AC there is no such thing, you can always make it more difficult with ease.

For me the full seasons is the thing. And getting into the atmosphere of classic F1. I've been playing these F1 games since the first Microprose F1 Geoff Crammond titles and of course I always tried to like them and get into the atmosphere. Crammond Grand Prix 4 was the first one that scratched the surface a little. I played countless seasons through in GP4. I enjoyed it but of course looking back at it now, it was seriously lacking in many ways. I also had Grand Prix Legends that had the 90's F1 car skins. I played that too. What a great game it was (for its time).

Then I got a PS4 and those Codemasters EA F1 games. F1 2020 was the best. I had AC and ACC all the time, but the PS4 versions. Enjoyed them a lot and AC for the consoles is the best hotlap simulator ever created. Because that's what it basically is for PS4.

Then I saw some videos of the Automobilista 2 and AC F1 mods and decided to buy a good gaming PC. I installed the Lotus98T based 1986 season by GregZ and those 1988 tracks by Rainmaker and I was like "holy crap this is amazing". I mean that track pack is simply perfection. All circuits are so well done and almost completely trouble free ai racing. Even Detroit 1988 which is the best made street circuit EVER. That track pack is a great base for classic F1 in AC. Honestly... for me AC is the only platform where you can finally create a proper classic F1 evinronment.

Then I got into adjusting and fine tuning and I was able to create (imho) the best classic F1 atmosphere EVER with those seasons. I play them religiously and they're basically everything I always dreamed about. To finally have something that actually feels like the real thing with very accurate AI race results. And now I realize how bad the Codemasters games actually are. I never got into AMS2 and RF2 F1 mods, really. Those classic F1 mods are very well done but driving doesn't feel right to me. Maybe I'm just too familiar with AC.

For example I was able to create that legendary F1 2007 season with Kimi, Hamilton and Alonso all finished within 5 points from eachother at the end... after 17 races. The results of the races are unbelivably realistic. That is only possible with delicate fine tuning of everything. Of course every gamers' skills are different and you probably have to fine tune it a little for your own skill level... you might be much better or worse sim racer than I am... fine... just tone up or down the driver ratings... and if Hamilton/Alonso at 100 isn't enough for you, increase your cars' CD gain and make it slower on the straights... it's all possible and easy.

People complain about AC ai. But the ai is actually very, very good and fair, providing the track ai and cars are good. You simply have to see how the created cars drive and adjust the driver aggression (BASED ON THE CREATED CARS). With ASR/RSS cars you can have it higher but with SD cars you'll have to tone it down close to zero.

If you keep your line and don't try stupid overtakes, I have no problems finishing even the longer races 99% of the time. The backmarkers and outlap AI cars is the only problem but I have reduced even that problem by adjusting the lower end team cars/drivers accordingly. Another issue is the ai cars' pitting. I want to have mandatory pitstops in the races because playing races without them doesn't feel right. Now the ai cars can pit twice without any reason occasionally, no matter how much more starting fuel or capacity you give them. You should be able to determine "max pitstops" per car.

But everything else is adjustable and there is no such thing as "AC ai". It depends on so many different factors.

And yes, I agree. If we can't get stuff like ASR 1991 (with 100% genuine looking F1 cars and tracks) I will stick with AC1 for sure. It has some shortcomings but they are actually very minor ones. But if AC2 offers similar adjustability and just adds more features it'll be amazing.

And I agree with Scott. I don't care for the career mode but it would be great to have more depth in the Championship/season mode. And the more we can play with the settings, the better.

 

[Whitestar]

Just to check: The Steam Wishlist says the game will be coming in January 2025, and won't take my money before then by the look of things. Will that be when the game releases feature complete or will there be an early access phase like AC1?

Early Access. With 20 cars and 5 tracks.

 

[Scaff]

he modders creating game play

Modders have primarily created cars, tracks, and skins. Actual mods that introduce new game-play are a minority. Most of the modded content has been used to hot-lap and race and run track-days, all of which are core gameplay for AC.

Yes the tracks and cars have added to its longevity, but no by any significant or regular game-play changes, nor does the low system requirements argument hold much ground, titles of a similar age or more recent, which also have low system requirements have not seen the same long-term user counts.

My view is that AC's success is a combination of it's open approach to mods (which I fear we may no longer live in a time where its quite so easy, sim-racing was a much ignored niche back then) and luck. I say luck, as to a degree it always seems to happen that way with regard to what title happens to catch the attention and gain that critical mass of support from both players and modders.

A career mode that locks you into grinding to unlock cars or tracks is of no interest and would be a major disincentive

If there will be ingame currency then for sure you will have to "grind" to unlock or buy cars , so be prepared for that

It's been confirmed that you will be able to 'borrow' all cars, you just will not be able to mod or customise them.

 

[MagpieRacer]

What’s truly remarkable about AC is the incredible diversity in the way it is used and the different elements of car culture it supports, from circuit racing, to drifting, to rally, to touge, to drag racing, NASCAR and everything in between. Almost “Drivetribe” like – reminds me of the opening scene of the Grand Tour with all the different car cultures driving across the desert brought together by their love of cars.

So, as we all contemplate AC Evo, we all come to it with our own perspective, how will it support the things we love doing in AC? And given that diversity, it’s hard to imagine it will cover it all.

My own perspective is a love of motor racing through the ages, and the ability to race across all eras and all disciplines, and replicate championship seasons and major races. From a collection of over 4600 cars and 1400 circuits, I have over 220 championships built in Content Manager across Formula, Sports and GT, and Touring car categories – some I’ve built myself and some from the modding community.

Around 50 of the 74 seasons of Formula 1 can be created in varying levels of detail, some with individual, high-quality mods of each car in the season, some less so, some with a single high-quality mod/car representative of the season with liveries for each car (think RSS 70, 79, 86, 90, 10, 13). On this forum, @Apocalypse211 has accurately created around 15 F1 seasons across the 80’s, 90’s and 00’s. Pyyer’s F1 track extensions and the VRC FA means we can do the F1 season in real-time.

The AC Le Mans project now has 8 Le Mans 24hr races created with correct liveries and representative grids, some almost exact. I’ve created another 9. Similarly, there are WEC/ICM, DTM, BTCC and ATCC seasons/grids across many years from the 60’s through to today. And of course that’s just a very small sample – many other modders are doing the same to one or more elements.

For me, (and I do compete IRL in a historic Group A Alfetta GTV6 touring car, and in an Alfetta 2L GTV historic sports car) being able to re-create and experience some of the great moments in motorsport, to get some sense of what it was like is just amazing. From Mulsanne in a 917 in 1970, to Senna and Prost at Suzuka, Plato v Menu v Neal at Thruxton, Moffat v Brock or Whincup v Mostert at Bathurst, to driving through the night and winning in the 499P at Le Mans 2023 (incidentally the in-car from car 83 499P was live to Youtube and is fantastic – but what was amazing was how close it was to the AC in car!)

I see AC as more of a living, virtual encyclopedia of motorsport that you can jump into at any time and recreate virtually. And it’s the combination of the base AC game and importantly its openness, CSP, Pure/Sol, Content Manager, and the incredible modding community that has made this possible.

If I had one improvement I’d like to see in AC (other than better AI, and less volatile curbs), it would be adding more depth and functionality to the User Championships/Career building mode to support the user’s ability to build more accurate Championships with a greater ability to include the actual history of the season, and of individual races, including things like custom grids/liveries per race, weather for practice, qualifying and race, better record of results. I know some of this can be done in the current AC career mode (as opposed to User Championships) but it has to be done outside of CM and is bit tedious outside the CM interface.

So how does this relate to ACE? Well, AC started with a broad selection of race and road cars, a selection of race circuits and a couple of point-to-point road sections (and it seems ACE will start in a similar place) but looking at the ACE info to date there are several red flags for me and my own little part of the AC world.

But the positives first:

• It seems the focus on driving physics remains – it will be a simulation – opinion on the pre-alpha has suggested a mix of AC and ACC handling and FFB feel – no bad thing
• The focus on motorsport remains with race cars and circuits in the early access release and an in-built online (iracing style) competition
• It looks great – the graphics do look amazing
• Weather built-in with transition, drying line, standing water modeled, time acceleration etc

The red flags:

• A career mode that locks you into grinding to unlock cars or tracks is of no interest and would be a major disincentive
• The marketplace/car modding/renting (including liveries) model may or may not support building seasons/championships or putting together season grids
• Modding may be very restrictive and impair the ability to create the cars, tracks, and championships – would it even be possible to create an ASR 1991 car pack? Will this fall under the licensing support Kunos has mentioned?
• How easy will it be to create historic/or current track skins? Will extensions be able to be built to cover different layouts and years? Would this fall under the licensing support?
• Haven’t seen anything on custom/user-built championships or careers – all the focus has been on the game providing a career mode.

Now these are just red flags – that is, things of concern given the announcements to date. Of course, there has been very little on modding revealed other than it will be there, and they will seek to limit IP/license infringements. There is very little detail on how career modes will work and whether they will be user customisable.

Will I buy it – of course I will! Will I still need to keep AC and my CSP/Pure subscriptions – well only time will tell, but I expect I’ll be running AC for some time yet.

Great post, now I'm going to have to explore buying a PC that can run AC just so I can do everything you've just talked about.

Thanks.....................


😅

 

[Alfa Romeo GT]

Modders have primarily created cars, tracks, and skins. Actual mods that introduce new game-play are a minority. Most of the modded content has been used to hot-lap and race and run track-days, all of which are core gameplay for AC.

Yes the tracks and cars have added to its longevity, but no by any significant or regular game-play changes, nor does the low system requirements argument hold much ground, titles of a similar age or more recent, which also have low system requirements have not seen the same long-term user counts.

My view is that AC's success is a combination of it's open approach to mods (which I fear we may no longer live in a time where its quite so easy, sim-racing was a much ignored niche back then) and luck. I say luck, as to a degree it always seems to happen that way with regard to what title happens to catch the attention and gain that critical mass of support from both players and modders.



It's been confirmed that you will be able to 'borrow' all cars, you just will not be able to mod or customise them.

Let's not forget that the moders made it possible to have a magnificent day-night cycle, as well as some really good rain with a dry trajectory.
This will undoubtedly be better done in the next game, but what's on offer is superior to some car games.

 

[Apocalypse211]

Comparisons between the sim racing titles is another art form. I have a good friend who loves classic F1 and likes Automobilista 2. I have played it also and I have bought all the classic new tracks whenever they come out.

I just can't get into the driving feel at all. The cars feel way too slippery and sloppy to me. F1 car should have great tyre grip and insane downforce. That, imho, is best simulated with Lotus98T on AC. Nothing comes even close. Well the Kunos 2004 F1 Ferrari is another great base (which ASR, RSS, VRC modern cars are probably based on, more or less). They are very good.

Of course none of us have driven a real F1 car but I've driven a lot of carting cars in my youth. To me Lotus98T is the only F1 mod that actually is able to duplicate something of that tyre feel. That's why I like those 80's mods so much because the cars are based on 98T.

What I like about AMS2 is that they have simulated the "active driving of a F1 car" better. So you constantly have to tweak the steering to find the tyre grip. AC F1 driving is a bit too passive. There should also be some more bumps on the tracks and we should be able to simulate the cars' trembling more. If you look at any old F1 footage you'll see how much steering work they have to do and how much the car trembles. Those aren't simulated properly in ANY sim titles yet. What I don't like about AMS2 that cars are so slippery and oversteery which to me is very unrealistic. You can't slide a F1 car like a BMW E30 on ice unless you're Schumacher, Raikkonen, Senna or Alesi. When you lose that insane grip it's usually spin and game over.

But overall AC is still superior to everything else, imho.

How will ACE simulate the F1 cars and what F1 car bases we're going to get? We don't know yet. And as Scott said, we don't know how much we can tweak them or is there even going to be F1 car bases that we can mod? Can we have real ads, cars and all that stuff that made AC F1 mods so good?

I know most people like the street cars but as Scott said people who play AC1 are so much into different things. I'm pretty much only into classic F1. ACC is pretty good GT3 season simulator which I play occasionally... RallySimFans mod RBR is still the #1 rally title for me... and I hotlapped the street cars for years on my AC PS4 version and I've had enough of that.