Aristotelis Vasilakos
18 h ·
This is a thanksgiving letter to my colleagues that helped me and gave me the opportunity to work on this project.
ACC v1.0 is about to go gold and in these last days I’ve been driving more than usual, not only to further develop it, but to experience it and help my colleagues with feedback and bug hunting.
When you’re working on a title and you have 99% of the time open all the dev HUDs and screens, jumping from one dev editor to another, from one PDF data document to Excel formulas and trying to understand what the car, tyre, aero is telling you… you’re kinda “seeing the matrix”. You don’t experience the title but you are focused on the vision your team and yourself has and trying to reach it.
But as I said, in the last couple of days I’ve been testing and hunting for bugs; being this an “endurance racing” title, I found myself driving for some long hours, with variable weather, with lot’s of opponents, with stints to finish and tyres to manage. And then it hit me…
I’ve been simracing since I remember myself, with titles that many of you probably haven’t experienced or even’t know. I’ve been there at 15 years old when 3D Grand Prix was out on Amstrad CPC and TT Racer released on Spectrum ZX… I’ve spent I dunno how many money (my mom knows) on Race Drivin’ and Virtua Racing. I’ve been there when Microprose GP1 came out on Amiga and GP2 got me to get a PC. I’ve tried Nascar and Indycar racing and then the king came along, it was called GPL and with it VROC and the multiplayer races. Went through Nascar Racing 2003, GTR1, F1CH, rFactor, GTL, GTR2, netKar PRO… you name it I was there. I did championships, broadcasting (radio, we didn’t had video back then!), did articles about simracing, I did virtual racing schools, I did mods… you name it, I probably did it. Logically I ended up being a professional dev and I’ve been very honoured and lucky to have been able to work in such amazing success stories as AC and all its DLCs, taking part in various historical moments of the simracing scene, such as the first ever Nurburgring Nordschleife laser scan track, Ferrari license, Porsche license and other “holy grails”. Modesty apart, I do believe that our work opened doors for all the simracing scene and healthy competition brought amazing improvements to the whole genre. I really do think that nowadays simracers are living the golden age of simracing. You can pick ANY simracing title and be certain that you will be enjoying a high quality software with features, realism and content to dream about only some years ago. Obviously I believe AC is the best, but it’s not important, leave away the fighting of sim VS sim and support all of them because it’s a win win situation; just look at what happened in your favorite sim in the last 5 years
Still… as I said above, I was driving ACC. I realised that the experience was all I’ve been dreaming in all my simracing career. It is my passion coming alive. The amount of detail is mesmerising. The attention to detail is incredible. The presence of the real life rules is total. The weather variation is unpredictable and has touches like the wind going up when the weather changes and the rubbered line becoming oily and slippery with the first drops of rain, only to be cleaned up again with heavy rain… The cockpits of the cars that are interactive and detailed. I’m not talking just showing a traction control level. I’m talking multiple dash screens one on one from the real counterparts, details like turning signals and rain lights, pit limiter signals and high beam flashing… it’s all there.
And then you have the sounds… oh the sounds. Never in my life I would have thought we could go so close to the real thing. Seriously, pick a good set of headphones and crank the volume to “eleven”… let me know when you regain your senses. It’s not just volume and authenticity. The are so many sounds, such a rich experience. Details as the physically correct electric pumps for the gearboxes, the ABS sounds, the marbles and dirt, the weather and the reflection of your engine from the pit wall.
And then the graphics! Full 24 hours cycle with, I don’t even know, how many light sources. The reflection of the wet surfaces, the lights of the cars casting shadows of your own into the walls and scenery, the damages headlights flickering on the turns, the dawns and sunsets and the sparks blasting into your windscreen going up to eau rouge in the middle of the night.
And then there are the gameplay rules. Everything from the actual series is there. It wasn’t an easy thing to do. Multiple practice sessions, multiple series, stints and pitstops, limited tyre sets, driver swaps, multiple classes, different kind of races, sprint, endurance, 24 hours, balance of performance for each track for each car… everything is in there. You only see some buttons and do some clicks, but the amount of code behind to make it all happen, thousands of code lines, only for the rules…
I won’t talk about the physics. Will have plenty of opportunities for dedicated articles about them. I will only say that with the total support of Stefano and the great additional help of Fernando, we pushed so hard like never before. The amount of data, depth and new features in the ACC physics engine is on a new level above everything I’ve ever done before and I’m saying this being as objective as I can possibly be.
Is it perfect? Of course not. I’m sure that every one of you will find something that you’d like to be done differently. But for me, it is an amazing achievement. The sheer experience of everything I ever dreamed simracing should be when I was driving GPL, when I was driving GTR, when I was hoping Racing Legends to be… this is ACC now and it has just started.
So I’m grateful to all my colleagues that put everything they had in it. I’m grateful that I’ve been given the opportunity to work on it. I'm grateful of the support of the community and its feedback. I’m happy that we release it for you to enjoy and looking forward to make it even better and more mature in the near future.
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