Kunos Reveals Assetto Corsa Competizione: Official Blancpain GT Game Coming This Summer
- Thread starter er185es
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- TRAPPIST-1g
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Here's another dev blog post on tires and rain
https://www.assettocorsa.net/forum/index.php?threads/tyres-oh-its-raining.50739/
https://www.assettocorsa.net/forum/index.php?threads/tyres-oh-its-raining.50739/
Tyres! And rain… But first…
The Rules!
The Blancpain gt series uses Pirelli tyres. Different sizes for different groups of cars, mainly 3 sizes depending the weight bias of the car. So front engine cars usually get 325/705/18 all around, mid engined cars get 325/680/18-325/705/18 front-rear and rear engined cars 325/660/18-325/705/18 front-rear.
Compound is one and unique for all races, all circuits, all cars. This means that this single compound must work in all cars, all weather conditions and all kind of circuits.
The above information is crucial in order to understand that these kind of tyres have an extremely difficult job to do. They have to work on cars that go from 40%, down to 55% of their weight to the front. Heavy cars that go up to 1500kg at full race trim while at the same time support well over 500kg of downforce, have to withstand at least 1 hour of hard racing before changing tyres and are driven in various circuits on various ambient temperatures by professionals and gentlemen drivers. At first I also thought “hey that’s easy, I only have 1 compound to do”, then as development went forward and Pirelli and teams started sharing data (thank you so much!) I knew I was into big big trouble… Luckily I have master Stefano always willing to accept a challenge!
Let’s start with the slick tyres.
Slicks have a wide operating range. They give decent grip from 40°C and up to 130°C. Obviously they have a narrower optimum range around 70°C to 90°C. Pirelli defines optimum pressure at 29psi (almost 2bar) but most teams will run a little bit lower. Pirelli though, advises against very low pressures as it is easy to deflate a low pressure tyre on a kerb or similar conditions… For safety reasons it is prohibited to go lower than 20psi (1.4bar) as minimum inflation pressure.
The tyres are always in preheated in tyre heater racks up to 70°C but realistically around 65°C, so expect to start any session (except maybe hotlap) with tyres at around 65°C core.
Pressure in AC now influences the stiffness rate in a non linear way and differently for vertical, lateral and longitudinal. The whole footprint flexes in all 3 axis and I believe you will definitely feel this when attacking kerbs. Damping of the tyre is also affected by heat.
The heating in ACC now has 3 interacting layers. Surface, core and inside air.
The surface heat is quite active, going fast up and down while influenced from slip, flex, rolling speed, ambient temperature, road temperature, air speed and rotational speed. Obviously it exchanges heat with the inner core too.
The inner core, is influenced mainly by rolling speed, flex and surface and inner air temperature.
The inside air is exchanging heat from the core and… brake heat.
For the first time though, we are not going to show you everything, just what the real teams get to look at, which means pressure and core IMO temperatures.
Tyre wear
This is now calculated in 3 separated IMO layers in a way that camber and toe can affect different parts of the tyre wear. If you use excessive amounts of camber and toe on a circuit with very long straights, then you will experience much more wear (and heat, more about it in a minute) on the Inner side of the tyre, making braking and traction worse but not affecting a lot lateral grip… and vice versa of course. Tyre wear is also implemented in a different way. We actually simulate the tread depth and we lower the depth as the tyre wears out. So you start with 3mm of depth at fresh tyres and you wear this out. Normally the teams and Pirelli consider a tyre as a very consumed one at under 1.5mm. The tyre wear is influenced by the distance covered, but most importantly by the slip. The more you slip the tyre, the more it wears and by “slip” we consider not only actual dragging the tyre on turns, braking and acceleration but also toe and camber, so again, watch out on how you setup your car.
Another important factor for wear is surface temperature. The harder you drive the more surface heat you generate, the faster the tyres wear out. Heck you could completely destroy a tyre by doing donuts for some minutes… Obviously you are not going to monitor tyre’s surface temps as it is rapidly changing and hardly measurable in real time (in the real life), but if your core temperatures are on target, then the smoother you drive the less wear you’ll have. Also graining, blistering and flatspotting are still there, with all vibrations now acting also on the suspension movement. Pirelli points out that those tyres do not suffer much of graining and blistering, but if you keep using wet tyres on the dry, well don’t expect miracles. TC and ABS levels can also play a role here. Since flex also influences tyre heat, a stiff suspension and dampers as well as high downforce, can also influence the tyre wear…. so many things, so little time, I know.
The Overall Feelings
All of this works together, obviously in real time and affects many aspects of the tyre behaviour. This is one of the biggest improvements of ACC. Heat, wear, grip, do not just influence tyre grip but actually change the tyre behaviour. Slipangles and slipratios, stiffness rate and damping, lateral and longitudinal flex that is now also simulated, all of them change in real time, depending all of the above factors. You can expect a cold slick tyre to not only have less grip, but to be way more nasty and on the edge. So if it starts raining and you’re on slicks, before aquaplaning issues, you might have to deal with a much more nervous car behaviour because the tyres lost heat and pressure. A consumed tyre has less flex too, generates less core heat and has different peak splipangles. You might find the grip acceptable but the behaviour changed for the worse. All is extremely dynamic and lots of placebo is going to occur…Be brave and endure the difficulties
Still, there’s more. ACC now simulates variable dynamic weather and so we have…
Rain.
Rain in ACC is not simulated by simply lowering the grip. We simulate mathematically an actual water film depth. Tyres go over it and depending on tread design, load, speed and more, they manage to drain the water out and have a contact with the ground… or not. If the tyre can’t drain enough water, then it starts losing contact, up to complete aquaplaning, which means total loss of grip, zero, null, nada. So in ACC the feeling you get from a wet circuit is a good grip but a constant feeling of “something is about to happen”. You might do a turn in a specific way and feel there’s more than enough grip, you might even think “hey that was easy after all, arcade™!”, only to push a tiny bit more the lap after, or have the rain fall harder 3 laps later and go completely aquaplaning sliding out of the corner. The wetness also lowers drastically the heat generated by the surface layer of the tyre, so temperature of the tyres will go down inevitably.
Slicks can go into aquaplaning very VERY easy. I strongly suggest that you watch the first laps of the Hungaroring race1 of the Blancpain GT Series to understand how cars on slick struggle on damp conditions, but also how the BMW M6 that had wet tyres could work his way from 11th position to 2nd and struggle right afterwards when the dry line started to form. You can also see him searching for wet spots to cool down the wet tyres. Here's the video. Race starts in 33:00
Also in ACC wet tyres will overheat dramatically in dry conditions and you can cool them down going outside the dry line, searching for wet spots. Beware that in such conditions it’s easy to place one side of a car in the wet spot or puddle, resulting in high rolling resistance force from the water depth (and sudden aquaplaning) that can easily destabilze your car.
I will also mention the obvious…there is no way you can stay on the track under heavy rain on slick tyres. We’re not talking being slow or having difficulties to control the car… we’re talking complete and utter loss of control and sliding around on “ice”. Fear not though, for people that want to experience the graphical majesty of rain conditions but in a less hardcore grip situation, we have a nice option slider that will lower the amount of physics water… just for fun.
Staying on the dynamic track subject, here’s how a track surface changes through different conditions.
Special guest…
Marbles.
Did you know that real drivers will go over the marbles to collect them on their slick tyres so that they gain a kind of “tread” which lowers a tiny bit the risk of aquaplaning? Of course you’ll have to deal with less grip and vibrations, but nothing is worse than aquaplaning and it might help you until you go in for your pitstop… or the rain might go away and you’re ****ed… ops!
Then we have tyre damage… but that’s something we still working on and I’ll explain it to you later.
So, what’s next? Aero I guess… back to writing. (where’s my coffee!)
The Rules!
The Blancpain gt series uses Pirelli tyres. Different sizes for different groups of cars, mainly 3 sizes depending the weight bias of the car. So front engine cars usually get 325/705/18 all around, mid engined cars get 325/680/18-325/705/18 front-rear and rear engined cars 325/660/18-325/705/18 front-rear.
Compound is one and unique for all races, all circuits, all cars. This means that this single compound must work in all cars, all weather conditions and all kind of circuits.
The above information is crucial in order to understand that these kind of tyres have an extremely difficult job to do. They have to work on cars that go from 40%, down to 55% of their weight to the front. Heavy cars that go up to 1500kg at full race trim while at the same time support well over 500kg of downforce, have to withstand at least 1 hour of hard racing before changing tyres and are driven in various circuits on various ambient temperatures by professionals and gentlemen drivers. At first I also thought “hey that’s easy, I only have 1 compound to do”, then as development went forward and Pirelli and teams started sharing data (thank you so much!) I knew I was into big big trouble… Luckily I have master Stefano always willing to accept a challenge!
Let’s start with the slick tyres.
Slicks have a wide operating range. They give decent grip from 40°C and up to 130°C. Obviously they have a narrower optimum range around 70°C to 90°C. Pirelli defines optimum pressure at 29psi (almost 2bar) but most teams will run a little bit lower. Pirelli though, advises against very low pressures as it is easy to deflate a low pressure tyre on a kerb or similar conditions… For safety reasons it is prohibited to go lower than 20psi (1.4bar) as minimum inflation pressure.
The tyres are always in preheated in tyre heater racks up to 70°C but realistically around 65°C, so expect to start any session (except maybe hotlap) with tyres at around 65°C core.
Pressure in AC now influences the stiffness rate in a non linear way and differently for vertical, lateral and longitudinal. The whole footprint flexes in all 3 axis and I believe you will definitely feel this when attacking kerbs. Damping of the tyre is also affected by heat.
The heating in ACC now has 3 interacting layers. Surface, core and inside air.
The surface heat is quite active, going fast up and down while influenced from slip, flex, rolling speed, ambient temperature, road temperature, air speed and rotational speed. Obviously it exchanges heat with the inner core too.
The inner core, is influenced mainly by rolling speed, flex and surface and inner air temperature.
The inside air is exchanging heat from the core and… brake heat.
For the first time though, we are not going to show you everything, just what the real teams get to look at, which means pressure and core IMO temperatures.
Tyre wear
This is now calculated in 3 separated IMO layers in a way that camber and toe can affect different parts of the tyre wear. If you use excessive amounts of camber and toe on a circuit with very long straights, then you will experience much more wear (and heat, more about it in a minute) on the Inner side of the tyre, making braking and traction worse but not affecting a lot lateral grip… and vice versa of course. Tyre wear is also implemented in a different way. We actually simulate the tread depth and we lower the depth as the tyre wears out. So you start with 3mm of depth at fresh tyres and you wear this out. Normally the teams and Pirelli consider a tyre as a very consumed one at under 1.5mm. The tyre wear is influenced by the distance covered, but most importantly by the slip. The more you slip the tyre, the more it wears and by “slip” we consider not only actual dragging the tyre on turns, braking and acceleration but also toe and camber, so again, watch out on how you setup your car.
Another important factor for wear is surface temperature. The harder you drive the more surface heat you generate, the faster the tyres wear out. Heck you could completely destroy a tyre by doing donuts for some minutes… Obviously you are not going to monitor tyre’s surface temps as it is rapidly changing and hardly measurable in real time (in the real life), but if your core temperatures are on target, then the smoother you drive the less wear you’ll have. Also graining, blistering and flatspotting are still there, with all vibrations now acting also on the suspension movement. Pirelli points out that those tyres do not suffer much of graining and blistering, but if you keep using wet tyres on the dry, well don’t expect miracles. TC and ABS levels can also play a role here. Since flex also influences tyre heat, a stiff suspension and dampers as well as high downforce, can also influence the tyre wear…. so many things, so little time, I know.
The Overall Feelings
All of this works together, obviously in real time and affects many aspects of the tyre behaviour. This is one of the biggest improvements of ACC. Heat, wear, grip, do not just influence tyre grip but actually change the tyre behaviour. Slipangles and slipratios, stiffness rate and damping, lateral and longitudinal flex that is now also simulated, all of them change in real time, depending all of the above factors. You can expect a cold slick tyre to not only have less grip, but to be way more nasty and on the edge. So if it starts raining and you’re on slicks, before aquaplaning issues, you might have to deal with a much more nervous car behaviour because the tyres lost heat and pressure. A consumed tyre has less flex too, generates less core heat and has different peak splipangles. You might find the grip acceptable but the behaviour changed for the worse. All is extremely dynamic and lots of placebo is going to occur…Be brave and endure the difficulties
Still, there’s more. ACC now simulates variable dynamic weather and so we have…
Rain.
Rain in ACC is not simulated by simply lowering the grip. We simulate mathematically an actual water film depth. Tyres go over it and depending on tread design, load, speed and more, they manage to drain the water out and have a contact with the ground… or not. If the tyre can’t drain enough water, then it starts losing contact, up to complete aquaplaning, which means total loss of grip, zero, null, nada. So in ACC the feeling you get from a wet circuit is a good grip but a constant feeling of “something is about to happen”. You might do a turn in a specific way and feel there’s more than enough grip, you might even think “hey that was easy after all, arcade™!”, only to push a tiny bit more the lap after, or have the rain fall harder 3 laps later and go completely aquaplaning sliding out of the corner. The wetness also lowers drastically the heat generated by the surface layer of the tyre, so temperature of the tyres will go down inevitably.
Slicks can go into aquaplaning very VERY easy. I strongly suggest that you watch the first laps of the Hungaroring race1 of the Blancpain GT Series to understand how cars on slick struggle on damp conditions, but also how the BMW M6 that had wet tyres could work his way from 11th position to 2nd and struggle right afterwards when the dry line started to form. You can also see him searching for wet spots to cool down the wet tyres. Here's the video. Race starts in 33:00
Also in ACC wet tyres will overheat dramatically in dry conditions and you can cool them down going outside the dry line, searching for wet spots. Beware that in such conditions it’s easy to place one side of a car in the wet spot or puddle, resulting in high rolling resistance force from the water depth (and sudden aquaplaning) that can easily destabilze your car.
I will also mention the obvious…there is no way you can stay on the track under heavy rain on slick tyres. We’re not talking being slow or having difficulties to control the car… we’re talking complete and utter loss of control and sliding around on “ice”. Fear not though, for people that want to experience the graphical majesty of rain conditions but in a less hardcore grip situation, we have a nice option slider that will lower the amount of physics water… just for fun.
Staying on the dynamic track subject, here’s how a track surface changes through different conditions.
- A green track will get gradually rubbered. marbles can appear at the side of the rubbered line
- If rain starts then (depending on the force) it will wet the track and the rubbered line will start to be very slippery. You might be forced to avoid it or explore alternative lines.
- If rain keeps on pouring heavy enough, it will clean the rubbered line and you might be able to turn back to a more traditional racing line. When this happens? I don’t know, try, experiment and find out!
- If rain keeps on going, puddles and “rivers” might start forming. Those also might force you to try different lines again. Puddles and rivers are placed in specific realistic places on the circuits, derived from actual drivers feedback and their onboard videos.
- If rain is lighter or stops and many cars are lapping, a dry line might form or simply a “less wet” line. You will obviously have more grip over the dry line but wet tyres will overheat.
- Finally puddles will be the last to dry out, so watch out even if the track is slightly damp and slick tyres are faster, puddles can still catch you out.
Special guest…
Marbles.
Did you know that real drivers will go over the marbles to collect them on their slick tyres so that they gain a kind of “tread” which lowers a tiny bit the risk of aquaplaning? Of course you’ll have to deal with less grip and vibrations, but nothing is worse than aquaplaning and it might help you until you go in for your pitstop… or the rain might go away and you’re ****ed… ops!
Then we have tyre damage… but that’s something we still working on and I’ll explain it to you later.
So, what’s next? Aero I guess… back to writing. (where’s my coffee!)
- 15,381
- TRAPPIST-1g
- ProjectWHaT
More tid bits of information as people ask them:
- 500
- Berlin
"...wet tyre was still slower, but it gave so much more confidence while driving in those extreme situations.
It's not casual that teams usually install wet tyres when they want to let a less experienced journalist to drive the cars."
Nice fun fact, i always wondered why this is.
- 15,381
- TRAPPIST-1g
- ProjectWHaT
- 500
- Berlin
Post from Aris about Aero on official forums 
https://www.assettocorsa.net/forum/index.php?threads/aero-i-believe-i-can-fly….50787/
https://www.assettocorsa.net/forum/index.php?threads/aero-i-believe-i-can-fly….50787/
- 15,381
- TRAPPIST-1g
- ProjectWHaT
Devblog on the driver rating system:
https://www.assettocorsa.net/forum/...ing-system-we-want-to-help-you-improve.50766/
and then comments by Minolin
https://www.assettocorsa.net/forum/...ing-system-we-want-to-help-you-improve.50766/
First - thank you very much for joining our Early Access phase for ACC.
In terms of the gameplay elements around the Ratings, Event leaderboards and their game modes, I'd like to share our vision and the elements delivered in the first Early Access release, and open the discussion.
The vision:
On the long run, ACC will have quite a number of ratings and subratings. Some of them are focusing on your personal driving behavior, with the goal to be a good friend and help to improve. Some are purely competitive, and will connect you to other drivers. Then we have the multiplayer-related ratings, used to keep things clean and improve the multiplayer experience. Overall, we hope to improve the overall experience and fun, but also get rid of some typical simracing incentives. So this is going to be an invitation to develop from being a simracer to become more of a race driver.
6 of those ratings will be connected in a progression, where we try to detect the individual driver's capabilities and move the focus on the most important aspects. Those ratings are expressed in a 0-100% scale, and will unlock the next one once you achieved a value of 50%. While you are progressing through the ratings, you will either prove or practice driver-focused categories like Track Competence, Consistency, Car Control. After that, the rating will suggest to start becoming competitive and advance through the Pace, Racecraft and finally Competition rating.
Early Access Release 1
We will start with the first 4 ratings. At this point we will collect general feedback and feelings, analyse the data in terms of "how many drivers settle down where" and test the system. It will be also the first time where the backend servers have "real" load.
During the whole Early Access, the rating profiles may be reset for various technical reasons, so don't worry about your rating too much.
Let me go through the actual ratings and their expected effects:
TR - Track Competence
During this stage, every track has 3 "medals" to earn. We start out very easy: Do one clean lap without cut or spin.
For beginners, this of course requires to learn the track, which is the very basic requirement of anything that will follow. Go slow and easy, at this point nothing else is important. Blue feedback colors mean you are slow (which is much better than too fast), Green is perfect, yellow/orange/red indicates mistakes or overdriving you should avoid.
Also, your TR rating can't get worse at any time. Go out and drive, even testing something can't have any negative impact on TR.
The 2nd medal is similar: Do clean 2 laps in a row, that is without loss of control and with a (very low) minimal pace. Once you achieved this, the TR rating will be at 50% and unlock your next task: Consistency.
At this point, you always have the choice to focus on the next rating, or to improve the previous one(s).
There is one more track medal to earn: 4 clean laps in good conditions (adjusted lap requirement in wet/night conditions). Please note that your TR rating will not go to 100% during the Early Access.
CN - Consistency
The ability to consistently drive lap after lap is one of the key features in real racing, but for some reasons largely underrated in the simracing world.
Being consistent first means you are trained to find a pace you can do reliable lapping in - many laps without a spin or major problem. This will unlock many features (like being able to race others), and will help you to understand if different lines or setups have any actual impact.
But the most important: you just have more fun after all!
During the CN phase the Rating system will assist you with feedback for each corner, where green is very consistent to your latest laps, while yellow/orange/red indicates a very different way of driving. In case you noticed you got faster or slower in one corner, do NOT try to compensate in the next corner.
Cutting/losing the car will vastly reduce this lap's consistency, so make sure you find a good pace you are very comfortable with. The whole point is to be able to just drive without ruining the car, or messing up otherwise.
Similar to TR, the CN Rating can hardly drop once you have driven a bit. Usually the worst thing that can happen is that it just doesn't improve. Improvements/high ratings are possible when doing either very precise laps, or many consecutive laps - or both. So for example if you are doing well in lap 3 to 6, and then add one bad lap - this session's CN rating will be derived from 3-6, unless you add a streak that is even better. It is very important that the first 3 ratings are considered as friendly companions which are there to help you, and only you can see them. I'm looking forward to your feedback and impressions.
Once you have managed to achieve 50% CN rating, you will unlock the last driver-focused one: Car Control. Still keep an eye on your CN rating from now on, basically anybody should be able to at least have ~80% - you just need to consider this an important skill. Be assured, your practice investments will pay out big times.
CC – Car Control
You often hear that racing is about "the limit", and it's absolutely true. But we see a common misconception in simracing, while the real racing is the opposite: Most simracers are trying too hard. Riding on the limit really means on the very thin line of your tyre's grip, and going faster than that is actually slower and much, much more dangerous.
This rating will watch at various aspects and give you feedback where you lose time due to slow transitions etc, but much more important gives you feedback when you go too fast. First you should try to avoid any overdriving, that is find the correct steering angles and have the car under/at the limit any time (otherwise feedback is color yellow-red). Once you are able to avoid overdrive, you will notice everything is becoming easier while you won't be slower (or even pick up some pace). At this point you want to watch where you lose time because of being below the limit, usually this is about slow input transitions and careful corner entries.
Again, the CC Rating is meant to be your personal friend. The Rating is able to slowly decrease based on what and how you do it; but this is a very slow process and easy to catch up with some good practice sessions.
If you reached 50% CC - you are ready to get serious and enter the first competitive rating: Pace!
PC - Pace
Having proven you can handle your GT3 car, we are ready to enter the Competition - the title is not "Assetto Corsa Basics" after all.
Pace is the first rating that cares about laptimes and track performance. Those are measured in different Event Leaderboards, where you will challenge other drivers.
During the Early Access phase we will see a set of Special Events every new month. Those are connected to dedicated leaderboards, which directly influence your Pace rating: Your best Rank is your Pace rating. 50% means you are exactly in the midfield, 100% means you have a world record in one of the current event leaderboards.
Starting with Release 1, you can pick the "Hotlap" Event #1, which is basically what you expect: Dry, Daytime, perfect but fixed conditions, anything resets when you cross the start/finish line. Go for the best laptime possible.
The events #2 and #3 are (in my opinion) much more interesting: We introduce the "Hotstint" gameplay mode. The starting conditions are 100% comparable as well, but the goal is to drive as many laps as possible within a given time. Your leaderboard rank will be the result of the laps done (and time needed). While the Hotlap mode is a nice display of potential quickness, you will need to be a much more complete race driver to excel in the Hotstint category. Consistency, risk management and reliable pace are the key components.
This month's events will be a short stint in pretty good conditions (Event #2) and a medium (35 minutes) stint with a transition into the night (#3).
Recap
I would like to remind you again that the driver-oriented ratings' purpose is to help understanding how you drive, and give feedback on where you can improve - which has the ultimate goal to give you a better and more enjoyable time in simracing. This effect of course depends on your "entry" level, so skilled simracers (and actual race drivers) will have a very different experience compared to less experienced drivers. I'm looking forward to the feedback of everybody, so please don't hesitate to drop your feelings even if you feel you are on the entry level - maybe your feedback will be the most important in the end.
In terms of the gameplay elements around the Ratings, Event leaderboards and their game modes, I'd like to share our vision and the elements delivered in the first Early Access release, and open the discussion.
The vision:
On the long run, ACC will have quite a number of ratings and subratings. Some of them are focusing on your personal driving behavior, with the goal to be a good friend and help to improve. Some are purely competitive, and will connect you to other drivers. Then we have the multiplayer-related ratings, used to keep things clean and improve the multiplayer experience. Overall, we hope to improve the overall experience and fun, but also get rid of some typical simracing incentives. So this is going to be an invitation to develop from being a simracer to become more of a race driver.
6 of those ratings will be connected in a progression, where we try to detect the individual driver's capabilities and move the focus on the most important aspects. Those ratings are expressed in a 0-100% scale, and will unlock the next one once you achieved a value of 50%. While you are progressing through the ratings, you will either prove or practice driver-focused categories like Track Competence, Consistency, Car Control. After that, the rating will suggest to start becoming competitive and advance through the Pace, Racecraft and finally Competition rating.
Early Access Release 1
We will start with the first 4 ratings. At this point we will collect general feedback and feelings, analyse the data in terms of "how many drivers settle down where" and test the system. It will be also the first time where the backend servers have "real" load.
During the whole Early Access, the rating profiles may be reset for various technical reasons, so don't worry about your rating too much.
Let me go through the actual ratings and their expected effects:
TR - Track Competence
During this stage, every track has 3 "medals" to earn. We start out very easy: Do one clean lap without cut or spin.
For beginners, this of course requires to learn the track, which is the very basic requirement of anything that will follow. Go slow and easy, at this point nothing else is important. Blue feedback colors mean you are slow (which is much better than too fast), Green is perfect, yellow/orange/red indicates mistakes or overdriving you should avoid.
Also, your TR rating can't get worse at any time. Go out and drive, even testing something can't have any negative impact on TR.
The 2nd medal is similar: Do clean 2 laps in a row, that is without loss of control and with a (very low) minimal pace. Once you achieved this, the TR rating will be at 50% and unlock your next task: Consistency.
At this point, you always have the choice to focus on the next rating, or to improve the previous one(s).
There is one more track medal to earn: 4 clean laps in good conditions (adjusted lap requirement in wet/night conditions). Please note that your TR rating will not go to 100% during the Early Access.
CN - Consistency
The ability to consistently drive lap after lap is one of the key features in real racing, but for some reasons largely underrated in the simracing world.
Being consistent first means you are trained to find a pace you can do reliable lapping in - many laps without a spin or major problem. This will unlock many features (like being able to race others), and will help you to understand if different lines or setups have any actual impact.
But the most important: you just have more fun after all!
During the CN phase the Rating system will assist you with feedback for each corner, where green is very consistent to your latest laps, while yellow/orange/red indicates a very different way of driving. In case you noticed you got faster or slower in one corner, do NOT try to compensate in the next corner.
Cutting/losing the car will vastly reduce this lap's consistency, so make sure you find a good pace you are very comfortable with. The whole point is to be able to just drive without ruining the car, or messing up otherwise.
Similar to TR, the CN Rating can hardly drop once you have driven a bit. Usually the worst thing that can happen is that it just doesn't improve. Improvements/high ratings are possible when doing either very precise laps, or many consecutive laps - or both. So for example if you are doing well in lap 3 to 6, and then add one bad lap - this session's CN rating will be derived from 3-6, unless you add a streak that is even better. It is very important that the first 3 ratings are considered as friendly companions which are there to help you, and only you can see them. I'm looking forward to your feedback and impressions.
Once you have managed to achieve 50% CN rating, you will unlock the last driver-focused one: Car Control. Still keep an eye on your CN rating from now on, basically anybody should be able to at least have ~80% - you just need to consider this an important skill. Be assured, your practice investments will pay out big times.
CC – Car Control
You often hear that racing is about "the limit", and it's absolutely true. But we see a common misconception in simracing, while the real racing is the opposite: Most simracers are trying too hard. Riding on the limit really means on the very thin line of your tyre's grip, and going faster than that is actually slower and much, much more dangerous.
This rating will watch at various aspects and give you feedback where you lose time due to slow transitions etc, but much more important gives you feedback when you go too fast. First you should try to avoid any overdriving, that is find the correct steering angles and have the car under/at the limit any time (otherwise feedback is color yellow-red). Once you are able to avoid overdrive, you will notice everything is becoming easier while you won't be slower (or even pick up some pace). At this point you want to watch where you lose time because of being below the limit, usually this is about slow input transitions and careful corner entries.
Again, the CC Rating is meant to be your personal friend. The Rating is able to slowly decrease based on what and how you do it; but this is a very slow process and easy to catch up with some good practice sessions.
If you reached 50% CC - you are ready to get serious and enter the first competitive rating: Pace!
PC - Pace
Having proven you can handle your GT3 car, we are ready to enter the Competition - the title is not "Assetto Corsa Basics" after all.
Pace is the first rating that cares about laptimes and track performance. Those are measured in different Event Leaderboards, where you will challenge other drivers.
During the Early Access phase we will see a set of Special Events every new month. Those are connected to dedicated leaderboards, which directly influence your Pace rating: Your best Rank is your Pace rating. 50% means you are exactly in the midfield, 100% means you have a world record in one of the current event leaderboards.
Starting with Release 1, you can pick the "Hotlap" Event #1, which is basically what you expect: Dry, Daytime, perfect but fixed conditions, anything resets when you cross the start/finish line. Go for the best laptime possible.
The events #2 and #3 are (in my opinion) much more interesting: We introduce the "Hotstint" gameplay mode. The starting conditions are 100% comparable as well, but the goal is to drive as many laps as possible within a given time. Your leaderboard rank will be the result of the laps done (and time needed). While the Hotlap mode is a nice display of potential quickness, you will need to be a much more complete race driver to excel in the Hotstint category. Consistency, risk management and reliable pace are the key components.
This month's events will be a short stint in pretty good conditions (Event #2) and a medium (35 minutes) stint with a transition into the night (#3).
Recap
I would like to remind you again that the driver-oriented ratings' purpose is to help understanding how you drive, and give feedback on where you can improve - which has the ultimate goal to give you a better and more enjoyable time in simracing. This effect of course depends on your "entry" level, so skilled simracers (and actual race drivers) will have a very different experience compared to less experienced drivers. I'm looking forward to the feedback of everybody, so please don't hesitate to drop your feelings even if you feel you are on the entry level - maybe your feedback will be the most important in the end.
and then comments by Minolin
Please allow me to put some answers and clarifications to some of the comments we read over the internet:
1) At the moment my focus is 100% on the content for the first release, which means we have three driver focus ratings and one competitive rating.
Racecraft + Saftey Rating are scheduled in the R2, Multiplayer is R3 and R5, so for now I won't add much to the speculations, maybe aside from a my general stance (which shouldn't ever be mis-read as promise of any kind)
2) The 4 ratings we are talking about have nothing to do with offline, online, multiplayer (R3). They are just there.
They also have no requirements, nor are those ratings requirements for anything else than the unlocking process inside the progressions. I totally do agree on the idea it is bad to be locked out of any parts of the game - except for the multiplayer, where having something like an exclusion via SafetyRating is a bad, but necessary idea (but this is not the time to talk about yet)
3) No, MR wasn't stopped because of this. Just risk management with the background of bad persons in the law profession, and I still hope it can come back one day (although realistically I will be very busy for a few more months)
4) About disabling the Rating system: I'm not sure if you will feel this is a requirement once you got your hands on Release 1. The 3 driver ratings TR, CN, CC are "just" expressing your performance on track, and they do so in the most friendly and forgiving way I could think of. Aborted laps, test sessions, setup work won't really affect it once you have driven your first sessions and the values could settle down. Actual improvements in your driving will be reflected, but short term underperformance won't really be notable.
And there is no direct consequence except what you make out of it: Use the numbers to see where you can improve. Change something in your behaviour, see if it works. Practice, see how your ratings raise. Ignore it, and the driver's ratings won't be more than a number - like a laptime (which is a some trivial kind of rating number as well, if you think about it).
That is true for the driver's ratings, and for sure a different story about the competitive ones. The Pace Rating (PC) which is in the first Release is basically active when using one of three Special Events, and I don't see a reason why you would enter one of those with deactivated Rating system. For the ratings introduced after Release 1, yes, those will need consideration. Some of you may recall that I created an ELO-based performance rating in MinoRating, which was quite popluar - but I disabled it because I've seen too many negative effects. It would be save to assume that we are aware of the drawbacks and will give our best to handle them well. ACC should be a good and fun experience after all.
In a general note, I would like to ask for the favor of focusing on the content of the first release. Let's please keep at least this thread for observations, feedback, discussions, suggestions about the first 4 ratings - and move the speculation about Multiplayer topics somewhere else. This will ensure that I don't miss anything relevant (and I can feel how strong the interest regarding multiplayer is).
- 5,161
- Massachusetts
ACC really sounds like it could be amazing. Limited, of course...but, amazing nonetheless. I can't wait to feel how driving differs in ACC compared to AC. Tires and suspension appear to have been improved tremendously. That could also mean they're much more sensitive to poor inputs. I hope the tires work as well as Aris is describing them. The tires in AC, while i loved the way they felt and the way you could feel slip coming on with such precision, I never really thought that the heating of tires in AC was correct. Tires seemed to take a LOT of beating in order to get properly heated up, but then they would cool with even the slightest straightaway. No doubt, that is what happens in real life, but I think they cooled too fast and they took too long to get warm in the first place.
It'll be good to only be concerned with core temperature rather than trying to put more heat into the surface of the tire and failing 90% of the time.
On paper...I can't believe how exciting ACC appears. Hopefully I won't suck too bad at racing since that's all there is in ACC.
It'll be good to only be concerned with core temperature rather than trying to put more heat into the surface of the tire and failing 90% of the time.
On paper...I can't believe how exciting ACC appears. Hopefully I won't suck too bad at racing since that's all there is in ACC.
This is my plan.
- buy ACC EA
- buy a DD wheel
- buy a triple monitor setup and or an HMD VR
- get a new graphics card or maybe a new gaming computer
- dreaming of getting the Racing Cube
- spend every bit of free time racing and enjoying ACC and AC.
- 15,381
- TRAPPIST-1g
- ProjectWHaT
I see they've included Windows 7 after everyone was in an uproar thinking they dropped support for it
- 5,161
- Massachusetts
In my opinion, I would skip the triple monitor setup and go VR. I've never used either, but VR is definitely the future and you get 360 degree immersion. I can't even fathom how awesome it must be...you've gotta feel you're in a freakin' race car sometimes.
Why do you need gift cards to purchase ACC? Can't you order directly from Steam?
- 15,381
- TRAPPIST-1g
- ProjectWHaT
- 5,161
- Massachusetts
You made a very good point that I never would have thought of. I'm so used to using credit cards/debit cards for everything, I forget that many people still prefer to use cash.
Only one more day boys!! Anyone else excited to see how the new physics system is? The new tire model's complexity is going to be so interesting.
- 15,381
- TRAPPIST-1g
- ProjectWHaT
Almost 12 hours left!
- 500
- Berlin
It will be interesting to see how much improved the Nurburgring looks compared to the AC version, as they basically took the mesh i guess and ported it over to UE4 and probably ended up redoing textures, skybox and vegetation.
Marco actually mentioned this in his longer EA post, that Nürburgring being one of the oldest assets in Assetto Corsa (compared to Laguna Seca or Red Bull Ring), we shall be able to see that ACC is everything but a simple copy&paste of AC
Marco actually mentioned this in his longer EA post, that Nürburgring being one of the oldest assets in Assetto Corsa (compared to Laguna Seca or Red Bull Ring), we shall be able to see that ACC is everything but a simple copy&paste of AC
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