Kunos Reveals Assetto Corsa Competizione: Official Blancpain GT Game Coming This Summer

[ALB123]

I don't know jack about the video game industry...but, I can't imagine Digital Bros. wants their newly purchased, highly respected software company to produce a PC-only title when they only have one other title under their belt and that title was available on PC & consoles and is so similar to the game they'll be releasing next.

 

[JulesDennis]

@ALB123 I 100% agree with you that it makes more sense for the title to find its way to PC/XBOX/PS platforms but you never know.
We'll just have to wait for a "Yes" or "No" answer.

EDIT:IMO if PS5 is coming in 2019 or 2020 (as some people claim is going to happen) I can see why KUNOS would hold back to say anything.SONY going "PS5 is out at 2020" and then KUNOS going "ACC coming to PS5,the first ultra sim that bla bla bla".

 

[th3o]

I really hope the PS5 will be a console where everything will run in native 4k (30fps for the likes of Uncharted etc and 60 fps for sports games) without any sort of checkerboard wizardry. Guess we will see the power of the 1080 or 1080Ti

 

[Georgeagea]

I really hope the PS5 will be a console where everything will run in native 4k (30fps for the likes of Uncharted etc and 60 fps for sports games) without any sort of checkerboard wizardry. Guess we will see the power of the 1080 or 1080Ti

Not that much. Maybe a 1070 at max I think. GPUs are one of the most expensive parts of those systems and they need/want to keep the cost of those consoles sub-500$.
I hope though for a 1080 or better equivalent.

And yeah PS5 in 2020 in my opinion.

 

[th3o]

Not that much. Maybe a 1070 at max I think. GPUs are one of the most expensive parts of those systems and they need/want to keep the cost of those consoles sub-500$.
I hope though for a 1080 or better equivalent.

And yeah PS5 in 2020 in my opinion.

Hmm, i really don't see Sony bringing out a console with only 0,6 TF (GTX 1070 has 6,6) more than the XBoneX 2-3 years later than that X.
My guess is at least 9TF.

 

[BrandonW77]

Not so sure about that.I mean they did not share any info about consoles.People are directly asking about it in the forums and on twitter.Silence in the forums and no answers in twitter too.But they have answered in positive comments and some other (no platform related) comments/questions.
So I dont think it is looking positive for console users unless they want to announce "coming to consoles" at a later time for whatever reason.

That, or they've learned not to say anything about consoles until they have something rock solid and confirmed to announce.

 

[Fredzy]

The physics engine news.. this is a relief. Great news.

(Try driving the KTM X-Bow in PCars 2 and then in AC - it's easier to manage the X-Box in the RAIN in PCars2 than in AC even on optimum tarmac. And that's not to mention the way the AC car feels so much more "real." It's too bad so many "sim" racers pander to "accessibility" - all they have to do is give us a mode sans that accessibility in addition to whatever else they do. Problem solved.)

I always chuckle when I read nonsense like this. If driving a car was anything like AC on the Xbox controller, people would be injured or killed every time they drove challenging roads. Driving quickly isn’t difficult, and if you’re a competent sim racer as well, it should not be difficult. It’s not accessibility, it’s about how you tune your input to mimic a steering wheel, which is a fantastically easy device to use, even at speed.

A few things here - first I think VXR is scoffing at the idea of "more realistic = more difficult" in a racing game. I absolutely agree that this mindset is bogus. I feel PCars and Gran Turismo are more difficult than AC because of how they diverge further from reality. But that is from someone who uses a wheel exclusively.

Second, AC is abysmal with a controller. This doesn't mean it is unrealistic! It means they've done a not-so-good job with controller input design. I would rank that as the single most important thing to address for consoles by a wide margin. People won't play the game if they can't control the cars. I tried and tired myself just to work out a good setting for a controller-bound friend that I wanted to get into AC. I couldn't crack it, and feel like if I can't do it then very few of the more "average gamers" that might give it a go would ever stick with it. Which would be a shame.

 

[panjandrum]

I always chuckle when I read nonsense like this. If driving a car was anything like AC on the Xbox controller, people would be injured or killed every time they drove challenging roads. Driving quickly isn’t difficult, and if you’re a competent sim racer as well, it should not be difficult. It’s not accessibility, it’s about how you tune your input to mimic a steering wheel, which is a fantastically easy device to use, even at speed.

A few things here - first I think VXR is scoffing at the idea of "more realistic = more difficult" in a racing game. I absolutely agree that this mindset is bogus. I feel PCars and Gran Turismo are more difficult than AC because of how they diverge further from reality. But that is from someone who uses a wheel exclusively.

I'm guessing here that you neither of you has had any RL motorsports experience, or that it's been extremely limited? If you have, and you think it is "easy" and you are actually winning those events, then you are an absolute natural and you should go forth and make your career out of it.

But, if you haven't, then you need to go do that for a few seasons before you go suggesting that difficult isn't realistic. Same if you are doing events but not winning - in that case it's "easy" because you aren't pushing hard enough - you'll know you are doing it right when it suddenly gets challenging and difficult - when you realize that you can push your car right to the edge and hold it there and that if you aren't very, very good you'll lose it... And it's that challenge than makes it fun. Seriously, what would even be fun about any of this if it was easy???

It is, however, extremely easy to be tricked by the "street" experience you may have had. Hell, just go look at some of my very early posts and you'll see that owning and "driving with spirit" some very powerful cars when I was younger, on the street, convinced me that somehow I should be able to handle powerful cars on the track in sims. Hahahaha, what an ignorant fool I was!

Lucky for me, I got involved in amateur motorsports shortly after I got into sim racing (right around the release of GT4) and have never looked back (once you have the bug you are pretty much hooked for life). RL experience taught me a lot about SIM racing too. I can still be fooled at first by a sim that "feels" pretty good, but then falls apart with experience. Often what happens is I discover that FFF "Fudged Forgiveness Factor" - a fake safety-margin - when even though a car "feels" about right I can do idiotic things, like slamming the go-pedal all the way down and keeping it there in a light powerful car in the rain, and just magically everything is fine. Or hammering hard on the brake for sustained-periods in an MR or RR car hard in a corner without having to worry that the tail and nose will flip ends. This makes the "sim" quickly bore me because car-control is a huge amount of the fun, both in RL and SIM racing.

So, to those of you who think that "easy sim" = "realistic sim" - all I can say is go out and do the real thing and then come back. You won't feel the same way. Plus, you'll have a hell of a lot of fun!

 

[DeadHero]

Second, AC is abysmal with a controller. This doesn't mean it is unrealistic! It means they've done a not-so-good job with controller input design. I would rank that as the single most important thing to address for consoles by a wide margin. People won't play the game if they can't control the cars. I tried and tired myself just to work out a good setting for a controller-bound friend that I wanted to get into AC. I couldn't crack it, and feel like if I can't do it then very few of the more "average gamers" that might give it a go would ever stick with it. Which would be a shame.

I would love if they could improve the animations, by making them smoother as if you were playing with a steering wheel.
The rest, in my opinion, is amazing and allows me to have a more precise control over the car and better feeling compared to any other racing game that I've played.

 

[Georgeagea]

Hmm, i really don't see Sony bringing out a console with only 0,6 TF (GTX 1070 has 6,6) more than the XBoneX 2-3 years later than that X.
My guess is at least 9TF.

Fingers crossed mate!

 

[inCloud]

Guess we will see the power of the 1080 or 1080Ti

It will be on par with Navi mid-segment GPU and two-generation-form-here-**60-Nvidia-GPU, which means ~ 1080Ti performance.

I really hope the PS5 will be a console where everything will run in native 4k (30fps for the likes of Uncharted etc and 60 fps for sports games)

Scalability, we can expect 1080p/60fps and 4k/30fps as option from next gen. In current gen refreshes its all about weak CPU, not GPU anymore.

 

[SlipZtrEm]

A few things here - first I think VXR is scoffing at the idea of "more realistic = more difficult" in a racing game. I absolutely agree that this mindset is bogus. I feel PCars and Gran Turismo are more difficult than AC because of how they diverge further from reality. But that is from someone who uses a wheel exclusively.

Second, AC is abysmal with a controller. This doesn't mean it is unrealistic! It means they've done a not-so-good job with controller input design. I would rank that as the single most important thing to address for consoles by a wide margin. People won't play the game if they can't control the cars. I tried and tired myself just to work out a good setting for a controller-bound friend that I wanted to get into AC. I couldn't crack it, and feel like if I can't do it then very few of the more "average gamers" that might give it a go would ever stick with it. Which would be a shame.

Ah, beat me to it.

I agree with @VXR that on a pad, Assetto Corsa is not the greatest. It may have its own simulation issues, but I still find FM7 to be one of the best pad experiences in the genre; it translates the feel of driving to a little hand-held controller. Whether or not it does it "authentically" with or without hidden assists is beside the point; it's translating a very different approach in the real world, complete with the seat-of-the-pants feel, to a little mass-produced hunk of plastic. The rumbly triggers on the XB1 pad in particular make it for me.

I also agree that more difficulty doesn't equal more realistic. It's an exclusionary idea pushed forth by sim racing elitists that bizarrely seem to want their hobby to disappear.

But on a wheel, AC feels incredibly natural. Like, lose yourself in the drive natural, at least for me.

 

[DatNoiseV12]

I would love if they could improve the animations, by making them smoother as if you were playing with a steering wheel.

that would make a huge difference. pad support itself is more than fine, as i said multiple times.
i wouldn't have put 600 hours (probably more) into assetto if it was bad with a controller, thats for sure.

I'm interested in how it is going to sound. It obviously is going to sound better than AC, That's a great starting point.

Interview with Marco tomorrow.
View attachment 716143

interview is up
https://www.motorsportrepublic.com/...ssarutto-il-nuovo-assetto-corsa-competizione/

 

[VXR]

@panjandrum I don’t have any racing experience, but I wasn’t talking about AC as a racing sim. It’s so hamstrung with the tool available to me - the Xbox controller - that I can barely turn a lap like I’m some sort of incompetent moron who didn’t have nearly 15 years fast road driving experience on broken, adverse cambered British moorland roads, which would be on a par with pushing on at any track, anywhere in the world.

 

[Johnnypenso]

@panjandrum I don’t have any racing experience, but I wasn’t talking about AC as a racing sim. It’s so hamstrung with the tool available to me - the Xbox controller - that I can barely turn a lap like I’m some sort of incompetent moron who didn’t have nearly 15 years fast road driving experience on broken, adverse cambered British moorland roads, which would be on a par with pushing on at any track, anywhere in the world.

How would you compare the experience of real life driving on a road versus driving with a couple of sticks and buttons in your lap? Does anyone draw the same comparison between real life combat and Battlefield or example?

Edit: Golly, the news is coming fast and furious on the official forum. I just read that Kevin, of the Minolin online driver rating system, something pc based online racers may be familiar with, is now a Kunos employee.

http://www.assettocorsa.net/forum/index.php?threads/welcome-kevin-minolin-in-ks.49171/

 

[Nielsen]

So from any point of view you can consider ACC physics as a direct evolution of AC1 physics with the added bonus of not having 170+ cars to update and check if we decide to make substantial changes...

How should we understand this? Most of the AC car list will be carried over to take advantage of the improved physics, or Kunos won't have to update and check +170 cars because ACC won't have that many cars?

this is giving me, Aris and the new physics dev that joined us Fernando the opportunity to get in pretty hard in some areas and make some substantial changes that we couldn't afford to do with a big released product like AC1.

Then he goes on to suggest that AC is a big title - as if ACC isn't going to be comparably big. Pretty confusing.

 

[ProjectWHaT]

 

[Corsa]

Yep.

Hello Helicorsa.

Kevin (minorating) will definitely create a great multiplayer experience with his rating system.

 

[Fredzy]

I'm guessing here that you neither of you has had any RL motorsports experience, or that it's been extremely limited? If you have, and you think it is "easy" and you are actually winning those events, then you are an absolute natural and you should go forth and make your career out of it.

Well let's break these things apart a little. If someone is a SIM alien, they aren't necessarily qualified to say "this game is more realistic than that" unless they also have relevant real-world experience. Likewise, someone who goes to the track often and knows the limits of their car well may not be capable of alien performance in any SIM, but could give a valid comparison of one game vs. another with respect to realism.

So rather than call AC "easy," maybe I'll rephrase my statement: AC is a lot less frustrating to me than GT and PC. Whether that is because it is more or less realistic, I can't debate - indeed I've thought through and can't defend AC = most realistic sim of the three just because it feels the most natural to me. My real world experience is too far in the past now to make direct comparisons to my past 3 years' SIM experience. But to address your other point, yes, I am going fast

You sound like me snapping at a self-professed hardcore mountain biker that cries about a cross country trail being "too easy." My first response is "You aren't going fast enough."

Ah, beat me to it.

I agree with @VXRIt may have its own simulation issues, but I still find FM7 to be one of the best pad experiences in the genre; it translates the feel of driving to a little hand-held controller. Whether or not it does it "authentically" with or without hidden assists is beside the point; it's translating a very different approach in the real world, complete with the seat-of-the-pants feel, to a little mass-produced hunk of plastic.

I think the "authentic vs. with hidden assists" bit is pretty important, leaves me unsettled. I think that in the end, some sort of dynamic smoothing and interpretation of inputs are required to make AC reasonably playable with a controller. That would amount to an artificial aid, but one I could accept so long as it didn't provide any competitive advantage outside of keeping people on the track. I mean the guy is using a controller, let's throw him a bone. It seems Kunos would be reluctant to do even that kind of thing. I am at least certain they wouldn't do anything dodgy with the physics. Hopefully we'll see before the end of the year.

But on a wheel, AC feels incredibly natural. Like, lose yourself in the drive natural, at least for me.

Hear, hear!

 

[Johnnypenso]

Yep.

Hello Helicorsa.

Kevin (minorating) will definitely create a great multiplayer experience with his rating system.

The best, most tunable racing radar I've yet to encounter. Should be a model for all games. Can't wait to see what Kevin comes up with when he has the full backing of a developer behind him.

 

[Fredzy]

How should we understand this? Most of the AC car list will be carried over to take advantage of the improved physics, or Kunos won't have to update and check +170 cars because ACC won't have that many cars?

I read this but didn't think twice about it, funny enough. I assumed he's referring to the proper sequel to AC, which will apparently reuse AC1's assets, which I'm fine with!

 

[DeadHero]

pad support itself is more than fine, as i said multiple times.

Exactly. I've also seen videos of people racing with a mouse, something certainly worse than a gamepad, so I don't really understand all the fuss about this.

How should we understand this? Most of the AC car list will be carried over to take advantage of the improved physics, or Kunos won't have to update and check +170 cars because ACC won't have that many cars?
Then he goes on to suggest that AC is a big title - as if ACC isn't going to be comparably big. Pretty confusing.

I still believe AC Competizione will only feature GT3s from the 2018 season (as specified in the BP press release), so It won't have more than 12 or so cars.

Edit: According to this post, Misano has already been laserscanned, four new programmers were hired and 1.4 million copies sold across PC, Xbox and PS4.

 

[Johnnypenso]

Exactly. I've also seen videos of people racing with a mouse, something certainly worse than a gamepad, so I don't really understand all the fuss about this.


I still believe AC Competizione will only feature GT3s from the 2018 season (as specified in the BP press release), so It won't have more than 12 or so cars.

Edit: According to this post, Misano has already been laserscanned, four new programmers were hired and 1.4 million copies sold across PC, Xbox and PS4.

Not quite Gran Turismo or even Driveclub figures but still much higher than I would have guessed. Certainly bodes well for future releases in our so-called "hardcore sim" niche gaming genre.

 

[EmArA]

Now if the game is the official Blancpain GT series should this mean that Kunos has the exclusive rights similar to Sector 3 Studios rights to DTM?
That would create problems to other developers.

Very possible since the below GT series are organised by SRO Motorsport group

SRO Motorsport Group (GT series) by M-Bimmer, on Flickr

 

[Punknoodle]

I'm guessing here that you neither of you has had any RL motorsports experience, or that it's been extremely limited? If you have, and you think it is "easy" and you are actually winning those events, then you are an absolute natural and you should go forth and make your career out of it.

But, if you haven't, then you need to go do that for a few seasons before you go suggesting that difficult isn't realistic. Same if you are doing events but not winning - in that case it's "easy" because you aren't pushing hard enough - you'll know you are doing it right when it suddenly gets challenging and difficult - when you realize that you can push your car right to the edge and hold it there and that if you aren't very, very good you'll lose it... And it's that challenge than makes it fun. Seriously, what would even be fun about any of this if it was easy???

It is, however, extremely easy to be tricked by the "street" experience you may have had. Hell, just go look at some of my very early posts and you'll see that owning and "driving with spirit" some very powerful cars when I was younger, on the street, convinced me that somehow I should be able to handle powerful cars on the track in sims. Hahahaha, what an ignorant fool I was!

Lucky for me, I got involved in amateur motorsports shortly after I got into sim racing (right around the release of GT4) and have never looked back (once you have the bug you are pretty much hooked for life). RL experience taught me a lot about SIM racing too. I can still be fooled at first by a sim that "feels" pretty good, but then falls apart with experience. Often what happens is I discover that FFF "Fudged Forgiveness Factor" - a fake safety-margin - when even though a car "feels" about right I can do idiotic things, like slamming the go-pedal all the way down and keeping it there in a light powerful car in the rain, and just magically everything is fine. Or hammering hard on the brake for sustained-periods in an MR or RR car hard in a corner without having to worry that the tail and nose will flip ends. This makes the "sim" quickly bore me because car-control is a huge amount of the fun, both in RL and SIM racing.

So, to those of you who think that "easy sim" = "realistic sim" - all I can say is go out and do the real thing and then come back. You won't feel the same way. Plus, you'll have a hell of a lot of fun!

That's not to say hard sim = realistic sim either, though. Take iRacing for example. The tire model used to make the car feel extremely slippery. Driving the V8 Supercar was very very difficult. Recovering from a slide nearly impossible. They changed the tire model, it became easier to drive, it had a lot more grip and recovering from a slide was easier and many people assumed that iRacing was going Simcade and making it easier so more people could enjoy. That's not the case.

In reality, yes they are touchy to drive, but they do have grip, you can recover from a slide. I've driven a V8 commodore race car a couple of times at the track and also race my own race car and I think it feels a lot more realistic now than it did before and I know my feelings are shared by many professionals.

I think yes, a realistic sim can feel easy for those who are old enough to drive on the road. It's when you are trying to extract the last 10 or 20% that you realise it's not that easy all the time and where more skilful car control is necessary.

 

[SlipZtrEm]

You sound like me snapping at a self-professed hardcore mountain biker that cries about a cross country trail being "too easy." My first response is "You aren't going fast enough."

Ah, the "too easy" thing pops up everywhere, too! I was at the AutoShow on the weekend trying the Forza esport challenge. Someone walked up and talked to his friend about how he was sure he could win this, because "racing in Forza is easy".

He didn't even crack the leaderboard.

The Canadian GT Sport contest offered the same sort of thing. I pushed as hard as I have in a GT game in probably a decade, and found myself coming up a little bit short (made the top 40, but not the final 16). Regardless of GT's position on the ever-changing scale of simulation, being the best at any racing game is a lot of work. There's nothing "easy" about it.

[qupte]I think the "authentic vs. with hidden assists" bit is pretty important, leaves me unsettled. I think that in the end, some sort of dynamic smoothing and interpretation of inputs are required to make AC reasonably playable with a controller. That would amount to an artificial aid, but one I could accept so long as it didn't provide any competitive advantage outside of keeping people on the track. I mean the guy is using a controller, let's throw him a bone. It seems Kunos would be reluctant to do even that kind of thing. I am at least certain they wouldn't do anything dodgy with the physics. Hopefully we'll see before the end of the year.[/quote]

FWIW, I've always understood the artificial aids in FM to amount to smoothing and some slight level of counter-steer assist (which one could argue is its own form of input smoothing, really). When I was at the Porsche Experience Centre with Microsoft, I made sure to test cars in-game as close to the ones I'd be driving. With a wheel and a pad, the Cayman (GT4 in-game versus 718 S on track) did behave largely the same, and what I found most interesting was its attitude when I surpassed its grip. It felt friendly and malleable. The instructor told me the experience on the low-grip surface is the same as it'd be on a normal one, the break-away limit is just at a much lower speed. So that was very interesting.

I'm fine with those sorts of controller aids, so long as, like you said, there's no real competitive advantage. Pads do tend to be favoured by the top Forza players, but I'm not so sure that's to do with an inherent advantage, versus the questionable wheel implementation (better in FM7, but still some ways off the leaders of the genre).

 

[DeadHero]

Not quite Gran Turismo or even Driveclub figures but still much higher than I would have guessed. Certainly bodes well for future releases in our so-called "hardcore sim" niche gaming genre.

I remember people saying that AC has sold between 400-450k copies on Steam, so about 1 million were sold on PS4 and Xbox. That's a very impressive number.

 

[lancia delta hf]

@panjandrum I don’t have any racing experience, but I wasn’t talking about AC as a racing sim. It’s so hamstrung with the tool available to me - the Xbox controller - that I can barely turn a lap like I’m some sort of incompetent moron who didn’t have nearly 15 years fast road driving experience on broken, adverse cambered British moorland roads, which would be on a par with pushing on at any track, anywhere in the world.

I really don't think pad use is bad at all. Some cars are better or worse than others on the pad. However , May I suggest trying out the Lotus Evora GTC. It's great with a pad and might get you use to the controller.

How should we understand this? Most of the AC car list will be carried over to take advantage of the improved physics, or Kunos won't have to update and check +170 cars because ACC won't have that many cars?



Then he goes on to suggest that AC is a big title - as if ACC isn't going to be comparably big. Pretty confusing.

I too didn't think twice about it until I read your post. I'm still taking it to mean a small car list though. This could also mean good visual damage model.

I wonder if we will now see Assetto Corsa "insert race series here" games?

 

[inCloud]

I remember people saying that AC has sold between 400-450k copies on Steam

622,821 ± 24,267

 

[Fredzy]

Ah, the "too easy" thing pops up everywhere, too! I was at the AutoShow on the weekend trying the Forza esport challenge. Someone walked up and talked to his friend about how he was sure he could win this, because "racing in Forza is easy".

Exactly. If someone is really fast in a particular game, that only tells you that... they are really fast in that game. That driving skill can be applied to all games like it, but not without at learning curve. Hard to say whether the curve is easier going from a realistic SIM to a less realistic or arcade title you'd think so, but not always the case.