At the recent sim racing expo, Assetto Corsa EVO was shown to the public. And truthfully, I believe it has the potential to evolve sim racing to the next level.
The Game’s Handling
Tangibly, loads of booths at the expo showcased the new simulator by Kunos Simulazioni. We at tracc.eu tried Assetto Corsa EVO and you can see our first impressions here:
The three preview settings available showed amazing promise. All the goods of the Assetto Corsa Competizione handling model, but with fixed suspension for starters. Next up, the wet feels very difficult. It feels more akin to iRacing’s wet weather driving compared to how ACC felt.
Racing the AI showed something that is mostly reserved to rFactor 2’s AI. The ability to make mistakes. The AI managed to race so hard against one another that in some races, they would crash each other out. In other races, there was nothing to be heard. This is an important towards making the AI more realistic. One aspect of most sim’s AI that I have disliked for a long time is it’s perfection. It seems like Assetto Corsa EVO will be rid of that.
Importantly, as well, is that the three different cars on display, the Hyundai i20, Alpine A110 and Porsche 992 Cup all felt enjoyable to drive. An important step in bringing Assetto Corsa back to the grand variety that we have gotten used to from it’s origin title.
Apart from the Tangible, Assetto Corsa EVO Promises More
By clicking on the video below, Kunos’ presentation at the expo will start.
A few key notes and takeaways from the talk are:
- A completely new game engine
- A grand feat of new features (Virtual economy, realistic traffic AI, procedural map generation, … )
- A mashup of genres (It feels like hearing about Forza Horizon: The Simulator at times)
- A direct (but non-exclusive) line to SimGrid
- Customisation for the ages (car and character)
I want to focus, however, on one slide that was shown at the presentation, for now. This photo was snapped by me at the sim racing expo and shows some new features.
A few features here, like DirectX 12, up to native 4K-resolution or VR and triple screen support come to little surprise. It gets more interesting, the lower down the list we go, however.
I’ll be going through a few features now that may need context or explaining.
DLSS & FSR
These technologies are some of gaming’s best that came out of the machine learning craze so far. These are Nvidia’s and AMD’s respective technologies for increasing visual quality of video games.
In short, these technologies help players get free FPS or frames per second. Less pixels have to be rendered by the graphics cars, with the ones not being rendered being estimated by the machine learning algorithm, leading for the GPU to focus more on generating more pictures in a second.
Both these technologies work great, one better than the other depending on the situation, but crucially they both work well.
Gravity-Based Dynamic Track Technology
This sounds very cryptic, because it is. Gravity has been a staple of sim racing for as long as it used 3D-technology. So what could this point mean?
Assetto Corsa has recently gotten an update to it’s Custom Shaders Patch modification that greatly improves off-road racing. The dirt feels better to drive in and it looks like there is dirt being displaced as a race goes one. Similarly, iRacing has dirt road and oval racing which both use a dirt displacement technology, greatly affecting how a driver needs to take a dirt oval line over a race distance.
Maybe Assetto Corsa EVO will feature off-road dirt physics from the get-go? Or at least maybe the engine is ready for that.
Procedural Technology for Free Roam Maps
Sensible people laughed at the possibility to have a 2500 km² map when the “leaks” came out.
“No way they scanned that much area.”
We failed to take into account that something like this could be generated as well.
I don’t doubt for a second that technology like this is possible. What I wonder, though, is how well the quality will be. Will the roads feel natural? Curves, bumps and roadside objects? Regional differences? Off-road woodland tracks? There is so much that could be taken into account where I wonder if it has been or will be.
Physically-Based Sky
What I imagine this refers to is that earths rotation and placement and so forth are taken into account. So depending on where and when you are, there might be different dawn and dust times, amongst others.
Maybe we’ll even get to see the occasional aurora borealis if racing in more northern places.
Physically Accurate PBR Car Materials
PBR refers to a technology called “physics-based rendering” which allows two-dimensional planes to look three-dimensional and interact with light in different ways. Basically, it’s the backbone of modern game textures that look photorealistic.
With this being possible in the new engine, photorealistic cars are guaranteed. It seems like Assetto Corsa EVO might be the photograph’s and videographer’s dream as well.
Dynamic Particle Effects and Tyre Wear Visuals
It seems like tyres in Assetto Corsa EVO are planned to wear and even look worn after a while. Oftentimes, in motorsports you can see drivers or riders look at their slick tyres to spot graining and usage.
Maybe this will even be possible in Assetto Corsa EVO now. Additionally, maybe the marbles on the circuit will accumulate dynamically over time as well, now.
Assetto Corsa EVO Sounds Great
There is no doubting that everything we have heard sounds impressive. However, the proof of the pudding lies in the tasting. So, we’ll have to see whether Assetto Corsa EVO can deliver on all that has been said or even use all the possible features enabled by the new engine.
They are not the biggest development studio out there. Can they fully use their engine now or will it be enabled feature-by-feature over time? And when will we get modding access?
We’ll see the first availability of features on January 16th, which is the currently scheduled release date for the Assetto Corsa EVO early access on Steam.
If they can use all they have set out to enable in their new engine, Kunos is in the position to evolve sim racing as we know it.
What do you think of everything we know about Assetto Corsa EVO? Join the conversation on our Discord server!