Kunos Simulazioni Looking at Assetto Corsa HTC Vive Support

[Paul Jeffrey]

Marco Massarutto, Licencing Manager of Kunos Simulazioni has confirmed via his personal Facebook page that HTC Vive VR support is being assessed for Assetto Corsa.

With Assetto Corsa already proving to be one of the stand out VR compatible games, not to mention probably the finest sim racing game with VR support at present, it now looks like the studio are looking to make a move towards developing some serious Vive compatibility for the title. Of course Assetto Corsa already works with a Vive headset, via the Revive injector, but with increasing numbers of sales (reportedly 1/2 million in comparison to the 1/4 million for Oculus), it appears that Kunos are assessing the possibility of looking at potential ways to bring in native support for this headset.

"We have arranged a dedicated room for VR in our new studio (including a motion simulator to reduce the sickness), and this week finally we have completed the setup for Vive, that definetely isn't "plug&play" like the Oculus (both in terms of hardware and software setup), but once installed, the HTC Vive has shown a very interesting potential. So, now at least we can evaluate properly the change to support it in Assetto Corsa, with some dedicated R&D. It's early to confirm if we'll support it, but we'll try" said Massarutto.​

Assetto Corsa in VR video:

It is understood that Kunos now have access to a new space within their studio dedicated to virtual reality, so players might have some further developments with regards to VR and Assetto Corsa in the next few months. At present Assetto Corsa does provide a good VR experience with the Oculus Rift unit but many areas of the VR support in game still need further development. Hopefully the new 'VR space' will help in advancing development for this area of the sim over the coming year.


Assetto Corsa is a racing simulation available for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Windows PC. Additional DLC can be downloaded across all platforms adding a variety of additional cars and tracks.

The Assetto Corsa sub forum is a great place to get involved with your fellow community members and discuss the game. Here at RaceDepartment we have a wonderful Racing Club that hosts regular races and league events, plus you can add a wealth of additional content via our modding downloads archive and catch up on the latest news with regards to the sim.

Do you own a HTC Vive and play Assetto Corsa? What does the headset feel like in AC in it's current form? Looking forward to the possibility of future native support? Let us know in the comments section below!

 

[MarcG]

The devs of Sims obviously know how important and how good VR is and how potentially good it's going to be, otherwise they wouldn't even concern themselves with it in the first place, let alone make it low priority!

As for AC the Rift works marvelously well and I hope the the Vive users soon get to experience what we already do.

 

[Yapci]

If after 10 or more years of VR it still represent less than 10% they will probably just implement it as a basic and nothing more.

We got online in AC. They are developing more features than promised when I bought early access. And more content. We can agree that it lacks features and content but...after 3 years they still launch updates and develop new features that didn't even exist when it was first launched as EA...

So from a bussines point of view I would probably do the same. Online racing has been a niche in a niche from a little niche so many years. Maybe VR helps simracing community to grow so online simracing community grows and then developers will add lot of features to their simracing games...but they got to implement what is actually something everybody talks about. At the end of the day, they want to sell their game, to improve it and I guess make happy the majority of their customers. Majority doesn't includes all. And probably half of this community isn't include in that majority.

But it's a fact that most servers are empty doesn't matter which sim we are talking about. And if they are public they are full of...so!!!

 

[Alex Townsend]

I don't have VR and last I checked it's still out of my reach as triples would cost half the price. (And I still can't really afford those either.)

But with the Devs adding support and more users purchasing these devices the option to own one in the future may be more realistic as the prices naturally come down

All good imo

 

[Nevini]

t h e r e are more important things than VR.

Never a truer word spoken by a philistine, World peace, Believing in democracy like Brexit and Donald Trump to the acceptance in the west of Dhimmi. All are more important than VR, however also wrong on so many levels.
1. World peace will never happen
2. Democracy is a con ;-P
3. Dhimmi will be a reality, as we all fail to learn from the past.
3a, Far too many remoners and anti trumpers in this world to accept DEMOCRACY

I care more about VR than than any of the above.....

Better than life....now pass me the groinal implant (TM MicroSoft, Windows 10 Edition) ;-)

 

[Turk]

I don't have VR and last I checked it's still out of my reach as triples would cost half the price. (And I still can't really afford those either.)

It's probably smarter to hang on and see what the next generation of headsets and cards will bring. They need to seriously up the quality while reducing the price or it's going to remain a niche product. I just couldn't wait.

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

Your comparison comes off as they should exclude people with VR devices when online racers weren't excluded since sims always tended to offer online multiplayer support.

In my opinion their focus needs to be on building more tracks that's all. But of course i am not allowed to disagree with anything right? I must agree that VR is the best thing to focus on right now?

Well I don't, I don't give much about VR at this stage with the technology still being in it's infancy. I am interested in racing cool circuits, having awesome league tools, driver swaps and many more things I can enjoy right now in 2017. Ill probably enjoy VR in 5 to 10 years when it's finished and of a great quality. Until then Ill happily enjoy a conventional good sim with enough quality content with a basic PC, a single monitor and a steeringwheel with pedals.

 

[Blimey]

They spend 2 years working on implementing VR and fixing typos and minor bugs, in 2 years they could've rewritten the engine to do more than just VR, but if motion sickness is your type of thing then good luck.

 

[Enagee]

@Bram if you expect to enjoy VR in 5 to 10 years the development starts now not 5-10 years time.

Sure Kunos are not going to stop track focus because of VR....What few said before it went on consoles...Resources are going to the console so it will slow AC on the PC ......

Its all part of growth.

 

[F_B]

Aaaah surprise, another example of VR-users vs non-VR-users.
This technology really seems to be a big problem for some people.

 

[Blimey]

@Bram if you expect to enjoy VR in 5 to 10 years the development starts now not 5-10 years time.

Sure Kunos are not going to stop track focus because of VR....What few said before it went on consoles...Resources are going to the console so it will slow AC on the PC ......

Its all part of growth.

What growth? xD I wanna see those numbers.

 

[Radu Oros]

In my opinion their focus needs to be on building more tracks that's all. But of course i am not allowed to disagree with anything right? I must agree that VR is the best thing to focus on right now?

Well I don't, I don't give much about VR at this stage with the technology still being in it's infancy. I am interested in racing cool circuits, having awesome league tools, driver swaps and many more things I can enjoy right now in 2017. Ill probably enjoy VR in 5 to 10 years when it's finished and of a great quality. Until then Ill happily enjoy a conventional good sim with enough quality content with a basic PC, a single monitor and a steeringwheel with pedals.

You're allowed to disagree, but when you disagree using wrong comparisons it doesn't come off right.
Kunos giving Oculus and HTC support is not directly related to Kunos not caring about online or more tracks. Since we already have multiplayer and tracks in the game, but VR support wasn't possible before, and it still isn't native support for HTC, only Oculus at the moment.
In the end of the year post they announced this "Taking advantage of the maintenance operations that will involve the Vallelunga circuit for all of 2017, we are now putting the final touches together to open a new studio, still close to the Autodromo di Vallelunga, but with dedicated areas for VR, testing, multiplayer and R&D, that will allow us to work better!"
Sim racers have a motto "nothing is never enough, nothing is ever right".

 

[vilivili]

...after 10 or more years of VR..

I think the Oculus Rift could be considered as the real beginning of VR era. The amount of VR users is growing but is held back for various reasons like motion sickness, cost, resolution etc. When these reasons/challenges are overcome, there's no questioning whether it was worth developing it.

 

[Cote Dazur]

Thank you @Paul Jeffrey for this interesting news on the Vive support coming to AC.
We should not be too surprised to see Kunos reach for more direction simultaneously than before, since they know have access to more resources.
Because VR is new, it is not yet used by a multitude of players, even though triples have been here much longer, they also do not represent a majority, still when a SIM does not cater to triples, the SIM community always say it is not right.
VR, Triples and MP always have and probably always be only important to a minority really involve in the SIM community, still, to me, they are key to immersion, therefore I like it a lot that Kunos in particular and all Devs pay attention to them.

 

[ZethGAF]

Their tracks are often made by a single person. I am almost positive it's not the same one who does VR - but carry on.

Their recent VR developments have been a couple lines of code and ini fixes - not exactly swallowing up resources.

 

[Lino Carreira]

interesting numbers....
http://www.isrtv.com/virtual-reality/alleged-vr-headset-sales-revealed-results-surprising/

 

[tlsmikey]

That's a lot higher than i thought. >400k. I'd imagine thats more than the number of monitors sold for most manufacturers.

 

[bigaustin]

main problem is having remove the vive to use the menus, project cars has the best implementation so far. even RRE has menus you can use with headset, and that's only just had a VR patch.
as usual people with triple screens moan about VR, without having tried it.
VR is here to stay and grow...

 

[Blimey]

That's a lot higher than i thought. >400k. I'd imagine thats more than the number of monitors sold for most manufacturers.

lol, monitor sale is bigger than car sale.

 

[Colin Knowles]

lol, monitor sale is bigger than car sale.

Is that business use or private use ?
Please provide your source

 

[TzZyO]

Thanks to Marco's slip of the tongue we now know what the biggest drawback of the current VR technology is apart from the insufficient resolution that still manages to bog down even quite potent rigs (or all of them?)

In order to properly experience VR, one needs a motion simulator or a kind of an inner ear implant, because human brain doesn't take the discrepancy lightly. Talk about proper immersion...

Syncing the HMD to the motion simulator, however, is a pretty complicated task. You'd have to filter out any parasitic movement induced by the shifting gravity vector simulation, like rotations to the side or linear jolts, while still retaining the positional information resulting from both the user's own movement and the movement of the system. And if the motion platform in question isn't equipped with precision 6DOF sensors to measure its own position and orientation in space, one would have to recalibrate it every time, especially between the "driver swaps".