Assetto Corsa 2 launching Spring 2024

Assetto Corsa 2.jpg
The much anticipated true and faithful follow-up to the first Assetto Corsa has had its release period surface online. We can expect an early 2024 release!

Image credit: Kunos Simulazioni

The original Assetto Corsa launched in late 2014, and it’s still going on strong today. It has become the darling of the online sim racing modding scene. It didn’t matter what kind of racing anyone wanted to do. If the player wanted vintage Grand Prix racing, modern day sports prototypes or even a massive dinosaur, AC could do it.

In 2018, its GT-racing focused cousin Assetto Corsa Competizione was released. Whilst a very solid sim, the lack of variety limited its appeal. The sim racing community has been waiting with baited breath for news of Assetto Corsa 2 and when it would be releasing. Now it seems we have an idea.

1679072344314.png


AC2 Spring 2024​

In an image posted by video game industry analyst MauroNL on Twitter. It seemed to be a quarterly financial report gave us the information. It recounts the information on the first two instalments. Right at the bottom, it specifies Spring 2024 as the expected release date for the second version of Assetto Corsa.

Spring traditionally runs from 21 March to 21 June. This will mean just over nine years will have passed between the release of the first and second iterations of Assetto Corsa.

Best of Both Worlds​

The original Assetto Corsa may still be the standard for a lot of online racing, but it is very much limited due to being an older game. With just four years between the original and ACC, the quality of the graphics improved exponentially.

But like has already been said, ACC is specifically GT-racing focussed and has less to process. It was developed on Unreal Engine 4 whilst we have seen how Unreal Engine 5 looks with a racing sim through Rennsport.

Here’s every bit of hope that AC2 – or whatever it may end up being called – can have the variety of AC but the refinement of ACC.
About author
Luca Munro
Biggest sim racing esports fan in the world.

Comments

If they don't allow modding I won't be that interested until late in the development cycle...

ACC was hot garbage when it first dropped... And whilst it has improved over the years it still has FFB and VR issues that other sims don't... And the AI makes the AI in AMS2 look like real life racers...

Kunos needs the modding community in a lot of ways... As AC shows, the community plugged a lot of holes for Kunos...
ams2 ai like reallife? you must be joking. madness engine has the worst ai ever made!!!!:) and the car feeling is arcade.
 
Finally! I've never found my way into ACC because I am completely oversaturated with modern GT racing and because of it's poor performance and image quality in vr (don't have a monitor on my simrig). So i gave up after my third hardware upgrade since ACC was released.

Hope we'll see a different game engine this time in AC2 and all the qualities that made AC1 great. AC1 as a base game + dlc was good with a lot of great content, but the mod support made it stay alive and modern all these years. A true successor to rFactor 1.
 
Some people here are looking so gloomy and fearfull. Maybe you guys never knew, but some time ago if I recall correctly Stefano or Aris said off the record on one of their streams that when they released the tyre model that fixed the kerbs issue in ACC that they thought about updating the physics engine in AC with all the new features that they had included in ACC.

But at they didn't because they understood that if the changed the game with one update there was a high risk that it would broke the shaders patch and SOL. Kunos didn't want to mess with it as the game despite having reached it's end of development was still being quite profitable to the company because the shaders patch and SOL kept the game relevant.

What made Rfactor 1 the reference for a decade was that it was made as a modding platform first and as a racing simulator second, in Kunos they understood that and it was what turned AC into the new Rfactor 1. ACC never had modding in mind because SRO didn't wanted it, and that is the very same reason behind why ACC can't have nordschleiffe, licensing.

With AC2 they don't have such limitations, and they know how much more profitable AC was than ACC. What somehow worries me isn't the approach they will take with the sim, they know what they need to do. What worries me is if they can live up to Stefano, they are a very small team and more than half of original AC was coded by him, included the graphics engine and physics engine.
 
If they were clever they'd figure out a way to setup a mod store and charge a small subscription fee for access - note not a fee for the mod content as legals from licence holders would complain.
 
Last edited:
Looking forward to its release but racing sims are like fine wine they take time to mature so even though they are building on previous experience & its not EA I'm sure it may take many updates & tweaks to actualize their vision.
 
Premium
Looking forward this. Hopefully it will be a great title. I've started spending more time with Assetto Corsa, and it's really amazing with the mods that are available. The original AC can be just about what ever sim you want it to be. For me its been a hotlap and HPDE title. Ive been happy just taking the cars I like and running them around various tracks. Its definitely a good break from the norm of thenusual games I play.
 
Thats it?

Really sparse on details. No scope of the game, no general direction, nothing...

Have the feeling they will just grab the ACC engine, call it AC2, change the content and there you go, but i have no tabs inside kunos, so i am just speculating.
You understand that wasn't a official announcement?
It's something someone noticed on a financial report to investors.
 
Last edited:
Seriously, while not 100% perfect, nothing is really, but name a sim with a better physics and FFB than ACC.
It's a long list...

Anything without a magical tyre pressure figure is a great start for better realistic physics...

Then any other major sim is better for the FFB...
 
Last edited:
ams2 ai like reallife? you must be joking. madness engine has the worst ai ever made!!!!:) and the car feeling is arcade.

Before v1.4 of AMS2 I'd of completely agreed with you... The pCARS series in general is absolute hot garbage...

ACC AI will ram me off the road more often than not... AMS2 AI knows where I am and shows that it's thinking about my position...

Still has a tonne of missing features in the AI, like fuel weights and decent strategies... But it's a lot better to race the AI in AMS2 than ACC...

And the new tyres with the slow speed fixes have taken 1.4 and put it infront of rF2 physics for me...
 
Last edited:
I don't care when it's released as long as the VR performance isn't like the dreadful ACC counterpart and I include visuals in that as well, they got that very very wrong so I really want them to get AC2 VR right.
 
Until Kunos explain what are the goals and reasons for wanting to create AC2, all we will say is blah, blah, blah.
What we know is that Kunos are able to create something new and raise the bar.
Netkar pro, at the time was different and great.
AC, same, except it also become the most played of all the game we see as simulator. Today I play it almost exclusively, the second I play is ACC.
ACC, was and still is different and great. immensely successful despite some glaring issues.
I personally do not need a new AC, the technology and FFB, if Kunos is not coming up with something radically new and different will be the same as all the other.
Knowing Kunos, AC2 will raise the bar, be unique and different. Will it make me switch from AC? I doubt even Kunos can do that, unless a technological advancement, which is nowhere to be seen at this time, makes it a game changer.
 
Last edited:
If they were clever they'd figure out a way to setup a mod store and charge a small subscription fee for access - note not a fee for the mod content as legals from licence holders would complain.
Charging for accessing free content??? That's fun... and the best way to become the most hated sim ever by modders. Making more money with a subscription fee on their behalf. It's already been done it was called rfactor 2.
 
Might be controversial but I honestly do not care if it doesn't have mods if it has a diverse car and track list to begin with. That was the problem with Assetto Corsa
 
Some people here are looking so gloomy and fearfull. Maybe you guys never knew, but some time ago if I recall correctly Stefano or Aris said off the record on one of their streams that when they released the tyre model that fixed the kerbs issue in ACC that they thought about updating the physics engine in AC with all the new features that they had included in ACC.

But at they didn't because they understood that if the changed the game with one update there was a high risk that it would broke the shaders patch and SOL. Kunos didn't want to mess with it as the game despite having reached it's end of development was still being quite profitable to the company because the shaders patch and SOL kept the game relevant.

What made Rfactor 1 the reference for a decade was that it was made as a modding platform first and as a racing simulator second, in Kunos they understood that and it was what turned AC into the new Rfactor 1. ACC never had modding in mind because SRO didn't wanted it, and that is the very same reason behind why ACC can't have nordschleiffe, licensing.

With AC2 they don't have such limitations, and they know how much more profitable AC was than ACC. What somehow worries me isn't the approach they will take with the sim, they know what they need to do. What worries me is if they can live up to Stefano, they are a very small team and more than half of original AC was coded by him, included the graphics engine and physics engine.
With AC Kunos understood what rfactor2 didn't. They just abandoned AC at one time, letting the sim lacking major features. But once everything the game was sypposed to do was right, it remakned in that good state.

This was a clever move, although risky, because modders did not have to review their previous mods, regularly broken by new nevereding updates. They could move on other projects (mods). As players, we knew what we would not get (well, in fact we didn't knew, CSP and SOL changed the game, but it is another story).

Both rfactor1 and AC were conceptualized with modding in mind, indeed. And they both lack crucial features because of that. What worries me is how AC2 will avoid the rfactor2 effect : the neverending development process because of a small size team, causing broken mods never fixed because a non existing mod support dedicated team. That's why smaller teams make less ambitious games in terms.of content but more solid in terms of features. We see how much time AMS2's development takes, and how.much time ACC one has taken, and both projects were less ambitious rhan AC2.

He is who he is, but Ian Bell, with a more communication oriented strategy, and more diversity (by selling other projects to other editors, invluding an official NFS game and its non NFS sequel), managed to get the means needed to complete project cars, which was a really ambitious game in its time, in terms of features, graphics, physics and tyre model. It was co funded by the community and it took years to achieve.

What I mean is I hope Kunos has the means to reach its ambition with AC2. This is the first step, otherwise, it will be another rfactor2 debacle and it will be a very long way, and a hard one, full of neverending whining and bashing (we all know how it works).

After the success of AC1, AC2 must be the most ambitious racing game ever, a modding oriented AMS2 with many options to set up rules by race type, considering it will be possible to race every existing, and non existonh, category. Which means, it maybe fully integrated in mods or/and adjustable by the player (i assume it will be probably only the second option). And, if the game is released in early access, the development should be over in 2 or 3 years. If not it will be rfactor2 again. Good luck AC2!
 
They deserved every cent they've earned. Tbh everything they need to do is give us a better game engine that can provide current generation graphics and I'm all good. The community can provide all the rest as it has till now.
 

Latest News

Article information

Author
Luca Munroe
Article read time
2 min read
Views
35,616
Comments
262
Last update

What's needed for simracing in 2024?

  • More games, period

  • Better graphics/visuals

  • Advanced physics and handling

  • More cars and tracks

  • AI improvements

  • AI engineering

  • Cross-platform play

  • New game Modes

  • Other, post your idea


Results are only viewable after voting.
Back
Top