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.

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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.
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Luca Munro
Luca Munroe
Biggest sim racing esports fan in the world.

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Comments

Richard Wilks
roadyroad said:
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!
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Rewriting history much?

Kunos didnt abandon AC, they sold out, making Stefano a lot of money, which was the whole point to begin with. Then their new overlords of course wanted to make money, hence ACC.

As for rFactor2, there was no subscription fee, there was an online fee that you payed ONCE. Also, both rf1 and rf2 are far more complete and complex titles than AC, hence why you see proper racing in those 2, and not much on AC.

The big problem with rf2 was that they decided to listen to the community, and its two most annoying features for modders, the package system and the new tire model were direct responses to the community criticisms that it was annoying to have so many different files in mods that you had to get yourself, and that people didnt know what they were doing with the previous tire model.
 
paracletus
This will get me back into driving games, been a few years.
Stefano no longer with the team is a loss, but I still have very high hopes for this game :thumbsup:
 
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Aki Korhonen said:
ams2 ai like reallife? you must be joking. madness engine has the worst ai ever made!!!!:) and the car feeling is arcade.
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You guys are both completely wrong. AMS2 has bad AI but so do most other sims. But the car feeling is the best for me, since 1.4 on par with RF2. It's the most real car feeling of all sims for me. And this is both not a fact as you state with "is arcade" it's: subjective. Your opinion is worth as much as the opinions of all others here.
 
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Edivad82 said:
I think that in this round the game will be "armored" and no longer moddable like Assetto Corsa.
They will never make the same mistake again.
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I dont think they made a mistake with ACC, ACC is official blancpain gt racing game and i think that modding was blocked becouse of that and also Unreal Engine 4 did not help. We can just wait and hope that modding in AC 2 will be allowed, i mean they must know that AC is still alive and that popular becouse of mods.
 
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Richard Wilks said:
Rewriting history much?

Kunos didnt abandon AC, they sold out, making Stefano a lot of money, which was the whole point to begin with. Then their new overlords of course wanted to make money, hence ACC.

As for rFactor2, there was no subscription fee, there was an online fee that you payed ONCE. Also, both rf1 and rf2 are far more complete and complex titles than AC, hence why you see proper racing in those 2, and not much on AC.

The big problem with rf2 was that they decided to listen to the community, and its two most annoying features for modders, the package system and the new tire model were direct responses to the community criticisms that it was annoying to have so many different files in mods that you had to get yourself, and that people didnt know what they were doing with the previous tire model.
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Maybe my point wasn't clear. Not remaking history, even not making history at all, whatever why AC had been abandoned it had been. By stating "abandon" I don't mean anything negative, the game had just been stopped being updated at one time and it basically allowed the game to become what it is today. It was a positive and successful way in terms of business and for the users.

And rfactor 2...
Isn't a "Yearly Online Services Subscription for rFactor 2" a subscription fee?
Like AC, whatever the reasons are, the end result is what I have stated. Again, nothing negative about the game, it is now, after all these (too many) years, in a pretty good state.

No one can deny the fact that AC has been a more successful game than rfactor 2. Therefore, if AC2 has the ambition to be rfactor3, concerns are justified, as we know which formula has been much more successful.
 
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jonelsorel said:
Right, shooting yourself in the foot by changing the recipe after making 56 million from your first official product that still shines 8 years after release is a perfectly sane choice. Tip: don't bet your house on it.
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For some reason Turn10 etc have given them a pass on this one, but no way this time round will it be modded with loads of rips.

Some will say this is a good thing as only 'quality' mods. But really why would we not just stick to AC?
Its no where close to looking as good as GT or Forza, but its still good looking, far better than rfactor2.

Also I'm not really betting my house on it. I just can't see it, all these rips all over again?
No chance.
 
R
Perun950 RACING!!! said:
I dont think they made a mistake with ACC, ACC is official blancpain gt racing game and i think that modding was blocked becouse of that and also Unreal Engine 4 did not help. We can just wait and hope that modding in AC 2 will be allowed, i mean they must know that AC is still alive and that popular becouse of mods.
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About UE4, it should be modding friendly, as many games using this engine have been getting mods for years, but it is true that Kartkraft, which aimed to be fully moddable is not moddable at all. Something wrong between racing games and UE4? Or maybe just a coincidence.
 
FS4A
The only reason why AC is still very popular after 9 years is modding.
AC2 will end just like ACC if they don't make it moddable.
 
R
FS4A said:
The only reason why AC is still very popular after 9 years is modding.
AC2 will end just like ACC if they don't make it moddable.
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Is ACC a failure because it is less successful than AC? New content is still developped and sold, some leagues are using the game. These are just 2 different games with different purposes. And the success of a game is not to be consider with customer eyes but with the business aspect in mind. And we don't have any figures. As I said before, slighty mad studios selling arcade games was a good way to finance their more ambitious project. Was Shift, Shift2, Ferrari test drive tremendous games? No, they were just different products than pcars 1 & 2 made in a global strategy, a successfull one. I'm quiet sure ACC has been at least quiet sucessfull along with AC still making sales, and that's why AC2 is coming.
 
Richard Wilks
roadyroad said:
Maybe my point wasn't clear. Not remaking history, even not making history at all, whatever why AC had been abandoned it had been. By stating "abandon" I don't mean anything negative, the game had just been stopped being updated at one time and it basically allowed the game to become what it is today. It was a positive and successful way in terms of business and for the users.

And rfactor 2...
Isn't a "Yearly Online Services Subscription for rFactor 2" a subscription fee?
Like AC, whatever the reasons are, the end result is what I have stated. Again, nothing negative about the game, it is now, after all these (too many) years, in a pretty good state.

No one can deny the fact that AC has been a more successful game than rfactor 2. Therefore, if AC2 has the ambition to be rfactor3, concerns are justified, as we know which formula has been much more successful.
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Is rFactor 2 subscription based?


The subscription is only for on-line racing. You can either get it as a separate, yearly subscription or buy rFactor 2 with lifetime access to on-line racing. If you're not interested in on-line racing, you can just buy rFactor 2.
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At the end the second was the one that stood.


Also, AC is "successfull" because it became a haven for people wanting a cheap GT or Forza that you can roam tokyo with assets ripped from every other racing game out there. You can all try to paint it some other way, but this is the cold hard truth.

At the end of the day whatever AC became today has very litte to do with actual simRACING.

Now if Kunos wants to create another posterchild piece of software for rampant piracy, its up to them, but i suspect that the road will be far more rocky from now on for that.
 
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Richard Wilks said:
Also, AC is "successfull" because it became a haven for people wanting a cheap GT or Forza that you can roam tokyo with assets ripped from every other racing game out there. You can all try to paint it some other way, but this is the cold hard truth.
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The key word is Freeroam. Its not about pirated content. The appeal of freeroam is to relax and chill outside of racing. If there is a seamless balance between the two, then I would say that would be the evolution of sims.

How to do this? Its easy, make a freeroam area like LA Canyons, SRP, or what have you, and let it be the central online starting hub from which to meet other players and set up race events which shift to circuit content. If the central hub sessions are populated by rank, all the better.

Streamlined play like this should be the future of simracing. Car and track content alone does not cut it anymore.
 
Richard Wilks
orange400 said:
The key word is Freeroam. Its not about pirated content. The appeal of freeroam is to relax and chill outside of racing. If there is a seamless balance between the two, then I would say that would be the evolution of sims.

How to do this? Its easy, make a freeroam area like LA Canyons, SRP, or what have you, and let it be the central online starting hub from which to meet other players and set up race events which shift to circuit content. If the central hub sessions are populated by rank, all the better.

Streamlined play like this should be the future of simracing. Car and track content alone does not cut it anymore.
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Sorry, but i have absolutely no interest in what you described, and many simracers also dont.

There are games like that already, and i dont see what living some sort of street racing dudebro fantasy has to do with simRACING.

That just fuels my conviction that AC today is basically the need for speed and forza horizon crowd living the dream with a cheap game with an endless stream of "free" content.
 
D
Scott Harrison said:
According to this article it will have a proprietary Kunos engine with a new physics engine.

https://www.si.com/fannation/racing...and-new-physics-engine-revealed-by-publishers
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Physics yes, the graphics is not so certain. It was the original plan based on what Marco hinted in his interview, but I don't think it's something small team like Kunos can pull off esp. without Stefano. What was good in 2014 for AC is hardly acceptable by today's graphics standard, especially after such a good looking chap like ACC (not talking VR).
 
O
Richard Wilks said:
Sorry, but i have absolutely no interest in what you described, and many simracers also dont.

There are games like that already, and i dont see what living some sort of street racing dudebro fantasy has to do with simRACING.

That just fuels my conviction that AC today is basically the need for speed and forza horizon crowd living the dream with a cheap game with an endless stream of "free" content.
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That complacency is why simracing is niche and why theres no one to play with unless you either organize league races or bend over for iRenting.
And what is "dudebro" about freeroaming during downtime while waiting for a ranked race?
 
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Richard Wilks
orange400 said:
That complacency is why simracing is niche and why theres no one to play with unless you either organize league races or bend over for iRenting.
And what is "dudebro" about freeroaming during downtime while waiting for a ranked race?
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This has nothing to do with complacency. What you described is not circuit racing, rally racing, or anything akin to organized racing, its basically TDU online. Like i said there are plenty of games for that, that is not simracing.
 
O
Richard Wilks said:
This has nothing to do with complacency. What you described is not circuit racing, rally racing, or anything akin to organized racing, its basically TDU online. Like i said there are plenty of games for that, that is not simracing.
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Seems you don't understand what simracing is. A race with sim physics is sim racing. A ranked matchmaking system which keeps players engaged during downtime helps promote an active playerbase. That translates to more sim races. More structured "organized racing" can proceed from there.

It seems you're blinded by past games because of their casual focus and don't see what it will take to grow the genre. If AC2 adopted this model or something similar, I think it would quickly become the top sim, even with limited content at release. Again, leading to more of what you personally like.

What definitely won't work is another car/track sim with barebones online, as the market is already heavily saturated with superior alternatives due to years of mod support.
 
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