“Assetto Corsa Needs More Tracks” (does it?)

[Davide Nativo]

Looking into one of the most debated arguments about the Italian sim.

One of the usual complaints regarding Assetto Corsa was that it does not feature many tracks. Criticism usually revolved around the quite heavily presence of Italian circuits, even minor ones, but almost no tracks from the Asian or American continent. European selection is also limited to a handful of renowned locations.

Personally, I see the reasons behind the discontent, as the total number of tracks is of about 15, 16 whether you consider or not Trento Bondone and the historical ones. Adding to that figure are some fantasy venues like Black Cat County or places like the Drag Strip or the Drift pad, which are limited to very specific use. At the same time though, I stand with those who value quality over quantity, and having a decent collection of laser-scanned tracks is preferable to me than having more but with lower grade consistency.

I am also convinced that this issue is mostly limited to the console players. Why I say that is pretty obvious, I believe: Modding. Xbox One and PlayStation 4 users have no possibilities to extend the AC track roster in any way. PC players instead have a fine selection of circuits available at their disposal, and 90% of these are gratis to download for anyone.

Quality is also very high, with many of these recreations being very faithful to the original, result of many hours of work spent on every fine little detail and sometimes started with even LiDAR data at hand. I think that no one can really argue that at the moment of writing of this article, we have many beautiful tracks free for AC, expanding further the possibilities of the sim.

It really is a matter of being able to make the most of the resources available, searching in the download section, looking for what could suit your needs and enjoy it while thanking the author for his/her work. A suggestion I dare give also is - take your time. Unfortunately, we as simracers have become rather spoiled. When we had just a half dozen cars to be run on a handful of tracks in just a couple of sims, almost nobody used to complain that there wasn’t enough to have fun with. Now that we have a half dozen different sims, each featuring quite a selection of different vehicles and circuits, we always pretend more.

I believe the problem lies within the fact that we do not commit to a car or a track for more than a few hours, after which we feel bored and in need of a change. That is not constructive, and makes us unable to fully appreciate what we are given. Practicing, doing some time attacks, developing consistency, should take days. All that should then converge into racing the AI, looking for or hosting multiplayer competitions on that specific venue. Jumping from place to place, vehicle to vehicle, does not help. I maybe take this a stretch further, but isn’t this kind of behaviour also making us unhappy most of the times in our real lives? Commitment is the answer. As I said in another article of mine, having many choices means that you actually have to make a choice.

Allow me to tell that once again I think that simracing can teach us to be a better person, if we use it as a proper tool of personal growth. If used improperly, it can favour bad habits that we already exhibit in our daily lives, and maybe worsen them. If put to proper use, it can become a way to weed out those bad ways and help us find a better balance.

Therefore, look back now at the circuits you have in AC, both official and 3rd party ones, thinking what would happen if you’d decide to spend even just a week on each, perhaps with different cars and in different conditions but always on the same location. With the clear intention of knowing it by heart and learn it in every detail, appreciating all that went behind it, whoever built it. Now tell me you still believe there are not enough tracks for you to have fun with, if you do.

Oh boy do we like mods! If you do too then we have you covered with our fantastic Assetto Corsa modding archive. From downloads to a place for mod discussion, we have it all for you to enjoy, check it out today! If you don't fancy trying out some of the awesome community created tracks and cars then drop in on our Assetto Corsa sub forum to chat about the game with your fellow fans. Interaction and threads make forums fun, so start one today!

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[Gabyzen64]

Mod Edit: this is an english speaking forum please use it in future.

Interesting topic, I share the thought of the article in part. Better to have less traces and work hard on them to learn them better than two hundred, but then use less than half of them. Personally my favorites are Monza, Spa, Nordschleife and Mugello. I have about 218 cars and 68 tracks (including those of the game), all of high quality and I do not complain about the lack of tracks or cars. With the mod you fill all this.

 

[Celtic Pharaoh]

Um according to another website I know, there are in fact 933 tracks for AC so I would think there are enough tracks

 

[Davide Nativo]

*Thanks for another great article btw.

Thank you

 

[Zoltan76]

Then you're missing out on quite a few. There's at least 10 high quality tracks available nowadays.

Which are...

 

[Zoltan76]

Great article it is I think.
I'm a big track/car collector. Don't misunderstand me, I prefer quality over quantity, but mods turn to be good or crap only after trying them so I downloaded hundreds of them and kept approx. 25% of these mods.
I love RD because nearly all content is at top quality but to be honest, there are some (not too much, but still) really great mod which are not represented here.

And yes, trying and learning tracks is always fun.

Can someone list the top quality modders?

 

[Michael Hornbuckle]

Anyone know what new tracks are coming from the top modders?

Mosport and Barber

 

[Jurld]

Barber would be really nice. I went to the Indycar weekend last spring and have been wanting to drive this track ever since.

Aside from that.. I'd kind of forgotten that AC comes out of the can with so few tracks. I spent the obligatory "kid in candy store" weekend here downloading and trying out mods. There are some great mods available, for sure.

Then I got PC2 and never looked back (much). That game just takes it to the next level for me, as far as being a more complete and less frustrating entertainment experience. But even though it has a large selection of tracks, I really do miss a few from AC and other games. Zandvoort being the main one.. The fact that it will never have Barber is really too bad.

I will absolutely settle into a single track for long periods of time if I enjoy driving it. Having the leaderboards and ghost cars in PC2 time trials helps me gauge progress, but a lot of the time I am just out there driving around because it relaxes me. This is where AC really shines. Mods like Lake Louise and the new California Canyons are fantastic for this kind of driving.

 

[xmlinc]

pushing again AC? we need more tracks for rF2

 

[Mickdrs]

Long live the mighty modders.

 

[delpinsky]

AC = made for modding.
We have Custom Championships or we can create our own Career slot.

This means we have at our disposal plently of cars from many different motorsport Series, thanks to modders, but if we want to simulate those Series correctly, clearly we need the real tracks those Series race in as well.

That's why official "quality" tracks are never enough, in my opinion, if you can have cars from different Series. The more official laserscanned tracks, the better.

But if we want to race a single track over and over because we love it, because it's detailed, I don't see any problem with that. It's great, especially, if you can count on modded cars.

 

[Tbear]

AC is built for Modding.
Cars
Tracks
Apps
Skins
That's why I think most of us use it in the first place.

Assetto Corsa is the only thing on my gaming computer and I just installed a 2 Terabyte hard drive. Start about 1895 and fill it up Modders!

There is no reason Assetto Corsa will not contain the entire history of motor racing.

 

[CaptainBigleux]

As the others fellow members, I will say we are very happy on PC, lot of quality mods. You can find almost everything, or if not you can build it on RTB.

But the downside of this, is that we have maybe even too much sometimes, it can take hours to test different tracks or even different versions of a track. Instead of focusing on handful of tracks and trying to really enjoy them. I would call it the netflix effect. You spend more time choosing than playing.

Second downside, is the multiplayer aspect. Kunos should implement a feature like I used to know in Counter Strike back in the days, that when you want to connect to a server that plays a map (or a track in the case of AC) that you don't have on your PC yet, it upload automatically on your PC. Maybe Kunos could insert a label of "certified" tracks, to avoid illegal conversion to be downloaded this way.

 

[Trezoitao38]

It is a old sim. I have been playing Assetto since the first day Early Acess. For me, sometimes lack more tracks. There are very good mods and this is very good. Still I want more tracks.

For F1 cars Assetto Corsa miss some tracks. Tracks like Magione, as a example, is not good for F1 cars. Laguna Seca, Brands Hatch and Zandvoort is sort of, in my opinion not good for very fast cars.

So, when you are more focused on F1 cars, you have less tracks. Barcelona, Imola, Silverstone and Spa are very good tracks to F1 cars.

Also, Silverstone with just some adjustments can have 1 or 2 more layouts, so, why not?

Why not more historical tracks with the laser scanning that Kunos already have? Some like Spa 85, Silverstone 91, the many Imola layouts?

And, imagine Misano for the original Assetto Corsa. Imagine the option to select your favorite car from AC and drive on this track.

Why not Kunos?

 

[Daggerman]

They were just too damn slow with the track creation. If it were a case of manpower they could have outsourced the work. A lot of the tracks posted over from Ferrari VA look pretty shoddy and rough in places too. I am thankful for the tracks we have, I think for the most part they are reasonably accurate.

 

[el_mattpro]

Come on... Assetto Corsa have like 2.000 tracks counting every single mod out there, AC don't need more tracks, the only think i'll be glad to see is a "Laser Scanned pack of Formula 1 Tracks" (actual calendary 2018) that'll be pretty good, but more tracks?... neh, we have even WRC and GroupB rally stages, free roam, highways, real race tracks, fiction race tracks, laser scanned race tracks, modify race tracks (layouts wet + 100 cars on track for VLN) etc...

 

[Leonardo Ratafiá]

we have enough good tracks, great quality but as with money, hardware and (you name it), never is enough.
I think AC is the best modding platform of this century, it already beat rF1, maybe not in termns of quantity of tracks. And there are some great tracks and mountain pass road conversions out of RD.com. AC is plenty of life.

 

[Highbank]

Get Lilski on the payroll...really his tracks brought me to AC...Riverside Forever!

 

[Mascot]

Um according to another website I know, there are in fact 933 tracks for AC so I would think there are enough tracks

Crikey, there's over 300 more out there that I don't already have?
What is this website of which you speak?

 

[Andy-R]

Get Lilski on the payroll...really his tracks brought me to AC...Riverside Forever!

Be careful what you wish for! If that happens he'll be pumping out Nurburgring GP's and Silverstone GP's for the rest of his track creating career

 

[destinationriver]

In my opinion, there are plenty of good quality mod tracks. Theres nearly no track that you can't mod into AC. But what I would really like to see are some new laserscanned tracks. I know that Kunos stopped the development of AC and there will be no further updates, but they could at least add the new laserscanned tracks they used for ACC (Misano, Zolder, Paul Ricard, Hungaroring).

What I would be also very keen about are more historic tracks. I know that we already have Monza 66 and Silverstone 66 (and there are mods from so many other tracks and years, Monaco 66, Spa 66, Spa 92, Monza 88 and so on), but some official old tracks would be real great stuff.
And also some laserscanned US tracks would be real cool. Sure we have Laguna Seca, but what about tracks like... Indianapolis (road and oval), Daytona (road and oval), Road America, Watkins Glen, COTA, Long Beach...