Assetto Corsa Competizione, The Official Blancpain GT Series Game Announced!

[Paul Jeffrey]

Top GT3 licence, UE4 graphics, day to night cycle, dynamic weather, advanced physics with a focus on realism.. is Assetto Corsa Competizione the sim we've all been waiting for?

When Kunos Simulazioni hinted at a big announcement a few days ago, many thought it would simply be a case of confirming another licence for the already well developed Assetto Corsa software, or at the very most a potential AC2 first announcement. Not so, the team over in Italy have been hard at work behind the scenes developing a very exciting new piece of software, and what is more the new Assetto Corsa Competizione title will focus on a single racing category, the incredible Blancpain Endurance GT3 series.. a welcome hark back to the days when racing simulation developers focussed all their attention to detail on a specific racing series, something that Kunos are keen to replication with this newly announced IP.

Set to feature a pretty significant shift away from the basis of the Assetto Corsa title we all know and love, Kunos have confirmed that AC Competizione will feature what are described as "photo realistic" graphics thanks to the use of the incredibly powerful Unreal Engine 4 graphics engine, allowing Kunos to move away from the single light source solution of Assetto Corsa and finally bring both time of day and weather effects to their racing game - a must when you consider the Spa 24 Hour is a key event in the real life Blancpain championship.

As well as the obvious visual benefits brought from a move to Unreal 4 (see screenshots attached to this article), another key talking point from the simulation announcement comes by way of confirmation that Kunos are looking to build a sizable offline career mode around the new game, with driving school tutorials making a welcome return to a popular modern day simulation.

Alongside what promises to be a substantial offline element, the initial press release indicates that Kunos are also aiming to make considerable changes to the way Assetto Corsa veterans experience online play, with an eye on the emerging eSport marketplace the Italian developers are promising a well rounded ranking and matchmaking online system, potentially encouraging a much more evenly balanced online experience and less of those famous public lobby first corner crashes...

Although only initially announced this afternoon, it looks like development is well on the way with this exceptionally exciting new title. Projected for a summer Steam EA release, I'll leave you with the new trailer to get the juices flowing for now...

Assetto Corsa Competizione should be available on Steam Early Access Summer 2018.

Check out the Assetto Corsa Sub Forum here at RaceDepartment for the latest news and discussions regarding the sim. We host quality League and Club Racing events, have a selection of fantastic mods to download and some of the best community conversation. Join in the discussion today.

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Excited? Looking forward to the new title? Let us know below!

 

[Amir Vodokotlic]

Interview to Marco
https://www.spreaker.com/user/motorsportrepublic/lintervista-a-marco-massarutto-per-parla

Can someone translate please.

Or summery of interesting points.

Thanks

 

[Andrew Harper]

From now on there will be more people playing the Blancpain GT Series as there are fans on the grandstands. At the Nurburgring last year it was embarrassing to see so little paying spectators for such a cool series of cars.

Yes it's slightly sad to see, I've been to Blancpain Silverstone for two years running. Last year it was ok, year before it was really empty. Admission was cheap, children were free. Even at the Spa 24 the grandstands were empty for almost all the race, albeit that's a massive circuit.

I think Blancpain probably make their money via the teams, entry fees, etc. Spectators help the circuit to some degree.

Mind you when I think back to the day's of BPR/GT1 the crowds were a bit thin then as well.

Will be interesting to see what WEC is like in August with Alonso and the warmer calendar date.

However I'm not complaining as I can get decent photos without battling with crowds! lol

Of the four wheel variety, F1 always came top, with BTCC 2nd.in the UK (in my view).

The only exceptions are things like Goodwood, Silverstone classic where the crowd figures are always very good.

GT3 (and endurance racing in general) is really healthy at the moment, great time to be a sportscar fan

 

[BhZ]

Can someone translate please.

Or summery of interesting points.

Thanks

Driver swaps confirmed at the beginning of the interview.
They spent 8 months in R&D and decided to use the UE4 for their game and it will probably used for their future projects.
Early access (beta version) at a lower price than the release one.
Many teams use AC for the training of their pilots. Some of the teams also asked them some advices to build their own simulator.
Direct collaboration between pilots, teams and kunos.
They will use the 2018 season for the content.
There will be 10 circuits used in the Blancpain series (you can find them on the blancpain calendar).
They will follow their philosophy, so the handling will be realistic (as it was in AC).
Tyre model, aero and suspension geometry will be improved thanks to new developers that have been hired in the last year (one of them is also a mechanical engineer).
ACC will be more versatile and easier to use for people with less experience (which doesn't mean less realism).
The feeling of the car will be improved.
They received numerous esports contacts, but for the moment they are focusing on the development of the game. (Based on the way he talked about this, i believe esports will come)
Official leaderboards (basically RSR inside the game).
They hired the guy behind minorating.

 

[KODIAK]

bentley! bentley! bentley! bentley! bentley!

unless the corvette decides to make an appearance!

 

[DaVeX↯]

From audio (hope I understand right):
sprint races, endurance ones, diver swap, strategy from pitwall
phisics engine as been reviewed and improved to 64 bit
AI as been reworked too
all rules will be present ingame flags, stewarts and so on
ranking/rating for servers (minorating is working with them now)
night, rain confirmed
video is pure gameplay no pre rendered vid
full support from Epic
real working mirrors
better phisics thanks to mechanical engineer on team
better tire model suspension geometry and car body phisics

 

[M-Bimmer]

Good one Paul, you touched on the one thing that people seem to forget that SRO also runs the GT4 European series and much more. If Kunos adds a full GT4 grid some time down the line then it is just gonna be heaven for all I'm concerned. The latest roster of GT4 cars is just so diverse, tons of manufacturer variety in a class of cars that are actually fun to drive. God I cannot wait for the early access.

Had the same thought when i read the announcement.

Here are all their GT series for those who might not be aware
SRO Motorsport Group (GT series) by M-Bimmer, on Flickr

 

[Alex72]

It will have tracks from the get go?

 

[RufGTI]

Had the same thought when i read the announcement.

Here are all their GT series for those who might not be aware
SRO Motorsport Group (GT series) by M-Bimmer, on Flickr

I guess that if the Blancpain Ultracar GT1 Sports Club was also be integrated somehow only few people would drive the GT3 cars

 

[ShredatorFIN]

Question: Someone know something about the sound ?

"Thanks to the multi-channel audio sampling of real GT cars, the game conveys captivating and immersive acoustic surroundings and realistic environmental effects."

Source assettocorsa.net

This is huge for me, as I always thought many racing games focus just on graphics but not audio, which is 50% of the audiovisual immersion. Hope it will beat RaceRoom.

Luca does top job if he has good samples, for example F2004. And sound engine is probably better this time around.

 

[dud]

It's not invalid to say that Win7 is old enough to justify pushing it out.

From my perspective, the perspective of somebody who uses Windows for gaming and nothing else, I have to remark that Win10 is not an updated Win7. It is more like a new OS with new policies. I heard that they pushed some advertising crap along with the updates that mitigate meltdown. The concept of a base OS forcing advertising on me is alien to me. Not to mention all that useless moving around of base functionality that comes with each new Windows (new Windows, not new Windows version).

Also, I pay $60 to Kunos for the game, and it forces me to give $100 or whatever to Microsoft, for a product that is not acting in my interest. I would rather give more money to Kunos. This is all backwards.

 

[Marcel vd Aa]

I'm seeing a lot of people worrying about win7 and UE4. Offcourse win7 doesn't support dx12 so you'll miss out on some graphic eyecandy but UE4 works beautifully on Win7. I've been playing Train Sim World for some time now and it is one of the heaviest games imaginable when it comes to open worlds and scenery and it runs beautiful on my rig. Look it up on steam, it looks amazing. And if ACC turns out this great when it comes to graphics and combines it with racing I'm very happy. So stop worrying and wait until there's more to say about minimal system specs. And I can't imagine that they will exclude Win7 from the OS's needed. It's still the most used OS according to most gaming surveys I read somewhere...

 

[FeltHat]

yup, almost 72% of steam users still use windows7

 

[Glen Orpheus]

AC was the only early access game I've backed that I'm truly happy with, in fact its my main goto sim and i have them all, so i'll be more than happy to back this project.
Bring on the Summer already

oh yeah one last thing.... i hope we're not driving round nighttime spa with a constant fireworks display cos that'll just make it look like a cheap arcade racer

 

[Zuffenhausen Weiss]

From now on there will be more people playing the Blancpain GT Series as there are fans on the grandstands. At the Nurburgring last year it was embarrassing to see so little paying spectators for such a cool series of cars.

Embarrassing? Speaking from a UK perspective, from the time I (used to) marshal at sportscar races including WEC, Britcar, Blancpain GT and British GT; crowd attendances have always been sizable or dismal except when taking place on public holidays (like Oulton Park British GT) because it isn't the late 80s Group C (when they used to draw in huge crowds - mainly the Brits had the TWR Jaguars to root for) and like series organisers, paying spectators are not their main source of revenue, it's the drivers and teams who are.

This is what I think - SRO gets most of their revenue running a gentleman driver's club and some of the teams run a driver club for gentleman drivers who can bring money into the team, that's why 1) SRO have been around since the early 1990s and have outlived the all the GT classes out there since 1993 2) when I once marshalled at the Blancpain Silverstone, I used to see so many supercars at their special parking lot including the Veyron, Enzo, Carrera GT, etc which I rarely see in other series including BTCC. They are smart enough to know who the audiences are and I think it's a good move along with showing their series live via YT.

 

[David Wright]

yup, almost 72% of steam users still use windows7

Well the Chinese ones do. Not sure how big AC is in China. 5 months ago the figure was 45%.

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/258913-what-the-hell-happened-to-the-steam-hardware-survey

 

[motoliser]

Kunos better hurry with the main course ...I dont see AC fans happy with a starter for a long time!

 

[Zuffenhausen Weiss]

Project cars 2 does have great physics and force feedback, whether you like it or not its up their one of the top three, no sim out their touches its tyre model right now, not even Assetto Corsa as much as I love ac.

IMHO, PCars 2's physics compared to AC is like shandy to lager, could be great but it's watered down to keep the masses unaware and not surprising for an AAA title

 

[Matteo Pagin]

I'm adding a sligthly longer translation of the interview in case someone is interested:

- Drivers swaps confirmed
- Ranking system for both skill and safety similar to iRacing (he mentions the latest GranTurismo's one)
- Choice of Unreal Engine driven by desire of focusing on the features that were lacking in Ac1, basically "gameplay features" like implementing the various RL regulations, better career mode, better AI ecc.
(He supports this decision by saying that Kunos' competitors, even though with a way bigger workforce, have decided to avoid writing an Engine by themselves)
- They have worked 8 months during 2017 on R&D testing the Unreal Engine, Marco says that it has been an huge risk because they still didn't know if that Engine was the right choice..
He mentions as an example the need to do separate renders for the mirrors, which that had trouble to implement initially as the Engine is "general" and not geared towards sim use
This required weeks of telemetry of how the Engine works, how it uses CPU/GPU ecc.
- The assets needed some remork as well, in order to be optimised for the different engine (as a result of the aforementioned analysis)
- He praises the photorealism of the Unreal Engine, even though some months were needed before both the eye candy and the framerate started to get to the desired level
- They took some inspiration on how to solve some issues they had from videos of other games made with the Unreal Engine, mainly the ones made my Milestone
- Early access price smaller than final price, still no release date announced, not even approximately
- Many drivers asked Kunos help to setup simulators in order to train for new tracks, for example
- With this license they are going to have an even stronger collaboration between Kunos and drivers/racing teams
- They will be at many racing weekend in order to gather data from the teams
- Expected AC sales : 100 thousand copies, results about 1.4 millions of users
- He mentions comments of people on Facebook that were saying to him that the training/playing time in Assetto proved useful to catch the car in RL critical situations
- ACCompetizione won't be a stepdown in terms of realism(obviously cit.), actually they have more time compared to the previous year to develop the tyre model/aero model/suspension model (they hired 4 new programmers, one of whom is a mechanical Engineer)
- They are trying to improve even further the feeling of the car and of what it is doing
- Kunos is working on a connection between virtual and real Blancpain (for example ideal time laps vs real ones, plus something similar to RSR with invitations to the races for the fastest guys, he mentions GranTurismo's Academy )
- One of the programmers that they hired is the creator of Minorating (congrats!)
Sorry for the rough translation but I was writing while listening!

 

[Conrad Miller]

Before you accuse of me being a fanboy; I, in fact, don't play as often as I wished (AMS, in fact, have more playtime than both rF2 and AC put together though I don't think it's all that perfect) because it's lack of car packs that is why I don't play it regularly and I'm not a single seater fan enough to - AC had all the potential to be great but what's the point of downloading skins or mods when you can't use them online, AI racing terrible and from driving, it feels like it's hardly realistic at all. Also there's some incident I've encountered such as spinning off and hitting a wall at even 30mph, it's laughably unrealistic like you can drive as if nothing happened. Also, because I don't have time to engage in any racing or the setups, the online trackdays (which I have time for) is full of d-heads, that's why it's so popular with these types.

Finally, one intelligent guy among all the sheep. Totally agree.

By the way: https://twitter.com/GRCseries/status/966409719828000768

 

[KODIAK]

with improvements to the physics, i hope people on the older game get an update.