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.

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

 

[T04STY]

Wow. I bet it won't look like this on my PC

haha yea I know that feeling

 

[Torcano]

I'll ignore the car number errors

I think the 55 number is supposed to be something of significance, like the 5th of May there will be an announcement or some such. Aaaaah, the truth is out there, wake up sheeple.

 

[T04STY]

Fingers crossed for that wtcrlicense!

Raceroom already has the WTCR licence. The Audi can already be driven. Give it a go, it's great!

 

[ouvert]

Raceroom already has the WTCR licence. The Aidi can already be driven. Give it a go, it's great!

really ? do we know when they plan to relase WTCR cars?

 

[Bryan O'Connor]

Looks a lot like pCARS which isn't a bad thing at all.

Just wondering what the track list will be like as the (european) Blancpain season isn't very long.
If you include the Sprint and Endurance series the tracks are;

Endurance;
Paul Ricard
Monza
Silverstone
Spa
Barcelona

Sprint;
Zolder
Brands Hatch
Mizano
Hungaroring

Quality tracks mind, just might not have the variety to sustain it for a long period?

 

[samcar304]

Can't wait, looks great. Hopefully they add some more series too. Would he nice to see GT4, British GT or even a VLN style series added to the game. It's got all the features we could ever want as endurance racing fans, I just hope they build on it to make it even stronger.

 

[Steve Worrell]

Looks a lot like pCARS which isn't a bad thing at all.

Just wondering what the track list will be like as the (european) Blancpain season isn't very long.
If you include the Sprint and Endurance series the tracks are;

Endurance;
Paul Ricard
Monza
Silverstone
Spa
Barcelona

Sprint;
Zolder
Brands Hatch
Mizano
Hungaroring

Quality tracks mind, just might not have the variety to sustain it for a long period?

The championship is only 5 rounds?

 

[samcar304]

The championship is only 5 rounds?

There is 2 championships, Sprint and endurance. Both have 5 rounds but they contribute to the overall winners cup so all in all its 10 rounds.

 

[Andrew Harper]

Wow. I bet it won't look like this on my PC

Yes it will certainly be interesting to see what the minimum specs will be.

Watching some of the YouTube tutorials for the UE it is brilliantly simplistic to create lush detailed environments with tonnes of detail. However you would need an absolute beast of a PC to even get decent FPS. So a balance is required and I'm sure the team are well aware of this. You don't need huge amounts of trackside detail, it's mostly in the environment and the lighting. I think that's what impresses me about Raceroom, even as a DX9 game it just looks damn good. Especially in the evening.

Shame that the kart sim that used UE4 never materialised. It would have given us an idea of what hardware you need to run this engine properly.

I would imagine the cars featured in the promotional videos and pictures are probably almost identical in detail to the current AC ones. They already have very impressive levels of detail on them and it wouldn't make much sense to double to detail again for example.

I think the issue most of us will suffer with is weather. I can see rain and weather putting a lot of strain on our PC's

Makes me slightly sad I suppose, apart from PC and PC2 I can run all my sims in 4k with high levels of detail and they just look brilliant. Think I may struggle with this one a bit though!

I may be going to the Spa 24 this year, if I do I'll try and report back if they have demo(s) running.

Can't remember what I saw at Silverstone last year, it may have been Project Cars but not sure.

 

[BhZ]

Can't wait, looks great. Hopefully they add some more series too. Would he nice to see GT4, British GT or even a VLN style series added to the game. It's got all the features we could ever want as endurance racing fans, I just hope they build on it to make it even stronger.

They already specified it will be a blancpain game, so anything not included in the blancpain won't be included in the game. My guess would be new cars and skins each new season, possibly the gt4 cars since the asian blancpain has them and some asian tracks hopefully. I doubt we will see anything else apart from those.

 

[Richard Dastardly]

RE tracks: that's a decent amount for an initial release, it takes *ages* to properly detail 3d environments these days. With the way GT3 is spread out these days it does lend itself to addon series later as a way of adding more tracks.

Pluses: Spa, Brands Hatch
Do we have to?: Zolder, Hungaroring... who's ever going to voluntarily join a Hungaroring race

Oh for the nurburgring 24hr track with modern graphics.

 

[samcar304]

They already specified it will be a blancpain game, so anything not included in the blancpain won't be included in the game. My guess would be new cars and skins each new season, possibly the gt4 cars since the asian blancpain has them and some asian tracks hopefully. I doubt we will see anything else apart from those.

Ah right, thanks for clarifying. I wasn't really sure. I was hoping more SRO governing series could be included but if it's blancpain only then I understand

 

[BhZ]

Ah right, thanks for clarifying. I wasn't really sure. I was hoping more SRO governing series could be included but if it's blancpain only then I understand

Well, see it this way. The base of the game could theoretically handle any series, so let's say (it's just an example) that they get the WEC license. They could release a game based on WEC with the same graphic engine, wec tracks and rules. It would require way less effort than it did now for example and i think that if they had the same track in multiple series, it would be easy for them to put them in new games. So while we know we won't see anything else apart from the blancpain in this game, i wouldn't exclude the possibility of a new game in 2020/21 for example. After all they said that this is just the tip of the iceberg...

 

[Peter Kerényi]

Ah right, thanks for clarifying. I wasn't really sure. I was hoping more SRO governing series could be included but if it's blancpain only then I understand

In the RD interview they confirmed ACC will include the 2018 and 2019 seasons of Blancpain GT Series, so BES and BSS. Furthermore, Marco said if the game will be successful and there will be an interest in other series within the SRO nothing is ruled out.

 

[Andrew Harper]

In the RD interview they confirmed ACC will include the 2018 and 2019 seasons of Blancpain GT Series, so BES and BSS. Furthermore, Marco said if the game will be successful and there will be an interest in other series within the SRO nothing is ruled out.

Yes, exactly. It's great to have a wishlist but the licence is with Blancpain and the SRO. So don't expect anything other than the Sprint and Endurance series at the moment. I would imagine the most likely scenario is adding GT4 at a later date.

Not sure where the rights are to historics like GT1 but I suppose in theory they could add those for novelty factor.

 

[Richard Dastardly]

I would imagine anything too esoteric would go into AC2 rather than be an ACC addon - there's huge advantages to keeping a tight focus production-wise, less so for us of course. Even VLN would be a big increase in scope - might be one track but it'd bring all the issues of multiclass. Might think "oh that's just tagging cars", but think about getting AI to let cars in a faster class past & all that'd be required to implement that.

 

[BhZ]

I would imagine anything too esoteric would go into AC2 rather than be an ACC addon - there's huge advantages to keeping a tight focus production-wise, less so for us of course. Even VLN would be a big increase in scope - might be one track but it'd bring all the issues of multiclass.

Blancpain asia features multiclass racing already.

 

[Peter Kerényi]

Yes, exactly. It's great to have a wishlist but the licence is with Blancpain and the SRO. So don't expect anything other than the Sprint and Endurance series at the moment. I would imagine the most likely scenario is adding GT4 at a later date.

Not sure where the rights are to historics like GT1 but I suppose in theory they could add those for novelty factor.

I'd be so happy if we got something from PWC, GT4, British GT or Blancpain Asia down the line. If only for the new tracks

Historics (and street cars from which the GT3 variants are derived) would be nice to have as extras, even if only for time trials and similar modes. Like you are a driver for Ferrari and you do promos for the street car 488 GTB, as well as drive e.g. the 550 GT1. BTW SRO even has a series that has historic racecars and hypercars so it's not far fetched. For modes see for example F1 2017's classics.

The collaboration of SRO and Kunos has great potential. BUT we need to be patient, wait for the release, play the game and not think about what could be just yet. I often have the bad habit of not looking at what I have but what I could have.

 

[vegaguy5555]

Wow. I bet it won't look like this on my PC

I was told you just turn it on and everything works. I'm the only one that has any problems so you should be good!

 

[Richard Dastardly]

Blancpain asia features multiclass racing already.

BP Europe which is what is in ACC so far does not though - and there are some interesting things needed to implement in AI for multiclass ( mostly "how to be passed without giving up position in my own race", but that's also good AI for being lapped anyway ). If it *is* then you open up every other SRO series too - British GT would be great fun given car spread & track selection, although I suspect rather niche.