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!

 

[Ferenczy36]

In my opinion this has it's positives and negatives. Always great to see continual growth in the sim racing market with a new title, great that this is from the same great folks that brought us AC, and nice to see someone taking from iRacing's playbook when it comes to a rating/ranking system and online racing community.

My only concerns or hopes is that it doesn't start favoring eye candy over physics, they don't fully abandon AC just yet, and that it doesn't water down the online racing community even more when trying to find servers to join in on a quick race at the spur of the moment. Right now as it is, the times of the day I can usually break away from work and other responsibilities to play, there isn't a lot of multiplayer activity. It's usually one server with 10-12 cars, and another two to three servers with 3-4 cars...and that's about it. Not too many options.

For now though, this is a plus and therefore my cup is half full.

 

[melanieuk]

The resident rF2 hater is out in full-force.

Nah there was no need for him to mention rFactor 2, and in the same sentence how "simcadey" AC was to him,he did it twice, so how does that make me a rfactor 2 hater, and even if I was, what's it to you.
If anything rFactor 2 and Project cars gets the most hate on this site, so are you going to call those haters, move on and enjoy the great work the team puts in here at RD OK.

 

[Zuffenhausen Weiss]

Have you played BeamNG? its a pretty good crash simulator.

Not yet, looks interesting though if my HD space allows it - mods from rF2, rF1, AMS and some from AC ate it up (though recently deleted 30gb of AC tracks and most all the mod cars except a few on my C drive) - give it a go one day but ATM, going through the rF1 mods I'm clearing out despite playing for a month (because of lack of car packs in rF2)

 

[Thomas Cameron]

Instabuy for me , i only just built a ryzen 1700 /geforce 1070 setup looks like this'll need more horses ... no pun intended

 

[InsaneOzzie]

WOW, talk about out of the blue awesome news to wake up to....but it looks like I'll be put in a position of finally having to upgrade to Windows 10, from what I can see on the Steam page 7 isn't supported. But I guess it's a small problem to deal with as most Win10 issues have already been sorted by the Windows community.
Defo will be following ACC's progress with interest

 

[Apexxer]

Was just thinking the other day, if Kunos would be releasing any more official content for AC... And then I thought about what they write in news articles on development and it always lead me think that they would be releasing a new game as opposed to new content for AC based off of what they say... La Viola...

 

[Erik Frisen]

Wow awesome! Can't wait for release! Hopefully this will make Simbin step up their game for GTR3 release as well. Battle of the GT3!

 

[Epistolarius]

The resident rF2 hater is out in full-force.

So you're defending and agree with the person that was replied to?

Realism, I bet they will claim to make it realistic but in fact far less ball-breakingly realistic (as rF2) to not alienate their usual fanbase, the Top Gear watching, Ferrari poster hanging on their bedroom wall console gamers...like Battlefield fanboys claim their fave FPS to be more sim compared to CoD (and one had the gall to compare BF3's realism to rF1).

I'll never understand why people constantly check news for games they're not interested in only to trash talk them in the comments.

 

[motoliser]

Looks great. But I would prefer to see Assetto Corsa 2 with all of that included.

 

[Lachlan B]

To me there is no reason that this game is only bound to Blancpain. Of course the initial graphics are going to advertise it as the official game of the series. The main thing that makes me think that the Sprint and Enduro series are not going to be all is because the SRO own a fairly decent variety of series.

Its mentioned that they want to create a fairly hefty offline career mode, progression wise you either use the F1 2017 system of changing teams etc. Or you go for a progression from lower series to reach the main game.

The SRO run British GT, two GT4 series for North and South Europe, Blancpain GT Asia, Intercontinental GT Challenge and I believe the PWC. It also has ties to Australian GT and I'm sure many others. The potential content pool from just the SRO is pretty mega and it would make a lot of sense to include either at launch or afterwards.

From a more far fetched imagination if I was WEC or IMSA for example and saw what Blancpain has done with Assetto, I would at least give it a look. All the mechanics to include those series would not take long to implement, meaning its only content like the cars and tracks that has to be worked on rather than a full new platform like how Formula 1 has its own game.....

I'm curious as to what other people think of my line of thought....

 

[Zuffenhausen Weiss]

So you're defending and agree with the person that was replied to?



I'll never understand why people constantly check news for games they're not interested in only to trash talk them in the comments.

It just pops up on the right side of the page, so took an opportunity to read plus it's on the sim racing news everywhere. Anybody claiming realism is just asking for it that's why I viewed it with cynicism given my experience with AC.

Actually, I didn't dislike AC 100% as there are good and bad points, and do recommend it to new sim racers as rF2 is too much to take in for a lot of them but both better than PCars 2 though. It was rF2 and rF1 gave me what I wanted and was willing to trade fancy graphics to accommodate 40 plus cars on track at once (something you can't do unless on mod tracks) and as I said, the lack of car packs prevents me from enjoying rF2 fully.

I all but stopped playing AC recently as those months in and when new sims came in via offers plus it felt it wasn't cracked up to be the sim it claimed to be once I compared them together.

 

[Austin Ogonoski]

Super, super, super excited. I think a lot of us wanted GTR 3 and this is basically GTR 3. Day one, hour one purchase for me. Will probably sink an unhealthy amount of time into the title.

Not sure how AC fans will feel though. No mods, no drifting, no free-roam maps, no "track day" servers, and a focus on ranked multiplayer. Remember, people bought AC because it wasn't iRacing. And it fostered both a great drifting community and great free-roam track day community. Those two groups are now excluded from this.

Which leaves the eSports tryhards such as myself. And there aren't many of us.

Sim Racing System is wonderful and there's a great competitive sub-community in AC (Sai Yip = God), but it's the same 50 to 100 people racing in every event. Outside of European hours you were lucky to get 16 cars total for a GT3 race - some we had 10, others we had 4. And SRS isn't some little app. Everyone who owns AC generally knows about it and have already decided whether they want to use it or not.

Awesome project regardless. Will buy day one. Will buy all DLC. Will stay up til 3am building setups.

Definitely curious to see if the feeling is reciprocated by the masses. Remember, Race Pro on the Xbox 360 got a lot of people into sim racing, but Race Pro as a product was a commercial failure. And 1,382 people might profess their love for Richard Burns Rally on sim forums far and wide, but RBR sank the company that made it.

 

[DND]

Now we just need someone to do the same with the IMSA license!

Unfortunately Forza and IMSA currently have that relationship established, but for how long I am not sure....hopefully not too long.

This initial announcement is very exciting and certainly checks a number of boxes for me. I think it establishes a benchmark for others to aspire to in the concept of concentrating on the core essentials of a racing sim. Good Luck to Kunos on the development of ACC.

Thought on nVidia and the cost of GPU's being driven by reasons that have little to do with gaming and more to do with mining. Could it be possible that it is cost prohibitive for gamers to upgrade a dedicated card.
Can't explain this one though the card I bought new 21 months ago,

 

[melanieuk]

I'm curious as to what other people think of my line of thought....

It's do'able they do run various race types has you've mentioned.

I'm confused by some of the comments here claiming it'll get boring because it will only have Ten or so Tracks. So how many tracks are in the codemaster F1 series and why aren't people questioning that, doesnt make sense to me to question one, yet accept the other.

Anybody claiming realism is just asking for it that's why I viewed it with cynicism given my experience with AC.

Really did you question Studio 397 claiming they have "class leading physics", as far as I'm concerned class leading is when everyone else is copying you or following what you're doing, I don't see anyone copying or following them.

Actually, I didn't dislike AC 100% as there are good and bad points, and do recommend it to new sim racers as rF2 is too much to take in for a lot of them but both better than PCars 2 though.

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.

 

[ozm8ey]

I'd rather they made Assetto Corsa 2 to be honest rather than just a single series game.

 

[pjcforpres2020]

Stoked to see this - clearly this is the start of the AC2 rollout - and love the model this appears to suggestion - fully licensed series to begin with, which hopefully means more don't developed series to follow with next gen graphics and physics.

 

[Hash_V8]

Cool,Ac has come a long way,will be jumping on board the early access, if for anything, just to annoy mel, and keep on top of Ai behaviour too i suppose.

 

[Cristian Haba]

What is happening in this thread, just lol, I have seen and read everything now. This life, is a good life.

 

[Erik Frisen]

I'm glad they decided not to go the AC2 route. I'd rather have a fully fledged racing series and with all their attention to that series. What would ac2 bring to the table? Same content but just with weather effects? Or 150 new cars plus 5-6 new tracks? Nah this was the way to go IMO. Plus GT3 is the most exciting series for me and seemingly many others.

 

[Graham Botha]

I wonder where this leaves SimBin?

Probably in the dust by the look of things. Been radio silence on that title since it was announced.

Fairly pleased with this announcement and definitely hoping that they will add other series as DLC going forward. It would be great to have WEC in addition to Blancpain as potential DLC at some point for that LMP1,2 and 3 fix? Fortunately UE4 supports VR out of the box, which is also a plus. They can take some tips from PC2 around a fully integrated UI for VR and also how triple screen support was done (as simple to configure as currently in AC but supports different monitor sizes and no need to configure NVidia surround). Hoping that Competizione lives up to all expectations, so lets see where the rabbit hole leads ...