Do you feel that AC will be the last sim of your life?

[Elaphe]

I do. Maybe if you are younger than me (and more optimistic) you have expectations in a brighter future. I have the feeling that there is no logic in expecting new sims in the future (such Assetto Corsa 2, for instance). The reason is the hardware. Newer games with photorealistic graphics with ray tracing, 4k, running in triple screens or high resolution VR headsets with lots of FOV, with real physics ala BeamNG Drive? That's impossible now and it will not be possible in many decades. The evolution of CPUs and GPUs is slow and almost stuck, with absurd prices and unable to supply enough computing power even for the games with have now under certain circumstances. Ten years ago I dreamt with better games; nowadays I dream with better hardware to improve the experience I have with AC.

 

[AccAkut]

Bolded is the answer. I've stopped trying out random mods and stick to those three. The only exception to that being the KTM Xbow mod that was commissioned by KTM and done by one of the modders here.

Lol you'll be missing out a lot then. Sort by Rating and enjoy.

 

[Ghoults]

I definitely hope it is not the last one but at the same time it does so many things well that it is hard to replace by any one single product. Just the fact alone that the official development has ended years ago and the actual game engine is still getting new features added is not just insane but also something never done before. Even in whole of game industry that is really unique. The quality of mods is also still very high and lots of new mods are being made and even started. There are lots of players online and lots of match makers and other services. And to top it off there is nothing out there to challenge it.

Even if you take long break from ac and come back it will be new and different. For sure ac still has many years in it. And not just in it but at the peak of all sims on all measurable meters. Player counts, content, hours played.

I remember playing gpl a lot and for long time after it was released. It was not because I thought gpl was so amazing. It was more about the other games being not that good or the other games had issues I did not want to deal with. Mostly physics issues. But gpl also had a problem that it was relatively stagnant game at the time. There were addons that improved some of the base game engine functionality but in the end what kept gpl afloat was new tracks and car models. Not even new cars per se. Mostly new tracks. Which gpl had tons and tons.

Finally what made me move away from gpl was live for speed. It was better all around. Except mods. But lfs still added skins, online skin downloading system and autocross track creator. Also lfs had pretty solid user experience and good online racing component. It had good car and track selection. It was good, fresh and more fun than gpl. At its peak lfs was amazing with its ranking systems and such, way before iracing. So I then played lfs a lot and for long time. The community was great and there was lots of things to do like skinning competitions in addition to actually just driving. It was progressing and it was fresh, fun and interesting.

But then lfs started to become stale. Its small amount of content started cathing up to it. Development has effectively been stopped for the last 14 years. I can keep doing the same thing for a while but what kept me playing gpl was the new tracks and other smaller things. Lfs hasn't added even those. It is weird looking back how quickly lfs died for me. But what killed it for me was its stale development and just its oldness and nothing being added to it. Then ac came. It added new things that I cared about. Good quality physics, extremely well done modding support, lots of new cars and tracks. I had occasionally played gpl while playing lfs. Gpl still had new content coming. But once I moved on from lfs it was dead. There was nothing new, nothing to see, no change.

So now I have played ac for quite some years. There is nothing better out there overall now that would made me switch like I did with gpl or lfs. Ac has just so many things going for it. Everything from gpl and lfs and a lot more. It just keeps getting better. There is also no chance of ac just dying of developer inactivity like happened with lfs. Even though official development has ended years and years ago.

So for me to move on from ac I think what it takes is that ac stops improving. That effectively means that people just lose interest. Once fewer and fewer people play ac and make mods and improvements for it and fewer people play online... once ac goes from being actively improved and new stuff being added to just a library of content that was once released then I'd guess it will be the end. It can be a slow death like with gpl if there is nothing to take its place. Or it can happen quickly like for me with lfs when something else is out there. But as long as you can take, say, a 6 month break and come back to improved game with loads of new content.. ac is not going anywhere.

The thing is though even if ac2 comes out it is not a guaranteed replacement or even an improvement. For example rfactor1 was the king of sims and modding for quite some time. But rf2 did so many things wrong that it is almost impossible to look back and think its predecessor used to dominate. Ac2 can also make many mistakes and not end up anything for anybody but a very small and vocal group of people. Maybe after 10 years we look back and think how could ac2 get it so wrong. Or we could all be playing ac2 and seeing no reason to even occasionally drive ac1.

So it can so many ways. Ac could just die on its own with nothing out there to really replace it. Or it can die relatively quickly if something better comes out. Or ac can just fizzle out as people move to the other games. Or ac can just keep going for really long time if the important key people stay interested and new people with the right abilities can step up. However, sooner or late the age of the sim starts working against it. More mundane upkeeping is required to keep it running on new systems and once that starts to become not fun. I think eventually people will move on. It is just life and life happens in many ways. I very much like ac but if we are still playing ac after 10 years I'd find that more worrying for the simracing as a whole than compliment to ac. It is good. But that good?

 

[Kyuubeey]

One thing I can say is that probably even in 10 years, we can still be proud about the best car and track implementations in AC right now. The quality is just objectively good and will more or less be timeless to some extent. It's not like older sims where it was "good for the time" and that's it, we've moved past that level and the physics especially have matured into something actually serious instead of just 100% purely guessing.

 

[onearmedbandit46]

However my cars are also garbage and I don't know what I'm doing if you ask anyone, so maybe nobody is missing out.

Vocal ignorant minority. What happened in the community is shite and it honestly does dismay me that people like yourself have been subjected to this bs. Regardless I still love driving the cars you've worked your magic on and hope to see more in the future.

 

[dwightyone]

I do think the open modding ability of Assetto is the last of it's kind as I believe Rfactor2 may have limits put on it in the future with regards to modding with their new owners. I'll never tire of Assetto and will just upgrade the hardware ammo to make it look and drive better courtesy of CSP.

 

[R8pilot]

I don't think things are as dire as you suggest, but you have a point about hardware.

We've seen how the price of top-tier graphics cards has escalated with every new series, and that's even without the current gouging. That's likely to continue as extreme UV, etc., becomes required for new fabrication nodes. Chiplets and 3D circuitry may help, but these all add expense too.

The good news is that there's still some juice left in graphics hardware. Over the next 3 years we should see a 50-100% increase in graphical performance. Not enough for triple 4k's, perhaps, but getting there ... for an ever-steeper price.

Almost certainly, the next evolutionary step in games, for better and mostly for worse, will be on-line services. Your hardware would then only need be powerful enough to project an image on your screen and handle other minor tasks (e.g., you own a console - and for "lock in" reasons most people likely will have to). The heavy-lifting will be done by Amazon and Microsoft, etc. But my guess is that this will result in a "race to the bottom" as these services attempt to satisfy everyone including those with potatoes for computers and the lamest of internet connections.

I'm more fearful about the game market than the hardware market. The AAA houses are imploding with their drive towards all possible least-common-denominators. We're going to need some dedicated indie developers to move things forward!

 

[Lizard Of Bodom]

I think there is still plenty of stuff to be expected in future but question is - will anyone bother to create something meaningful? These days its easier to create a close-source "sim" that will look nice and push it to people becayse of colorful bells and whistles, but will it be as popular or liked? There is plantyful of decent games that look much better than AC with all aftermarket mods, but none of it can match AC's realism and gaming experience, so if I want to lets say run GT3RS on Nordshleife, I want it to experience and feel it well, not to look at nicer graphic of tarmac or cars beside me.
At this point I am not playing anything else apart from AC because of
a) AC's variety of cars and tracks
b) obsolete hardware (2x980GTX that can run AC pretty well but no other modern game can utilise SLI).
I do hope that there will be something alike AC in future but made on modern graphical engine, utilising modern hardware and most importantly adding more stock features to use from. I love having a blast in LAC with extra features provided by CSP but its bit annoying not knowing if car behing me uses the same mod or not - its night for me and maybe raining, and for him its middle of day, no lights and indicators. It just take some immersion out of the sim experience.

However, its most likely AC is last game of its kind and will be still played years from now with better mods etc because nobody will release equally good proper sim with open moddability and such variety of content. :/

 

[Kevin Troschinski]

First to answer the question. I am in the mid40s so i hope NO it´s not the last sim of my life.
One thing is sure - AC will entertain me some more years for sure.

The golden years of simracing are NOW and the way the world is moving into more and more commercial don`t give me the feeling this "golden age" will last very long.

Todays its money money money first, than far behind emotions or passion.
So i think there will be no more outstanding "classic sims" in near future.

 

[BrightCandle]

Generally the trajectory of sims has been on average for ever deeper simulation and improvement, but it is by no means a smooth line of such progress. So I am confident better sims and games will be produced in the future.

I am concerned about the long term trend in the gaming industry to appeal games to a wider audience by dumbing them down and making them pretty. I am sure companies like Kunos are definitely chasing that direction right now and will likely end up making the next Need for Speed like game as a result just as Slightly Made Studios did and as Codemasters does. But in its place the sim racers will consistently fund simulation making studios. So while the industry as a whole forgets its audience the audience will constantly fund indies that produce ever better sims.

So overall i can't see things getting worse really but I also doubt Kunos will be the company behind the sim we are all in love with in 5 years time. Progress is always going to be a bit bumpy but I would never bet against improvement at some point in the future.

 

[Kyuubeey]

What's more real about BeamNG's physics that other sims don't do? Driving wise, it's a very inaccurate physical based sim, with pseudo soft bodies that are either made of jello or vibrate uncontrollably.

I like it and I support it, but that kind of thing is more of an experiment than a genuine step forward. It's even less accurate than rFactor 2.

Sadly I don't think a sim with better physics than AC + CSP is likely to come out any time soon, and if it does, it won't be moddable. If such a thing appears and is moddable, I'll probably hop on and port all my cars to it, though.

Realistically, I think a lot of modders will stick with AC at least 5 years into the future, or more if nothing better comes.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

After ACC AC feels quite old school with simplified physics and dated graphics, but you can't beat sheer amount of content esp. with mods.
For GT racing alone it's just crazy to go back to AC. We'll see if Kunos can surprise us once more with AC2, whatever form, kitchen sink or series, it's going to be.

 

[Elaphe]

I meant the collision physics of BeamNG Drive and how they work together with all the parts of the car. That gives the feeling that the car is real and destructible, forcing your to be aware, feeling vulnerable. That all helps inmersion. It would be something really cool to see in a game such as AC, despite the fact that the CPU would have a lot of extra work to do.

 

[Michael Krone]

Im not a pessimistic person but I dont ever see another sim coming out that "checks all the boxes". My opinion is as simple as that.

I could be wrong and Ill remain hopeful.

 

[Gevatter]

It already isn't

 

[onearmedbandit46]

Nope, I'm sure there will be other sims that will lift the genre further. If not, then no problem, AC with mods ticks all the boxes (mostly) to keep me entertained.

 

[aphidgod]

No... but that answer is entirely based on faith. There's nothing in any pipeline I'm aware of that will even scratch it.

 

[Mr Deap]

My experience with AC in a nutshell.

AC will be my last sim from Kunos. I don't support trolls.

 

[Johnr777]

Oh not this again…

 

[aphidgod]

Can someone just make it stop?