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.

 

[Mr Deap]

AC is your last sim from Kunos, then proceeded to call them trolls.

Either that means you don’t like the game or you have a pretty bad grasp of the English language… which is it?

It's funny you don't dig it. Your quote is a good example. You can look up in my whole comments history how much bias you gained from the troll.

You can look for the reference in Wikipedia.

 

[Johnr777]

It's funny you don't dig it. Your quote is a good example. You can look up in my whole comments history how much bias you gained from the troll.

You can look for the reference in Wikipedia.

It’s not that I don’t dig it. I just wish I understood a word of what you are saying.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

 

[aphidgod]

I think Churchill said it best.

"The truth is incontrovertible; malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is."

Do with it what you will, Deap, which we all know will be nothing.

 

[Foffy]

It's hard for me to think of another game that tries to cover as much as it does as Assetto Corsa, though a great deal of this is because mods fill in the track and car selection to an unrivaled degree.

I don't think it will be the "last sim" I'll put some time into, as I'm sure future games might do things in interesting ways. The question I wonder is about 2024 and the Assetto Corsa sequel. Will it be a boxed product with no modding capabilities, or will they double down on what's given AC almost a decade worth of interest? If games are "services" and that's the direction this industry wants to double down, the game currently has already found a niche to work in with the game being a sort of platform for the community to build on top of. It will be up to the parent company as IP publisher to support that or not. There's some faith in that, as they've very much found a strong niche with 505 Games being the lead publisher on major successful and good community crowdfunded games like Bloodstained, Indivisible, and Eiyuden Chronicle. Being a previous publisher to games like ArmA, almost completely driven by community content, also leaves hope.

I imagine if an AC2 is a walled garden and not moddable, if AC1 is your go-to sim, unless a new competitor arises, it could technically become your "last," and that's about the only way I can assume such a thing can be the case.

 

[Kyuubeey]

Hey, all I know is that I have enough data to make a few dozen extremely high quality cars into AC2 on week1 assuming that the implementation is even a bit similar. Hell, even if it isn't, data is data.

The only thing that'd really stop me from porting all my stuff to AC2 (and maybe bringing a lot of people to try the hopefully shiny new physics features) is if it is allowed or not to begin with.

Part of me hopes AC2 is a serious sim with even better physics than what current modded AC is capable of and with enough content to work off-of like we have in AC1, but that's somewhat unrealistic. I'm not counting on it.

 

[HypoToad]

Since we're in lockdown and staying home because of Covid, I got out my old Driving Force GT and fired up Assetto Corsa. I remembered I was a bit underwhelmed by it before but after reading somewhere to turn off assists it's been a revelation. Why I didn't do it sooner I will never know, I guess I was not that into it as I liked playing the old GTR2. Now it feels like I am really driving the cars, no more wheel skidding, no more over braking, total control, slow down before the corners, hit the apex's, lap times are dropping.

Now I can't wait to play it.

 

[gecco]

My last sim? Hell no, I do not think so... Also at 45, I hope I have some good years in me still, to wait for what is to come...
But the real question would be, if we think, that Assetto Corsa was the first and last sim to to provide such quantity and variety of cars, with accurate physics for all of them?
My answer to that question will probably be yes. AC has set a very high standard, and there is probably too little to gain from details like e.g a more sophisticated tire model and to much work doing it all over again for so many cars.
So from the publishing and developers side, there might be some temptation to go the NFS or Forza route...
However, If there ever will be a true successor from Kunos to AC at some point in the future, I'll be the first one to buy it, buy into Early Access, or kick start fund it. Maybe the speculated AC2 that has been mentioned in some business report recently, is already that, who knows. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

 

[Gevatter]

AC has set a very high standard, and there is probably too little to gain from details like e.g a more sophisticated tire model and to much work doing it all over again for so many cars.

Stefano said in one of his coding streams that he thought about bringing ACC's 5 point tire model to AC, but then didn't because not only would it require an update to all Kunos cars, it would also break every single mod car.

 

[Kyuubeey]

There's a ton to gain from implementing actually realistic tires onto actually accurate cars (KS cars are a big step up from older sim content but not very accurate in the end of the day) but it must be understood that doing it for 200~ cars in any kind of realistic timeframe with only one person doing the implementation is extremely unrealistic.

I've ground myself to the bone and provided an idea of what high-effort development for a variety of cars would end up like, but I totally understand why KS wouldn't feel like updating even a single thing in any of the cars. To be totally honest though, it doesn't matter. A bunch of people think KS cars in AC are very accurate. The end user has no idea about any of this stuff so you will just get personal satisfaction and some praise from the very hardcore sim crowd if you make very HQ content. Economically AC1's method made sense and it's probably what anyone would be forced to do. Although here and there some implementations are just strange for no explainable reason other than incompetence, to be completely honest.

I will add, if the cars were very accurate, and you could use tires based on completely trends and logic in them without the car behaving strangely in any circumstance, you could just auto-generate every single tire in a realistic timeframe. It would not be completely ideal if you have more data to inform the end result but it's honestly close to what I and some others do in many areas of the tire and it is a big advantage to having accurate physics bases for the cars. Very little to none hackery involved so you can do extremely big mass-updates to core systems stuff.

ACC content is likely more accurate than AC content and most of them are literally from the same racing regulations, so I think Aris is capable of doing system-wide changes to all cars much easier than in AC. The TMV10 remake was probably a PITA back in the day even with generation tools.

 

[Neilski]

It’s not that I don’t dig it. I just wish I understood a word of what you are saying.

Umm, be careful what you wish for...
(His first post above has to be the most beautiful example of unintentional irony that I've seen for a long time!)

Stefano said in one of his coding streams that he thought about bringing ACC's 5 point tire model to AC, but then didn't because not only would it require an update to all Kunos cars, it would also break every single mod car.

Well, I can't instantly think of a reason why you couldn't have the existing cars (e.g. mods) sticking with the current tyre model, and then updating cars as and when they are ready for the new model. Maybe there's an excellent reason not to do this of course.

Getting back to the OP's question: hell no. I will be gutted if it's my last sim, even though it's the one I have used most heavily for many years. It's great, but it has plenty of shortcomings. Maybe AC2 will happen, or maybe someone else will find a way to develop something new and better.

I have very little idea about the commercial realities of this stuff, but it's hard to imagine an open-source approach delivering the goods, so I guess we need someone to invest pretty significant cash on the understanding that the sim community will pay up for a "better" sim. That community has surely gotten a lot bigger since the pandemic kicked off, right? And of course: wheels, pedals, PCs (and the rest) absolutely dwarf the cost of the software at present.

Among other complicating factors (and I'm sure we must have dozens of long threads on this topic alone), I do know for a fact that I would never have bought AC if it had cost me ten times what I actually paid for it. However, having enjoyed it so much and for so long since my original purchase, I would now regard a 10x price increase to be a damn good deal (I have clocked up over 1000 hours so far...). Incidentally, I didn't enjoy iRental (nasty tyre behaviour, and not very impressed with the overall package in many ways) and didn't stick with it for long.

By the way, I still haven't given up hope that Scawen will deliver the new tyre physics one day!

 

[StefanoCasillo]

Stefano said in one of his coding streams that he thought about bringing ACC's 5 point tire model to AC, but then didn't because not only would it require an update to all Kunos cars, it would also break every single mod car.

nah
Pics or it didn't happen.... it's either your memory failing you or my english not getting the message through... or I was drunk, or high.. or both.. because that doesn't make any sense at all

Perhaps I was talking about rain or some other thing? Multiple contact points should be pretty much plug and play without requiring additional data.

 

[Gevatter]

nah
Pics or it didn't happen.... it's either your memory failing you or my english not getting the message through... or I was drunk, or high.. or both.. because that doesn't make any sense at all

Perhaps I was talking about rain or some other thing? Multiple contact points should be pretty much plug and play without requiring additional data.

No I'm sure it was the 5 point contact model. During one of your ACC AI improvement streams somebody asked you about it and you said you thought about it. I could be wrong about your reasoning to not implementing it though but I'm almost certain it was either about modders complaining or - what I just thought of - something to do with CM, maybe CM extended physics? TBH even if they were still available I wouldn't rewatch all of them just to argue this point

No idea about your state of drunkenness at the time... maybe too much coffee?

 

[StefanoCasillo]

No I'm sure it was the 5 point contact model. During one of your ACC AI improvement streams somebody asked you about it and you said you thought about it. I could be wrong about your reasoning to not implementing it though but I'm almost certain it was either about modders complaining or - what I just thought of - something to do with CM, maybe CM extended physics? TBH even if they were still available I wouldn't rewatch all of them just to argue this point

No idea about your state of drunkenness at the time... maybe too much coffee?

ya the modders thing makes total sense.

 

[pumpkineater23]

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.

I've gone from 'Night Driver' (1976 Atari) to various racing games/sims over the years. Assetto Corsa, CM and Sol in VR is what I always wanted. I can't see it getting much better any time soon. It's more the VR tech that will improve, rather than the sim. I expect cloud streaming will progress into something that surpasses high spec PCs before too long.

 

[Kurei159]

I don't think hardware development will be as stagnant as you put it. I believe photonics will boost hardware capabilities by a bunch to make that kind of thing possible. With the tech industry leaning more towards AI, things like improving matrix calculation time are definitely priority. We've just had some talks about photonic processors not too long ago as well. This means new era for CPU/GPU hardware, and we may all end up just using a fusion hardware if it can get as powerful as the company claims it to be.
Sure, making them viable and robust for exactly our purpose may take a bit of time but I have enough reasons to put faith in it.
Also, AC2 can mean better optimization than what current AC can offer to improve performance. I would love to see an AC2, hopefully with some form of backward compatibility for AC mods.

 

[TPGRacing75]

No it will not. Unlimited amount of modded content doesn't matter when 75% of it is Forza/Gran Turismo/PCars/Grid rips and "wangan special" drift cars with wonky physics.

AC is a great Driving sim, but I wouldn't consider it the best racing sim. IMO it is at its best when freeroaming in your dream car with AI traffic, something no other title provides outside of maybe ETS/ATS,. Something to do when you just want to unwind, but as soon as you try racing against the AI (especially multiclass) it can become very frustrating real quick.

I respect modders like URD, RSS, VRC, and many of the people here who create high quality cars, but sometimes I feel AC has too many cars and tracks, that I spend half of my time trying to weed out the crap, and the other trying to find stuff to recreate real races/racing series.

At the end of the day, I'm very much in the minority camp of "stop adding 2-3 of every car class in the world, and instead give me a full grid of accurate cars and tracks from ONE series, and a decent offline/campaign mode to make me feel like I'm part of the series, rather than just lapping a random car around a random track."

I've basically grown dreary of sandbox sims. All the same concept wise, just with personal preference on FFB/driving model, and the cars they pick. *YAWN*

 

[Nicecuppatea]

As an increasingly old fart, I vaguely remember an arcade racing game that was just a plastic car on a metal rod and the track was either a screen or a projection behind it, the tyre model was terrible.

Coming from that to where we are now, almost fifty years later, makes me optimistic about future developments, even if progress does slow dramatically. There's usually a way to do things better and/or faster.

 

[gecco]

By the way, I still haven't given up hope that Scawen will deliver the new tyre physics one day!

Together with the Scircocco!

 

[Fat-Alfie]

I hope it won't be my last sim, but I do know that buying into Assetto Corsa in Early Access, and then experiencing the constant development of the sim, with all of the physics updates, improvements (or otherwise) in the AI, the tyre model, new tracks, new cars... it was just magical!

AC was my first real racing sim, and the only sim I have wanted to make tracks for, and as such it will always hold a special place in my heart.