Welcome to simracing world!
It's a big world and can be confusing for beginners. There certainly are different approaches to simracing, you can just enjoy driving the cars and have some quick races or you can join a league and try to compete. If you do that its all on you and there certainly always is some alien that is faster than you.
If you are brand new, you should get the basics down first. Practice is always important and will be essential on your whole journey. Start slow, start with easy cars and stay with one or two tracks. Get to know them really well. If thats working out, join some races. Racedepartment offers nice club racing, where everyone has someone to compete against - from beginner to pro. I think youd need to be a premium user for that, though.
I myself got started directly in a league, which was more fun to me. Having the same drivers to compete and compare against, having a goal from track to track and improving on the way. People will certainly practice more for leagues, which makes the competition stronger, fields and fights closer. Thats good practice.
How to find leagues? Racedepartment is engaged in a new simracing platform called Simracing.GP. Message
@Bram Hengeveld for more details - besides racedepartment many other communities host there leagues and events via that platform. I started with a big national community before the platform came up - thats another option.
Public lobbies often end in carnage, can be fun, too. But yeah, most of the time its carnage. Stuff i enjoy are the public trackdays on the Nordschleife.
Assetto Corsa forum section
PC, PS4, XB1, Mobile | Assetto Corsa community forums | Kunos Simulazioni
www.racedepartment.com
Assetto Corsa Racing Club
Daily casual club races for all skill levels and professional esport leagues for PC, Playstation 4 and Xbox One.
www.racedepartment.com
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Mods are easier to install than you think - I think someone posted a link to a tutorial already.
Lots of tracks and cars to discover, I'd recommend sticking to mods from Racedepartment as they are regulated and often offer high quality, free content - there also are a handful of great modding teams, which you usually have to pay. But be aware, there also are some cheapskates out there where you can buy low quality, ripped mods. These cant be found on racedepartment by the way.
Some additional mods are really cool, too:
Helicorsa helps you massively in wheel to wheel combat and CSP (Custom Shaders Patch) and SOL enable stuff like night/day transitions, graphic improvements or the newest addition: Rain.
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For skins you need a program, which is able to save ".dds" files. Freeware for this would be "GIMP" (basically a free version of Photoshop, obviously has lots of limitations compared to it but the basics are similar) or "paint.net". I prefer Photoshop, though
Have fun!
