Last week, Kunos Simulazioni and 505 Games surprised us with the announcement of the new Assetto Corsa Competizione racing title which will be coming to Steam in the summer of 2018. (Early Access)
Assetto Corsa Competizione will be the official game of the BLANCPAIN GT SERIES, an official grand touring racing series, named after world-renowned Swiss watch manufacturer Blancpain and organized by SRO Motorsports Group.
Ever since its well-received announcement, the sim racing and race gaming community expressed their delights and concerns regarding the upcoming racing title. In good Kunos fashion, the Assetto Corsa developing team was willing to answer the most vital questions in a community Q&A session.
Community FAQ What is Assetto Corsa Competizione?
Assetto Corsa Competizione is our all-new racing simulation that reproduces the Blancpain GT Series Championship managed by SRO and based on the GT3 homologation. ACC is not an additional module or an extension of Assetto Corsa but a different, new and separate product altogether!
Is AC Competizione a spin-off of Assetto Corsa?
Absolutely not! We are developing AC Competizione from scratch. It takes advantage of the Blancpain GT experience, know-how and data collection acquired while working on AC. However, AC Competizione is not AC featuring the Blancpain GT Series. It is a completely new game that will offer realistic car handling as well as new features and gameplay not seen before in our products.
Will AC Competizione be available on PC Steam only, or on console too?
Right now, all our efforts are going into developing Assetto Corsa Competizione on Steam, during Early Access.
Does AC Competizione use the UE4 Engine’s physics?
AC Competizione will feature an evolution of the physics engine already used in Assetto Corsa, completely independent from UE4’s built in physics.
What is going to happen to Assetto Corsa now you’re working on Competizione?
The game will continue to be available for purchase, servers for multiplayer and lobbies will be kept open and active for as long as people continue to play it. The game will not receive further updates now (It has now been 7 years since AC development started and 4 years from its 1.0 release) Our entire team is now focused on AC Competizione.
Why the Blancpain GT Series? What does make it so special?
When we started to figure out what the new AC would have to be, we saw that -including AC- the current generation of racing games offers a huge variety of “generic” titles performing multiple race modes with any kind of cars. This usually results in finding a compromise in terms of score, racing rules, gameplay modes etc.
On the other side, very few games are dedicated to a specific race series that can be completely simulated in all its detail and, more importantly, can keep gamers focused.
Whenever we’ve asked the community for their opinion, GT racing was always on the top of their wish list, and we found that the Blancpain GT Series fits the bill! Featuring Sprint races, endurance, night racing, driver swaps, official teams and drivers, these are exactly the things our fans asked for! Not to mention the best GT cars available, in their racing outfit, that results in lightness, handling, grip and brake power. Add to this formula the 24 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps, and you get the best thrilling GT racing series ever.
Will we see a day/night cycle in Assetto Corsa Competizione?
Yes – Players will be able to race at any time of the day, thanks to a real-time, full day/night cycle.
What are the recommended system requirements for Assetto Corsa Competizione?
Our minimum target specification is currently an i5-2500/AMD FX-8100 or equivalent, 4 GB RAM and NVIDIA Geforce GTX 760. However, right now, it’s way too early to be more precise. Over time, we’ll be able to be more specific later as we continue to develop ACC. Therefore, if you are considering upgrading your hardware configuration, we strongly suggest you wait for our Early Access before upgrading.
Will Assetto Corsa Competizione be moddable? And will modders be able to port their work to AC Competizione?
Assetto Corsa’s structure was designed from the beginning to be moddable. Being developed with UE4, AC Competizione processes data and assets through a completely different structure and file format. Therefore, the game will not be compatible with mod contents created for Assetto Corsa. Also, our team does not have enough experience with UE4 to tackle both the development a brand-new game and the challenges of supporting an open platform in the time frame available for this project.
We are fully aware of the importance of modding and its contribution to the success of Assetto Corsa. It’s a great way for new talents to emerge, for the community to “suggest” new directions and/or simply to make a product richer. It is not a coincidence that some of the best community members are now contributing with us to the evolution of the software.
However, for ACC this element will have to be put in standby mode for a series of reasons. The most important one is that we have given ourselves an enormous task of rebuilding, once again our software from (almost) scratch. In a world where pretty much, every product you see on the market in sim racing is an evolution of games that have been on the market 10-15 years ago, our approach is to get a big ax and reset things to (almost) zero before starting with a new project. ACC is no exception.
In this case the task is rendered more complex by the fact that we are using, for the first time a third-party engine that we did not design ourselves and the truth is, given the amount of time we have available to deliver ACC to the public, we have more than enough on our hands trying to figure out how to use the engine effectively to also think about how to make the platform moddable.
As you can imagine, this has been a source of endless discussions in the last year and a half as every decision comes with pros and cons, there is going to be pain no matter what your final call will be. It goes without saying that we believe we made the right call even if that means losing the huge benefits of a moddable platform.
We know this might not cover everything, but over time we will continue to answer your most frequently asked questions! Once again, we want to thank our community for the outpour of support you’ve shown us since our announcement last week. We absolutely cannot wait to tell you more about Assetto Corsa Competizione in the near future.
Dukester
norbs diplomacy lesson 101: "If I was putting words in your mouth, you'd know."
I guess that's why iRaping's model is working pretty well - as long as there's people on it, they've a continuous income stream that they can spend on content & development.
GT3 just doesn't interest me, I mean it could just be how they are on iRacing but they're not something I enjoy or am drawn to driving. It is one of if not the most popular series on iRacing so I guess that might translate to ACC as well. It seems a bit limiting to have just the one series but I guess there's quite a few GT3 cars so that provides some variety but yeah will people get bored of the same thing.
To celebrate the Blancpain GT Series visit to sunny Brands Hatch in Kent this weekend, check out these lovely new WIP Assetto Corsa Competizione images..
Dukester
norbs diplomacy lesson 101: "If I was putting words in your mouth, you'd know."
I realise I am dark with the AC nazis, and I dont think that is colouring my judgment, but I just cant get excited about this. The best thing about AC were the exotic cars. Old or new, just different cars. That felt different. GT3s. They are fucking everywhere, everywhere!!!!
Julian Huguet of nVidia interviews Kunos Simulazioni’s Executive Manager and Co-Founder, Marco Massarutto about the upcoming Assetto Corsa Competizione racing title.
Dukester
norbs diplomacy lesson 101: "If I was putting words in your mouth, you'd know."
