Community Question: What do you think about Assetto Corsa Competizione's Physics?

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There has been plenty of chatter over the past few days about Assetto Corsa Competizione's physics from sim racers up and down the grid. What is your stance on the matter?

The dedicated GT World Challenge racing platform, Assetto Corsa Competizione has been around since 2018, with it seemingly receiving its last bit of new content earlier this year as Kunos switches focus to Assetto Corsa Evo. The Nürburgring-Nordschleife finally got added to the game in April 2024, and the Ford Mustang GT3 followd not long afterward - even for free.

Despite the game having entered its end-of-life cycle, the community shows no signs of abandoning the title. But Kunos have been heavily reworking the physics even in the title's latter stages, and there are a few people who do not seem that happy about it.


This weekend is the final round of the Intercontinental GT Challenge Esports Series with the 24 Hours of Nürburgring, and Dáire McCormack - who won last year's IGTCE championship with Williams Esports - garnered a bit of attention on social media. In a Tweet, he went on to criticise the current state of ACC's physics and wished for the 1.7 or 1.8 patch's physics to return.

These comments caused a bit of a ripple effect, and have warranted us to ask all of you, how do you find the ACC physics? With our Racing Club regularly hosting races on the platform, many of you may be well versed in what is happening.

Pros vs. Joes: Different Perspectives​

One of the people to comment on the matter was Ricardo Claro, or Random Callsign, who pointed out in a video that someone in McCormack's position is trying to find any inherent advantage. The physics changes mean they have to completely change how they drive and set up the car, perhaps way more dramatically than most average joe sim racers.

Claro commented on the changes made in version 1.9 of ACC, stating that the game had major issues with the way cars reacted to kerbs for many years. 1.9 had seemingly rectified this, but that according to McCormack and a couple of other top level players dramatically changed the meta of driving and setup.


ACC has had a few of these major changes result in some unintentional exploits. Optimal tyre pressures for example are, as of the publishing of this article, set at 27.0 PSI in the dry and 30.8 in the wet. For a short time however, there was an exploit that meant it was optimal to completely maximise the pressure for the wet.

Now though, the 1.9 build of the game sees it to be beneficial to kill the traction control, which is not particularly true to life with GT3 cars. Subsequently, the slip angle seems to be more pronounced in corners. Claro even went as far to say that ACC's force feedback has regressed to even behind iRacing in terms of feel, with the consensus over the past few years being that iRacing's force feedback was not up to par.

That is why we want to hear from you. For those who played ACC both back when it was version 1.7 and 1.8, plus continue to do so now, what have you observed?


What do you make of the physics changes in Assetto Corsa Competizione? Let us know in the comments below or discuss this news in our ACC forum!
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Luca [OT]
Biggest sim racing esports fan in the world.

Comments

Premium
Aside from the physics bugs, it's the overall topic that is sadly true. ACC is being abandoned in a broken state, just like the original AC was. The AI is utterly broken, BoP is non existent in some categories, etc.
I understand EOL. No dev, especially this small, can keep a game going forever, but to leave it in such a state is shameful. Especially considering it already happened before, but in that case we got saved by CSP and everything that revolves around it.
As a consumer, I question why would I buy AC Evo? For the hype, a few years of fun, and then get left stranded with another broken game at the end of the run?
 
Honestly the 1.9 update broke ACC, at least with regards to force feedback. With 1.8 the FFB was responsive and detailed, but the transition to 1.9 left it lumpy and spongy IMO.

This might be down to my wheelbase however, which is widely regarded to have inconsistencies across titles, and a change of FFB could have caused a large change in the FFB response on my wheelbase that may not be experienced with other wheelbases.
 
I had been away from ACC for a bit. When I returned, I actually felt like I was driving in mud. I tried everything to get the car to turn. I was running a caster setting at 12.9 before and I had no issues. Now, that setting gives me molasses on a cold morning. I don't know what they did, but I am determined to get at least within a second of my previous best laps.

If everyone else is struggling, LFM is going to be in trouble.
 
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I had been away from ACC for a bit. When I returned, I actually felt like I was driving in mud. I tried everything to get the car to turn. I was running a caster setting at 12.9 before and I had no issues. Now, that setting gives me molasses on a cold morning. I don't know what they did, but I am determined to get at least within a second of my previous best laps.
You probably won't, the cars were nerfed when the ideal tyre pressures changed from being in the 27 region to being in 26 region. The loss was around a second per lap.
 
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Aside from the physics bugs, it's the overall topic that is sadly true. ACC is being abandoned in a broken state, just like the original AC was. The AI is utterly broken, BoP is non existent in some categories, etc.
I understand EOL. No dev, especially this small, can keep a game going forever, but to leave it in such a state is shameful. Especially considering it already happened before, but in that case we got saved by CSP and everything that revolves around it.
As a consumer, I question why would I buy AC Evo? For the hype, a few years of fun, and then get left stranded with another broken game at the end of the run?
I'll back everything Kunos do tbh. To me other games are more broken and horrid as an overall experience. I'm not taking anything away from your experience.

Kunos is the only dev creating stuff in their own engines, exclude ACC in that obv. The reality is, the perfect race title doesn't exist. If we could all craft it, it would be different for us all. I've got AMS2 uninstalled, RRE the same. Didn't rate LeMans, got a refund. Thought Rennsport beta was a pile of poop. F1 titles hit then miss miss miss. WRC ruined by EA! I need not say more.

I think a perfect title would be a mix of lots of things, A from one title, B from another, blah blah blah. But we all wouldn't agree on it regardless of course.

Beep beep, get lapping
 
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I got the early access and have put so many hours into it because I love Kunos, love the series, the cars etc. I just couldn't get it to work or me, I always put it down to my PC being mid spec and so not getting the granularity and feedback/realism I kept hearing about on the forums. I loaded it up so many times haha. I'm relieved it's not just me who didn't click but no hard feelings.
 
Premium
Isn't that gaming in a nutshell ? I mean, "few years of fun" for the cost is pretty awesome...
This is how the gaming industry works today, yes. Wasn't always the case, and I am still playing perfectly functional games, even sims, from 20+ years ago that costed me back in the day a fraction of the money I poured into ACC.Way back when DLCs, subscriptions, seasonal passes and the likes were not even a word, thankfully.
So yes, today it is not imaginable to buy a game and play it virtually forever and have fun with it indefinitely. You're expected to keep bleedi.. - sorry - paying money for the privilege, and EOL means end of the game.
 
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Isn't that gaming in a nutshell ? I mean, "few years of fun" for the cost is pretty awesome...
It shouldnt be though. We used to have higher standards by expecting (at least) almost bug free finished games that you could enjoy for as many years as you like.

The fun can come to an abrupt halt once you find out there will not be any more updates and fixes to things that should have been finished to begin with. Then you start to feel like, why did I put up with this in the first place and realize youre caught in the cycle.

I myself justify it by saying 'so and so' amount of money is worth 'so and so' amount of time but in the end I still know its wrong.
 
Premium
It shouldnt be though. We used to have higher standards by expecting (at least) almost bug free finished games that you could enjoy for as many years as you like.

The fun can come to an abrupt halt once you find out there will not be any more updates and fixes to things that should have been finished to begin with. Then you start to feel like, why did I put up with this in the first place and realize youre caught in the cycle.

I myself justify it by saying 'so and so' amount of money is worth 'so and so' amount of time but in the end I still know its wrong.
Do you work in software?
 
Quite sparse of what I'll be able to add here.
Was pretty active from the release date and 8-9 months onwards. When I came back just post the general 1.8 update I felt enormous improvement in FFB response details to my wheel and experienced that linearity of travel/suspension was quite more trustworthy.

So quite surprised to read that 1.9 has resultet in a major setback.

Once I during 2020 met my ratings goals, my interest waned. The very apt description of the in my world "dull" static values for optimal tire pressure tells me that modern GT racing is not me at all.

Like a long goose walk on a gray day.

With too perfect perfect low profile tires, on all too perfect tracks with perfect track surface, modern tire handli g seems to me almost like in Formula E. And when forums and consensus on perfect tire pressures that everyone drives with are formed at the same time, then I am completely put off. Then, in my world, you completely suck the fun part out as ment the scrutineering part. So not me.

The latter was probably just a general attitude towards modern GT racing.

With perfect tyres, perfect track surfaces, all sharing more or less the same setup, it is clear that the requirements for the core sim part will be significantly higher in themselves.

That an update can impair the experience of the basic part, well then it must be quite a blow.
 
Physics in simulators is a strange topic to talk about. No one seems to ever truly agree on what is realistic or not, what is good or bad, it's an endless conversation that usually goes nowhere.

McCormack, the author of the first tweet mentioned in this article, goes on saying that iRacing and Rennsport are better than ACC, claiming that they're "clear ahead of ACC".
From my experience, and from what I hear from the community, iRacing and Rennsport both have significant issues with their tyre model when it comes to how they react to heat. ACC's tyres at least don't "turn off" like in those two other games.

ACC's 1.9 update took a step towards making the driving less robotic, a complaint I heard about ACC before. There was no feeling the car out, there was just knowing the speed and the inputs required to take a certain corner. Granted, even in games where you can feel out the car, driving becomes just a bunch of numbers and inputs you give the car, but it was generally concluded that in 1.9 the cars became more "alive" on the tyres.
This doesn't justify the downgrade in FFB though, the first AC has tyres that feel really good and FFB that gives you a lot of information.

I could go on about every simulator out there and what people or I think about said sim's physics, but as stated at the beginning it usually just ends up being a moot conversation where all you do is lose time.
There are tons of simulators on the market, just pick the one you like and hope that the developers make the changes you like.
 
Premium
People asking for games that will last 20 years are living in cloud cuckoo land. If Kunos did nothing with ACC and left it in it's pre 1.9 state that everyone is now looking back fondly on, then odds are it would no longer work due to updated windows software breaking something or Nvidia breaking something with its almost weekly graphics cards updates. They have to iterate, and they have to keep it fresh, and they have to sell DLC and at some point they have to release something else to pay the bills. Most of the people on here have probably put hundreds of hours into ACC, and are still complaining. That's incredible value. Maybe its time to move on.
 
I drive ACC from time to time, to me honestly something always felt off. FFB never got me and it's most strange of all sims out there. I have ACC from the start when being released but never got me into enjoyment like Raceroom or rFactor 2 where I know even the slightest part of my tires what is doing. Of course FFB and physics are two different things but perception for us while playing is seamless.
It's a good sim but not one of my favourites at all.
 

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