Assetto Corsa Competizione, The Official Blancpain GT Series Game Announced!

[Paul Jeffrey]

Top GT3 licence, UE4 graphics, day to night cycle, dynamic weather, advanced physics with a focus on realism.. is Assetto Corsa Competizione the sim we've all been waiting for?

When Kunos Simulazioni hinted at a big announcement a few days ago, many thought it would simply be a case of confirming another licence for the already well developed Assetto Corsa software, or at the very most a potential AC2 first announcement. Not so, the team over in Italy have been hard at work behind the scenes developing a very exciting new piece of software, and what is more the new Assetto Corsa Competizione title will focus on a single racing category, the incredible Blancpain Endurance GT3 series.. a welcome hark back to the days when racing simulation developers focussed all their attention to detail on a specific racing series, something that Kunos are keen to replication with this newly announced IP.

Set to feature a pretty significant shift away from the basis of the Assetto Corsa title we all know and love, Kunos have confirmed that AC Competizione will feature what are described as "photo realistic" graphics thanks to the use of the incredibly powerful Unreal Engine 4 graphics engine, allowing Kunos to move away from the single light source solution of Assetto Corsa and finally bring both time of day and weather effects to their racing game - a must when you consider the Spa 24 Hour is a key event in the real life Blancpain championship.

As well as the obvious visual benefits brought from a move to Unreal 4 (see screenshots attached to this article), another key talking point from the simulation announcement comes by way of confirmation that Kunos are looking to build a sizable offline career mode around the new game, with driving school tutorials making a welcome return to a popular modern day simulation.

Alongside what promises to be a substantial offline element, the initial press release indicates that Kunos are also aiming to make considerable changes to the way Assetto Corsa veterans experience online play, with an eye on the emerging eSport marketplace the Italian developers are promising a well rounded ranking and matchmaking online system, potentially encouraging a much more evenly balanced online experience and less of those famous public lobby first corner crashes...

Although only initially announced this afternoon, it looks like development is well on the way with this exceptionally exciting new title. Projected for a summer Steam EA release, I'll leave you with the new trailer to get the juices flowing for now...

Assetto Corsa Competizione should be available on Steam Early Access Summer 2018.

Check out the Assetto Corsa Sub Forum here at RaceDepartment for the latest news and discussions regarding the sim. We host quality League and Club Racing events, have a selection of fantastic mods to download and some of the best community conversation. Join in the discussion today.

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Excited? Looking forward to the new title? Let us know below!

 

[St3fan]

Is there any info on how the wet physics is gonna be simulated? Will it be just lowered grip, or will us see water puddles exactly at where they will be in real life? I'm really interested in knowing how it feels driving up Eau Rouge in the wet.

 

[Matteo Pagin]

with improvements to the physics, i hope people on the older game get an update.

They won't.. the reason why they are making these improvements on the new title is that they don't have to spend months correcting/adjusting all the other 100+ cars in the game.. too much work at these point

 

[Matteo Pagin]

Is there any info on how the wet physics is gonna be simulated? Will it be just lowered grip, or will us see water puddles exactly at where they will be in real life? I'm really interested in knowing how it feels driving up Eau Rouge in the wet.

No info regarding that on the interview
EDIT: Sorry for doublepost

 

[ltcars]

Interview to Marco
https://www.spreaker.com/user/motorsportrepublic/lintervista-a-marco-massarutto-per-parla

It's italian

 

[Emerson Meyer]

Amazing news. Huge!

Ps. Will we be able to run the game with DirectX 7? And Windows 95?

 

[marcocale]

Taken from the official Blancpain series page. Got No time to look it up. Has kunos elaborated on 24h cycle?

Yes, here

 

[Paul Jeffrey]

Can someone translate please.

Don't worry, our interview is coming soon

 

[dhmotor]

I guess I will have to buy this game since it is what I was asking for - being able to recreate actual races with the cars and skins on the tracks that a series takes place on - now with weather and day/night transitions. Ironically, for sports cars, AC came closest to being able to do this already with Custom Championships and mod cars, tracks and skins. Especially after the ready to race AI enhancements came out. So while my preference would have been for a prototype multi-class series like IMSA or WEC, this is the right direction anyway. Hopefully you will be able to campaign the series as either your favorite driver or against all the known drivers (seems to be the plan). It will be nice if the AI lays down lines using actual laps from various pro drivers - not that I am adept enough to tell the difference, but it would be nice to know you are racing against the Land guys, or team WRT etc. the way they would brake and turn in.

 

[rhin0z]

Steam has a competione page up listing the o/s as win 8 and win 10. my faithful win7 is no longer there. Decision upgrade to win 10 with its built in spyware module to sell interested parties what bottle water I drink ect..... or head over to iracing and face pillage and extortion. It maybe ok since i only use that gaming computer for games only.,,,,,,,,,,,nevermind.

 

[BhZ]

Is there any info on how the wet physics is gonna be simulated? Will it be just lowered grip, or will us see water puddles exactly at where they will be in real life? I'm really interested in knowing how it feels driving up Eau Rouge in the wet.

Based on what Stefano said years ago about the rain, i think we will have something similar to rF2.

 

[horto45]

bentley! bentley! bentley! bentley! bentley!

unless the corvette decides to make an appearance!

 

[melanieuk]

I'm seeing a lot of people worrying about win7 and UE4. Offcourse win7 doesn't support dx12 so you'll miss out on some graphic eyecandy but UE4 works beautifully on Win7. I've been playing Train Sim World for some time now and it is one of the heaviest games imaginable when it comes to open worlds and scenery and it runs beautiful on my rig. Look it up on steam, it looks amazing. And if ACC turns out this great when it comes to graphics and combines it with racing I'm very happy. So stop worrying and wait until there's more to say about minimal system specs. And I can't imagine that they will exclude Win7 from the OS's needed. It's still the most used OS according to most gaming surveys I read somewhere...

Have you seen Fernbus Simulator? Also uses UE4.

 

[ionONE1]

It's not invalid to say that Win7 is old enough to justify pushing it out.

From my perspective, the perspective of somebody who uses Windows for gaming and nothing else, I have to remark that Win10 is not an updated Win7. It is more like a new OS with new policies. I heard that they pushed some advertising crap along with the updates that mitigate meltdown. The concept of a base OS forcing advertising on me is alien to me. Not to mention all that useless moving around of base functionality that comes with each new Windows (new Windows, not new Windows version).

Also, I pay $60 to Kunos for the game, and it forces me to give $100 or whatever to Microsoft, for a product that is not acting in my interest. I would rather give more money to Kunos. This is all backwards.

Windows 10 key is 20 € or less, you only need a 4gb+ stick and you can download it from the official ms website via "Media Creation Tool".

 

[Michael Hornbuckle]

Stefano stated that the current min specs are placeholders only

 

[Patrik Marek]

Is there any info on how the wet physics is gonna be simulated? Will it be just lowered grip, or will us see water puddles exactly at where they will be in real life? I'm really interested in knowing how it feels driving up Eau Rouge in the wet.

well, seeing from static water on the Eau-Rouge , at least currently in the super early wip, visually it's static , but yeah, I'm sure they will do the proper physics simualtion
maybe not to the extend that SMS did in pCARS, but I'm sure it will be more advanced then just decresing grip level

 

[Patrik Marek]

Have you seen Fernbus Simulator? Also uses UE4.

oh wow, that actually looks great

 

[Neils on Wheels]

oh wow, that actually looks great

looks great, probably terrible physics.

 

[Patrik Marek]

looks great, probably terrible physics.

i'm sure it's not about physics , it's about the feeling of driving a bus and carrying passengers etc.

 

[Emerson Meyer]

looks great, probably terrible physics.

2006... we need better graphics, new DirectX

2018... graphics are overrated... DirectX 9 is nice

Go figure

 

[Epistolarius]

Steam has a competione page up listing the o/s as win 8 and win 10. my faithful win7 is no longer there. Decision upgrade to win 10 with its built in spyware module to sell interested parties what bottle water I drink ect..... or head over to iracing and face pillage and extortion. It maybe ok since i only use that gaming computer for games only.,,,,,,,,,,,nevermind.

Read:

I can confirm you that it won't be a DX12 (only) game as UE4 potentially supports multiple APIs.

Minimum requirements are not to be trusted at the moment, they're just there because the Steam page required us to put them in. The more we approach the release the more they'll be more realistic.