The state of AC -- is it not amazing?

[Greg Pugliese]

Is it not amazing that nearly five years after release, AC is still going so strongly? This point was brought home to me today by the simultaneous release of IER's P13c, URD's AMR EGT, and Ben O'Bro's Singer 911, bringing us three high-quality new cars to try out tonight. CSP continues to advance, the incredible mod teams of RSS, URD and VRC (among others) continue working on new mods, Peter Boese continues to update Sol ... it's truly awe-inspiring what this community has done with AC. Once in a while I think it's good to step back and appreciate what we have here. So hats off to you all! Looking forward to the next five years!

 

[BrightCandle]

Mods always extend the life of a game. They are a good way for a company without the money to really develop a complete experience eventually. Kunos unfortunately isn't continuing with the approach and is finding it now hard to compete with their prior title. I for one think AC has a strong future for quite some time.

 

[Terry Rock]

Is it not amazing that nearly five years after release, AC is still going so strongly? This point was brought home to me today by the simultaneous release of IER's P13c, URD's AMR EGT, and Ben O'Bro's Singer 911, bringing us three high-quality new cars to try out tonight. CSP continues to advance, the incredible mod teams of RSS, URD and VRC (among others) continue working on new mods, Peter Boese continues to update Sol ... it's truly awe-inspiring what this community has done with AC. Once in a while I think it's good to step back and appreciate what we have here. So hats off to you all! Looking forward to the next five years!

I don't think Stefano himself, could have predicted what was to come after the release of this title.
He probably thought...(given the lifespan of most sims)...he'd get 4...maybe 5 years.
I'd love to hear his thoughts on it.
AC has gone so far that anything the studio puts out beyond ACC as a possible replacement, will need to be earth-shattering...at every level.
It is great to be a car enthusiast and simracer at this time.

 

[Ben O'Bro]

To be honest, i'd love to move on to a newer game engine...
Unreal engine for example has so many powerful tools when it comes to props on a track
and simply better materials handling for a car...

i guess when the day comes, if it does, for a AC 2.0, all my files for the Singer and Caterham will be here to try and convert

LA Canyons would also be a nice new challenge to convert

Till then... still enjoying AC !

 

[Gevatter]

To be honest, i'd love to move on to a newer game engine...

Just yesterday when I drove the Escort RS I thought about how great that car would look, sound and feel in the current Unreal/ACC engine. With that level of drivetrain simulation and wet weather physics it must be an absolute joy.

 

[Ghoults]

To be honest, i'd love to move on to a newer game engine...
Unreal engine for example has so many powerful tools when it comes to props on a track
and simply better materials handling for a car...

Be careful what you wish for. Ue4 is pretty powerful for the developer but I have my doubts what it can be for modders. One of the strengths of ac is that the developers use almost the same tools as the modders (I think they used slightly different version of sdk which can open kn5s) which means they have/had incentive to make the pipeline/sdk/tools really good for themselves which made it is also pretty good for the modders. If kunos made a moddable ue4 game I'd imagine they use the ue4 editor to make/import the content to the game and I'm not sure if they'd be willing to open that route up for modders along with all the documentation that goes with it.

How do moddable ue4 games handle 3d model imports? I don't have any ue4 games that support modding so I can't check myself. Importing models into ue4 is pretty much as straightforward and about as simple as importing into sdk in my experience but obviously I have not imported anything into a complex game project...

 

[Terry Rock]

Good modders are an impressive bunch of folks. I cannot fathom how they do it. I have a lot of respect for the work they do. I wouldn't know where to start. Deciding on a particular car or track and then pulling all the countless bits together to present some of the sheer masterpieces is daunting to myself.

 

[John-Eric Saxén]

They won't be able to release a successor that would attract similar masses, at least not in the near future, so might as well put the idea on the back burner. Even if AC2 turned out to be a crazily awesome product, the challenge is to get customers move to this new "ecosystem" and have them re-buy DLC packs. If you already own for example Nordschleife in AC1, it will take a lot more to get you to buy it in AC2, especially if it drives and looks 99% the same. Their own old product is definitely their worst enemy in this sense. IMO it will take a significant technological development in sim racing industry to make AC seem enough "outdated" to have masses moving to a new platform.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

Too bad Kunos consider that title a closed chapter, could still use some features transfer from ACC, or even more DLCs to finance the work.

 

[Stereo]

How do moddable ue4 games handle 3d model imports? I don't have any ue4 games that support modding so I can't check myself. Importing models into ue4 is pretty much as straightforward and about as simple as importing into sdk in my experience but obviously I have not imported anything into a complex game project...

Pretty much just have it read more than one ue4 archive, instead of just game.dat or whatever the default one is called. So you still need the sdk project file the original authors used to set up all the variable names and stuff to match.

 

[That Dude There]

AC still sells in steam. It's not like there is no money coming in from it. I have no idea how much though.

 

[Highbank]

AC is just $5 until Oct 28th right now on Steam, under $18 for the Ultimate Edition, you have to be nuts not to pick that up!

...and a side note, the Content Manager is greatest thing I've ever seen in sim racing, the things you can do with it are amazing, I need to send them some more money, it's amazing

 

[Authense]

For me there is no alternative to AC as long as F1 Codemasters does not come with VR. I have all the other titles like PC2 etc., but I always play AC with open wheelers. Sadly, the open wheels community isn't that big in AC, because these people tend to play Codemasters. Will see....

The absolute best about AC are the mods, tools, apps. It is a whole universe in comparison to other games with the ability to have over 100 tracks, similar number of cars etc. It is just outstanding.

And as VR technology is still behind single screen the AC engine is more than good enough to provide immersion for years to come, or maybe months, depending on what Pimax is gonna put out in December....