Assetto Corsa
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| Assetto Corsa: GTE's at the Nordshleife |
In 2013, Italian developer Kunos Simulazoni released Assetto Corsa onto the Early Access program on Steam. The game received a large amount of patches, and was finally released into 1.0 in November 2014.
Assetto Corsa is known for it's mod support. There is a large amount of content developed for it, with more being added every day. AC shipped with a large selection of cars, ranging from GTs to road cars like BMW M3s and Lotus's, to super cars like the McLaren 12C and Ferrari 458 Italia. It also shipped with a small collection of hyper cars, including the LaFerrari, Pagani Zonda R and Pagani Huayra.
It is also noted for being one of the only sims that uses laser-scanned tracks, a process that makes the tracks much more accurate, by scanning the surface with a laser, allowing incredible detail on the camber, height difference and exact accuracy on the width and length of the track, and on the angles of the corners. Tracks on release included Spa, Monza, Silverstone, Imola and the Nurburgring GP course.
In 2015 the first DLC was released, this included the other part of the Nuburgring (The legendary Nordshleife) and 10 cars, including the McLaren P1, Sauber C9, and Alfa Romeo GTA. It is currently priced at $17NZ.
While the game itself is missing some features that should be standard in a modern racing sim (such as weather simulation, and a day-night cycle), it does have incredibly accurate physics.
rFactor 2
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| rFactor 2: Corvette GT2s at Silverstone |
Image Space Incorporated released rFactor 2 (obviously the sequel to the original rFactor) in 2013. Since then, the game has been constantly updated with additional content, including Indycars, Formula 2, GT cars, the occasional road car, and a collection of classic open-wheelers. rF2 is considered to be one of the most feature-rich racing sims on the market, with a full weather simulation system, a day-night cycle, and RealRoad, their custom built dynamic surface system.
RealRoad simulates cars putting rubber onto the track, in a dynamic way rather than a scripted way like other sims. This means that the track surface would be more rubbered-in closer to the end of a long race, due to the cars rubbing their tires over the surface. This gives the cars more grip. This is most prevalent in corners where cars are breaking and accelerating. This system also carries over between sessions, so at the beginning of a practice session the track would be un-rubbered and less grippy, but over the course of the session rubber would be added to the track. This would carry over into the qualifying sessions, and finally, by the time you got to the race, you would have a fully rubbered-in track.
Unfortunately, rFactor 2's community never really took off the way that AC's did. While AC has a large amount of mods available, rF2 has significantly less, especially in terms of cars. However, the mods that are there are generally higher quality than the ones in other sims, especially the two United Racing Designs payware addons, which include GTE and DTM based cars.
Project CARS
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| Project CARS: Classic Group A at Bathurst |
Project CARS (Community Assisted Racing Simulator) was released in early May this year, after spending 3 years in Slightly Mad Studio's closed beta system. It includes possibly the largest diversity in it's content, ranging from classic touring cars through to modern GT, prototypes and open-wheelers. It's notable for including both weather simulation and a day-night cycle, and also includes the Circuit de La Sarthe, the course on which the 24 Hours of Le Mans is run, the race itself is included as an event in the career mode.
It offers a detailed career mode, better than any other sim available (indeed, almost no other sims actually have a career mode, but rather a series of championships you can do at any time, in any order). The career mode allows you to start in whatever "tier" you wish, the lowest being go karts, the highest being Formula A (SMS's own version of F1) and the LMP1 class, along with a huge amount of content in between. You play through a season, at the end of that season, you can pick a new contract based on your performance. It's a simple system, but it adds a lot of replayablility to the game and forces you to drive cars and tracks that you normally wouldn't.
Unfortunately, the game does not have mod support, which will cause the community to suffer later on. The physics are also considered to be sub-par by some, in general, the sim doesn't really do anything incredibly, but does everything decently, meaning it's one of the best choices for somebody's first sim, or if you're just looking for a bunch of content to play around with.
Project CARS is interesting in the way that it was developed. As part of the aforementioned closed beta (which you could only buy into for a certain amount of time, I missed out unfortunately) the game's direction was decided on by the community, they voted on what content they wanted to be added to the game, and what the focus of the title should be. This sparked a lot of controversy, as some people didn't like the outcome, claiming that they were "ripped off" because the game was different from what they wanted.
Disclaimer: All screenshots on this post were taken by me.
It offers a detailed career mode, better than any other sim available (indeed, almost no other sims actually have a career mode, but rather a series of championships you can do at any time, in any order). The career mode allows you to start in whatever "tier" you wish, the lowest being go karts, the highest being Formula A (SMS's own version of F1) and the LMP1 class, along with a huge amount of content in between. You play through a season, at the end of that season, you can pick a new contract based on your performance. It's a simple system, but it adds a lot of replayablility to the game and forces you to drive cars and tracks that you normally wouldn't.
Unfortunately, the game does not have mod support, which will cause the community to suffer later on. The physics are also considered to be sub-par by some, in general, the sim doesn't really do anything incredibly, but does everything decently, meaning it's one of the best choices for somebody's first sim, or if you're just looking for a bunch of content to play around with.
Project CARS is interesting in the way that it was developed. As part of the aforementioned closed beta (which you could only buy into for a certain amount of time, I missed out unfortunately) the game's direction was decided on by the community, they voted on what content they wanted to be added to the game, and what the focus of the title should be. This sparked a lot of controversy, as some people didn't like the outcome, claiming that they were "ripped off" because the game was different from what they wanted.
Disclaimer: All screenshots on this post were taken by me.
