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

IMO subjective opinions about game’s physics and FFB provided by drivers who didn’t race a real GT3 car are basically worthless. Unless they can point to a specific aspect that is obviously wrong or backed up by analyzing telemetry.
Even pro drivers who raced the same cars IRL can have different opinions about physics. Only those who have extensive experience in both real life and the sim with the same car and preferably with similar setup, tires , same track etc. are worth listening to. But that’s obviously quite rare .
 
A GT3 driver told me that he prefers AC to ACC because in ACC you can do things you can't do in reality.
If AC is far from being perfect, due to his tyres model, he found AC more natural in driving or in car behavior than ACC.
From my point of view of 10 years of simracing, I prefer AC and RF2 (the two simulations I began with). AMS2 is nice but I'm not totally convinced (the breaking feels weird to me). I didn't take any pleasure by driving ACC...
I've tried shortly Iracing which is a good sim too, but don't want to spend too much money.
LMU is the latest I bought and I'm not disappointed by the driving.
Now, ACE is coming soon...
 
Today I compared AMS2 and ACC at Mount Panorama. The lap times were almost identical, but I realized that something is seriously wrong with ACC. The car's physics felt completely off, and there was just... no feeling at all. There was no connection between the car and the track. With AMS2, I had a great time on this tough track—you could really feel the weight of the car and the tires working. I’m not sure if the recent updates have broken ACC, but now I don’t even want to play it because of how bad it feels.
 
Today I compared AMS2 and ACC at Mount Panorama. The lap times were almost identical, but I realized that something is seriously wrong with ACC. The car's physics felt completely off, and there was just... no feeling at all. There was no connection between the car and the track. With AMS2, I had a great time on this tough track—you could really feel the weight of the car and the tires working. I’m not sure if the recent updates have broken ACC, but now I don’t even want to play it because of how bad it feels.
Have you tried the latest beta in AMS2...... epic!
 
To me ACC is hands down the best GT3 experience available from the perspective of my rig. No other SIM has better GT3. The physic is great, it has evolved over the years to be as good as ever.
The gap between real driving and sim driving is so huge, that comparing on feeling to determine accuracy is useless, pro driver or not.

Now, if someone wants to post some facts backed by data demonstrating how an other SIM has better physic than ACC for GT3 in which circumstances, I am all ears, bring it on.

If not, my impression is the only one that matters to me and to me ACC is the king of GT3. :D
 
Premium
I love ACC, both physics and handling. Until recently, GT3 was the best for me. AMS2 is great and fun, but it's a different kind of experience, less realistic for my taste. Now I'm hesitating with LMU, which I also think is great, I don't know whether to stick with ACC or LMU. I think they're extraordinary games, very immersive...
 
I don't know whether to stick with ACC or LMU
They are both superb alternative, but also complementary as they represent different grids. We are fortunate to have such accurate and great driving content, both cars and tracks. Happy days!
 
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Premium
I have to say that I understand the criticism of version 1.9 anyway. When it came out, I also felt that FFB had lost the feeling of "contact with the asphalt". I don't play it very often and now I try it and I like it, but I would like to try version 1.8 again to be able to evaluate the difference...
 
Today I compared AMS2 and ACC at Mount Panorama. The lap times were almost identical, but I realized that something is seriously wrong with ACC. The car's physics felt completely off, and there was just... no feeling at all. There was no connection between the car and the track. With AMS2, I had a great time on this tough track—you could really feel the weight of the car and the tires working. I’m not sure if the recent updates have broken ACC, but now I don’t even want to play it because of how bad it feels.
You know that your whole post is criticizing physics judging from what you're physically "feeling" in your hands, right?

You know that you can make AMS2 (and Project Cars 1 & 2) - and some other games - "feel" bad / good / better / worse or just completely, massively different through all sorts of in-game and especially text-file FFB changes, right?

You know that regardless of how bad/good/better/worse or just different those settings and text-file changes make the FFB that the actual in-game driving - the physics - are still 100000% identical to before, right?

21 years of simracing later and I see that people are still judging in-game physics - pure vehicle behaviour, action, reaction - based on how their real life wheel moves & shakes.
 
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