The December update for Le Mans Ultimate is waiting for the green flag: On December 10, the new version will feature new content, hosted servers, and online championships.
Images: Studio 397
December 10 is shaping up to be a big day for updates to sim racing titles: iRacing's 2025 Season 1 is expected then, RaceRoom will deploy its Super Tourers, and finally, Le Mans Ultimate looks to add another track and the first batch of LMGT3 cars in order to continue its quest to complete the 2024 WEC grid.
It is not just content in the update, however: Hosted sessions will be possible, and online championships arrive as part of online subscriptions that have been announced previously. Here's everything you can expect in LMU's December update.
Le Mans Ultimate LMGT3 Cars: Four New Sets Of Wheels
As GTE has been phased out in favor of GT3 machinery at the start of the 2024 WEC season, sim racers had to make do with the full 2024 Hypercar grid racing the 2023 GTEs so far. The four new cars will change that a bit - but only three will be paid DLC, as the McLaren 720S GT3 Evo has been announced as free DLC for all players already.The other cars that hit LMU on December 10 are the Ferrari 296 GT3, the Corvette Z06 GT3.R, and the BMW M4 GT3. By process of elimination, this leaves the Aston Martin Vantage AMR GT3 Evo, the Lamborghini Huracán GT3 EVO2, the Ford Mustang GT3, the Lexus RC F GT3 and the Porsche 911 GT3 R (992) for the final GT3 DLC cars of the 2024 season, which are expected to join the grid in early 2025.
LMU Goes To Brazil
The same now goes for the Losail International Circuit, which hosted the 2024 season opener, as Interlagos is confirmed to be the next track to join the Le Mans Ultimate calendar. A favorite of many, and not just Formula One fans, the iconic Brazilian circuit was the site of round 5 of the 2024 season, and it saw the #8 Toyota team around Sébastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa take the overall victory while the #92 Manthey PureRxcing squad around Klaus Bachler, Alex Malkhyn and Joel Sturm won the LMGT3 class.The Autódromo José Carlos Pace, named after the Brazilian 1970s F1 and sportscar racer, is plenty popular in sim racing, so most LMU players will most likely not be too upset about having to wait for Losail in favor of the Sao Paulo-based circuit.
The three LMGT3 cars and Interlagos will be available for £13.99 / €16.99 / $17.99.
Hosted Servers
Content aside, the online portion of Le Mans Ultimate will look different once the December 10 update is deployed. Thus far, racing with your friends was not possible unless you happened to be in the same split for an online event, and hosting leagues was not an option at all. The arrival of hosted servers will change this, although their implementation might not be the what many sim racers might have hoped for.For one, they will be quite accessible according to the announcement. Hosted Servers will be run via LMU's RaceControl platform, and they can be set up and controlled via the racecontrol.gg website. That should mean no dedicated server tool for players to install, and hopefully a rather easy and straight-forward way to set things up.
On the flip side, the hosted servers will be a paid service. Depending on a server's size, they start at €0.38 per hour (potential local taxes excluded). The obvious comparison would be iRacing, which makes hosted servers available for roughly €0.48 (converted from the $0.50 price listed by iRacing) per hour, although a bulk purchase discount for these sessions is also available.
Hosted servers can be made available publicly or run as private sessions, which can be found via a five-digit code.
Spectator Mode & WEC Overlay
Furthermore, the addition of a spectator mode coupled with WEC-style overlays means that sessions can be broadcast once the update is deployed. Streaming league races with commentary is supposed to be made easy with this.However, even POV streams could benefit from the overlays, which are set to look like the graphics and animations used in the broadcasts of real WEC races. According to the update announcement, "the broadcast overlay outputs to HTML outside of the game and can be used as a transparent layer in most streaming tools". A guide on how to use them properly is set to follow.
Optional Online Subscriptions
Finally, LMU's December update will also introduce online championships that will be part of a subscription model, which is set to feature two tiers. The rest of Le Mans Ultimate's online modes are not affected by this.The lower tier is called RaceControl Pro and allows users to take part in the aforementioned online championships. Players commit to a car for the entire season to compete in, and the races will take part on set days "with a limited number of attempts per week depending upon the difficulty of the championship", according to the official announcement. RaceControl Pro is set to cost €3.50 per month if players opt for an annual subscription.
Above this sits RaceControl Pro+ at €6.50 per month on an annual subscription. This higher tier lets players unlock all Studio 397 content in both LMU and rFactor 2 in addition to what the lower-tier RaceControl Pro gets them.
More benefits are also planned to come.
"The optional RaceControl Pro subscription includes a unique Online Championship mode that ramps up the importance and excitement of races powered by skill-based matchmaking and will in future host the the future qualifying for our important Le Mans Virtual esports series", states Motorsport Games CEO Stephen Hood. "The premium Pro+ tier of RaceControl is a landmark moment in our ambition to integrate games, features and content within a seamless platform for the benefit of our players."
Hood continues: "We sincerely hope players enjoy this update as the passionate Studio 397 team continue to pour their hard work into making this FIA WEC experience the best it can be, with many more exciting updates planned for 2025."
Other Improvements
Meanwhile, VR will be much more accessible than before. LMU can be fired up without adding a launch option line in Steam, the UI can be customized, and VR-related keybindings will be added as well. For VR enthusiasts, this should be great news as the mode has worked so far, but not in a very streamlined way - but Studio 397 has more in mind for VR as well down the line.Smaller tweaks concern the physics with a slight increase of grip at the limit, the implementation of ABS for the LMGT3 cars, and smaller performance improvements, particularly at the start of a race when all cars are crowded together in what is usually one of the more performance-heavy parts of any track with the main grandstands and pit building being present.
What do you make of the incoming Le Mans Ultimate update for December 10? Let us know in the comments and join the discussion in our LMU forum!
