Assetto Corsa Competizione: Cool Stuff About Marbles...

[Paul Jeffrey]

Just in case you didn't already know, I recently found a very illuminating social media post from Aris of Kunos Simulazioni, referring to the behaviour of marbles in ACC...

For those of us that don't know (and forgive me if you do), marbles are the little discarded bits of rubber that inevitably relieve themselves from the tyres of racing cars following prolonged lapping of a racing circuit. Often found on the edges of the racing line, these little pieces of rubber build up during track action and over time form something of a visible carpet of darker tyre shreds that can add a very noticeable effect on the driving dynamics of cars that find themselves straying away from the traditional racing line.

The original Assetto Corsa didn't simulate the visual or physical effect of marble build up on the circuit, and often I find it strange that the topic isn't really spoken about much from the sim racing community of any modern racing title. However, in the quest for further realism with the new Assetto Corsa Competizione racing sim, Kunos sound like they have really gone to town with this feature.. not only adding the visual aspect of marble build up, but simulating its effects in both wet and dry conditions.

When speaking via the comments section on social media, Assetto Corsa Competizione physics guru @Aristotelis gave some really, really cool insight into how this works in ACC...

The quote from Aris:

Ah we're pretty proud and enthusiastic about marbles. Not only if you pass over them they accumulate on your tyres and make the lose a bit of grip on the dry and vibrate.

But if it starts raining and you go over them and you accumulate, they will add a bit of tread on your tyres that might help you with aquaplaning in the initial raining conditions until it either dries up or you go in for tyre change. Obviously we're talking small influences, but every little helps.
So if it starts rain and you're on slicks, go the outside line and pickup marbles!

We wouldn't be able to simulate such a thing if it wasn't from the help of Blancpain drivers that so much supported us and gave us amazing feedback...

...It doesn't improve grip, but it gives the tyres a "tread" so the water (simulated as an actual film of water with depth) has some way to drain through and improves the aquaplaning risk.
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Again my apologies if you already knew all about this, but I for one certainly didn't, and I don't mind admitting - this is one incredibly cool feature, and one of the many reasons I firmly believe Assetto Corsa Competizione is set to be a very, very good racing simulation.

For more Assetto Corsa Competizione news and discussion, head over to the ACC Sub Forum here at RaceDepartment. If you enjoy online racing yourself, you might enjoy our ACC League and Club Racing forum, a place to take in clean, fair and competitive online racing in this sim.

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[manc0ntr0]

PC2?
I thought this is an ACC thread. Fanboys always need to say "mine is better". The funny thing is PC2 is better than PC1 and that's it.

On the other hand, nice to read about marbles.

 

[F_B]

Keep it comin’ neuer31, that’s pure comedy gold.

Time to try ACC again, had not had much time recently. Very promising features.

 

[SimJim70]

bits of rubber that inevitably relieve themselves

Quite the turn of phrase you have there Mr Jeffery!

 

[GTR233]

Contrary to fanboys may think, marbles are not a new stuff exclusive to ACC as 13 years old GTR2 (Ian Bell team) already had this feature, then SHIFT (Ian Bell team again) and then Pcars (still Ian Bell team), nevertheless good point to Kunos to add it to their new baby

 

[Kenny Paton]

Contrary to fanboys may think, marbles are not a new stuff exclusive to ACC as 13 years old GTR2 (Ian Bell team) already had this

I already 'd you
see post #28

 

[RasmusP]

Contrary to fanboys may think, marbles are not a new stuff exclusive to ACC as 13 years old GTR2 (Ian Bell team) already had this feature, then SHIFT (Ian Bell team again) and then Pcars (still Ian Bell team), nevertheless good point to Kunos to add it to their new baby

I don't remember though if you could increase grip using them in the rain or whether they had an impact to the grip at all?

BTW, imo the tech below the hood is awesome in pcars and pcars 2. Sadly the direction in the end wasn't to my liking...

 

[Ryann]

ACC already represents almost everything I could ever want from a sim. Nearly everything they have done just clicks with me. Now I just wonder how the career will be handled. If Kunos could provide well structured, progressive career, I could finally stick to a single sim.

 

[callumjtc]

English forum guys. First the usual fanboys derailing the thread, now a private conversation in Spanish (or Portuguese?)...
Lasst mal stecken Jungs und lernt bitte Englisch. Ist nicht so schwer, zur Not gibt's Google Übersetzer
You see.. It sucks if we all write ihr native languages ..
No idea how people even get the idea to do this? Everyone writes in English, let's do it differently.
Probably like the people who step into a calm train where everyone speaks quietly English or German and they start to make a call where they almost shout into their phones in whatever language while everyone can listen although being 20m away.

Rant over.

Sorry mate, I don't speak Italian and never have but I was trying to be accommodating using the power of Google Translate!

 

[RasmusP]

Sorry mate, I don't speak Italian and never have but I was trying to be accommodating using the power of Google Translate!

It's their job to throw their own stuff into Google translate and put the English text on here though
I did the same as you a few times but in the end... Why should we, it's not that hard and if the others can't be bothered to put it into Google translate themselves than we shouldn't be bothered to do it for them.

 

[callumjtc]

It's their job to throw their own stuff into Google translate and put the English text on here though
I did the same as you a few times but in the end... Why should we, it's not that hard and if the others can't be bothered to put it into Google translate themselves than we shouldn't be bothered to do it for them.

Fair enough, will keep that in mind

 

[9kret9]

Very nice, adds a lot to realism. AMS also has it, it's worth mentioning.

 

[EduCalza]

These guys at Kunos, creating another level of simracing 'games'. I can't wait for final version.

 

[Arconian]

ACC is shaping pretty awesome ATM. My only problem with it is the 1st Gen i7 and GTX770.

 

[Frank]

Off topic

You are flat out wrong, but I guess you haven't looked into tech under the hood.
PC2 physics are more complex and more sophisticated and that is for every car, fact (again, it is not about how realistic the car in the end handles, which is up for debate).

Visuals I would say better for ACC, but not that much (especially compared to other sims).

No, PC2 tires do not freak out when pushed over the limit, that is simply not true.

No sim has good AI, you can find that out really quickly doing a multiclass race and observe lap 1. I think AI behavior is decent in PC2, sometimes great, sometimes bad, but rF2, AC etc. are all on the same level, some of them exceed the others in certain areas ; actually for me F1 has the best AI, but it is no sim.

They have too many cars tbh, more polish (hence why the perception of so different car handling) and better class balance would be nice.

I like the driving UIs of iRacing, AC and PC2, especially because they are customizable.
You can do a custom online championship in PC2, idk why it is not available offline ...

You need to get your facts straight and inform yourself before claiming stuff.

It was a big fail, but no other sim offers it natively, so that's that. Openweather API (lower tiers) is also terrible, mostly updating every hour ... unusable.
I am more pissed about unfulfilled Driver Swap promise tbh and the still existing bugs.

If you want people to take you seriously, you might want to quote your facts.

On topic
It seems like a pretty advanced system they have in place, I am curious to see if I can feel the differences.

 

[Andrew Harper]

PC2?
I thought this is an ACC thread. Fanboys always need to say "mine is better". The funny thing is PC2 is better than PC1 and that's it.

On the other hand, nice to read about marbles.

Yeah I know, didn't take long for the fights to break out! lol

PC2 has marbles but I never viewed it as totally realistic, it was something that worked up to an extent. I enjoy racing on PC2 anyway, not everybody likes it and that's fair enough

The level of detail in ACC is impressive though and it's certainly a nice piece of work by the team to include this.

One thing that does occur to me (and this has been mentioned on other threads) is how realistic do you want it? In some cases if you went to pass someone and picked up tonnes of debris on your tyres, you could crash or spin as the track grip would drop very suddenly. Not everyone would be keen on such realism, they want a "live" track but don't want it to be impossible to race and pass on. Not an argument for or against, sometimes it's about getting the balance right without making it totally impossible.

 

[Chris Frays]

Yes, ACC is getting better and better. I am actually totally addicted to race it. Great fun, superbe visuals and the Ranking System is very motivating.

 

[Dobermann92]

The hating on Project Cars 2 is never getting old...

It is a nice feature to have it on ACC, I didn't know that those marbles can help you in wet conditions.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Time for the, "Can't we all just get along!" comment

A feature is not less important or a bad thing just because it may have been implemented by someone else first. Kunos still had to build the feature. It's not like competing software houses just hand new features to each other out of good will.

One thing I noticed about AC is that the level of mods for VR UI and everything else are pretty extensive, impressive and a bit confusing when you are first looking at it, but it does show a LOT of love for the game by its user base!

I'm hoping that ACC out of the box will work well navigating in VR, and incorporate some of the best most popular mods since they have been effectively filtered for Kunos by their popularity and ratings by their customer base.

I'm not suggesting that the game should be closed to mods going forward. Mods allow them to tap into the passion of their user base, allow their customers to take some ownership and enjoy the game even more.

Anyway just watching as things come together.

 

[michelforest]

Pcars2 failed miserably.

On every level, yes...

 

[David Wright]

I don't remember though if you could increase grip using them in the rain or whether they had an impact to the grip at all?

They reduced grip in the dry but did not increase grip in the wet. The latter seems to be a "new discovery". I'm not sure if it is unique to the Blancpain series or not.

GTR2's livetrack was pretty subtle. So subtle that I guess many did not realise it was there. Marbles are used quite sparingly in GTR2 for example. Having checked video and photos from the FIA GT series this seems accurate. The multi-class racing, meaning quite a bit of overtaking off the racing line (cleaning the track up), could be one reason. It may also be down to compounds used back then. F1 never used to produce the carpet of marbles is does now. The rubbered in racing line used to be darker - now it usually isn't.

When you have a new feature in your sim, the temptation is to over-play it. When rF2 came out - realroad was accelerated five times and the green track was very green so you noticed the track rubbering in. Raceroom was one of the first to include suspension noise but listening to real on-board recordings it seems overdone. PC2's party piece was puddles and arguably that was overdone too. I did a time trial at Zolder when it was released in ACC and off the racing line was a carpet of marbles which again seemed over-done. Not sure if they've toned it down in later releases - I must give it another try.