Assetto Corsa Free Bonus Pack 2 Details Revealed

[Paul Jeffrey]

Coming on March 31st, Kunos Simulazioni have today revealed details of the second free bonus car pack to hit the popular Italian racing simulator, Assetto Corsa.

Featuring the Corvette C7 Stingray, Ford Mustang and Fiat Abarth 595 alongside a new desert style 'Black Cat County' track, Bonus Pack 2 is a nice addition for fans to enjoy alongside all the promised goodies due to come in the Version 1.5 release on the same date.

Black Cat County is a new and attractive-looking fictional circuit that will come in three configurations and could well prove to be a wonderful playground for those with a leaning towards sideways drift-style action in the game.

The Fiat Abarth will form part of the Xbox One and PS4 release content due to launch on June 3rd in Europe and June 7th in North America with the C7 Stingray and Ford Mustang coming to console in the ‘Prestige Pack’ pre-order incentive at select retailers.

Don't forget to have a look at our recent exclusive interview for discussions around the console release and check out our Assetto Corsa forums and Racing Club for great online racing against your fellow sim drivers.

Looking forward to version 1.5 and the free bonus content? Enjoying the game so far? Let us know in the comments section below!

 

[Eduard Mallorquí]

It's not that hard to understand, Stefano and Aris are unable or lack enough knowledge to fix and improve current physics and AI behavior under racing conditions, so obviously Massarutto thought that the best is to shift the direction of the game to a road driving experience just like American Truck Simulator where you just need to know where your pedals are to cruise around the long and empty roads of the desert.

 

[Brandon Wright]

Once again, before the inevitable fanboys attack me, this is fine. Some people like it, some won't. I am personally disappointed it has changed course like this but I am also glad they have found a path they want to pursue. There seemed to be a lot of indecision between 1.2 and 1.4 and now they are molding AC into what they want; a driving simulation. Honestly I think they would have garnered mush less negativity from parts of the community if it had been labelled as such from the beginning but that is hindsight for you.

So in short, AC (in my opinion) is becoming more about a driving experience (joining a server with friends and cruising around a track chatting) rather than a competitive racing simulation.

I'm not a fanboy (not even close) and I'm not attacking, but I do have to question the claim. DP1 had 7 race cars and 3 street cars. DP2 had an even split (if you consider the two RUF's as one car, and it's a track oriented street car anyway). DP 3 had 7 race cars and 2 street cars. So that's 18 race cars and 10 street cars. All 3 DP's came with race tracks and two of the three (especially the most recent one) were heavily weighted towards race cars. I'm not seeing a shift to street cars/cruising here. The two bonus packs were focused on street cars, but then nobody has to pay for them so I don't see any reason for people to be upset about that. You have a right to your opinion of course, and I'm not questioning that, just questioning the claim that Kunos have decided to pursue a path that focus's on street cars just because they release one pack that has a few street cars.

It's also worth noting that when Kunos gets a license from a manufacturer, that manufacturer has a lot to say about what cars get included. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if Chevy and Ford mandated that the C7 and Mustang be added to the game in order to secure the license. So it's probably safe to say that any perceived shift in focus is guided more by the car manufacturers than by Kunos themselves. Seeing how valuable manufacturer involvement is, keeping the manufacturers happy seems like a wise decision to me.

IRD admins have previously said AC is one of the most difficult sims to organise a server and set up a race. I've never done it myself but I tend to believe an admin from RD after all the races they put on in the weekly club races that span a variety of sims. Clearly they have the experience to state things like that.

They've said it's the most difficult to run a proper RD-quality league with because they like to have things like a live broadcast with graphic overlays and that's difficult/impossible with AC currently. Getting a server setup is a piece of cake, there's a few steps to take the first time you do it (which are probably similar to all sims, like port forwarding) but after that it's about as easy as you could ask for and the server app is very straight-forward and slick. I could literally have a server setup and running in less than a minute.

It's not that hard to understand, Stefano and Aris are unable or lack enough knowledge to fix and improve current physics and AI behavior under racing conditions, so obviously Massarutto thought that the best is to shift the direction of the game to a road driving experience just like American Truck Simulator where you just need to know where your pedals are to cruise around the long and empty roads of the desert.

A far more likely scenario is that Ford and GM said "Sure, we'll give you the rights to license some of our race cars, but you have to include our flagship street performance car as well".

 

[Stereo]

The two bonus packs were focused on street cars, but then nobody has to pay for them so I don't see any reason for people to be upset about that.

A lot of the bonus material is also community-created; which I guess does show that it's what the community wants in the game. (the Cobra, Miura and Audi Quattro for example)

I did a lot of the technical work for the previous broadcasted RD series, ended up with some unavoidable issues (AC doesn't let apps know qualifying laptimes, kinda messy procedure at the start of the race to get the cameraman & commentators' cars out of the starting grid) + some ease of use issues since I'm not a professional coder by any standards, if you want a top quality broadcast you can't really accept that sort of thing. I don't really blame Kunos though, their staff member who was developing the app interface left and that's a hard position to replace.

If they were actively developing the app interface a few small changes could go a long long way towards making a broadcast-quality stream, it's a very flexible system that's just missing a couple key inputs/outputs.

 

[Tim Meuris]

I'm a bit dissapointed as well. I admit I have had awesome races on AC and put several hundred hours in the game. I'm in a league as well atm and enjoying it but I miss the feeling that Race07 gave me back in the days. Not talking about the driving feel cause AC is lightyears ahead of that, really, that's why I'm still playing this game so much. Also the attention for triple screen support and shiftdelay for paddle users in cars with manual shifter is what I adore about AC.

But it's still missing lots of racing features and league support isn't that alive atm (not talking about public servers here) and like a few other raceminded people already mentioned: all those road cars are a nice addition. But in the end I wanna race and then you're left with a bunch of emotionless GT3cars (yes I'm aware they're immensely popular) that are often seen in endurance racing, a feature completely absent in ac. Not that KS did a bad job on those cars, on the contrary!
But when you look at other sims and their content (RRE f.e.) it's starting to itch a little...
And I'm guessing, the depth kunos puts in these cars goes way deeper than RREcars (f.e.)
but (for me) it's sad to see all these rather uninteresting racecars coming out cause a lot of development tim went into them.

Well, play other sims if you're not happy then.
I know, but the driving feel is still just magic, track choice is great too.
Maybe more racecars will come out that I do like as well as racing features.
And then I'm slightly dissapointed to see this latest update news.

It's free, so don't nag, true.
It's probably a good decision creating this content with the console release in mind.
And I think it will be a healthy decision for AC as a product but it doesn't even get me lukewarm.
Hopefully lots of features will be added/improved with this update.

Not bashing here, still loving ac, but for my expectations it's stagnating atm...

 

[Brandon Wright]

I'm a bit dissapointed as well. I admit I have had awesome races on AC and put several hundred hours in the game. I'm in a league as well atm and enjoying it but I miss the feeling that Race07 gave me back in the days. Not talking about the driving feel cause AC is lightyears ahead of that, really, that's why I'm still playing this game so much. Also the attention for triple screen support and shiftdelay for paddle users in cars with manual shifter is what I adore about AC.

But it's still missing lots of racing features and league support isn't that alive atm (not talking about public servers here) and like a few other raceminded people already mentioned: all those road cars are a nice addition. But in the end I wanna race and then you're left with a bunch of emotionless GT3cars (yes I'm aware they're immensely popular) that are often seen in endurance racing, a feature completely absent in ac. Not that KS did a bad job on those cars, on the contrary!
But when you look at other sims and their content (RRE f.e.) it's starting to itch a little...
And I'm guessing, the depth kunos puts in these cars goes way deeper than RREcars (f.e.)
but (for me) it's sad to see all these rather uninteresting racecars coming out cause a lot of development tim went into them.

Well, play other sims if you're not happy then.
I know, but the driving feel is still just magic, track choice is great too.
Maybe more racecars will come out that I do like as well as racing features.
And then I'm slightly dissapointed to see this latest update news.

It's free, so don't nag, true.
It's probably a good decision creating this content with the console release in mind.
And I think it will be a healthy decision for AC as a product but it doesn't even get me lukewarm.
Hopefully lots of features will be added/improved with this update.

Not bashing here, still loving ac, but for my expectations it's stagnating atm...

I agree with all of that. But there are plenty of paying customers who do enjoy driving/racing street cars and AC is really the only sim you can do that in, so from Kunos point of view it wasn't a waste of time. And since the manufacturers have a large say in what cars get in the game, it makes sense to keep them happy and put some of their street cars in the game, especially if they're planning to use it for tech demos.

There are plenty of non-GT3 race cars in AC, and it's a pretty good variety. I haven't taken a count but there's probably as many or more race cars in AC than there is in AMS. So there should be plenty to keep race car fans happy, and there's more on the way. As long as they keep putting out race cars as well as street cars, both camps can be happy.

Not at all trying to argue with you or say you're wrong, I'm just saying there's a lot of stuff that goes into these decisions that we may not think about or be aware of. So there's no reason to think that Kunos is shifting their priorities to street cars just because they give us a few for free.

 

[Brownninja97]

The way I see Assetto corsas that its trying to do what things like GranTurismo and Forza should be, its a mix of both worlds but with actual physics. A few people said it before but there arent really many good options for the people that want both, sure there are a lot of streetcars to use in Race 07, GTR2 and rfactor with mods but lets be serious, they look like complete crap in terms of graphics. Yes i know graphics isnt everything but it helps with immersion A LOT.

Its generally an untapped area, your options are pretty limited if you want to drive a F40 but done properly or something close to it. This goes back to the "you cant impress everyone mentality", you just can't, sim racers want race cars, others want street cars.

Assetto corsa has its issues, believe me I know but car choice isnt one of their problems, not at all. The car choices cater to a wide audience, if AC was only race cars with the same physics then there would be a different mentality and i can tell each and everyone of you that Assetto corsa would as a result have way less sales as a result.

That choice to apply considerable effort into road cars has allowed kunos to catch users migrating from consoles to PC, the largest migration there has ever been in fact, it also allows them to attract those drifters from LFS, i dont know how big that community is but they finally get a new game to drift on, 3d modellers can show off their models in a beautiful engine, same can be said for the 2D/3D skin artists.

If you intend to reply to this overly one-sided comment please keep in mind i am referring to the cars, not the feature list, the cars.

 

[Tim Davila]

They need to fix AWD and tyre camber physics if they want high quality mods to continue being made. Still no word about either in 1.5 sadly.

this is just NOT true, and you know it. So why are you saying that as a fact? just wondering.

The most amazing mods ive ever seen are on AC and they keep comming out, with top quality and they feel awesome, a camber issue (that aris already is looking on tho and openly discussed it) or awd thats not perfect will not hold enthusiasts modder from doing perfectly fine with what they have available to them physics wise.

some of you modder guys seems to seek perfection, but theres no such a thing in anything in life, not even nature is perfect so its a lost battle from the very start.

 

[Brownninja97]

this is just NOT true, and you know it. So why are you saying that as a fact? just wondering.
The most amazing mods ive ever seen are on AC and they keep comming out, with top quality, a camber issue or awd thats not perfect will not hold enthusiasts modder from doing perfectly fine with what they have available to them physics wise.

it is true, there are problems with awd and camber. I've been assured that they will be fixed, as to when they will be fixed is anyones guess

 

[Tim Davila]

we all know that.... But modders will still keep overcoming those perfectly fine while they dont get fixed, ans update their work when the fixes come, as i said they will do their best with whats available.. thats what pros do, they dont keep complaining about their gear, they get the gear available and do crazy good stuff with it.

ps; ninja try to read posts entirely, it really helps tho. not bashing but it was clear that u only readed the first lines before answer.

 

[Torcano]

They are bringing out a licensed modern Ferrari F1 car to AC with the console release AFAIK... yet people seem to be going "NOOOO FREE CORVETTE AND MUSTANG! I'M SO TRIGGERED RIGHT NOW! STREET CAR FOCUS FROM NOW ON OMGOMGOMGOMGOMG!!!!!!!!!!1ione". Legit reaction right there.
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

 

[ZethGAF]

It seems like people are willfully spreading misinformation. If you read the post, it makes very clear that this update does not represent a change in direction for the game.

 

[Chris]

I did a lot of the technical work for the previous broadcasted RD series, ended up with some unavoidable issues (AC doesn't let apps know qualifying laptimes, kinda messy procedure at the start of the race to get the cameraman & commentators' cars out of the starting grid) + some ease of use issues since I'm not a professional coder by any standards, if you want a top quality broadcast you can't really accept that sort of thing. I don't really blame Kunos though, their staff member who was developing the app interface left and that's a hard position to replace.

Thank you!

I didn't want to jump in on this simply because I've had this conversation over and over again. But at the moment AC just provides an extremely 'clumsy' platform for league racing. No doubt league racing is possible but the ratio of administrative work to actual racing in AC is just ridiculous.

I currently am running the RDGPC with AC and am spending about a total of 4-6 hours doing post race officiaiting... For races that last only 40 minutes. It's the simracing equivalent to an iceberg.

Radu mentions that the community has provided apps, well that's great, but it's not enforceable, so if someone isn't running an app, then they can get away with whatever they like. The best method is to have server-enforced features that kick you for not complying, much like the Checksum kicks.

Then as Stereo rightly mentions, we do strongly prefer to run a properly broadcasted league and AC is absolutely unfit to do that unfortunately. I just hate how we are often labeled as the bad guys because we're reluctant to work with a sub-optimal product for league racing.
It's totally backward that we are blamed for this.

 

[Radu Oros]

I currently am running the RDGPC with AC and am spending about a total of 4-6 hours doing post race officiaiting... For races that last only 40 minutes. It's the simracing equivalent to an iceberg.

There is Stracker, which does: "The server-side app automatically stores all laps, sessions and drivers in a database on the server. It can provide web pages with interesting information for access with a browser. See the NEYS AC server statistics for an example."
http://n-e-y-s.de/main (app's website, with more info and manual)
http://www.racedepartment.com/downloads/stracker.3510/

About Broadcasts, what is currently missing and important for hosting a "televised" league for the public to watch.
It depends if you want to necessarily broadcast it or if you want to offer your Premiums a more serious competition other than with the regular clubs.

But have you made an objective list and presented it to the devs to what is required to have a well presentable and not hard to setup broadcasted league races? I'm not trying to enter the debate if they should know all about it without you needing to mention it, but trying to cooperate to present your needs objectively. Perhaps if they don't have a clear idea about it, they don't have the same effort for doing it, as they need a good plan before starting development on something.

 

[Chris]

There is Stracker, which does: "The server-side app automatically stores all laps, sessions and drivers in a database on the server. It can provide web pages with interesting information for access with a browser. See the NEYS AC server statistics for an example."

We already use sTracker, and yes it is useful, but it's not something that everyone has to download to use as people without pTracker will still show up in the times. More over, pTracker is not necessary when it comes to running a league.

About Broadcasts, what is currently missing and important for hosting a "televised" league for the public to watch.
It depends if you want to necessarily broadcast it or if you want to offer your Premiums a more serious competition other than with t

The inability to provide proper overlays, a proper spectator mode that doesn't require the usage of a car slot on the server and doesn't need to use ESC+BTP when the race starts to get the broadcasters car off the track. The same goes for the two or three commentators. It is do able but, in a broadcast where presentation is everything, it's incredibly clumsy and looks awful.

But have you made an objective list and presented it to the devs to what is required to have a well presentable and not hard to setup broadcasted league races? I'm not trying to enter the debate if they should know all about it without you needing to mention it, but trying to cooperate to present your needs objectively. Perhaps if they don't have a clear idea about it, they don't have the same effort for doing it, as they need a good plan before starting development on something.

Not sure if you saw but we wrote a rather long Open letter. It contained many elements required for league racing that are simply not present in the game, or much like the 'spectating' function, is very poorly implemented.

We have made an objective list many times. So here it is again...

• Collision Netcode needs a massive improvement. Colliding cars over react to tiny bumps. In fact, the netcode for general car behaviour has changed almost naught since NetKar Pro. Look at the car movement in that video. It's near on identical to the car movement in AC... And that game came out 10 years ago! TEN!
• A penalty system that actually works. At the moment there's only cutting penalties and they are inconsistently applied at best which means it's better to turn the system off entirely.
• The flag rules are non-existent as they're purely cosmetic. You can ignore blue flags until the cows come home and you will receive zero penalty.
• Then of course there's the spectating mode, or lack thereof, which requires a car slot for each member of the broadcast team. They then get spawned on the grid when the race is about to start (23:19 of that video if it doesn't automatically take you there) and you then have to esc+btp when the race starts by going through menus which totally detracts from the idea of presenting realistic virtual racing.

Then there's a whole host of other things that aren't necessarily required for league racing, but just help the atmosphere of things massively like timed races, time of day progression in MP (which I hear is coming in 1.5 thankfully), formation laps, sector times, rolling starts, a safety car, false starts, engine stalling. All of these things add to the authenticity of a league race (or even a public server race!), yet none of them are present.

Then there's also the fact that you can Esc+BTP and rejoin the race, which in league racing is an absolute no no. Even if you do rejoin the track having to re-complete that lap again, the fact that you can do it in the first place is simply unacceptable.

I love Assetto, but it's just not suitable for leagues (and please don't point me in the direction of the ACRL because I've seen that league and... just, no). I've run 3 seasons of AC leagues now and weekly club races ever since MP was released, so I know pretty darn well what it does well and what it doesn't do well. It's fine for just casual club racing or public server racing, but not for leagues.

Anyway, I'm done commenting about this subject as I now feel like a broken record. So, here's to a successful 1.5, and hopefully it will come with some nice improvements.

 

[Warren Dawes]

WOW!!!!
I came to this thread to find out about a FREE addition coming to AC (which looked interesting to me). Unfortunately I've had to wade through 5 pages of this rubbish, and I'm still not finding anything very helpful, except for the original post. Thanks for that one Paul, I should have stopped reading at that point .
I guess this is why I don't race on-line these days, if this is an indication of the "Community".

 

[Baki]

Cant wait to see Ford Mustang e Corvette C7 Stingray and maybe the 595ss Abarth.
+Black Cat County - American road track
new Vallelunga layout
-reworked tracks

and all the other hacked things from the Cats

 

[Tim Meuris]

I agree with all of that. But there are plenty of paying customers who do enjoy driving/racing street cars and AC is really the only sim you can do that in, so from Kunos point of view it wasn't a waste of time. And since the manufacturers have a large say in what cars get in the game, it makes sense to keep them happy and put some of their street cars in the game, especially if they're planning to use it for tech demos.

There are plenty of non-GT3 race cars in AC, and it's a pretty good variety. I haven't taken a count but there's probably as many or more race cars in AC than there is in AMS. So there should be plenty to keep race car fans happy, and there's more on the way. As long as they keep putting out race cars as well as street cars, both camps can be happy.

Not at all trying to argue with you or say you're wrong, I'm just saying there's a lot of stuff that goes into these decisions that we may not think about or be aware of. So there's no reason to think that Kunos is shifting their priorities to street cars just because they give us a few for free.

yes I agree lots of people enjoy AC. I do too. Just had the most insane battle in the gt3's at nurburgring gp. It has great driving dynamics! but I'm starting to think the balance between driving and racing (not to be confused with road cars vs racecars) is shifting more towards driving. And with the console announcement I think businesswise that's the smartest thing to do. Like said in this thread before: it's gonna be a gt or forza with actual physics.

But for me I liked it to be more 'race-accentuated' and this has nothing to do with if we get free road cars or not with the update. There are racecars indeed but only the gt3's really come into play for regular league use and overall I don't find it an interesting car park at all (but that's just me). I bought every dlc and will continue to do so cause I still want to support AC (and have all the tracks ) but I don't think it will become the sim I hoped it would be.

And let me be clear: respect for KS cause it started out as a glorified tech demo so hats off!
Also car manufacturers probably have a big saying in what KS can put in their game and what not, another factor that is of great influence on that balance...

 

[Glaurung]

I think that it's nice to have in a sim not only race cars, but also road cars, and I'm not talking about supercars like the 458, the Nissan GT-R, the P1 or LaFerrari, I'm more attracted by average joe's ones, like the M4, the Giulietta, the Abarth 500, etc.
It's the ineffable satisfaction that makes you grin when you drive an M3 E30 and it reacts as you're expecting, the way it does the actual one.
Eventually, as always, to each his one.

 

[Grand Tourist]

Anything that's free and premium quality added to the content, wether it's official Kunos product or scratch build mod, shouldn't be criticized or frown upon. One should be grateful to have just that bit more content to fool around with.
The bigger discussion about career content, AI behaviour and in game immersion will last beyond the 1.5 update if not addressed to by then by our deer Kunos friends. I just think they need positive feedback in stead of bashing their efforts. Patience these days, especially amongst gamers, is so hard to earn. The title says 2016-2020 in the startup screen. ...so allow them to adjust without losing quality. They have the advantage of my doubts.

 

[Tim Meuris]

not trying to bash here.
I think they have a really good thing going on
it's just not going to be on par with my expectations
that's all what i was trying to say

and, now I think about it, up till now I've driven more road than race cars.