3 old friends, I underline old...
Let's talk about Assetto Corsa!
First question: why the name Assetto Corsa?
- laughs - Nice start...
Because it's cool!
We noticed some foreign products with italian names (Nd. Grand Turismo, Forza Motorsport), so why to copy them with a foreign name since we are italian?
Marco, what can you tell us about this new Kunos product?
It's new for you, not for us, since we've been working on it for 3 years - smiling - we are sick of it!
We are very happy of what we've done so far. What helped us to improve the approach in the way we work, are not only the past experiences but also the chance to have our headquarters here in a track (Nd. Vallelunga), being in touch daily with the world of motorsport.
Assetto Corsa is a bigger and different thing compared to netKar Pro and the opportunity to have more people working with us, gave us the possibility to focus ourselves individually on much more aspects, compared to the past, where it was basically a one-man-band, where everything rotated around Stefano (Nd. Casillo).
We have people like Aris (Ed. Vasilakos) - unfortunately! - who gives us the possibility to be more specialized in every area of the development, from graphics to physics, passing through licensing department.
It's our most ambitious project and what will determine the future of our company.
Another question: how much of netKar Pro can you find in Assetto Corsa? ..if there's any.
- People! People who worked on it, plus other new entries.
From the source code point of view, there's nothing in common, but the know-how we developed in all these years.
Assetto Corsa is not an evolution of things already done before. It's a project created from the scratch as netKar Pro was an experimental project, born with other objectives in mind. Stefano turned his experimental ambitions into something bigger and now Assetto Corsa concept answers to all the new demands we received in all these years, such as professional, training-platform, modding and so on.
The first thing you notice when AC starts is the menu.
It's a very stylish menu, complete, and aesthetically functional. It seems to be a game though.
Does it means Kunos open to Arcade and people who are not addicted to simulations?
- Assetto Corsa is an Arcade! - laughin -
- (Nd. Aris) There's no reason why a user experience shouldn't be fun. Our primary goal with AC was to give the user the chance to play, to drive, which is the essence for a racing enthusiast. So everything must be easy and graphically clean when you want to select a car, a circuit.
So now, to set up the input devices you don't need a degree in engineering.
- No, it's enough a Master...
Stefano, what can you tell us about Assetto Corsa?
- I'm very tired!
- We are in the final timeline about implementations. From that moment on we're going to start the hardest part of bug fixing. It's really hard for us to talk about AC because we have it before our eyes every single day.
Compared to nK Pro I have a vision more related to software, because since AC is developead by a team, now I find myself to play just like a simple user... for example every time I try a new version I find something new to me, like a completely new menu, new cars and so on, and everything happens without my primary intervention, as it's now all made in synergy among the crew. So now the hope is to have now a more solid product as we can split the work among the team members.
Talking about physics, dynamic model and driving feel, things that really impressed me.. Aris, you told me before that the approach on physics and driving model was completely different.
- We start from a base, which is Stefano programming his physics engine; and it's really amazing to say "I need a value or a feature" and the day after being able to have it, working, and bug-free, and verified working as it should in reality.
When you got such an advanced model, you feel yourself compelled to do a step forward and not starting to create each car, one by one, with its own behavior and then trying to fix this to catch its right behavior and then again starting with another car to do a completely new thing to find its normal behavior.
We aim to link all the things together to have all the cars working in a proportional way and bound one another; and I think what we managed to do with AC is, often when you drive, you don't try to undestand what the simulator does and then you adapt yourself to it, but you simply try to understand the specs, the characteristics of each car and exploit them to drive faster or have more fun when you drive that car.
Will this be a great advantage for Modders as well?
- Yes, we hope so, also because everytime Stefano adds something on the physics engine and even graphics engine, one of my first thoughts is: "how can we make this thing easier to use by me and so by Modders (..later on)?"
Marco, let's talk about liceses and what we can expect from Assetto Corsa in regards of tracks and cars.
- Vallelunga has not been officially announced yet, but you can bet it will be in the final version.
Clearly we have our officies here at the track, so...
Monza, Silverstone, Imola and Magione have been already announced.
As Bonus Track: TRENTO - BONDONE hillclimb!
It will be revisited a little in function of the new graphics engine which is different from the old one. (Nd. GREAT NEWS!)
So this track will require a bit of extra work.
Two new circuits are on the way, but we can't talk about them as the license agreements are close to finalization.
Let's see if we can make a surprise to all racing enthusiats... we try to!
About Lotus cars, we have a multi-years license, covering also the next two years of production.
A base of 5/6 cars but no Classic Team Lotus brand, which is another thing.
Then we will add other cars as DLCs in the following months after the official 1.0 release.
Classic Team Lotus: 6 cars, 2 maybe 3 in the 1.0 version.
Three more cars added later on, considering the F1 from '60 on.
BMW: 9 models, street and race cars.
KTM with X-BOW.
FIAT 500 Abarth SS
Ferrari P4/5 Competizione
But in this area the work is not completed because we are finalizing other licenses to have more cars in the 1.0 version.
Another question: how many bugs do you count on adding into Assetto Corsa?
Just joking! Eheh
WHEN ASSETTO CORSA WILL BE RELEASED???
- When it's ready...
The idea was to release it within the fall of 2012, but some things happened, positive things, we hope positive not only for us but also for the final users, so we are thinking a date around the 1st quarter of 2013.
We aim to release a Tech-preview within the fall of 2012, so we can start with it a bug-fixing phase.
In this tech-demo it's likely we add a FIAT 500 Abarth and Magione, and our main goal is to test the graphics engine, a DX11 engine, in as more PC configurations as possible, to verify bugs, performances, interface working and all other feaures which are going to be added in the final version.
Will the Modding be easy to manage and open to every kind of possibilities, such as cars and tracks?
- The software is extremely open, in regards of cars and tracks customization and features such as output data, telemetries, overlay graphics; everything's planned to be extremely user-friendly. Clearly skilled modders will have no problems, whilst newbies can't expect to created state of the art work if they don't understand the values to add to create something.
WITH OUR PRODUCTS, IF YOU CAN OBTAIN REAL-LIFE DATA, IT'S ENOUGH TO ADD THOSE VALUES AND THE SOFTWARE DOES THE JOB.
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