My initial impressions on my "Potato-specced" pc

[v8vaantage]

Long post alert!!

I've just installed Assetto Corsa EVO and have played about with it for an hour so far, running on Patch 0.1.2. I thought since the original game I've loved since day 1 of it's early access (the one with only one Lotus Elise and one (short) track; a lot like demo versions of 1990's/early 2000's racing games) I thought I'd give my feedback to the developers, I will post a review after v1.0 releases.

In short, the modders of the original definitely did a grand job in making the game look, feel and sound next level; so much so, that I think some people have either not played the vanilla Assetto Corsa, or have forgotten just how much difference Custom Shaders Patch, SOL/Pure and PP filters made. I'd challenge anyone to install the original Assetto Corsa and play it with NO mods at all, because this is a night and day improvement in every aspect over the original. Kunos have come such a long way, and it shows.

So first, the PC I'm using, note it's pretty much meets the minimum requirements:
Windows 11
Ryzen 2600
32GB DDR 4
GTX 1070 (the "Minimum GPU")
Crucial 2TB NVME SSD
Monitor max supports 1080p/60hz.

So yes, not the fastest; latest PC on earth but since I mainly play PC games it does the job, and yes I'm considering saving up for a new build, but thanks to the economy and lack of spending money outside of bills; it's going to have to wait!!

Anyway, the game. I started the game and left ALL of the settings on default. There's too many to list but from memory it was basically native 1920x1080, no v-sync and medium graphics settings. Now, considering it meets "Minimum requirements", I don't feel that's a too bad result. I'm used to having minimum requirements to play like a slideshow at the lowest possible resolution/settings. Could optimization and frame-rate be better, of course!

Menu is a big improvement over the original. Content Manager became the menu, as it was so much easier to use and had more features than you could shake a stick at. Despite the menu being much better on EVO than the original vanilla PC game menu, it still needs some work. I feel that the different variants/livery/trim levels of cars should NOT show up as a different "model" on the selection screen. Perhaps have a "Variant" select button or have players click on the car of their choice and have a roll-over window appear in which you can choose which version of the car you want to drive. The same applies to the track selection screen. Have the location options appear first, then either have a pop up sub menu or "variant" selection button.

On performance:
"Practice mode" framerate seemed pretty good being the only car on track. I couldn't get MSI afterburner to show up specific framerate but I'd say it was around 40-60fps, and definitely more when I switched to the "underneath the car" camera view.

Racing:
To help performance I decided to limit the number of opponents to 5. The first thing I noticed was the very low framerate on the countdown to the race starting. All of the UI/and dials were juddering, but it smoothed out as soon after the green "go" lights disappeared from the screen. No doubt I suspect the frame rates would be significantly worse the more cars you have on the track.

Bugs so far:

I haven't noticed MANY major issues, although I'm sure that I will encounter some the more I play. The unsteady frame-rate at the countdown aforementioned is a fairly large problem. Other weird issues include opponents cars that seem to disappear/appear in the mirrors way too close in relation to the player, almost as though the lower LOD's aren't working in the mirrors but LOD0 (highest quality) IS. Therefore it can make it hard to establish where the rivals are without looking at the radar.

Some animations seem to be a lower framerate than the actual game, its only minor; but it can be distracting. Those "air-dancers" (i'm not sure what the actual name of them are) seemed to be quite juddery but the game felt smoother driving around. On someone else's PC/livestream; the wiper animations seemed a lower framerate than the driving/game itself.

Some car engine mixing is a bit funky. Sometimes the engine sounds are AWESOME, and then seconds later they can sound like the car engine sounds like its several hundred meters away from the car (if that makes sense). I mainly noticed it on the Honda S2000.

The feeling of the cars though, is probably one of my favourite parts so far. Each car drives like you'd expect, the push on and scrubbing under-steer you get on the front wheel drive cars, is probably as good if not better than any game I've ever played. The same goes for the vehicle weight and weight transfer feels absolutely fantastic. Better than any Forza or GT game I've ever played (I haven't played iRacing).

In summary, I would like to thank Kunos Simulazioni for giving players an opportunity to help play-test and improve the game and ironing out issues, whilst not charging any extra for the final release for Early access players as a Thank you. They didn't have to offer any of this but I'm grateful they stuck by their word. They could have had NO closed beta, No open beta and stone dead silence until release day, other than marketing material. I'm sure they would have preferred Early Access to start much smoother and less problematic than it has been for some users; who wouldn't? If Rockstar for example ever allowed people to play a small part of GTA 6 in Early access, despite the number of people absolutely desperate for them to play it right now, there would be meltdowns, swearing and rants galore and refunds left, right and centre, because I'm sure that that isn't content complete and probably has thousands of bugs to iron out still, not to mention optimization. Let's not forget that Kunos is a TINY fraction of the size of the development team of companies like Rockstar, EA, Turn 10 for example, and look how broken some of their "finished" games are, some of them are still broken even after over a dozen updates!!

[Sockpoppet]

Same issue, I'm running on similar specs, RDR2 runs perfectly smooth and it's a much more GPU demanding game. I hope the AC EVO team focuses on optimization, over new cars and tracks.

[v8vaantage]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Sockpoppet:

Same issue, I'm running on similar specs, RDR2 runs perfectly smooth and it's a much more GPU demanding game. I hope the AC EVO team focuses on optimization, over new cars and tracks.

I fully agree. Quality over quantity. I'm glad v1.0's car tally is going to be around 100 rather than 1000, for example!

I wish I could get RTSS to show on-screen inside EVO, but I can't! I wonder if the game is also heavier on the CPU than the system requirements show. The amount of physics this game is calculating must be pretty insane. But anyway, it's early, early days. I've played a lot of Early Access and Beta games over the years, and this is no-where near the most unoptimized and most broken, not by a long shot!