Assetto Corsa EVO Early Access Review!

After nearly seven years since the release of Assetto Corsa Competizione, Kunos Simulazioni has unveiled the early access version of Assetto Corsa EVO. Today, we’ll have a closer look at the early access of the new Assetto Corsa Evo.

While early access still has some bugs and probably not the best experience, there are many positive things that need to be said in this early review. 

Early Access Launch Details

In the last couple of years the gaming world has definitely changed. We’ve seen the rise of AI and latest GPUs with unimaginable performance in 2018 when ACC was launched. While this is a positive change, the expectations of the community have changed as well.

Every new title has big expectations, and if the title can’t match the community's requirements, it simply becomes lost in the sim racing world.

One of the most recent examples is Rennsport, which promised to deliver unmatched performance and racing experience, but it suddenly disappeared and no one is even talking about it anymore, let alone play it.

On the other hand, iRacing has been able to keep its user base for the last 10-15 years, while the graphics remained…let’s just call them, not up to date. But the experience doesn’t only come from graphics and how the game looks, but also how it feels and what features it offers at what price. Which leads us to AC Evo and what it wants to become over the next few years or maybe even longer.

But this sim is much more than that, so this early review will cover the negatives, but we have to understand AC Evo really is, early access with some bugs and a lot of features that need to be fixed. 

But let’s finally begin, the early access version is priced at £32.99/€39.99/$39.99. An introductory offer provides a 20% discount, reducing the price to £26.39/€31.99/$31.99, valid from January 16 to January 30, 2025.

The game's releases will also be in stages, every stage every few weeks, or even months while they slowly introduce bug fixes and add more features into the game. The full release with all features is expected in fall 2025, while multiplayer should be released in 3rd early access drop, while free roam right after that.

Graphics

While the game should get more features over time, the structure and physics should already be on track of an end product. Not to even mention the graphics that look really good in this first release. Even though some suggest that it still looks like a game from 2015, from my experience the game looks decent for early release.

But let’s begin with the graphics and the settings I used. My PC isn’t exactly the 8th wonder of the world, but still does a solid job with most gaming titles. Recommended settings from Kunos Simulazioni include RTX 2070 or Radeon RX 5600, with 16GB or RAM and Intel i5 10500 / AMD 2600X, even though CPU isn’t really a big deal in this whole story. 

My setup however consists of RTX 3060, i5 12th generation with 32 GB or RAM, but I still had to reduce most of the settings to Mid or High to run at around 40-45 frames per seconds. Later I added DLSS and had a significant improvement in performance with around 60 FPS in normal dry conditions with 20 cars on the track. I even increased some settings too high because I didn’t see a drop in performance. 

However, the situation changes when we add rain or when the night falls. Rain with the same setting will typically reduce FPS by around 20-30%.

The situation is almost the same while driving at night with around the same drop in FPS.

I should point out that even while optimized for version 1.0, the game should be good to run on RTX 30 series, while 40 or even 50 series should become a go to option to get the most out of the game. But that’s not that bad since Nvidia released their 5070 at 549$, and it should outperform 4070 by a long shot in almost every area. Also 4070 outperforms my 3060 by a lot, so guessing that 5070 should be able to run everything on Ultra setting, with around 120 or even more FPS.

Which will put the total cost of a PC at around 1300-1400 euros, give or take, to run this game at Ultra, considering that the price of 5070 will be around 700 euros in Europe, and of course considering that we would need to cut the budget on some other components like CPU and RAM.

AI Drivers

While AI drivers are not the smartest, they can drive. The starting procedure doesn’t exactly look right, with all of the AI drivers moving closer to the middle of the track and then starting to take their normal racing lines. A few tweaks here and there, and I think this could be fixed. 

But something that stood out was definitely problems in the rain. And yes, they did a community gathering at Laguna Seca, so I guess they like the spot. Jokes aside, AI drivers in the rain don’t really know what to do and mostly miss their braking points thinking that the track is dry. This leads to the next problem, which is driving in a big group. When a group of AI drivers get close together they start slowing down and creating a little train of slowly moving cars, which are hard to overtake since they take most of the road.

Another interesting thing is their race craft, or should I say the lack of. I’ve seen many crashes and missed braking point, which should make me believe that these AI machines are programmed to make occasional mistakes, but they just make too many of them now. Still something that I think will be fixed in the future.

But, what is really positive is the speed of these AI machines, once they’re in clean air, they start showing their skills and eventually get up to pace. I have to mention that I used 100% AI, but every time I got in the race it showed 97% which I believe to be another bug in the system. This 97% AI wasn't too difficult to beat, but I really had to focus not to miss a braking point or make a mistake, because AI will use it, but it seems that AI is better with racing cars than road cars, which leads us to our next point. 

Physics and FFB

I believe that we need to start with the setting and FFB cause it will determine how well the car will perform and also how good we can feel the differences in grip and weight transfer of the car later on. 

I used the recommended setting and only reduced NDP and increased NFR on my wheel. This helped me to feel the car a bit better under braking without having that very dampened feeling of the car while turning.

Another important part is what wheel you’re using and I highly recommend having a look at the recommended setting and possibly tweaking them to your liking. Overall, I would still like some improvement over time, but I guess that will come in the next few releases.

One of the most important parts is the in-game setting, which I believe should be explained in the menus without having to guess what each setting does. But assuming that everyone will do this part maybe once in a while, it’s not a huge downside. And of course, these are my settings if you wish to try them.

After setting the wheel, I finally started to feel the cars the way they should be felt, and yes, it’s good, it’s really good.

If you remember ACC, there was always this weird and unresponsive feeling when the wheel was centered, and then when the car started to turn there was big increase of FFB and overall force, which is because of the amount of grip the tires needed to become responsive. I have a feeling that this is significantly reduced in Evo, and makes the Cars not difficult to drive, and it shouldn’t be. 

Some cars felt more natural to drive than others, but I think at this point that is normal. So if you’re wondering how it feels, I would says a mix of ACC and iRacing, hard to say exactly what without trying it, but road cars feel really natural and almost like stepping in a real car and going for a casual drive.

The fact Kunos developed a completely new engine is supposed to reduce that bouncy feeling  that was present in ACC, when the suspension was too stiff, give me a positive feeling that they can adjust almost anything before the full release. On the other hand, I struggled with racing cars that produce this annoying sound while turning the wheel more than 45 degrees. Even at low speeds, it feels like there is a specific point where the car starts losing grip, instead of being linear as the wheel is turned more.

For me this was a big issue and the understeer that it created made the whole racing car experience not that enjoyable. I assume the problem are slick tires that don’t work in the same way as sports tires in road cars. But again, if they made road cars feel great, I don’t see the reason why racing cars would be the same.

One interesting thing is oversteer that feels manageable, especially with the Porsche 992, coming out of the slow turns felt really smooth, while understeer seems to step in a specific point completely at random, which doesn’t help with understanding what the car needs in a specific situation. Braking is another big segment that we need to address, while with most road cars going on 100% won’t do much, I definitely had to be careful with how much braking pressure was applied with faster racing cars, unless I wanted to understeer into the corner. This also depends on the ABS settings, but I assume we will have the answer to what is the fastest way to brake in the next few weeks after some testing.

Also, acceleration depends on the car and I had to be careful with how hard I pressed the accelerator out of the slower turns, and yes, losing the car is possible and there should be some throttle management in tight turns. 

Setups

It’s hard to say how setups will affect cars at this point, since there wasn't enough time to test the cars in a more competitive environment, but I’m sure that competitive setups will still be a part of AC Evo, and almost a requirement to go fast. 

But with that said, I think that the next few updates will solve this issue and make the experience a lot better for racing cars. Also, we’ll see new options and features that will show the way forward. 

Sound and UI

One of the key elements that are required for an immersive experience is definitely sound. ACC definitely set a benchmark in this area, with its very rough car sounds, but AC Evo doesn't seem to follow that route, at least not for now. The sound for some cars is simply not on the level where you would expect it, it just sound not right, with some cars not having the sound they should.

Another part that just didn’t convince me was the UI, some parts look good and they seem to follow the same theme, like their menu, which originates from ACC and original AC, while parts like the fastest lap, simply don’t have the unique presentation that we would expect from a title like this. 

But I will say this again, this would probably be the easiest part to change till the 1.0 release.

After all of this, it’s hard to say exactly how this game will look in the next couple of months or even years, because most of the content still isn’t here. But what I can say is that this title has a promising future in years to come. We have to remember, this is only early access and should be treated as such.