My brutally honest thoughts about Assetto Corsa Evo

After putting more time in Assetto Corsa Evo in the last few weeks than I did in some other sims in 10 years, im going to give you some more opinions on EVO, since the last update of the early access 1, update 0.1.5, has brought the licenses which will be integral part of what “EVO” will be. 

Now, Im totally aware that EVO is in early access, theres so much missing because Kunos will be adding stuff during EA and even past it, but there are a few issues that I think theyll prevail past early access. If you enjoy this type of content dont forget to subscribe, and like some other guy has said, if you want to unsubscribe, you need to be subscribed first.

First of all, the stability issues brought over 0.15, arent really of concern to me, because well, 0.14 didnt have those issues, it was very stable. And stability will come back.

The first real issue with EVO is “always online”. This is a big no-no for a lot of people. Theres a huge debate to be had about always online, and theres already a few big examples in racing titles about always online. The first one is iracing of course. The game is made to be always online, but pretty much all features are locked, bar a test mode are locked whenever the service is down, which is more often than I would like. Gran turismo 7 is another one. Whenever sony has issues, you can only access that gran turismo weird music mode. Strange when all of the other titles didnt have this issue before hand.

With Evo we can already see some of the cracks coming in, even before the game is out. In this case, we are talking about  during the first day with early access. Kunos suffered some sort of issues with the back end of the system, not sure if it was ddos or something else. 

Because of it most of the already small content was locked, both in terms of cars and the “evo part” of assetto corsa,  licenses and special events werent available. Only really 5 cars until they changed it via update.  Special events due to the nature of it require always online as it is an online leaderboard, so fair enough. But a good chunk of evo will be licenses and a career mode, and it does seem at this time, this content will be locked behind the always online requirement. That includes any customised cars, career credits, car dealership and so on. Both Assetto Corsa and Assetto Corsa Competizione didnt have these restrictions at all. If the online portion is down, due to back end issues, its fair, but imagine losing access to mods, stock content or race mode if the back end is down. I am also very worried about its stability at launch and going forward. Even now, its incredibly unstable and in the past Kunos has been victims of ddos attacks, which means things staying like this, it is reasonable to assume that every so often a good portion of the content will be locked.

Kunos may eventually back down of some of these restrictions, but at this time it seems the always online is here to stay and it will impede some critical components of Assetto Corsa EVO. I think the always online requirement will be a major turn off point for a good chunk of the community

Always online will lead to content that seems to be locked behind it, in this case career mode or licenses. In this point specifically we can see that Kunos doesnt have the experience and will require lots of trial and error. 

Dont get me wrong, I actually like the licenses. For the limited amount of content it was fun with some challenging bits, also screw that apline slash renault 5, it can burn in hell, but if look specifically at the competition that kunos wants to emulate, in this case the playstation 5, we can see that theres a lot less polish. The usability of the menus in Gran Turismo isnt really the best but its better I think. The fluidity of the user interface, though makes a difference. In gran turismo jumping between licenses its easy, often times even within the challenge you can go to the next one without dropping into the main menu, selecting the next challenge, loading the game and so on. Then theres the information inside the challenges, like an explanation of what it is, what is expected of the driver. Often times an example run is shown, all with a good graphical layout that makes the game inviting. Ah, we cant forget about the slightly annoying timed objectives that keep players engaged. 

The current state of the licenses user interface, in reality EVO whole interface, is underwhelming and needs a revamp. It lacks a certain je ne sais quois. It needs to be a little whimsical almost. If career mode is a thing, players will spend time in it, so might as well make it fun and low friction. I could talk about AI, but Im leaving it for another time. 

The last two points go hand in hand, which are graphics and performance. Yeah, early access, not optimised, yadda yadda. However, these points are important point because we have to remember part of the appeal of EVO will be the the free roam aspect of the title. First of all, lets talk about the graphics because im seeing a trend I dont like which is not exclusive to EVO. What is the deal blurred graphics nowadays? Modern titles, including EVO, but also Competizione, seem to have lots of blurred textures at a distance. The only way to effectively lower the blurriness to more acceptable levels is to go into 4K, but even so, it will never look as crisp as older titles, or new titles with older graphics engines. If you put side by side Le Mans Ultimate to Competizione or EVO youll see that LMU will look sharp at 1440p and above, while Compeitione will only look crisp at 1440p and EVO requires a lot of meddling. At 4K native it has incredibly agressive jagged edges with a huge amount of shimmering. Using Antialiasing will crunch the already difficult performance, so the only way to get some decent performance is to DLSS and use it as an anti aliasing strategy. In the case of EVO, only really 4K DLSS is usable or passable, 1440p native or DLSS will look blurry. This is essentially getting a good part of the community between a rock and a hard place. Get performance at the expense of graphics, upgrade the PC, suck up to it, or keep doing what you were doing in Assetto Corsa which looks good even at 1080p. 

The performance aspects are hugely impacted each way you decide to run it. Im excusing the lack of features in VR and triples like DLSS, because thats a smaller userbase and that FSR is kind of broken because its early access, but the graphical engine and performance being like this is much more of a bigger issue that will require plenty of attention by Kunos and its really not something trivial, even if they are on their own engine. We have to remember once again that having the Nordschleife free roam is going to be part of the base game and performance in large maps will be a thing that is needed to run decently. 

If we go to Gran Turismo 7, it looks good even the PS4. It looks sharp, the models look incredible, the light, sharpness, consistency. I know that Sony and PD have a huge team for this title, but if its possible for the PS4 gameplay to look good and consistent, with better hardware, better should be seen as well. 

I am of the opinion that modern hardware and features shouldnt serve as a crutch. I am also not expecting that a 10 year old graphics cards to run modern titles or slow down technology development like the geforce 4mx did back in the day. Yes i am that old. There needs to be a useful middle ground somewhere between geforce 960 in 2025 and, you need a 4090ti to run this.

Threat interactive has good videos on optimization that even though mostly wont apply to EVO or Kunos, but highlights some of the issues of modern graphics. 

I believe all these criticisms to be valid, and I know some of you will excuse “oh but its early access”. First of all, early access is not a get out of jail free card, it is made specifically to stress test  the title and find out what is wrong. Secondly, in order to improve any EA title, fair and honest criticism is required, otherwise we just have gatekeepers

What do you think of these points and what have you found in your experience?

Let us know below.