Assetto Corsa EVO made its big Early Access launch on Steam yesterday, bringing the next iteration of the racing franchise to both flatscreen and PC VR headsets. It’s getting mixed reviews, although VR users in particular are warning that you should wait for incoming patches, which will hopefully address the game’s currently questionable optimization.

KUNOS Simulazioni, developer behind both Assetto Corsa (2014) and Assetto Corsa Competizione (2018), released their long-awaited follow-up, Assetto Corsa EVO. The Early Access version boasts five tracks, 20 vehicles, single player, support for SteamVR headsets, as well as triple screen support.

While the studio promises the full slate of content is set to arrive in successive updates, which will include a total of 100 cars, 25 tracks, open world map, career and multiplayer mode, for now it appears VR users aren’t exactly happy with the state of the game.

User reviews are pouring in, with the game now counting over 2,700 reviews, garnering it a ‘Mixed’ score. Although some complaints mention the lack of features, which KUNOS Simulazioni promises are still yet to come, many of those specifically mentioning VR support are fairly cut-and-dry. It’s simply not optimized well enough, which has left it largely unplayable in VR.

“I won’t comment on the performance issues, as this is early access, only remark is that VR is currently unplayable,” says Steam user Poloman. “I have 150 fps on 3440×1440, but can’t get more that 30 [FPS] in VR.”

“Unplayable in VR with a RTX 4090 and i9 13900k at lowest settings (only targeting 80hz too). It has constant latency spikes making the game unplayable at any setting,” reports Mattios. “Flatscreen works fine, maxed out it barely hits 80% GPU and 10% CPU usage without upscaling”

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“Can’t recommend it in its current state, performance optimization is just not there, at least for VR. [I have a Radeon] 7600X + 7900 XT getting 50 fps running on a Quest 3 with Link and OpenXR, and that’s with a single car on track in practice, on the minimum graphics settings,” says Dan in their user review. “And that’s already disregarding visual glitches, that happened mostly on the menu for me. Besides that, the default FFB settings are not at all what I expected from Kunos. All in all, wait for the coming patches to even consider it.”

All of KUNOS Simulazioni’s Assetto Corsa racing games have followed similar Early Access launches in years past, which makes the slow drip of features no real surprise. And while VR hasn’t always been a day-one feature, it has been an integral part of the series.

The original Assetto Corsa was an early champion of VR, having previously included experimental support for Rift headsets starting back to 2013, and later gaining support for additional headsets in 2017 with the adoption of OpenVR. Full VR support for Assetto Corsa Competizione was released a month after it was available on traditional monitors.

The studio maintains its full 1.0 release will be ready “within less than one year from the start of Early Access,” and we’re definitely hoping to see more optimizations between now and then to make VR worth the $32 price tag.

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Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • XRC

    Looking forward to purchasing an updated version as the original and Assetto Corsa Competizione were excellent in VR.

  • xyzs

    They switched to a new in-house engine. That's much more work for their rendering engineers to get decent VR perf. It will take time.

    I don't understand the users who get the game as early release day one to complain that things are not polished and complete… As long as people will be that stupid, I think EA is a suicidal choice for most cases.

    • FRISH

      People pay money to be beta testers instead of being paid. Besides, criticism is what you use to improve and is given by people who want things to be better. We treat it as a bad thing because it's negative, but negativity has a function.

      • xyzs

        …But nobody forced these people to pay for the beta version, it was their own choice and their accepted the conditions when purchasing it as EA.
        Negative Justin and Dylan crying that the game is shit because for 2 hours they had only 5 cars available instead of 20 because of a tech issue is not what review are for.
        It's just like the total morons on Amazon who give a 1 star review to a product because the parcel arrived damaged or late.

        • FRISH

          I wouldn't say it is equivalent. If you 1 star a product for a delivery problem, then you're criticising the wrong company. If you're leaving a 1 star review because a game gave only 5 cars, then you're criticising the product directly. Yes it's early access, that has some validity, but at the end of the day gamers have too low standards and wonder why they get junk with poor releases that go beyond just early access.

          Release games in a way that people accept and people won't leave negative reviews.

        • Michael

          What are you talking about? The company delivering Amazon products are Amazon – and they are an online business.

          The delivery is 100% part of the product when you buy online – and in Amazon's case they can't say "Well it's not us that does the delivery"

      • Michael

        EA is not a beta.

        It's supposed to be a playable game that the developer hasn't finished.

        Read the EA FAQ, in particular Valve tell you to assess the value of the game – i.e how much money you pay – based on the content in the EA version.

        Well, as VR title ACE is unplayable. It's not currently worth anything. Kunos managed to say "There's no multiplayer in the EA" but they didn't say "VR is completely unplayable in EA" and, sadly, they actually said the opposite.

        This isn't about Beta testing, it's not about bugs.

        Very simply : early access are games. Games that should be playable and the developers of those games need to be honest in their description and advertising for those games – and those games need to be in a playable state.

        Well, this game is unplayable in VR. And this is a comment section in a website dedicated to VR gaming. In this context only a fool would claim he can't understand why people were complaining about ACE.

        Early access or not they were lied to and paid for a product that didn't work. Not "isn't finished yet" – didn't work at all. That's completely understandable.

    • Michael

      The key part about EA is that you get a playable game.

      Kunos not only didn't say the title wasn't playable in VR, they made 2 comments that suggested it would be really good. It isn't.

      So that's why people with VR headsets bought it and why they were really disappointed.

      They're not expecting "polished and complete' – they were expecting something they could play and keeping playing as more content, polish etc were added.

      But if you can't play the game at all then it's useless – it's not "early access" – it's no access at all.

      It's like if I sell you a dozen donuts but I haven't made them all and I tell you I'll add more donuts as I make them. So you come in the store, give me your money I give you the box and the box is empty – the empty box is completely useless. Even if you eventually get the donuts.

      You should note the EA faq makes it clear that you're buying the game in its current state. It's not a kickstarter. Not the least because they also make it clear that there's no guarantee the game will ever be finished or get updates. Well for VR in its current state it's not worth the money. Remember that key thing – Kunos said in their launch stuff that VR was good in their new engine.

      If they'd been honest I'm pretty sure most VR users would have either not bought it yet, or bought it figuring they'd play on a flat screen rather than feeling hoodwinked.

      Note too that this story is false. ACC has never worked well in VR – and Kunos have done little or nothing to fix that. Yes, they did support VR during AC development and that is reasonable, but ACC is infamous for being unplayable in VR. So Kunos track record is counting against them here. A lot of people are going to be fretting that they will never improve the VR in ACE.

      A lot of sim racers are 100% in VR now. They won't play ACC. They'll only play titles that work well in VR. It's not like an optional feature or a gimmick. Just like most sim racers are using a wheel – if the game didn't work with wheels, well maybe the console kids wouldn't see what the big deal was – but most sim racers would be thinking "Well it's not playable at all – so what's the point in the release?"

      You have to get your game to somewhat of a playable state before releasing it as 'early access' – the primary thing is you're selling it and you're selling it to people who want something to play.

      They failed to that.

  • bviktor

    PSVR2 when?