Community poll historic Spa

NASCAR is in a lot of the recent sims, a good version of historic Spa is not. Kunos is probably also the only studio with a good portion of the laser scan data as well.

It's not the first time they've mentioned historic Spa. It's been around for years that they've had data. It had become unlikely that we would ever see the track, but this was the first time we had ever heard directly that they were unlikely to do it.

 

Isn't that exactly what this poll is about? A question how many people would be interested in this track, which is directly related to whether it makes sense to develop this track or not.

Btw, to everyone who doesn't know the historic version of this track, i'd highly recommend to watch some footage on Youtube. Or drive it in GPL. It's spectacular, to say the least. I'm not much of a fan of the Nordschleife tbh, but i loved the Spa track in GPL. Fantastic to drive, and a really special track.

 

Ski made me do it

 

How about starting a Kickstarter? We could raise some money, acquire Kunos´ point cloud and pay a fair wage to one or two of our own modders to work on it. Kunos doesn´t believe in the Modding Community potential; this could change their minds towards us.

 

Right now the poll looks like this:
Would you like to get a new track?
-Yes
-No

For this to have any value, the poll should look like that:
What would you rather have:
-Historic Spa
-Any of the popular modern tracks from the community poll

 

Man, red wine and this....
Huge

 

How about thi:
Would you pay $9 to kickstart this project?
-Yes
-No

 

Nvm

 

The thing is AC is somewhat a spiritual successor of GPL, I think right in the intentions of the devs. It emulates the same simplicity of approach. Not too many features, but groundbreaking innovation in handling and focus on car personality. Because of this "heritage" I think historic Spa would be a great addition. I understand the sheer size of the track makes it a big project. In that case, why not historic Zandvoort? I remember it being a super fun track with some scary fast corners, it was one of my favorites in GPL. Of course, Spa was outright scary. I'd love to have it in game. The Lotus 49 in AC would love it too, I guess..

 

The historic Spa would be great for AC but im not surprised to see that it will take a massive resource investment to pull it off. The historic Spa is about double of the length of the current Spa.

It was really fun to drive on the really rough and laggy version in pcars. Would really love to see it for AC.

 

The other option wouldn't be "any" of the modern tracks in the other poll though. We aren't getting Bathurst, Le Mans, Suzuka or Monaco for reasons of licence costs and difficulty of scanning etc.

Unlike the other tracks old Spa would appear to be a goer, the only stumbling block being the dev time needed.

 

Would love to have more historic content in AC, but I can understand that it might not be the popular option. I hope either Kunos build the track or release the laserscan data to some trusted mod team.

Maybe they could get permission to convert the GPL track for historic accuracy and use the laserscan data wherever possible for the driving surface. The public roads that make up the circuit have changed a bit, particularly the long straight after Eau Rouge which wasn't straight at all in the 60s.

It would still be a lot of work, but worth it in my opinion.

Edit: Be great to have historic versions of a few other tracks already in AC: Ostereichring, Zandvoort, Monza Oval with chicanes used for GT racing in the late 60s, Vallelunga (basically the Classic layout we have already but run in reverse). Even some Early 90s version of Silverstone or Imola. Might get the track count up without the cost of new licences and scanning?

 

Not mentioned by Marco but one reason SMS gave for not including their historic Spa in pCARs was that Spa wanted a separate license fee for it.

 

It is iconic. Not too many other tracks of that time where you go full tilt trough villages, houses left and right. A long lap, and fair variety of corners. It hosted Grand Prix as well as 1000km Sports Prototype Races (something for the Ford GT, for example, and for the Cobra).

I believe we sadly aren't going to see too many historic tracks in AC. So if it's going to be only a few, make it great ones. Silverstone for example, while carrying a lot of emotional heritage, is flat out boring by comparison. A lot of right turns and the very rare lefthander...

While I'm always in favor of another modern F1 circuit, we have a huge inbalance right now in what we can race where. Some of the cars we have, they only have one appropriate track to play at. For the sake of a diverse racing experience it makes more sense to add one huge historic track than three more GT3 ones.

So much effort was spent on the Nordschleife. How many high-profile real life race events are there that we can recreate in AC? Actually none because we can't do 24h VLN...

 

Count me in with 50. Maybe a 100.

I tell you a little secret: I offered a modder a nice donation - somewhere near the amount above - to create a private conversion for me from another sim which I also own. He basically botched the job and ran with the money. Still I'd be happy to invest more bucks if that track materializes for AC.

 

You paid a guy to illegally rip you a copy and got ripped off.

 

Explain to me, Sharky, what exactly is illegal about a private conversion of a file you paid for to the format of another game you own? Or did you just fancy a chance to paint me with an evil word?

 

Yup, I should have clarified, I meant to say it might be cheaper than a completely new licence for a new venue, maybe a smaller additional fee

I guess modders might have held back from making / converting a Historic Spa thinking there was an official Kunos one in the pipeline, if we now know that isn't likely to happen hopefully someone will get to work on one fairly soon.

There are certainly a few old GPLers on other forums who haven't bought AC because there's not enough historic content and that's all they're interested in

 

And you actually believe it??
They shipped the game with a bunch of real tracks with fictional names, including Suzuka (Sakitto), Monaco (Azure) but they were stopped by historical Spa?!
Come on..

When will people realize everything Ian Bell says is bulls**t