An open letter to ac team

Hello AC Team,

I recently bought Assetto Corsa at Steam Early Access and I must say, that it is the game worth spending my money on. I'm glad to see that the game is developed very well. However, I am new to the so-called simracing games and community and it is difficult for me to learn the tracks. At this moment I am only able to drive on Monza raceway - not due to the fact that I leaned it on my own. I spend many hours in nine-year-old GTR 2 due to its very interesting feature - Driving School. In fact, this game taught me how to behave on raceway properly, how to overtake, generally how to DRIVE a racecar.

Therefore, I think it would be reasonable for the KUNOS Simulazioni to implement a similar mode in Assetto Corsa. This would allow many newbies like me to get fully into simulation racing and learn faster in order to complete more challenges and be able to compete with more experienced players.

Thank you in advance for the reply,
Marek

 

Agreed. It would be in Kuno's best interest to do so as it would help ease new gamers into sim racing instead of just leaving them to the wolves.

Maybe the career mode will unlock a series of special events that teach the basics.

 

They could even go the GT route and have different licenses that you need to obtain in order to race in certain events. I always thought they were neat. And they don't really need to make it as "tedious" as in the GT games, you can have some fun events in there that also help build up your skills.

 

Anything, just not that GT model, please. Nerve-killing.

Guys, there is no better teacher than logging track time, logging track time, and then logging more track time.

Use the ideal-line app, if you must, and the map-app that is available for the default tracks and even some mod tracks. Do not drive faster than you can and sitll contorlling the car, but focus on doping clean laps. The more the clean driving is automatized, the more faster track times will come all by themselves. For that "automatization" of driving clean laps, logging track time is a must - no driving school can replace that or aid in that. Because knowing the track inside out is key. Some cars are easier to drive than others. Also, play around with TC and ABS settings, and note the differences - understanding these differences in car behavior will help you to understand why the car is doing what in what situation.

Oh, and make sure you have a good setup for the hardware you use. When your brake pedals work like on-off-switches and so does your gas pedal, then that is not ideal.

And remember this: often driving slower results in faster lap times.

Also, some of the very good drivers out there, and not necessarily meaning the aliens, have placed videos of their laps on certain tracks. Study them and compare your way of handling the track, to theirs.

Knowing the track and always staying in control of the car's attitude is what its about. Routine and faster times come by themselves, then. Rambo drivers do not succeed. Drive disciplined. Not only better driving and lap times are your reward, but you will leave a better impression with others if you drive online, too.

 

I have heard about this from a few people, especially people on leagues. The premise is that every new player must go through some sort of license test or "driving school", which at the end grants you a license that certifies your completion of said hurdle, and will enable you to race in certain servers. For instance, to enter advanced or "serious" servers, you must pass some advanced school/test. If anything, it will eliminate trolls' excuse that "they didn't know" when they were ramming other people out the road.

No doubt about that. What I believe the OP is referring to is actually teaching you the basics, and more importantly, track etiquette and rules. Track time has helped me immensely in getting better times, and the ideal line assist has helped me ingrain in my brain how to take corners and hitting the apex in the right spot; however, I had to research track etiquette and rules by myself, which most newbies I'm afraid will not do.

 

Something for "Career", me thinks.

 

I like this plan as well. Also, I'm probably gonna start a series on my channel that shows the new folks how to tackle different tracks for the first time. I'm by no means a world record beating driver, but I'm willing to do something to help the people learn different tracks adequately well so that they won't have issues online and would race clean and have fun at the same time (and not use the cars in front of them as brakes by crashing into them). Been sim racing for almost 6 years now, so kinda know most of the tracks inside out and I guess it's a good time to put the "experience" to some use since AC seems to be pulling in more and more aspiring new sim racers. Good times ahead for this title indeed. ^-^

 

When I started playing GTR2, I always took driving school as something super booring and something that didn't help me, I started off doing practice runs, time trials and weekend races.
Then I moved on to doing the championship on medium difficulty and then moved on to maximum difficulty and tbh, learning that way is much more fun.

 

@Blame , easier said than done really. Easier if you never ever played a racing sim before and your mind is an empty slate so that you can learn all the good etiquette from the start like you did in your case I assume, because most of us 'last gen' sim racers went about our business in the same way. Becomes harder if you have played the arcade titles like forza and GT for ages and you get used to it, then think that is what sim racing is all about and then coming over to something like AC, rF or in more extreme cases iRacing only to go about wrecking everyone and wasting people's and their own time in the process. Hard to get rid of silly old habits without a good frame of reference and/or guidance.

 

Its a great game, your money is well spent.

 

I too moved from GTR2 to AC, but if you have watched BTCC, WTCC, FIA GT, doesn't matter what series it is where cars are involved, you should already have a general idea how to race in a racing sim after countless hours of observing other people race. When it comes to skill that's just you putting time into racing yourself.

I'm gonna be honest here, if you've watched motorsports for years and you start your sim racing career and have no idea how to race, you must be dumb as a plank. No offense.
Now, I understand that some people have problems with putting observed experience into use for themselves, but I myself have problems with learning/memorizing things that I'm simply not interested in, which simply makes me an idiot when it comes to things I have no interest in.

 

A good suggestion which, by it's nature, belongs in the dedicated forum.
Preferably with a more descriptive title.

 

You are going off a wild tangent here, all I'm saying is there are people who are quite new to the world of sim racing, doesn't matter how many hours they sat in front of the TV watching real world races. When it comes to learning, it is easy to convince yourself that everything you do is right if there is nobody showing you the basics, which makes it quite easy to learn the wrong stuff and roll with that knowledge for a long time before it comes around to bite you in the bottom. Simple example, most of my friends didn't have a clue how to heel and toe properly, they tried to teach themselves in a wonky way and they usually blame the game/equipment whenever they made a mistake while shifting, but once they saw me do it properly and they understood how it is done as intended it was much easier for them to improve. You are talking about practice makes perfect which is completely agreeable, but practicing the right stuff is what makes it possible is what I'm trying to say here. A Racing School mode for AC is a good idea and now that Kunos and RSR Nurburg are working together, we might probably get such a feature <fingers crossed> from the pros themselves.

 

Good post Torcano. This reminds me hearing somebody teaching to me to kick on the center of the ball to do power shots on soccer. Without this information I hardly have learned how to proper kick a soccer ball.

 

Yeah GT's licenses test are a *****, but they are fun to do.

 

I actually think , and probably will get lot of hate for this, for career driving school, it will be interesting to do something like GT academy, where they are picking the best driver from gamers to become real life race driver, .. so having somewhat similar challenges as real life drivers go trhough

 

Some of them are annoying yeah, but I still believe the idea works. Have a series of increasingly difficult challenges that try to build up your skills in fun and useful ways. Just get rid of the pesky braking tests.

 

The problem that comes by watching tv is that we think that we are as good as gilles, montoya, zanardi (the list goes on)... Exciting racing on the limit of a crash, but somehow they pull it off!

We see all their sucesses on the highlights, but none of their failures.

I had just one friend of mine that had this insight http://www.race2play.com/homepage/show_member/14868

do you recgonize the guy on the background? He was orders of magnitude better than us, and still....

And btw

 

So long as these "tests" are optional. I doubt that many of the guys on this server would want to waste time doing pointless tests when they already know how to race drive.

 

Thank you, guys, for the exceptional response! Over 15 replies in less than twelve hours is a great score due to which I recognize that the topic raises interest on the forum.

Still, in case of let's say Imola, I'm a novice who does not even know at which moments should slow down and brake. Thus, in my opinion logging track times is not a good alternative for real driving school. The thing I loved in GTR2 Driving School was the fact that circuits were divided into separate sectors. This allowed me to learn particular chicanes quickly. Moreover, there was a possibility of watching the ghost drive, from whom I learned the general shifting pattern for the cetain turns. I am sure that development of my driving style by logging track times (without any ghost drive used as "reference") would not be so great.

But, for now, let's wait for any response from the KUNOS Simulazioni. If they give some kind of a green light to this notion, we can talk about how such school should look like.