Are there too many cars in AC?

I ask for the sake of Aris and the devs. The more cars you have in the game, the longer it takes for the The Physics Guy to integrate new physics features into each car. Do you reach a point where it's just not feasible to introduce new physics because of the effort to add it to all the cars? Or do you end up with a whole raft of cars on different physics levels, like we have had with different tyre models. It seems to me like we might have enough cars already for this reason.

 

No way, so many beautiful cars to explore

 

I thought the physics was build "intuitive", so there´s no such thing as a "new" physics feature would pop up suddenly in a new car, that would have to be implementet to all cars? Sure, there´s been smaller corrections during development, like aero/stall, but all that is history and part of the physics base now.
Tyres/tires are apart, but chassis/suspension/aero physics are shared and just numbers. They were key right at the beginning as the base of AC. As Stefano once said about constant changes to other titles physics, it puts up the question if they know what they´re doing.
We´ve got features added, like AWD, because of a given car entering the pool, not that it affects all other cars etc.

It doesn´t seem to me that KS would/should stop adding cars just because of the work involved, not at all. Why would they do that, they want cars of their dreams in AC as much as possible, right?


cheers

 

I wonder what the situation is with physics modellers in AC - I mean is it still just Aris doing 100% of the work, or does he have an assistant aiding him, leaving Aris to work on the more complex stuff? Maybe its a bit like the 3D modelling where they have a number of people who are outsourced, then Aris just refines/fine tunes everything.

 

From a player perspective, of course not. There is never enough, people always want something new to experience and want something that's not implemented yet. I certainly do and I'm sure the devs do too. From a developer perspective I assume it's not necessarily the implementation of new features that's time consuming but the testing, taking longer and longer the more content they have to deal with. But that's just the way it is and something that can be combated to a degree with more efficient testing, automation and more testers. Don't think that's a good reason not to implement more content or new features for the simulator. Content is something AC should expand upon in the future, tracks more so than cars even. New content is also what keeps the game fresh and alive and makes it more attractive for people who haven't picked it up yet. And it's also what offsets the costs of further development.

 

I think new cars are welcome as every car in the game has its own physics model.
It creates a bit of excitation and freshness, to discover the behavior of the new ones (the best evidence for me is the popularity of the Mazda MX5 on RSR, even if I still don't try it).

On the other hand, it takes so much time trying to master the cars (I said trying) that I haven't drove more than 10 cars, in 4 month.
It makes me laugh now, when I read articles about AC on videogame websites, and that they regret the lack of choice.
It's clearly the Gran Turismo effect, where having 1000 cars is a commercial argument.

So, in my opinion, we have enough cars to enjoy ourselves, but new ones are very welcome

 

Well yeah, absolutely. Assetto Corsa is full of content with lots of enjoyment to be had, each and every vehicle and track is unique and offers opportunity to be mastered through many, many laps. Don't think most people playing AC actually even tried every single car that's featured so far, yet alone mastered them all. But new ones are always welcome, as you say. =]

 

In one of the recent streams, Kunos spoke about the new brake temperature modelling. The way it works is that Kunos builds the model and defines the parameters that are available to model brake temps. Then Aris has to develop values for the brake temp model for each individual car. It's Aris that dials in the physics values and makes them work, for each car. The more cars, the longer and longer it's going to take Aris to apply to each car.

As players, on the surface it migth be great to have new cars to play with, but the cost to us is either:
a) longer and longer times between physics features being implemented, or
b) more and more cars on different versions of the tyre or physics models.

I'm betting we'll see b). Kunos already said that initially some cars will have the new brake temp modelling, some won't. We've already seen it with the recent tyre model versions.

 

No idea what you mean, all the cars (except the Lotus Exos possibly) are on V7. And if it takes some time to implement it for all cars so that they have to do staggered releases of features for the cars then so be it. You don't lose out by this process, the cars are drivable with or without new features. Do you want them to stop development? I'm sure they want to continue expanding the game, plenty of new cars have been announced already and costs are offset by console versions and DLC (I hope?). I don't think there's need to worry.

 

Well, the best way to try out an experimental feature is to limit it to a few cars... there's no logic in experimenting with a change to every car all at once.

I say bring on more cars... and hire a physics-b*tch or two for Aris to delegate the tedious stuff to. (Hiring? )

 

More than enough, yes, as even after 2000 hours I have not driven all of them and some I have driven very little, and I am only talking about the Kunos original content, not even the mods.
Too many? Not possible, there is never too many, since disk space limitation does not exist anymore.

 

They have to keep releasing cars because that's what make $.

From perspective of a selfish player, we are far from too many, because interesting cars for me aren't here... yet.

Also agree about manpower, *cough* I'm good at copy&paste *cough*

 

The thing is new dlc's fund the continued development. More new content helps sell the base game and also other dlc packs. If it wasnt for new content generating more sales there wouldnt be so much of any continued work on the base and evolving new features along with extra simulation aspects.

Also the console release they decided to add even more content and there are plenty more licenses to go. Sure Kunos are now very busy but if it wasnt for the continued success of the game and the dlc's keeping up interest in the mainstream, then they wouldnt be busy with ac and would already have moved on to another project. Staying busy is a good problem to have for them I think.

The way I see it AC will continue development as long as interest is there and it still pays the bills. If the console release goes well then there may still be a few more dlc's to come after and a bit more development. Surely they dont plan to just release the console version then abandon ship.

There will be a time to start focusing on a new project but sims are alway an evolving product. What they have made now can be in some ways used in ac2 if that ever happens but that would only be if there is enough reason to rebuild the base engine enough to warrant a full new release version. This time will come but I dont see any reason to hurry that along as AC seems to be still doing quite well and likely a fair bit better then Kunos may have expected just after NKP amd announcing AC.

 

There will be never enough cars in AC. And updating physics doesn't mean you have to update each car one by one. A GT3 update would probably applies to all the cars in that class.

 

Still dont have Mclaren F1 road car and Ferrari 288 GTO, Im not satisfied yet.

 

Driving sims are interesting in that there's so much personal preference in a car. I tend to stick with maybe 3-4 cars that I drive all the time. But those few cars are probably completely different than what someone else really enjoys. So the more cars the better for the community as a whole. I would think physics updates are a global change in general and then certain cars might need fine tuning after.

 

and there will be more cars.. so blame it on Marco

 

At first I only care whether the cars I want to/might be able to own in real life are in the game or not, such as Ferrari 458, Porsche 911, Lotus Elise, Subaru STI, Mazda RX7 etc. Many of them are already in AC so at that time I thought there were enough cars in AC.

However, when more and more classic cars are introduced in AC, I start to wish to have more cars in AC. I wish AC to model all those beautiful classic cars. IMO AC offers the best road car driving, so I really hope that I can in AC drive cars like Toyota 2000GT, Porsche 356, Mercedes 300SL, Ferrari 250's, etc that I could never possibly drive IRL, or newer cars such as Lexus LFA, Porsche Carrera GT, Ruf CTR3, etc that I could never possible drive IRL either. I could look at those cars in AC showroom or make fancy screenshots in AC all day.

Also I find that most people who are "potential AC player/simracers" (mostly console gamers) care a lot more about how many cars there are in a racing game. Whenever I introduce AC or whatever racing sim to a friend, the immediate question they ask is "is there [insert car brand/model]", and "how many cars are there". None of them are satisfied about the number of cars in AC, and hesitate to buy AC and enjoy the fun. So I think to sell more copies, AC still needs more cars.

 

From what I see in Stefano's streams, the guys have developed some smart tools to help them calculate the impact of some physics variables, so hopefully Aris' work won't be THAT manual.
Plus now that Stefano has come up with the "Controller" abstraction, it will be even easier for him to code in any impossible new feature he/Aris wants. At least that's what I understood from his stream.

Need. Moar. Cars. Mainly Hondas pls. Yea, @Michael Hornbuckle sue me for turning this topic into another wishlist

 

To many cars NO!!!....not enough competitive, competition racing FWD cars YES!!!