Assetto Corsa EVO v0.3 patch notes: New tyre model and performance mode introduced

Assetto Corsa EVO’s latest Early Access update is out now, and while we’ve covered the contents of the game’s latest build elsewhere, there are a few interesting tidbits deep within its changelog.

Assetto Corsa EVO’s new  tyre model

The most significant change (outside of new cars, tracks and the first stage of multiplayer) is perhaps the introduction of a new tyre model. Players should now feel less but more predictable grip when using Eco and Road tyre compounds, while sportier compounds like SC, HC and Slick will have more grip.

The thermal behaviour of virtual rubber has also been tweaked, with tyre surfaces both heating up and cooling down quicker than before, with grip becoming much more dependent on tyre temperature.

Tyres should slip more progressively too, gripping up in a much more progressive manner than before, with Kunos claiming that players will ‘feel more bumps, kerbs and all the road imperfections’ in v0.3.

The Honda NSX-R receives some special attention with the addition of a better default set-up and revised tyres.

Assetto Corsa EVO 0.3 – other changes

Performance modes have now been implemented in-game, with the Audi RS3 having its ‘Drift mode’ activated. When activated, players will see ‘M4S Torque Rear’ displayed on their dash, making sliding and holding drifts much easier than before.

Car set-ups will now stick between sessions, with the Porsche 911 GT3 Cup’s electronics fixed, depending on the variant. The Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 has had its real-world active dampers implemented, too, with hybrid vehicles now only starting when their ignition is switched on.

Graphics have been further optimised alongside AI performance; however, Kunos has stated that the focus has been on making AI drivers drive more safely rather than improving their pace and defensive behaviour.

Gamepad users also now have a choice of two steering assist modes. These are ‘Assisted’ and the Assetto Corsa Competizione-style ‘Smart’. 

Many other improvements have also been made, with the full changelog listed below.

Assetto Corsa EVO v0.3 changelog

General

– Added BMW M4 GT3 Evo

– Added BMW M3 E30 Evo II (Sport Evo)

– Added Dallara Stradale in multiple configurations

– Added Caterham Seven Academy Racer

– Added Ferrari F2004

– Added Lamborghini Huracán Supertrofeo EVO2

– Added Mercedes-Benz 190E 2.5-16 Evo II

– Added Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 Clubsport

– Added Red Bull Ring

– Added Spa-Francorchamps

– Introducing Step 1 Multiplayer

Physics

– Review of exposed car electronics and performance modes for all EA1-2-3 cars

– Fixed ABS settings on the Ferrari 296 GTB

– Fixed erroneous setup limits across all car content

– Porsche Cup with dedicated setuplimits for each variant (to prevent player being able to select non-available electronics levels)

– Setup electronic limits set once at car loading

– Physics: fixed hybrid vehicles that could start with ignition off

– Physics: experimental wheel soft lock

– Physics: tyre flex in double precision

– Physics: experimental dampers

– NSX-R better vintage tires and setup

– Fixed car setup resetting on next session

– Fixed pit limiter display state

– Fixed ignition state after setup

– Soft limiter adjustments

– Fixed wrong setup in license tests

– Implemented Chevrolet active dampers for the Camaro ZL1

– Added engine throttle value for audio: these changes will likely benefit the overall audio quality as well that rely on physics

New tyre model:

– Less grip on Eco, Road compound but more predictable grip.

– More grip on performance compounds (SC – HC – Slick)

– A better thermal behavior: now tyre surface heats and cools very fast. Also grip is more temperature sensitive, so heating tires in the right way is pretty important.

– Speed Sensitivity: finally you’ll have a tyre that slips and makes the car go wide or sideways, regaining some grip in a more natural and expected way.

– New tyre structure: overall you’ll feel more bumps, kerbs and all the road imperfections.

– Tweaks to slick tyres and slick performance in the wet – note that wet-weather driving remains under development

Updated dampers:

– We’ve also developed an experimental method to stabilize dampers at very high damping ratios. This approach effectively mimics the behavior of 1000Hz suspension systems while running at much lower base frequencies. The result is significantly improved transient response and more accurate vehicle dynamics, especially in overdamped scenarios.

– Reworked ABS logic

– Performance modes now take effect – certain cars, such as the Audi RS3 also introduce unique modes, such as Drift mode. These modes will be available as Mode 2.

In general the modes are ordered in sequence of performance, the track-focused one being the default and the first one.

– Suspension damage review on all cars (added where it was missing)

Rendering

– Dynamic global illumination 2.0

– Improved mirrors rendering (resolution, content, far plane)

– Improved night aesthetic globally (car aa, headlights, shadows)

– Improved antialiasing

– Improved upscaling (dlss, fsr3)

– Improved grass 

– Improved cubemap rendering

– Improved crowds

– Improved motion blur, dof and other pp effects

– Improved virtual mirror

– Smoothed driver animations

– Improved showroom lighting

– Improved texture streamer logic and memory utilization

– Improved ssao contribution in distance

– Introduced adaptive v-sync

– Introduced car damage

– Added option to set maximum number of dash display renders (video settings)

– Added option to set maximum number of visible opponents in front and behind the player car – the option includes whether to apply also on non-driving cameras

– Optimized shadow rendering

– Optimized VRAM usage

– Optimized CPU and GPU

– Fixed AMD-specific glitches and crashes

– Fixed dynamic weather transitions

– Fixed TV cameras far plane

– Fixed car dirt accumulation

– Fixed FXAA crash

– Fixed black line while using triple mode on mono

– Fixed digital mirror displays not working correctly in races with different cars

– Fixed driver visibility not applied only to drivable cameras

– Fixed certain showrooms not having instanced structures visible in reflections (e.g. LED roof lights)

– Fixed driver animations not appearing in LOD cars

– Fixed driver casting static shadow ignoring animation movement in the focused car

– Added smoothing to driver animations, particularly for pedal inputs

– Fixed shadow bug on driver hands

– Fixed VR car shadow cut 

– Fixed VR inconsistent lod switching

– Fixed VR shadow popping in peripherical vision

– Fixed triple shadow popping in peripherical vision

– Fixed v-sync in VR

Graphics

– Ferrari 296 GTB standard version now has the correct front splitter

– Various updates to the Audi RS 3 model

Some of the changes will only appear correctly with newly purchased/customized cars. It is recommended to remove them from your garage and add them again.

– Smoothing on driver foot animations to mitigate the dancefloor effect on throttle blip and AI inputs

– Overall revision of lights and LED scripting logic, especially in car interiors

– Implemented physics-driven aero animations

– Digital dash fixes and updates on multiple cars

UI

– Per-item scrolling in certain scrollable lists (modelselection, grideditor, car presetselector)

– Reduce number of data models fetched for car displays.

– Fix for split thumbnails when using upscaling at lower resolutions

– Renamed My Cars (ex-garage) and Vehicle Hub (ex-dealership) in Open Mode

– Fixed reversed zoom in/zoom out with the mouse wheel in the interior view of the showroom

– Added weather in pitlane menu screen

– Leaderboard updates

– Added driver name labels

– They can be enabled/disabled on the fly with a key (default is V), in the UI there are 3 options like in ACC: MP Only (default), Always On, Always Off

– UI: added initial version of the MFD

– Gameplay-HUD settings now exposed in session settings menu

– Added persistence for last used Driving and Onboard Cameras

– Limits for drivable camera movements with hotkeys (+ linked hotkey camera movement with UI camera movement, and hotkeys skipped when the UI is opened to not interfere with UI navigation)

– Updated HUD gear widget

– HUD gear widget now only shows bb/electronics functions when they are intended to be modifiable in-car or in setup

– FF strength indicator added to HUD widget

– Fix for car display effects occasonally interfering with HUD gear widget effects

– Localization updates in all languages

– HUD layout now saves persistence (saving is done when calling the pause menu)

– HUD now defaults to centre screen on triples

– Compressed car customization items for multi-toggle optional items (now only one item will show up, sanitizing the lists a bit)

– The showroom has a new camera mode (called Showcase), enabled by default that uses the sequence cameras just like the screen saver, but playing all the time: it’s possible to go back to the previous mode (called Free mode) via the Scene Options (the flag is saved in the personal settings)

it also automatically switches back to the Free mode when in an interactive page – preset selection, configuration and the paintshop 

– HUD added wrong way popup and pit limiter widget

– HUD notifications are moved to centre side position even on ultrawide

– Added slider to Audio Device list

– Direct electronics stage input labels corrected to start from 0 stage

– Added scrollability to the list of audio devices

Controls

– Input: Gamepad Steer Assist has now 2 modes: Assisted (new) and Smart (ACC)

– Fixed brake bias and electronics adjustments being active in-car even when they were not flagged modifiable

– Fixed hotkey inputs being able to toggle unintended electronics stages that were supposed to be inaccessible both in setup and in-car

– Fixed steer assist not being selectable with the dpad on controller

– Implementation of custom per-car FFB gain (saved into documents folder)

– Added optional FF enhancement effects: G-force, kerbs, slip effect, ABS

– Work on mitigating low-speed FF vibration

– Controls page added into the MFD, allowing on-the-fly changes to controls/FFB settings

– Added VR panel move fwd/rwd and scale up/down inputs in controls with persistence on the set values

– Fixed direct wiper stage inputs not working for the top stage

– Direct electronics stage inputs now take into account setup limits

Gameplay

– Added replay at the end of the sessions in race weekend

– Removed game economy page in open mode

– Fix total km when purchasing new cars

– Fix money check when purchasing a car in career mode

– now all the player penalties are sent to the ui and not only the worst one

– Fixed remote state overwriting some of the local gamestate

– Fixed considering player as opponent for audio during replay

– Forcing stop replay in case of endgame replay during race weekend

– Fix session name at the end of the session

This should fix some of the bad microsectors (predicted and delta) behaviour under certain conditions (ps: inverted + and – for realtime gap)

– TV cameras with more priority to close cameras in mixed mode

– Improved automatic grid opponents varation when not single make

– Set the pit limit aligned with the signs (60km/h)

– Dirt/dust accumulation now based on tyre speed average and not car speed

– Engine can now be switched off with starter key

– Fix for crash in grid mixer when limiting vehicle type search to EV only

– Fix for previous car from career being momentarily visible when selecting open mode

– previously used driving camera restored after viewing a replay

– added DSQ and teleport functions

– analogue instrumentation now respects ignition state

– rain lights enabled now satisfies the black/orange flag requirement in the rain (since certain cars don’t have headlights)

– enabled onboard (F6) cameras

– adjusted default cameras for all cars (please reset to defaults if you have modified custom user saves)

AI

– Improved steering precision and smoothness

– Improved braking planning and execution when braking for another car

– Changed the approach how overtaking decisions are modelled

– Changed gaps and safety margin approach to be more precise and less “wasteful” while maintaining the safety aspects

– Introduced additional safety margins vs. the player car

– All focus is on the “safe” aspect of the AI; pace, defensive capabilities and variety have not been pushed

– To avoid races ending in an early mass collision, we temporarily disabled the collisions between AI cars in dense situations

– added pre-start revving for AI cars

– Fixed end-game commands sent to AI

Architecture

– Driver Manager items (cars and drivers) are now saved outside the file itself and they are read by folder structure

– Various loading optimizations thru prebuild asset and caching

– Optimized car info loading

– Optimization moving ContentDataManager from instance to static

– Fix on settings manager file loading

– Preload of the car assets

– CPU optimization – only visible lods are animated

– Avoid periodic stutter due to old consumable updates for backend

– Gameplay thread optimization

– Fix for a VRAM leak source from the UI engine

– Added garage versioning

Audio

– Introduced audio versioning and new default volumes

We recommend deleting the audiosettings file in doc/ACE

– Further improved Honda NSX sounds

– Fixed dust sfx that kept playing during replay in some occasions

– Better inflation sounds system and added damages volume

– Removed high pitch noise on Porsche 964

– Honda NSX-R new interior sound

– Fixed Honda NSX-R idle

– Fixed backfire probabilities being forced to defaults

– Fixed ignition sound event

– Fixed hit sounds not following the car

– Throttle managment for limiters moved to audio for a more fidelity audio on mp and replays

– Avoid muted audio due to async audiofade on loading (in some next/restart mp events)

– New Lancia Delta Integrale step sound set

– Lancia Delta Integrale 16V improved volume dynamics

– Updated backfire cone angle and distance volume curve (30 – 200m)

– Increased volume distance scale in track cameras

– Lancia Delta added countershaft gear whine which is a typical feature of Lampredi 2.0l engines

– Power on / off sound for EVs

– Increased minimum engine sound distance to 3 meters

– Added startup sounds on all content

– Fixed BMW M4 CSL idle sound

– Fixed BMW M2 CS Racing limiter and TC sound

– Added distance filter to better modulate the backfire timbre at large distances.

– Major rework of all backfire sounds and logic

– Tuned slip on wheel event