One of Assetto Corsa Rally’s standout features is its laser-scanned stages. A first for a rally game (excluding mods), every stage is meticulously laser-scanned, resulting in accurate road surfaces. However, achieving this comes with the perceived caveat of longer development times.
This seemed to be apparent in the game’s palty stage list, with the current Early Access build featuring just four special stages and 33 kilometres of roads.
However, during a community Q&A on the Assetto Corsa Discord, Game Director Irvin Zonca assured that laser scanning the stages is not increasing Assetto Corsa Rally’s development time.
Laser-scanned stages are “not making us waste more time”
“Having a laser scan in our pipeline is not an issue at all. It’s not making us waste more time,” he said in response to community concerns about the lack of stages.
According to Zonca, the stages are scanned by an external team to reduce the overall development time. “At Supernova, we take care of modelling and implementing the roads and environments. The laser scan surveys are done externally by one of our partners. It’s essentially outsourcing.
“We work with this partner called VIGEA. Their job is to get out in the real world and laser scan whatever clients ask like roads or buildings. They have their own equipment and take care of the logistics.
“We decide which is the best location to add to the game next. They then go there, laser scan and process the point cloud, so we really don’t have to do too much work in that area. When we receive the data, we have a pipeline in place where we start building the stages.
Zonca is no stranger to rally games, having previously worked on the WRC games and Sébastien Loeb Rally Evo. For these titles, the video clips and other sources were referenced to create the rally stages.
“It’s not quicker, it’s different [to laser scanning],” Zonca said about these older techniques.
“You have to employ different people because you don’t have a partner who is scanning real tracks. You get level designers to create the stages. It’s just moving the effort and the task from one part of the team to another.
“But in our case, we can outsource everything, and this makes things easier in that way. You also get realistic environments that feel different compared to doing things the old way by hand.
“Of course, it takes a lot of time to produce all the assets. The issue still is that Supernova is quite a small team,” he continued, adding that less than 30 developers are working on Assetto Corsa Rally.
“We are focusing on developing more content in terms of stages, but our pace also depends on the team size. We are not as big as other teams in the past.
“We will not stop at the end of the early access”
By the end of the Early Access phase, which will include monthly updates, the aim is for Assetto Corsa Rally to have around 130 kilometres of stages, with reverse layouts increasing the total to 260. However, Zonca hinted that additional stages may be added in updates beyond Early Access.
“Our plan for the future after early access is to keep building content for the game,” said Zonca. “We will not stop at the end of the early access. We are here to stay. Assetto Corsa Rally is also a dream and passion project, and the team is fully committed to it.”
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