Interview with Daniel Findley, CEO of Authentic Simulation LLC

As part of our feature ‘The future of modding in sim racing’, Traxion interviewed Daniel Findley, CEO of Authentic Simulation LLC, a US-based modding studio.

Authentic has created a swathe of content for Assetto Corsa since its inception in 2023, including the licensed Rush SR sports car and an official version of the Brazilian Belo Horizonte street circuit.

The studio plans to develop its own Unreal Engine-powered racing game in 2026 and currently has 14 full-time employees. 

The interview was conducted in September 2025.

When and how did your modding studio start? Was modding something you did in your spare time initially?

Authentic Simulation LLC was formed in the Summer of 2023. Myself and Tyrone Hesbrook decided to form a software studio that would be better suited to provide outsourcing support to larger studios, who had begun contracting both of us individually for specific projects.

At that time, we each had small teams under our own individual AC modding brands, and we had been creating mods for 5-10 years already. As a licensed USA attorney it was easy for me to incorporate our company and we began providing outsourcing support, acquiring official licenses, and hiring staff. Today we now have a team of 14 full-time employees, plus multiple additional contractors.

We generally split our time between three major categories: 1) outsourcing 3D track and car models to larger studios, 2) developing cars and tracks in Assetto Corsa for clients including sim lounges/centers, race teams, track owners, automakers, etc., and 3) developing our own software projects including our upcoming Autozi Garage game, SimVendor.com multivendor website (more about that below), and our SimLane commercial sim center management software.

What is the most difficult part of working on sim racing mods today?

Piracy is currently the biggest obstacle we face as a studio when it comes to publicly released mods. Based on our research, for every legitimate sale, there are often multiple unauthorised copies circulating online, which significantly impacts creators across the entire ecosystem.

This is one reason we purchased a controlling interest in the SimVendor.com creator storefront, and we are going to be launching a significant update in the coming weeks. PayPal has even assigned a couple of their enterprise developers to assist us directly.

One of the biggest innovations is our upcoming advanced DRM anti-piracy system that encrypts and ties purchases to customer accounts. We are going to launch both SimVendor 2.0 and our DRM system next month. Our hope is that we can meaningfully reduce piracy and provide a more sustainable environment for mod creators moving forward.

How long does it take to create a car mod from start to finish?

I’ll just share the timeline for our officially licensed Revolution 500 EVO that we are working on currently. We started developing the 500 EVO’s 3D model on August 1st, from the automaker’s CAD file and photographs they supplied us.

We finished texturing the 3D model by the end of October. In November, our team imported the 3D model into Assetto Corsa and added the driver, dash screens, and animations. Physics development began in December, with the code being added directly to the car and testing and refinement currently being conducted.

Final testing will take place in early through mid-January, with our Revolution 500 EVO’s public release in mid to late January. Officially licensed projects take 5-6 months to develop as we collaborate with the automakers and gather feedback from their test drivers. In contrast, internal projects can have a tighter deadline. Earlier this year, our Formula Force (F4) was completed in less than 3 months.

How difficult is it to find reference materials to help create mods. Do you work with external partners to
source things like this?

Thankfully, our automotive partners have been really good about working with us and providing us with CAD files, photos, and much more. We have LIDAR scanners, so for smaller clients, let’s say a race team or private collector who doesn’t have a CAD file, we can either develop the model from tons of detailed photographs (following our automotive photo guide) and/or we can fly out to LIDAR scan the entire car.

For physics, we rely upon the CAD files, detailed specifications provided by the automaker, dyno sheets, and AIM (or similar) lap data. We also generally put together a test team of actual drivers and often I even get a chance to hotlap the cars. This is all obviously very helpful to me, as I’m the lead physics programmer for all of our cars.

We also have a sound capture guide we supply to our automotive partners, and they generally follow it to the letter and provide us with good sound samples. We’ve also had the privilege of being invited to various racing events, where we’ve been given pit passes and had the opportunity to take photos, measure parts, and record audio in the garage and trackside.

Have you worked directly for developers like Kunos, Studio 397, Reiza, etc to create cars for their sims? If so, which cars?

We’ve worked for several larger studios as an outsourcing partner by providing game-ready 3D track and car models. One which I can share about publicly is Competition Company, and we’ve worked with them to help develop content for Rennsport, including Crest Da Cauras, and our upcoming Silver City track and officially licensed Rush SR racecar.

Have you ever helped find a bug with any of the above sims, or helped develop an interesting new feature?

We’ve certainly suggested plenty of improvements. For example, we’ve identified issues with texturing/mapping systems and proposed better alternatives.

The best example is when we were hired for a small role assisting with some code for a commercial automotive software (private use for an auto testing group). However, it ended up growing into a much larger project (and much more profitable) earlier this year because I was able to come up with an innovative solution that drastically increased the hertz rate that their physics simulation was run at, while only introducing a tiny bit of latency (essentially imperceptible) to buy time for some predictive generation models to run in the background and push the data needed for the increased hertz rate.

How do you think sims like Project Motor Racing, Assetto Corsa EVO and Rennsport having final approval over mods will affect your work? Will this make producing mods
more challenging in future?

No, this should actually be helpful for us. Certain mod studios in weak IP law countries will visually copy actual cars 1:1 and then just rename the car something different (the Cadillac LMDh mods for AC are a great example of this).

The USA has much stricter IP laws that we follow carefully, and that gives us a huge advantage when applying for console modding approval and also helps us tremendously when we reach out to actual automotive partners regarding a potential license.

Our goal is to be as strong of a possible partner for automotive and racing brands, and if game studios are actually going to begin vetting less qualified or less legally compliant studios, this will help us gain market share over the coming years.

Some of your mods are fully licensed; how challenging is it to negotiate to obtain these? Is it generally too costly?

We have a good response rate directly from automakers, but a pretty poor one from any licensing agencies. I’d say around 90% of our inquiries never even receive a response from the licensing agencies that represent many brands.

However, if we have the connection directly to a CEO or owner, we’ve actually had good success negotiating licensing agreements. It certainly helps that I’m a licensed US attorney with a background in licensing and business law.

In regards to price, we generally either spread the licensing costs out over the entire length of the license with yearly installments, which helps a small studio like ours to absorb the cost, or we reach a mutual arrangement where we will give the automaker or track owner marketing benefits and/or commercial usage rights in exchange for the official license.

Continuing on the above topic, does the size of the potential console mod market excite you as a studio? For example, Project Motor Racing will likely have a similar mod setup
to GIANTS’ Farm Sim games, which are massively popular.

Yes. First, piracy should be reduced as it is a lot more difficult to rip and distribute content between consoles. Second, we will likely have a 2.5x larger audience, while only having to develop a single mod for that game. Finally, our high standard of pursuing official licenses gives us a huge advantage.

Do you see the studio continuing to develop mods for Assetto Corsa in the long term,
even after AC EVO releases to v1.0?

Yes, at least until something similar to Custom Shaders Patch’s Extended Physics is developed for another title such as PMR or ACE. We work with professional race teams and others in the automotive industry who need the advanced extended physics support as they train drivers and/or conduct automotive testing within digital simulation software.

What should we expect to see from Authentic in future?

January 2026:

• Officially Licensed Revolution 500 EVO for Assetto Corsa. A totally revamped version of SimVendor.com, a multivendor sim racing website (with 3-5% site fees) owned by multiple creators and built for sim racers.
• We purchased a controlling interest in SimVendor this summer, and since then, our development has focused on a new, stronger backend and adding full membership support with a creator
  feed.
• Our advanced anti-piracy DRM system for Assetto Corsa mods sold through our
  SimVendor.com storefront.

Q1 2026:

• Officially Licensed Revolution 427 for Assetto Corsa.
• Our first hardware product launches. A button box with 4 rotaries, 4 switches, and 4 illuminated buttons.
• Our SimLane Command software for sim racing centers/lounges is currently in closed beta testing, but will be made available publicly soon! This commercial software will be free (with just a 2.1% fee per registration) and cover everything from website registration & payment, walk-in registration, multiple sim management from a single command PC, membership system, remote content updates and mod installation from the single command PC, and much more including tons of customization settings to fine tune everything to fit your center/lounge’s exact flow.

Q2 2026

• Turnkey simulator packages available through SimVendor.com.
• A larger & more advanced button box for retail.

Q3 2026:

• Autozi Garage will be released through Steam (a 100% free racing game built in Unreal Engine).