Opinion: Why time is running out for Rennsport

As Rennsport heads unerringly towards its September console release, co-developers Competition Company and Teyon released another update to its early access PC version this week, overhauling the game’s audio and opening up car set-ups for the first time.

However, with only three months left until the game’s full release, Rennsport is still missing many crucial features: it has no AI cars to race against (yet), it has a confusing storefront, and, perhaps most worryingly of all, it has scant content.

With its release window looming large in the windscreen, I jumped back into Rennsport to get an idea of how far it’s come since it first broke cover in 2022, and if it looks like it’ll be ready for September.

Audio improvements

The headline improvement of Rennsport’s latest update was its revised audio engine. The Mercedes-AMG GT3 was the main proponent of these changes, and its cockpit sounds are indeed a huge step forward, closely resembling Assetto Corsa Competizione’s for accuracy.

However, its external audio doesn’t quite hit these heady heights – a common factor throughout Rennsport (the GT3 Audi R8 being a prime example). 

To be fair to Rennsport, though, it states that the AMG’s overhaul represents the first step in a more far-reaching operation, which is encouraging. Less encouraging is the bizarre tyre screeching sound the cars emit in external camera views, sounding more like a dodgy fan belt on a ‘90s Fiat Panda. 

It’s all in the feels

When I first sampled a private beta of Rennsport over two years ago, I was not impressed with its physics model. The GT3 cars I tried felt extremely odd, especially over kerbs, with inconsistently floaty handling.

I’ve sampled it briefly on a couple of occasions since, but this week I tested Rennsport for several hours, driving the AMG GT3, BMW M2 CS Racing and Porsche 963 LMDh.

My first impressions were surprisingly positive. The AMG GT3 felt lively and provided decent force feedback on my Simagic Alpha EVO Pro wheelbase; I could feel the front tyres load up, and I could feel when I pushed too far into corners. It didn’t feel like the same game I’d tried many months previously.

I was mildly impressed, but it wasn’t perfect. For me, there was still a mild floatiness to the handling at low speeds, almost as if the force feedback had momentarily turned itself off (Le Mans Ultimate also suffered from a similar phenomenon in its early stages for me, and it feels much better now).

But still, the car felt predictable, believably reacting to my inputs, and the FFB added to, rather than detracted from, the overall experience. It’s not genre-leading by any stretch, but Rennsport felt far more engaging than I expected.

A switch to the Porsche 963 LMDh Hypercar was less positive, though, thanks to comparatively imprecise handling. Its cockpit sounds were visceral, however, and it boasted an impressively detailed car model.

The BMW felt pleasingly neutral to drive thanks to having fewer horsepower, but it did have an annoyingly delayed gear shift audio sound bug, which can hopefully be addressed soon.

Open set-ups

Rennsport has relied on fixed setups on all its cars since release, partly to satisfy its brief as an esports-focused sim via the R1 competition. However, the latest update now allows set-up changes to take place (after all, you can’t yourself a proper sim if you bar players from indulging in detailed setup work).

Not all parameters can be altered right now, though, but this should change closer to the game’s release. I spent a bit of time messing around with the AMG GT3’s set-up options to see if Rennsport’s engineering made sense, and for the most part, it did. 

In a cheeky nod to the Image Space Incorporated-derived physics story in 2023, I tried lowering all four tyre pressures to minimum values. In rFactor 2, this would lead to more grip with almost no drawbacks, but I’m happy to say this produced a lazy-feeling car in Rennsport, producing slower laptimes. Tick.

I also did the other classic rF 2 trick of lowering the rear anti-roll bar to ‘1’, and this improved the handling no end, especially when exiting slower corners, just as it did in Studio 397’s sim. Although Rennsport feels less reliant on tail-happy driving, it’s still less refined than the likes of LMU or iRacing in terms of GT3 driving, feeling more like a hybrid of Automobilista 2 and ACC.

Rennsport’s traction control (TC) and anti-lock braking systems (ABS) have also received some attention in the latest update, but when using higher TC settings the car would still break traction at low-to-medium speeds when under heavy loads. I felt like its intervention was too lenient and too late on occasion, but it could be mitigated by car set-up changes.

Interestingly, Rennsport’s AMG GT3 has its TC settings the wrong way around, with most intervention taking place at higher settings (the Stuttgart marque dispensed with GT3 norms in the real-world to enable the most TC intervention at lower settings).

Bugs and omissions

As an early access title, you can forgive Rennsport for containing a few bugs or stumbling blocks here and there, but with three months until a v1.0 release, most should have been squashed by now.

Minor quibbles like the day-to-night cycle giving me 48 hours’ worth of Ardennes summer in the space of two laps, despite setting the time acceleration to just 5x, can be fixed quickly, but the complicated way the Rennsport storefront works may take much longer.

Rennsport has already confirmed to Traxion that the baffling way the storefront currently works, with tiered Founder’s Packs, credits and other odd items for sale (cars with exclusive eVINs, anyone?), will be altered for v1.0. But in what form, we don’t know yet.

Graphics

The game’s general visual performance is also less than perfect, and I experienced several bouts of frame rate-related choppiness, but it was never game-breaking. 

Rennsport looks quite pleasant for the most part, as long as you pick the correct graphics settings (note that FXAA can only be set to ‘Low’ currently, so make sure to pick an alternative anti-aliasing method to smooth out the game’s rough edges). 

Unfortunately, however, there’s no dynamic weather or dynamic track evolution as of yet.

There’s a decent level of detail on-screen, but pop-in becomes more prevalent when adjusting the view distance. However, the game suffers from ‘ghosting’, where a translucent image of your car trails behind it, something ACC also suffered from thanks to its Unreal Engine origins. 

Rennsport uses Unreal Engine 5, which is notoriously resource-intensive, and on my mid-range gaming PC (with an Nvidia 4070 RTX graphics card and 3440 x 1440 resolution), it didn’t run at a consistent 60 fps on the Epic preset.

How well it will run on less powerful PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X | S consoles remains to be seen – while members of the development team claimed to Traxion that it was running at 60fps so far in console development, consistency will be key.

Single-player

For a console racing game to be a success, it needs to have solid single-player modes and engaging AI racing. Currently, Rennsport has neither of these things. There are no offline championships, no AI opponents and no career mode to grind through. 

12 weeks away from release, this is not a good sign, and it must be a top priority for Competition Company and Teyon for the console release.

Mercifully, it does sound like it is, with AI-controlled rivals and a form of challenge mode set for the initial release. While not a ‘traditional career’, there will be a structured experience at launch, followed by a plan to try and recreate real-world motorsport moments further down the line.

Not even seeing the AI in action once since the title’s reveal is unnerving, however. We hope to see more in July.

Esports

One of Rennsport’s founding principles was its focus on esports. In terms of professional sim racing, ESL R1 (now simply called ‘R1’ due to an apparent split with esports organising/broadcasting giant ESL) is the extent of this, alongside a presence at the Saudi Arabia-based Esports World Cup.

R1 is known for its extraordinarily large prize pools (prize money has totalled over $1 million so far) and slick production, attracting some of the world’s top esports teams and sim racers as a result. But it has failed to strike a chord with the community, garnering embarrassingly low viewer numbers considering the size of the investment.   

In some ways, I think esports has worked against Rennsport, as the R1 drivers have essentially acted as beta testers for the nascent sim, so viewers who tuned in to live broadcasts early on in the game’s development cycle saw an unfinished product. There’s no doubt in my mind that this has put off many prospective players.

This would be of no concern if the game had an active community, but on Steam, Rennsport has an all-time concurrent player peak of 129 (the game is also available via the Epic Games Store, so it may have a larger player base there). This is significantly lower than all of its direct competitors. 

Without a large community, it’s difficult to envision full servers or an active league racing scene post-release – but it does at least feature ranked multiplayer systems and a seemingly solid netcode already. Cross-platform play should help lobby numbers.           

Modding

Another of Rennsport’s founding principles was its friendly approach to modding. However, during its early access period, the only evidence of this has been a handful of scratch-made tracks, including Crest Da Cauras and Orchard Road Street Circuit – both Assetto Corsa conversions.

While there’s scope to see more quality tracks added in future, talk of the game’s feted ‘mod marketplace’ hasn’t quite borne fruit yet, so it’ll be interesting to see how, and if, mods form a large part of the game’s v1.0 release.

Content

Racing games live or die based on their content, and it’s here where Rennsport struggles.

Sure, there’s a case to argue for ‘quality over quantity’, and Rennsport’s range of officially licensed GTs and Hypercars has been modelled beautifully, but there’s simply not enough of them.

A McLaren licensing deal was announced around a year ago and still hasn’t progressed, with Rennsport’s car roster retaining a very German-centric feel (Czech marque Praga being a notable outlier). ‘Vintage’ cars are expected, but what exactly isn’t clear.

However, Rennsport’s console version will be published by industry giant Nacon, whose own Endurance Motorsport Series racing game is currently in production. Could this lead to a symbiotic licensing relationship, and perhaps more content for Rennsport? It’s unlikely, but Nacon’s negotiating power could ease the passage of future license agreements.

Rennsport’s console-based future

While Rennsport has many faults, perhaps its biggest is that it doesn’t do anything better than its competitors. It doesn’t drive better than Le Mans Ultimate, it doesn’t look better than Automobilista 2, it doesn’t sound better than Assetto Corsa Competizione, and it doesn’t have a community as large and passionate as Assetto Corsa does.

However, and this could be Rennsport’s saving grace, it doesn’t have the same level of competition on consoles. Arguably, it’s more engaging to drive than both Forza Motorsport and Gran Turismo 7, Xbox and PlayStation’s incumbent racing game behemoths, so there’s a gap in the market for a genuine console sim thanks to Kunos Simulazioni moving its focus away from ACC.

Based on the time I’ve spent with its latest build, I firmly believe Rennsport has the potential to be a worthy sim.

However, with scant content, few single-player modes (presently), missing features and just three months to go until its concurrent v1.0 release on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, time is running out for Rennsport.