In early May of 2024, user "iknowstuff99" (very appropriate name, obviously a throwaway account) posted a .txt file on various sim racing Discord servers containing information about Assetto Corsa EVO with no source. The user stuck around for some more time to just chat and discuss the info he gave.
The following are the contents of the .txt file, posted on a public simracing Discord server:
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Do not let this raise your expectations. The source for this information is unknown, and obviously not final. We have marked with (C) the confirmed features, (M) the features that might come and (S) the ones that are for the most part speculation. If one point contains 2 markers it is something in between.
(C) Will feature a huge 2500 square KM open world map of the real life area around (and including) the Nurburgring. Including highly detailed towns, all of the roads present in real life down to a 1:1 recreation.
(C, reported by locals) The map features real life landmarks correctly recreated. Some locations have been reportedly manually scanned by the dev team for maximum fidelity, such as Adenau.
(C) Traffic AI will be present on the roads and will react to your actions in a fairly realistic manner. AI traffic will be bound to the same physics as the rest of the player cars. AI might also be doing track days on the open world Nordschleife during opening hours.
(C) It will maintain the high level of realism that AC and ACC are known for, with even better physics and simulation. Roads will never be exaggerated in size for comfort.
(C, M) There is a possibility for an extensive player driven market and economy. There is a chance for social areas made in collaboration with the real life locations.
(C, S) If the economy is present, players might be able to own, sell, extensively customize and modify their cars and build a history on them to raise value.
(C, M) Players will be able to partake in jobs of all kinds, from pizza delivery to track taxi laps.
(S) There might be limited quantity/unique vehicles with special mods or references.
(M) Chances are more open world maps will be added. Almost confirmed locations are: Italy, Japan. Speculations around France, England, USA are also present.
(C, partly confirmed by the devs) Graphics will receive a hefty bump in quality and performance. Their in house engine apparently has similar capabilities to UE5 with technology similar to Nanite. Ground fidelity and quality has also received a significant boost. Textures, lighting, materials etc also look a lot better. No info on Ray Tracing or similar.
(C) Game servers will go beyond 100 users per server, if not double.
(M) Game servers might be divided per regions, with seamless transitions together with friends when travelling in Germany. Each of these servers will have huge player counts.
(C) Custom and player hosted servers will still be present. Normally the game will send you into the official open world, but one can choose to see a server browser. Game will try to match you with your friends or teammates if not using server browser.
(C) There is a half fictional loop of the autobahn that completes the real life highway. This is to make a loop for gameplay purposes.
(C, S) Players will almost surely be able to own homes, garages and even businesses like tuning shops, parts shops, clubs and so forth.
(C) There will be no -official- mod support.
(S) There might be a chance for modders to create their own tuning parts.
(M) Cars could have onboard Spotify radio/Spotify.
(C, by the developer) The physics model has not lost quality, as it has been initially worked on by the original developer before leaving.
(S) Console launch will happen at a much later date. Crossplay could be possible.
(S) Custom dirt/gravel road physics and correctly deformable terrain.
Release date is set to hit Early Access later 2024 on Steam. Price is unknown. Recommended specs are unknown. VR support is unknown.
=================END OF ORIGINAL LEAK==========================
Considerations:
So far, the leak is correct on the following:
- Freeroam around the Nurburgring, including towns accurately represented (someone has identified a road in the town of Nurburg in a reflection on a mirror in the recently released trailer)
- Traffic AI
- Improved physics and accurate roads not exaggerated for ease of use
- Graphics comparable to UE5 (someone also posted a comparison between ACC and AC EVO's Nordschleife and EVO presents much better lighting, shadows, ambient occlusion and scenery details)
- Lack of any kind of raytracing during gameplay in favour of performance (according to a Discord message on one server, the game ran at over 100 FPS while testing on a system from 2017 in "the editor")
- No official mod support (Kunos has confirmed it will come later on, as they're focused on finishing the game first in a very recent interview) and modders having the possibility of working directly with Kunos (same interview)
- No console launch yet (Steam exclusive as of now)
Again, everything stated here is publicly available on at least two fairly popular simracing Discords.
The account still exists but it has been inactive for a long time
NOTE: I am simply posting this after believing it was a low-effort troll for over 5 months, nobody aside from the throwaway account I mentioned is involved in any way, shape or form with the leak.
EDIT: Please read the whole post before commenting, I know it's long but I tried answering all the questions that may rise and explained (with sources) why some aspects can be considered confirmed. I would also like to repeat that I DID NOT MAKE THIS LEAK, and I simply copied and pasted what was sent publicly over 5 months ago.
EDIT 2:
Everyeye just posted an exclusive interview in Italian with Kunos Simulazioni's Marco Massarutto. Massarutto says that "In the creation of AC EVO, we figured out that, while staying in the genre of sim racing, there was some margin of improvement with graphics, sounds and physics, but with EVO, simply reproposing the same gameplay loop of "Pick car, track and mode" would not work today like it did in the past. Knowing this, and knowing EVO would need to be "THE simulation" like the previous Asetto Corsa titles were, to have a better gameplay depth, we wanted to satisfy players not only when they held the wheel at the beginning of a session, but right from when they opened the executable up until they hit "exit".
Additionally, Massarutto said: "Talking about the cars, in this case there's a very big evolution from the first Assetto Corsa, as it's no longer just about driving one of the models available in the simulation, but every car is a separate entity: with its own characteristics, setup (translation note: "allestimento", might not be the correct translation), value and history (translation note: "storico" meaning a set of details about the vehicle's past and technical data).
Leak aside, this interview also talks about offline AI opponents, advanced track evolution system and weather system among further modding support details, so it's worth a read regardless of this leak (if you can read Italian).
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