Oh..My..Guod..

















Press release:

April 12th, 2012

Kunos Simulazioni is pleased to announce a new officially licensed car for our upcoming racing simulation, Assetto Corsa, the Lotus Type 49.

Kunos Simulazioni is very proud to announce a new car for their forth coming simulation: Assetto Corsa, our first historic Formula One car, the Lotus Type 49, a real legend of motorsport. As described in Michael Oliver’s book, “Lotus 49 – The story of a legend” the Lotus 49 embodies Colin Chapman's original philosophy of simplicity and lightness in an elegant form. In a single leap the Lotus 49 moved Formula One technology several notches up the evolutionary scale, and can now be seen as a pivot about which F1 technology turned and refocused.

Not only was the 49 a state of the art design, but it would be driven through several tumultuous seasons by some of the world's greatest drivers including Jim Clark, Graham Hill, Jochen Rindt and Emerson Fittipaldi.

Kunos Simulazioni development team commented:
"We consider it a privilege and a challenge to have a chance to reproduce one of history’s most iconic cars: The Lotus 49 represents a pinnacle in racing simulation, thanks to the combination between history, technology, lightness, power and beauty. With its shape and livery, the Lotus Type 49 is the ultimate representation of a classic age in Formula One racing, just before technology changed as aerodynamics came to the fore, and sponsorship and big business changed the sport forever. We wish to thank Clive Chapman and everyone at Classic Team Lotus for the opportunity and support they are giving us by allowing our team to recreate this kind of beauty and power, to the best of our ability.

The Lotus Type 49 puts the physics engine of Assetto Corsa under great stress. Combining low grip vintage tyres with a nimble, lightweight chassis and a peaky powerful engine presents the perfect disaster scenario for any simracing physics engine. At KUNOS Simulazioni we believe that an F1 car of any age is a state of the art racing car, and as such it shouldn’t try to kill you just by exiting the pitlane. The Lotus 49 may be hard to drive to the limits when exploring its full potential, but it should also have exceptional handling, and offer confidence and grip when driven with authority and proper technique.

As a result of official licensing, Classic Team Lotus is making real life data and engineering documents available to us, and so far all of our work and fine tuning of our new physics engine confirms our belief of how an iconic Formula 1 Car should handle.

At the same time, we are humbled and amazed by the knowledge and ingenuity of the engineers and designers at Classic Team Lotus."
The Lotus Type 49 has been modelled in every small detail, with particular attention to its visual and dynamic proprieties. The aim is to reproduce the Lotus 49’s impressive handling agility and power with maximum accuracy. The images released today show the current state of development; meanwhile, we are still working, improving and tweaking in order to bring the authentic, original, unique Lotus Type 49 to your PC.

Game information.
Assetto Corsa is a new DirectX 11 based racing game for Windows, expected to be released in 2012.

Assetto Corsa is being designed to provide a very realistic driving experience, with single player and multiplayer options, officially licensed cars and tracks developed using Laser scan technology, and the highest level of accuracy possible in reproducing real world motor racing environments.

Also, Assetto Corsa will allow for considerable customisation and modification, in order to satisfy the expectations of professional simracers, gamers who prefer to approach the driving experience more progressively, and hobbyists who just like to collect lots of cars and tracks.

Wow, that's a beauty. It's looking like a good year or two for petrol heads coming up!

Is this going to be similar to GPL with other car makes and tracks of that period?

I saw these late yesterday and was just blown away. I'm not sure what other makers or models they may be building from that period, but I hope they do have some others.
I'm hoping they post some in-game footage to match these beautiful screenies.
Derek

Thre'll be a variety of different cars, tin tops and sigle seaters so in that respect it won't quite be like GPL, but I'm thinking that the physics will blow us out of our socks.

And i do believe that these are un-edited, in game actual sceenshots.

Graphics are between rfactor 2 and pCars... closer to pCARS actually but not there yet in term of global lighting and reflection details... in the last build (192) the pcars lotus is amazing to drive and to see.
Here some image to compare: (NOT EDITED SHOT apart from resizing)

Wow Assetto Corsa looks awesome!

One thing it should have that pCARS is still working to achieve is great physics and FFB, which at least on pCARS with Fanatec is still not so good.

Very much looking forward to Assetto Corsa, with those graphics and the physics and FFB of nKPro it should be awesome.

amazin'

This sim is going to take them to the top of the pack. NetKar Pro's physics were great coupled with these graphics...wow. I'm excited.

Those look amazing.


Wheels

I think - but of course I can't say yet - that AC will present it's stuff in a more "no-fuss, professional way". I.e., more focus on timing, qualifying, accurate race weekends, tons of telemetry. I don't expect it to have much of a "career" or such.

Whereas pCARS will be aimed to please both the "occasional race gamer" and serious sim racer, which means it will bring more of a game element to it, but maybe at the cost of not putting in all the hardcore details that for example belong more to rFactor than to NFS Shift.