Ten years ago today, the 1.0 edition of the PC version of the auto simulation hit Assetto Corsa was launched.
Slightly older fans of car simulations remember netKar Pro as one of the more serious driving games for PC. The Italian was responsible for that game Kunos Simulations who started working on a new project after 2010. At first it was a project conceived as a driving school made for the automobile club of Italy. However, it quickly grew into something much bigger as soon as the studio started developing its own engine. Ultimately we got a game called Assetto Corsa which turned into one of the most respected driving simulations on the market.
Assetto Corsa was an extremely realistic game in its simulation of physics, tire wear and driving model in general. She also used laser scanning technology of real tracks and over time it covered a number of famous racetracks such as Nürburgring, Spa-Francorchamps, Monza, Catalunya, Silverstone, Laguna Seca and others. The game also had wide support for modding and enabled the display of various telemetry and the like.
Initially, Assetto Corsa was launched in early access for PC in late 2013. It spent a little more than a year in that phase, but the development did not stop after the release of the 1.0 version. In 2015, it was announced that the game would receive versions for PS4 and XBO consoles, which after several delays happened in 2016. In parallel, the game had extensive support from DLCs that added new tracks and cars. Finally, in 2018, the Ultimate Edition package with all the expansions was released.
A sequel called Assetto Corsa Competizione followed in 2019, and although it was well received, a lot of players stuck with the first part thanks to the rich mod support. A few months ago, the original Assetto Corsa on Steam had almost 20,000 simultaneous players, while AC Competizione exceeded 10,000 players only once.
The third game in this series, Assetto Corsa EVO, is currently in development early access coming next month.