Assetto Corsa : a new online race

I have had the pleasure recently to participate in a race organized by Racingfr.

A great opportunity for many reasons. First, it was my first Online race with Assetto Corsa. In addition, the event was held on the Circuit de Catalunya, with an Audi R8 LMS, both from the Dream Pack 3, delivered by Kunos Simulazioni last October.

My goals were simple:

- having fun,
- finishing the race,
- gaining experience,
- and of course, seeing if my offline training paid off.

But I did not expect that my participation would be so complicated to implement. From a technical point of view, this was a small nightmare. Contrary to what I thought, my simulation environment was not at all suitable. I had to quickly fix it by taking several decisions :

- Video settings to allow frame rate per second which is around 40 fps, allowing to view 23 more furious while keeping the fluidity,
- Adjusting the field of view to 26 ° to have a realistic rendering of the distance between my eyes and the virtual windshield and therefore the world of AC,
- Setting up a head-tracking system, monitoring the movement of the head and eyes, in order to follow the trajectory with the eyes, outside the limits of the fixed screen. First I tried a plugin, Real Head Motion, which simulates the movement of the head from the rotation of the wheel. But it did not work because it is not compatible with 64-bit Assetto. So I had to fall back on Facetracknoir, which, equipped with my cap and three LEDs, works great!

I especially went to the depths of Assetto Corsa in order to draw all the information I needed to prepare the race. At this point, I realized that the base platform is incomplete and it is necessary to use plugins:

- Rivali OV1 Info app : to have, in the cockpit and on the track, a lot of information that are not available at the base or misrepresented at my sense, as petrol, consumption per turn, position, timing but also the temperature, pressure and condition of tires ... and now I find that through OV1LapsInfo, OV1TyreInfos and OV1FuelInfos windows. Note that the application needs much resource,
- Assetto Corsa Telemetry Interface or ACTI, which collects the telemetry data and then use them in MoTeC i2 Pro. Very useful especially for checking the height of the car after setting dampers. This is after the first time that I became aware of one of the AC of weaknesses: it does not handle brake temperature !

That's enough for today. I shall return later to discuss the settings that were endless until the last minute ... but it was worth it.

The Rookie