Assetto Corsa 1.12 arrived. Patchnote length is significant, despite the end of the world.
Remarkable things in reversed order of personal perception:
#6 Tyre pressure app
I’ll have to update the article about the 1.5 tyre app. Now we have colors relative to the ideal pressures as well. And it never was as important. The tyre model 10 adds lots of depth towards the tyre data, and non-aliens will have a hard time to understand their tyres without some help.
Btw. Kunos, do you know which is the most read article on this blog by far? Hint: Education is the lack of accessibility in AC, not rubberbanding AI or other arcadeish features.
#5 Highlands
This new track splits me apart. First, I was super excited about some kind of fantasy mountain climb track in Scottish HIGHlands. First pictures revealed that it’s comparably flat and wide instead.
But I can’t hate it. It’s not that bad until you witness a race in the MX-5 Cup on the short layout. What a glory! Can’t wait to see this combo on some good MP servers.
In a sidenote Marco published some impressive before-after album, which reduces my ability to hate the track even further.
#4 Placebo-model v10
If I’m not mistaken, Aristotelis has implemented the tyre model 10 to every single car in AC. Wth how much time did that take?
In a sidenote I’m sure he is kind of amused about the community reactions. So many people now feel significant changes in grip, balance and FFB. Attention subjective opinion: Most of this feeling is placebo. To my knowledge the TM10 does change how fast and alive the tyre’s values change during situations, like heating up and down more frequently during a lap. Yes, you feel some of the effects, some might even change the car’s balance in given situations. But most of the observations look like they would have been stated even if Aris forgot to actually deploy his changes to the patch.
Still, my deep bow to the work and consistency. SIMULATION_VALUE=11 confirmed.
#3 Timed online races
Simply put: Server admins can now chose if the race ends after X laps, or X minutes. This looks similar to the timed qualifying change (which I don’t see as major gain), but has a huge implication. No, it’s not the additional depth that you can gamble on how many laps the leader will do and maybe save one lap of fuel – won’t even be significant in league racing.
The big thing is that the race now properly ends for all, despite the laps they made. This can be viewed as online-multiclass-race enabler. I really really hope server admins will utilize this, and drivers will join.
#2 Change in development strategy?
So far we knew that Stefano is the single and only coder behind Kunos. His time and priority decides about what we get. This seems to change. Stefano (happily) gives 100% of the credits to the timed races to Manuel Darin, who again is grateful for the chance to do so.
Quick balance check: Highly appreciated feature, very well done. Actually this is some kind of work that might be done half-baked by Stefano, but not this time. So far I couldn’t see any bug report. => Manu has definitively proven himself and I’m looking forward to see two coders in this style.
For the moment this could mean that Stefano is evaluating stuff for AC2, while Manu still can work on AC1. If both work on the same software, things might speed up. This isn’t certain if you raise the amount of devs from 1 to 2, you can easily be trapped in a situation where the output suddenly is less or equal to 1 dev due to organisation overhead and misunderstandings.
#1 Race outlaps
Just a side product of the Timed (online) Races – now your race doesn’t magically and artificially ends when crossing the line after the finish condition. You are free to go off throttle, and drive into the pits now.
This isn’t even worth a line in the change log, but my biggest single point of the whole patch. Maybe I’m alone on this, but the first time I was on the verge to tears. It feels so good.
Cats on Slicks 
Ad #4
On some cars, the jump from V7 to V10 Tyre model has brough significant improvements.
Take the BMW E30 M3 DTM e.g. On V7 it was rather pushing in corners, and the back end at times tended to snap away from you totally unheralded. On V10, it drives like a go kart with a roof, no understeer, rear end is alive, but the FFB is more detailed now, that you can sense much more what the car will do.
Some cars the changes are more subtle, but overall the combined changes or enhancements of the TM10 plus the corrected inertias on cars where neccessary made this v1.12 the most significant update with regards to how FFB is perceived and the physics of the cars.
I even kept a copy of 1.11.4 on my HDD to make comparisons, and while I agree with your other points, there definitely is no placebo in TM10. Hats off to Aris to go through all the cars and update them all. it was a major achievement!
P.S. TM10 should be #1 on your list;)
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I’m not qualified to fight over your example, as you did much more science here with your 1.11 backup. I also believe that there are real effects in handling and balance like you describe due to different tyre data like heating in many situations. Inertia is a thing although I can’t estimate how much influence there really is.
But.. more detailed FFB due to tyre model change?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m very happy with the tm10 and (think to) feel it all over the place. Like tm7 my ability to drift cars improved big times. But how much of this is really “real”?
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Its not scientific really, its more like hopping back and forward between the two versions without to much plan (and feeling like a nerd doing so)
While totally not backed up scientifically, as I have no insight, my take on TM10 is that it changed the heating of the compound, partially the grip fall off when braking traction sideways, but most noticeably the way the flexing of the tyre or tyre sidewall is simulated.
Thus when the race cars got TM10, I found the heating of the tyres being more noticeable, and the cars were more difficult for me to handle when loosing the rear, and requiring quicker reactions (speaking of the GT3 cars), but the overall handling I found to have not chanegd noticeably.
On the road cars however, the increased detail in the FFB as I perceive it on my wheel, I relate to the better simulation of the flexing of the tyres during load changes. This makes sense to me, because on the higher shoulder road tyres, the flexing of the tyres I would expect to have more of an impact.
How much of this at the end is really there, or indeed placebo, I honestly cant tell, but at least I tend (like) to believe that TM10 is only little placebo and big part substantial update.
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