Assetto Corsa Must Have!

Assetto Corsa (AC1) was released in 2014. Yes, more than 10 years old game. So, why is it still one of the most used simulators?

AC1 was opened for developers in a way that, I think, will never happen again. Too many problems today with licenses, trademarks, and such. But, the initial AC had all the foundations already in a really good state, simply one of the best at that time.

Then comes modding, which has kept AC at the top level all these years! Mods are not only cars and tracks, but also enhancing graphics (rain and even night were not in the game from scratch!), enhancing and adding many physics features (Aeromaps, Cosmic suspension, etc.), improving the Tire Model, providing even better FFB, and tons of options to set all this like you want your simulator!

The essential stuff installing right after AC

Content Manager (CM)

Content Manager replaces the clunky vanilla launcher with a sleek interface for easy car/track installs, updates, and settings.

Installing it is just copying a file into AC root folder and use this file as launcher!

Developer: Ilja Jusupov (x4fab).

There is a free version and a paid version giving access to more advanced features.

Official page | Full version key

Latest release

Custom Shaders Patch (CSP)

CSP adds tons of features to AC, from graphic rendering to game physics, tyre model, aeromap, and more suspension characteristics, etc. It is required by most of the latest cars and tracks.

Installing it is just copying some files/folders from a zip into AC root folder!

Developer: Ilja Jusupov (x4fab).

There is a free version and a paid version on Patreon giving access to previews, with rain.

Official page | Patreon

An archive of Custom Shaders Patch changelogs for versions that were available to the Public via patreon, acstuff.club or the Custom Shaders Patch discord. Custom Shaders Patch Changelog Archive

Pure

Enhances post-processing, lighting, and weather visuals (High definition skies, linear color space, ...).

Support vanilla gamma rendering and introduced LCS (Linear Color Space) some times ago. If you use a PPfilter, pay attention to gamma or LCS PPfilter regarding your configuration.

To install it, copy extracted zip in AC root folder, and activate it in CSP settings, Weather FX.

Developer: Peter Boese.

Pure need a subscription on Patreon.

Sol is a weather simulation system for Assetto Corsa/Shader Patch. It is deprecated since CSP 0.2.10, replaced by Pure.

Must have apps

Ok, this is entirely subjective, so here is my take over it:

And of course:

Cars and Tracks

There are literally tons of cars and tracks on Assetto Corsa! But there is a load of pretty bad stuff, converted from other games without much knowledge. And there is also a lot of really outstanding stuff, whether paid or free, by many awesome guys. Here are just a few ...

Cars

And I certainly missed some good ones!

Tracks

Installing mods

You can install mods by drag and dropping downloaded zip into Content Manager. But... I would not advise doing that!

First, because several advanced cars and apps simply fail when installed like this (both VRC and RSS ask for manual installation). And because manually installing a mod is extremely simple when you know a bit about AC folder structure:

There are three locations to know on your hard drive(s):

AC root
│   Content Manager.exe
└───content
│   └───cars
│   │   └───abarth500
│   └───tracks
│   │   └───ks_barcelona
└───apps
│   └───lua
│   └───python
└───cfg

So, in content/cars each folder is a car, in content/tracks each folder is a track. Same for lua and python apps.

Config

There is two main places for your config in AC:

So, if something strange happens with AC (not launching, errors, etc) I would suggest to try with a clean install, basically: