New main menu

For this update, we mostly focused on Quality-of-Life improvements and fixes. Hopefully, this one will be stable enough to become the new recommended version. Although, there are a few new things too.

New main menu

Similar to the new pause menu, replaces the main menu with something a bit more fresh. To keep things familiar, the overall structure is very similar to the original menu, but it has a bunch of small additions here and there, so I’d recommend giving it a try (for now, it can be activated in the GUI module).

“Telemetry” tab will be ready a bit later, we’re still thinking about what’s best to show in there. Here is where the new menu can be enabled:

A couple of small hints:

• Hover AC logo in the upper left corner to access new in-game UI settings (more settings are coming soon);

• Hover a setup tab with vertical tabs enabled to see a button resetting a single section;

• Hold Alt while dragging a slider to edit one on the opposite side automatically.

Physics changes

Big update is that the way torque is applied to suspension on cars with extended physics and “TORQUE_MODE_EX=2” has been rewritten to be truly accurate. Previously, there were some inaccuracies under ABS activation and combined braking and engine torque. Along the way, it caused some issues with original AC ABS, so ABS has been tuned for cars using EX=2 to try and fix the issues (but for the new cars, we recommend instead to just use new CSP ABS as a more accurate alternative). AWD1 was rewritten as well, fixing a couple of small bugs in the vanilla code (axle torques should no longer oscillate wildly when differential is locking, though average torque should still remain the same).

Plus, there is a new physics experiment awakening the car in pits and using a strange prismatic joint while nullifying tyre grip, so any geometry adjustments would be easier to track. Also, the car awakening option has been rewritten with a bunch of new variants added, the one where instead of putting car to sleep AC would engage brakes seems to be a lot more usable.

Audio improvements

In the last couple of builds, there were a few regressions, especially when it comes to reverb and car collisions. Apart from that, for a long time there was this issue where CSP would silence all but the nearest six cars. With this update, those issues should be fixed, and the default limit should be bumped to 20 (updating car audio is still pretty taxing, I’m planning on rewriting it entirely for the next update).

Apart from that, CSP got some fallback audio for handbrake and turning lights, applied to some of the cars (can be disabled in car configs if needed). And for a test, there is a strange experimental option to add a bit of extra reverb based on surrounding geometry.

Up-to-date browser

Turns out, we no longer need OBS builds of CEF to get a browser texture into AC, so there was no need to wait for their fork. New version should run better, and got a few new features such as access to the microphone (if permission is granted), so now you can connect to a Discord voice chat from within AC.

With it, it’s possible to spoof GPS, which inspired me to quickly put together a simple tool for configuring track coordinates and orientation with much higher precision using Google Maps. Just mark the same point on both views a few times, and it’ll compute the rest.

Other changes

There are a lot of other changes: alternate FFB got an update to be more compatible with wheels without direct drive, racing line of Rain FX (making tracks drier or more wet as cars are driving by) is tuned and enabled by default, ghost works on A/B tracks, there are new options to hide pit crews entirely or simply add some variance to them, trees got a big visual boost with CSP forcefully regenerating their MIPs in the most alpha-test-friendly way, cars got 10 more additional switches, default Weather FX style got a big update. Plus, a ton of fixes: illegal tyres online are finally compatible with extended physics, CSP no longer crashes on systems without AVX support, deforming hoods are functional again, LCS no longer breaks Extra FX emissives, ghost or some specific materials, and a lot more.

Here is the full list of changes: gist.github.com. And, of course, the quick install link: acstuff.club.

Thank you so much for the incredible support!