Tweet
Having first launched on PC in 2014, Assetto Corsa made its mark with a push for accurate car physics - a key selling point that sadly wrestles with the more CPU-restricted designs of PS4 and Xbox One. The logic here is clear: the more cars simulated on a circuit during a race, the bigger the hit to frame-rates on console. Your mileage may vary as a result of how you set your vehicle count, but it's disappointing to see the game veer so far away from its target 60fps - coupled with aggressive tearing - when set to anything between 10 and 16 cars.We've been here before with the likes of Project Cars, of course. There we had another ambitious PS4 and Xbox One racing sim that struck 60fps quite happily with eight cars and less, but cranking that to 16 and above caused it sub-50fps levels of performance. In Assetto Corsa's case however, the consequences for pushing the car count up are actually more restrictive. Even with just 10 cars on the road we're faced with performance at the lower end of 45-60fps. Taken to its maximum 16 cars, this number drops to the 35-50fps region on both consoles. One difference between Assetto Corsa and Project Cars (and indeed the F1 titles, which also possess similar performance issues) is that both PS4 and Xbox One operate at 1080p resolution, though the Sony console's anti-aliasing solution is more effective on smoothing off the jagged edges.
This is also coupled with full-screen tearing. In some respects this is a benefit to the game's playability; on the one hand, yes, it sticks out like a sore thumb when turning a corner - lateral motion plus sharp contrasting edges tends to exacerbate the visibility of the tear-lines. But on the other, this artefact means each frame is output as closely to its 16.7ms render time as possible. Whether the frame is complete or not, it gives the player as much visual feedback as possible within each second of gameplay - a crucial component of any racing sim.
Read more…
More...