Early Access Launch of ‘Assetto Corsa EVO’ on PC VR Headsets: Why Waiting Could Be Wise

Assetto Corsa EVO made its debut in Early Access yesterday on Steam, marking an exciting moment for fans of the racing franchise. This latest installment is available for both traditional flatscreen users and those with PC VR headsets. However, the reception has been mixed, with VR enthusiasts in particular advising players to hold off until some key patches arrive to improve the game’s optimization issues.

KUNOS Simulazioni, the developers behind the acclaimed Assetto Corsa (2014) and Assetto Corsa Competizione (2018), have finally rolled out their highly anticipated follow-up, Assetto Corsa EVO. In its Early Access form, the game offers five tracks and 20 vehicles. Players can enjoy single-player mode, with support for SteamVR headsets and the luxury of triple screen support.

Although the developers have assured that more content is on the way—in future updates you can expect 100 cars, 25 tracks, an open-world map, plus career and multiplayer modes—the current VR experience is falling short for some users.

With more than 2,700 reviews and a collective ‘Mixed’ score, the community feedback paints a clear picture. While some players understand the lack of certain features, hoping for their future arrival, VR users have been vocal about the performance shortfalls. Many are finding the game nearly unplayable in virtual reality due to poor optimization.

A Steam user named Poloman shared his experience, saying, “I’ll hold off on judging the performance issues too harshly since this is early access, but VR is currently unplayable for me. I can get 150 FPS on a 3440×1440 resolution, yet it drops to a mere 30 FPS in VR.”

Mattios, another user, reported, “Even with a powerful RTX 4090 and i9 13900k, the game is unplayable in VR even at the lowest settings, aiming just for 80hz. It suffers from constant latency spikes, making it unplayable. On flatscreen, it performs well, with max settings barely engaging 80% of the GPU and only 10% of the CPU without upscaling.”

Dan expressed his frustrations in his review, recommending that others steer clear for now: “Performance optimization just isn’t there, especially for VR. My Radeon 7600X + 7900 XT setup gets around 50 FPS on a Quest 3 with Link and OpenXR, even with just one car on track and graphics on minimum.” He also noted visual glitches primarily occurring in menus and dissatisfied with default force feedback settings. “Wait for patches before diving in,” he cautioned.

KUNOS Simulazioni has a history of staging Early Access releases for their Assetto Corsa series, typically incorporating a gradual introduction of features over time. This somewhat predictable rollout pattern isn’t too surprising, considering VR wasn’t day-one material in their past offerings, but it has grown into a fundamental feature across their titles.

For VR enthusiasts, Assetto Corsa has been a pioneer since it first toyed with Rift support back in 2013. It later embraced wider headset compatibility in 2017 through OpenVR. Assetto Corsa Competizione added full VR support a month after its monitor release.

KUNOS Simulazioni aims to have a complete 1.0 version ready “in less than a year from the start of Early Access.” We’re hoping to see significant improvements and optimizations for VR soon, making it a worthwhile investment at its current $32 price tag.