We've written extensively about the upcoming racing sims and updates for sims that are expected to be released during 2024. This article highlights not only what's expected during the year but, a few things we hope to see as well as a couple of things we may never see, but hope for, anyway.
iRacing
iRacing released lots of content last year as well as a few feature updates. We expected the long-awaited rain update but that has been pushed back to next season. This means that in more or less two months, we should racing in the rain.
We're also hoping for a couple more hypercars like the Ferrari 499P LMH and maybe even the Toyota GR010 LMH. It's unlikely mainly because iRacing has focussed heavily on the IMSA series where there are only LMDh cars with no LMH cars being represented. However, this may change in the future since there are other Ferrari's in iRacing already but the Toyota most probably will never come.
Assetto Corsa Competizione
The GT2 car pack will be out this month and should deliver cars that are both fast and enjoyable to drive. We've already seen videos of the cars and we've been suitably impressed. However, Assetto Corsa 2 is expected in over six months, and we're not sure how much more development and DLC we'll see for ACC moving forward.
Assetto Corsa 2 is supposed to be similar to the original Assetto Corsa in the sense that it won't be focussed on just one category of racing and should include a range of cars from various racing disciplines as well as popular road cars. It will run on a custom engine and not Unreal Engine like ACC. This should give it excellent visuals and should be a lot more efficient in VR as well.
Automobilista 2
Based on Project Cars 2, Reiza Studios took AMS 2 to a whole new level by packing it full of cars and tracks that the majority of sim racers love to race. They've covered current racing series like their recent Le Mans and Hypercar packs as well as historic cars like old F1 cars and Le Mans prototypes spanning several decades.
We're expecting Part 2 of the Le Mans car pack very soon to complete what they released a few days ago as well as multiple historic versions of the iconic Le Mans 24 Hour track at a later date.
We're hoping that they release an F1 2007/2008 car pack because we think that those years represented some of the most closely contested seasons combined with cars that looked amazing and sounded even better. We got a taste for it way back in the day when MMG released their 2007 mod for rFactor. They promised a 2008 mod but it got delayed into infinity. It's of course highly unlikely that Reiza will release these cars because it's a huge amount of work versus what we think may be a very low demand. However, this can just be added to our wish list...
Le Mans Ultimate
There are only a few weeks left till Le Mans Ultimate is supposed to be released and we are waiting with bated breath. The videos we've seen look amazing but we'll only know for sure what it's like once we get to actually drive it.
It's meant to represent the FIA World Endurance Championship with all of the tracks, cars drivers, changing weather conditions, safety cars etc. It's also meant to be a long-lasting game with several years worth of updates planned. If this game is everything that we hope it will be, then it should be a cracker.
Rennsport
We're not sure what's really going on with this game in the sense that the developers chose to go Esports first and full release third. The closed beta is in the middle somewhere.
We tested it recently and it feels good to drive with good graphics and handling but it's very, very far from a finished product. Updates are coming at a very slow pace and the game runs poorly even on hardware that's relatively powerful. Based on what we've seen so far, we don't have high hopes for this game to be released this year in such a state that it will be seen as a serious threat to other established sims like iRacing or ACC.
GTRevival
GTR and GTR 2 were amazing games back in the day and GTRevival is positioning itself as the successor to those games but we see it as more of a replacement for ACC since Assetto Corsa 2 is not a follow to ACC. Either way, it will focus heavily on GT cars with realistic handling and high-quality cars and tracks.
There's been a few screenshots released and one gameplay video that shows the game in action but it's very difficult to judge much from the video. GTRevival is expected to be released towards the end of 2024 and we're hoping that the date doesn't slip.
GTRevival gameplay (Work In Progress)
F1 24
We're not fans of games being released as full games but are essentially DLC. Call of Duty Modern Warfare III is one example and we think that EA's F1 series is another.
The game is released every year with tons of huge bugs and it looks and behaves essentially the same except for updated cars and tracks. It would have been so much better if they released it as a Season Update DLC and only released a full-priced new game when they moved to a new game engine. This should allow for a game that will be relatively bug-free after a year or two and a lot cheaper for the average consumer.
It would be so amazing if the cars and tracks from all of the previous seasons were available in the latest game with the ability to not only play those seasons but also play a career mode across those seasons.
For example, you could start in the Renault at the start of the 2020 season, drive it as an Alpine the following year, get offered a drive at Alpha Tauri in 2022 and then move to Red Bull to fight Max Verstappen for the championship in 2024.
We know this won't happen but we did get something similar back in the day from EA in the form of F1 Career Challenge where you could play across four seasons of F1. The game covered the 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2002 seasons and for us, represented a proper F1 career mode.
Simply put, we're not actually looking forward to the release of F1 24 and only added it to the list to give us the opportunity to mention what we think should be done with the game.
Final thoughts
There's a lot that's coming up in 2024 in terms of racing sims and racing games. We only touched on the few we're looking forward to. Hopefully, every game and update we mentioned gets released on time and lives up to what was planned.
Feel free to give us your thoughts on what you're looking forward to this year.
