Here’s one big thing that’s coming to Assetto Corsa Evo, the full sequel to much-loved racing sim Assetto Corsa. The game will have an open world map.
And it’s not fictional locale. It will be the Eifel region in Germany, the area where you can find the Green Hell, Nürburgring.
The map will eventually be covering a staggering 1,600 square kilometers. To give you context of how huge it is, Burnout Paradise’s pretty decent open world is 30 square miles (so about 78 square kilometers).
Forza Horizon 5’s map is estimated to be 108 square kilometers. Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown’s 1:1 recreation of Hong Kong Island is about 80.4 square kilometers. It’s not as big as say The Crew and The Crew 2’s scaled-down recreation of the entire contiguous United States (estimated to be 5,180 square kilometers) and certainly not the biggest map in an open world racing game (Fuel still has that crown with approximately 14,400 square kilometers).
However, Kunos Simulazioni laser-scanned the region, which means the accuracy of the roads will be on par with how real-world circuits being scanned in the most realistic racing sims.
The open world isn’t just for cruising either. Players can interact with local business, rent cars and upgrade vehicles. In fact, Kunos is opening an invitation for local business in the Eifel region that does car rental, sell car parts and more to be featured in AC Evo.
A screenshot on the website revealed one such example, Vulcan Alpha, aftermarket wing shop run by Nürburgring YouTuber (and occasional racing driver) Misha Charoudin.
Misha’s video shows a glimpse of the open world, including dynamic day-and-night cycle and seasonal weather.
Seeing the real world re-created in video games isn’t too surprising, but seeing it being recreated with the care seen in racing sims is something else.
Assetto Corsa has a community of players where they cruise and drive around open world maps enabled via modding.
Understandably, the Eifel open world map will be rolled out in portions throughout the Early Access release period, the first phase to be release in Q2 2025.
Assetto Corsa Evo will be out on January 16, 2025 in Steam Early Access. So the open world map won’t be ready at launch.