Eboladrome: Drive The Grand Tour Track with your Virtual Dream Car

So I guess the boys are sticking with “The Eboladrome?” No matter, it’s an awesome name and I like it. I like it so much that I wish I could drive on it myself. Since that isn’t happening in real life, I will turn to the next best thing; a racing cockpit with a wheel, pedal, and shifter setup, and my trusty copy of Assetto Corsa.

When I wrote my piece on the best video games to go on your own virtual Grand Tour, a lot of people commented that I had left out Assetto Corsa. That wasn’t an oversight; I left it out on purpose because as a “game,” I find it to be a bit lacking on personality and features. As a driving simulator, though, you would be hard pressed to find anything more accurate.

Assetto Corsa is hands down, one of, if not THE, most accurate driving sims out there today, with an almost unbelievable level of realism in the handling physics. With a controller, AC is not going to play any differently than any other racing game out there, but play it “correctly” with a wheel and pedal setup, and you will be pleased at how well it replicates a real life driving experience.

With that being said, if you have the means, definitely get the PC version of AC. Not only do you get the better performance capabilities of a PC powering the game (assuming you have the hardware to handle it), you also have the benefit of mods. Mods make everything better. The car selection in the stock game is small and fairly lacking in variety. With mods, you can pop any car you want into the game. The same goes for the track selection; with mods, you can now do the Pike’s Peak Hill Climb, Goodwood, and anything else that you can dream of.

And now, you can drive on the Eboladrome.

Yes folks, the Eboladrome has been painstakingly recreated as a mod for Assetto Corsa and it is AWESOME. As far as accuracy goes, I have never been on the Eboladrome in real life, so I can’t say. But according to what I see on The Grand Tour, it looks pretty damn close! There are some unsightly low-res environmental textures (especially the trees) but let’s be honest, you’re going to whizzing away at high speeds anyway. Chances are you aren’t looking at the trees, and if you are then you need to pay more attention to the road. Also consider that this is fan made, so jaggies or not, this is beyond impressive.

To download the Eboladrome for Assetto Corsa, visit Race Department and click on the link on the left. The basic system requirements to run Assetto Corsa are:

• MINIMUM: OS: Windows Vista Sp2 – 7 Sp1 – 8 – 8.1 – 10
• Processor: AMD Athlon X2 2.8 GHZ, Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHZ
• Memory: 2 GB RAM
• Graphics: DirectX 10.1 (e.g. AMD Radeon HD 6450, Nvidia GeForce GT 460)
• DirectX: Version 11
• Network: Broadband Internet connection
• Storage: 15 GB available space
• Sound Card: Integrated

• RECOMMENDED: OS: Windows Vista Sp2 – 7 Sp1 – 8 – 8.1 – 10
• Processor: AMD Six-Core CPU, Intel Quad-Core CPU
• Memory: 6 GB RAM
• Graphics: DirectX 11 (e.g. AMD Radeon 290x, Nvidia GeForce GTX 970)
• DirectX: Version 11
• Network: Broadband Internet connection
• Storage: 30 GB available space
• Sound Card: Integrated

Installing and using mods is a pretty easy process.

1. Simply download the mod file from your website of choice
2. Extract it to /assettocorsa/content/tracks.
3. Make sure the folder structure within the zip file follows this format: /assettocorsa/content/tracks/trackname/trackname.kn5.
4. Once all files are in the right place, simply restart the game, and voila!

As with any mods, keep in mind there may be stability issues.

Enjoy!