A new sim, Le Mans Ultimate, was released this February (2024) on the Steam service, and it’s fair to say, it isn’t half bad.
The sim, from Studio 397, the creators of rFactor2, is the official game of the FIA World Endurance Championship, and is available in what they call, ‘early access’ form.
This means that, although the game is hopefully going to impress its users, the developers expect there to be some bugs found once the game is being used by the public, which they want reported back to them in order to put them right.
This is okay, as long as the developers take notice of the bug reports and act on them in a timely manner. Judging by how fast they got out the first hotfix on the very first day of release, together with some subsequent updates, it bodes quite well for the sim.
The main issue at first seemed to be the very slow and laggy interface, or UI, and the game would crash at times. Once everything was eventually setup the actual driving of the cars seemed pretty good, in fact, very good, for a new sim.
The hotfixs made the UI much quicker and reliable, and with the driving experience itself pretty impressive, overall, it wasn’t a bad debut for Le Mans Ultimate.
It’s still early days and we’ll have to see how things progress, but the initial signs are quite promising.
At first, there were seven Hypercars, 4 GTE cars and a LMP2. There were seven circuits including Spa, Sebring and of course, Circuit de la Sarthe, which is Le Mans in France.
As well as driving against the AI drivers, there is an online mode, where you race against real people from around the world. It has a ranking system with safety rating and skill rating, and you have to achieve a certain level before you are allowed to enter the higher-skill races.
One thing I found to be a good inclusion was the reports after a race showing who you had contact with, and what you might have done wrong during qualifying and the race, and not just your position, but your expected position.
Further updates, cars, tracks, etc, have been released as paid DLC, something that has not gone down too well with some people. They say that the game is still in early access form, so it’s a bit much to have to pay for any early updates.
Anyway, time will tell how successful Le Mans Ultimate will be. As with most sims, some people like it, and some people don’t. Despite the initial bugs and occasional crashes, first impressions seem quite positive.
If you like rFactor2 you will probably like Le Mans Ultimate, but whether it will turn out to be more than that, we’ll have to wait and see.