Greetings, Dear OverTake Community,
We’re coming at you once again with a big ole community newsletter full of simracing bits and other simracing things. 
Thankfully we’re not short on topics to mull over this month, so let’s dive right in!
Sim Formula Europe 2025
First off, let’s talk about Sim Formula Europe 2025 that went down last week in Maastricht, an open-to-the-public simracing-focused trade show that over four days hosted a colorful mix of new hardware debuts, software, and round table talks with industry leaders from both simulation and real-life motorsports. There was even a simracing competition on a not-yet released but highly anticipated new sim title by @Marcel Offermans of The Last Garage.
Here are Marcel’s impressions of the event as a game/sim developer:
“I had a great time at the event, the setting and atmosphere were even better than last year and I very much enjoyed meeting up with many community members and staff from OverTake. The feedback I got from the event was very valuable and I’m already looking forward to next year!”
If you haven’t already, make sure to check out the Sim Formula Europe Championship Final on YouTube:
Overall, Sim Formula Europe 2025 (SFE) was packed with experiences to enjoy. As you may already know, OverTake was the official media partner of SFE, and we as a team were elated to see many of you out there at our stand mixing in with the so-called real world. Events like these are always proving to be a meaningful experience, to put faces to forum names, shake hands, share feedback and ponderings, and jump in various rigs to do some laps of course! Sim Formula Europe highlights simracing at it’s best from all angles, and we are proud to have been part of it again this year. 
In the words of the OverTake team members who had the pleasure to attend in person:
Connor Minniss – Writer and Editor
“For my first community-based event with OverTake, it was a pleasure to meet so many of you at last weekend’s Sim Formula Europe event! It is always great to put faces to usernames, so thank you, everyone, for coming by our booth. Whether you were grabbing a Red Bull or staying for a few hours to chat, we, as a team, loved getting to know you all!
Over nine hundred incident points were amassed throughout the event on our iRacing simulator, so it is safe to say that the Mustang GT3 we were using is now in the workshop for EXTENSIVE repairs!
I personally can not wait for the next community-focused event we at OverTake will be participating in. Keep your eyes peeled on our social media for that announcement. I am really looking forward to seeing some of you throughout 2025 and beyond!”
Michel Wolk – Video Lead
“We had a great time at SFE this year. It’s always fun to meet and chat with our community and audience in person – and there are so many of you! I also had a good chat with people from the industry and other creators like Laurence Dusoswa, Race Beyond Matter, WromWrom or GamerMuscle. Everyone can just network and test stuff in a relaxed atmosphere without any gate keeping – this is what makes Sim Formula Europe a unique event!”
Brendan Dong – Art and Video Editor
“Attending Sim Formula Europe 2025 was fantastic. Meeting everyone felt like a podium finish—it reminded me why this community is so special. Events like this truly highlight the passion and strength that bring us all together.”
Rene Buttler – Head of Business & Product
“I just love this event! Hanging out with people from the community while trying different hardware pieces, seeing newcomers to our hobby exploring the options and talking with them (sometimes for hours haha) about what to buy as a first setup, it just feels like a big family gathering. The good ones tho Besides that it was once again awesome to spend time with friends from the industry and all the incredible content creators we find in our hobby. It was also the first time for me to bring my race car to such an event and I absolutely loved sharing the passion and seeing others enjoy sitting in the car.”
Sebastian Hornung – Managing Director at OverTake
“It is important to us to be the meeting point for the community and the contact point for everything to do with sim racing. That is why events such as Sim Formula Europe are our home. We not only meet industry partners and sim racing fans who have travelled far, but we also support the heartfelt project of our community members Andy and Diana, who put a lot of heart blood and passion into implementing such a great event every year.”
Asetto Corsa EVO Release Community Feedback and Impressions
Now for the sim-elephant in the room – the long anticipated Assetto Corsa EVO Early Access launch, a new potential heavyweight in the sim space landed with a bang on Thursday last week. One of the things that makes new titles particularly fun and rewarding is having a community to bounce things off of. Just being able to take part in the very first discussions and have a say adds flavor to the experience. It’s all about that FOMO, as we all know. Your user feedback on the forum and in the comment sections of the articles has been incredibly insightful and at times highly detailed and informative, providing a balanced cross section of opinions from the most skeptical to the most enthusiastic.
A sample of impressions of Asetto Corsa EVO from our community forum threads:
@SharkVA in response to our poll “How do you like Assetto Corsa EVO so far?” sees the potential and points out key aspects like headlights that feel “real”.
What’s there seems like a solid enough foundation. Optimistic that they’ll get a handle on the performance and rendering side of things to make it playable for all, VR or flat screen. The lighting is superb, most natural feeling lighting I’ve experienced in VR, save for a few scenarios/items. First time I’ve felt like the headlights are real. Can’t wait until it’s performative in an HMD without butchering resolution(s), which is even then only mildly playable with a 4090 pushing it at 90 or 120 Hz.
@decapnz points out the good: running at 1080p on mid/high end hardware is acceptable, but severely lacking for VR, which as many of us know is not in a great state in this first release. Car customization, though, gets a thumbs up!
I think so far it’s pretty good, actually
Obviously I can’t use just VR yet, but that’s fine. I understand it’s early access.
Game runs fine on my 1080p monitor using Ultra settings on a 7800X3D/3080ti.
VR is a puddle of tears.. but that’s fine. I can still play Assetto Corsa in VR – which is also still a great game.
I find I can almost seamlessly switch between the two games without feeling like I’m swapping games.
The car customisation from the latest patch is pretty neat, too.
On the more critical side, community member @Mr. Beldin takes issue with Early Access and how it doesn’t excuse every issue, citing the always online requirement as being prohibitively restrictive. A sentiment many agree with, it seems.
As someone else fittingly said, Early Access is not a “Get out of Jail Free card”. Not for Kunos and 505 Games, nor for any other developer or publisher. Gaming industry as a whole needs to do better in terms of what they promise and what they deliver – even in the case of early access – and not keep locking features behind these “always online” systems for no reason. Especially not without explicitly telling their customers what parts of the content will be locked behind online connection if these systems are used anyway, so that we know how crippled the whole product will become when the server outages eventually happen (in this case, they’ve never been online in the first place!)…
Community member @chrisracer has a more zen take, saying we should give it time, reminding us that the original AC took some time to develop. Wise words!
I do realize it is an early release. When AC was released as an early release back ten years ago it had a lot of it’s own issues. Give it time, it will get there. How long will it take till there are some great mods like in AC? I just don’t know if I have another eight to ten years to wait till it hits it’s stride. (currently 73).
And @Michael Krone sees a bright future with AC original to tie us over
All the problems are no problem to me. Im sure the game will be awesome and until then, theres Assetto.
There are clearly too many takes to list them all here but if you want to continue the discussion check out these threads:
Exciting times not often we get a new sim, thought it would be good to collect some of your first impressions! So far I am loving it, has some quirks but the driving feels immense.
www.overtake.gg
AC EVO IS OUT! And the opinions are heating up the simracing space. We want to know where you sit on the gauge, is it amazing, leaves much to be desired, or is there too much nuance to sum it up in a simple poll answer. Share all the details!
www.overtake.gg
Your opinion matters!
Club Racing: The All-new Race Event Selector
In every Community Letter, we like to mention how we’re constantly working on improvements to the overall experience for you. And one of the newest editions we can share is the Race Event Selector Widget. You might have already seen how easy it is to join events, but, starting in February, we will be rolling out the full beta version.
From then on all you need to do is click on an event of your liking in the side bar, and quickly sign up. This removes the need to dig in the forum to find an event that suits your availability. All session start times are displayed automatically in your timezone. As well as showing events in the sidebar, we will also be introducing a full dedicated page overview of events to scroll through.
For those of you who love jumping in casual races this should be a very useful addition.
Scott Deakin, who is responsible for the implementation, explains:
“The race event widget started life as a learning exercise for me to better understand the forum software but soon grew into a useful tool, allowing members to view upcoming races, sign up for events, and see race times in their local timezones. I’m hoping that it will help encourage more members to take the plunge into racing in this great community.”
A big shout out to Scott aka @GeekyDeaks and his amazing work on this project!
In celebration of the new Race Event Selector, we will be allowing all registered users on the forum to access club races for the entire month of February for FREE! So get in there and sign up to your heart’s content.
Some minor but needed changes…
On top of the headline announcements comes a smaller change worthy of a mention: We have increased the file upload limit so that bigger uploads won’t be rejected, getting rid of an annoying hiccup we hope will no longer hinder your amazing mod uploads.
Additionally, we added a top menu item for all official guides. This menu now groups any guides we release for easy access. We will be expanding this feature to community guides as well in the near future. We feel this is an important area of the site to highlight as many of you come here for advice on a variety of issues. Hope that helps!
OverTake Official Race Events
In the coming months, we’re excited to be organizing some official OverTake events for you to race in. These events will be part of a live broadcast with full race commentary, possibly featuring some familiar names from the simracing YouTube space. These events will be open to all premium members. To add to the excitement, some of these events will be scheduled close to real life races. So keep on the lookout for announcements.
Sim-Lab Pedal Set Giveaway #2
Finally, we have another exciting monthly giveaway as promised: We’re giving a random premium member the chance to win yes another amazing set of Sim Lab XP1 pedals as our way to give something back to you, the community, for all your dedication and support. Thank you for taking part and contributing here at OverTake.gg!
SimLab load-cell pedals – a set that offers great adjustability in the Sim-Lab XP1 set. The brake load cell is capable of handling a maximum of 200kg of pressure, which makes them an excellent piece of gear.
What ? Not a Premium member yet?
For just €1 a month – ONE euro! – you get to experience OverTake in all its ad-free glory, unlock access to special deals on hardware, and join daily races on a variety of sims with real members just like yourself. And the best part, you also help support us in continuing our quest to bring you the latest news in simracing, provide you with an ever-improving Racing Club ecosystem, and help with the significant running costs of the site. Your support matters. Please consider becoming a premium member today.
If you have any questions or feedback, please comment below. Your insights are always welcome.
Thank you, and hope to see you all on track in February
Best,
Chris
Nota: El contenido ha sido traducido por Google Translate, por lo que algunos términos pueden ser imprecisos
Fuente: https://www.overtake.gg/news/community-letter-lets-get-this-2025-sim-party-started.2807/