With the long-delayed release expected early this year, anticipation for Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown is reaching fever pitch. After multiple delays, a new trailer shown at Nacon Connect 2024 gives us a first look at off-road driving in a variety of vehicles.
What we didn’t get, however, was a release date. Again.
Watch the Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown The Explorer trailer
As the publisher teased last week, a new Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown trailer was shown during the Nacon Connect 2024 show alongside the reveal of racing games based on the Endurance Motorsport Series and MXGP championships plus the new open-world Terminator Survivors game.
Our first look at TDUSC since December’s The Racer trailer, the new trailer, titled ‘The Explorer,’ showcases off-road exploration on Hong Kong Island with a group of players cruising on dirt roads.
We get to see a Porsche Taycan Turbo S Cross Turismo, Lancia Delta, and Ford F-150 Raptor tear up lush forests, rocky canyons and sandy beaches. The trailer ends with the player finding secret car parts known as wrecks to build a Volkswagen Beetle Baja Bug.
We love how narrow the dirt roads are compared to other open-world racers like Forza Horizon. KT Racing has plenty of pedigree when it comes to off-road driving with the WRC series, so it will be interesting to see how different surfaces affect the driving physics.
In the latest newsletter, KT Racing addressed the lack of particle effects such as dust on dirt roads: "We're still working on integrating and optimizing these effects. It's an important element of off-road immersion but also resource- and performance-intensive," the newsletter reads.
"Our current development goal for this is to find the best balance between particle effects and performance while ensuring smooth gameplay remains a priority. Although we can display long dust trails like in the WRC games with the KT Engine, the scale of Hong Kong Island and the resources required to display other players and the detailed environments means it's much more of a challenge in TDUSC."
We can't wait to explore Hong Kong Island. Unfortunately, we still don't know when we'll be visiting the idyllic island.
Still no release date
If you were hoping for a release date, the trailer will disappoint you. Four years after its announcement in 2020, Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown still doesn’t have a firm release date, despite a recent financial report claiming the open-world racer will be released before the end of the 2023 FY ending 31 March 2024.
While we still don't have a firm release window, the trailer confirms Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown is still on track for 2024, most likely later in the year.
What did you think of Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown’s latest trailer at Nacon Connect? Let us know in the comments below.
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