Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown · published
Today we showcased to the world our next steps over the next 12 months to bring the Test Drive Unlimited franchise passion back into the hearts of many! If you’ve missed the video, we highly recommend you check it out as you’ll see a lot of gameplay and behind the scenes footage of some of the future features we are working on!
That said, let’s go into all the details about what the future will bring for Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown!
Year 1 Retrospective
Season 1
Season 2
Season 3
Season 4
Important Topics
Cross-Region
8 Player Group
Car Selling
Year 2
Season 5
Season 6
Season 7
Season 8
New Brands
Beyond
Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown launched on September 12 2024, however, it was not a strong launch for us as we had issues with the games servers and it was not representative of the TDU DNA the players wanted to see in the game, but it is something we look back on to move forward to continue to improve the game. So before we talk about the future, let’s talk about the past!
Season 1 was the launch of TDUSC. It brought over 100 cars at launch with dealerships, workshops, the Solar Hotel which came with 4 liveable spaces, a 6 car garage and an island recreated at 1:1 scale, Hong Kong Island. It also brought the first Solar Pass, live events, and other features. Players often mentioned the physics and car sounds of the game were well created, and it’s something they saw was a good base that we needed to improve on.
Season 2 brought Ibiza! It was faithfully recreated at a 1:1, but only the town of Evissa was made. This created a great contrast between the two islands, similarly to what TDU2 offered for players. Ibiza welcomes back an old character from the Test Drive franchise, Tess Wintory, and her brand known as Selene which had 6 vehicles customised. It brought a new social hub, clan stores, rotating races, and an increase in the clan influence level cap. We also brought an improvement to the wheel animation with 900 degree steering!
Season 3 was initially planned to be the Clan Wars update, but after player feedback, we decided to delay this update theme and instead bring highly requested features by the community to change the direction of the game. This is where our future started. In Season 3 we brought back:
Car Delivery Missions - A highly requested feature from the past TDU games that is essential to improve the TDU DNA. In this new game mode, you are able to deliver vehicles for customers to the location of their request. We dressed some of these contracts (the name for missions in TDUSC) with some props to make it feel more immersive, especially compared to the previous TDU2 car delivery missions. Players seemed to enjoy this new method of playing, as it took them away from the racing.
Navigation Races - In this game mode, the player GPS and map HUD are disabled and the player must make it to a location and park the vehicle before the timer ends! It gave a new way to race from point A to B in TDUSC as it meant learning the map was your advantage!
Quick Pause/Restart - A feature that was also highly requested was being able to pause and restart races quickly. We delivered this day one in Season 3.
Ability To Race Solo - At launch, every race you did in TDUSC was grouped into multiplayer and races would populate with AI for the players who did not join. We finally gave players the ability to launch solo or multiplayer versions of each race.
Selectable AI Difficulty - AI difficulty selection as another largely requested feature, and we delivered this in Season 3 to the community!
Customisable Licence Plates - We gave players the ability to have more ways to customise their vehicle with custom licence plates they could dress their cars in!
Season 4 will be released on July 23 with a planned maintenance. More details on this will arrive in tomorrow's patch notes article! Season 4 introduces the Casino, an eagerly anticipated feature coming into TDUSC that is a part of the TDU DNA. So let’s discuss the Casino, and more!
Casino - The Casino features will be split into two updates, so let’s talk about what you can find in both!
Day One Update (July 23) - At launch, the casino will offer two stores; a car part store where you can purchase rims and licence plates, and a clothing store where you can find luxurious clothing items. You will also find a slot machine in which you can earn a reward of a Mercedes-AMG GT Black Series as the main jackpot, or 77,777 Casino Chips as the secondary jackpot. You’ll be able to buy Casino Chips at a ratio of 2 Solar Coins = 1 Casino Chip.
Mid-Season Update (late-August) - The mid-season update arriving in late August will bring a high-payout slot machine (1,000,000 Casino Chips), and poker which you will have a choice between 3 different buy-in rooms for! We also aim to bring the ability to cashback your Casino Chips to Solar Coins in this update.
Poker will give you a choice between 3 different rooms based on buy-in price. Once you enter, you can start a game up and play!
Group Ping - Group ping is finally here! In the launch of Season 4, we improved the ability to group with 3 other players as we improved our network infrastructure. With this, we brought Group Ping, which allows you to create up to a 4-stop itinerary and send this itinerary to your other group members. Now, you can create the perfect multi-stop cruise in Season 4, and we can’t wait to see some of the cruises done with this feature!
Active Aero Improvement - Finally, your Bugatti Veyron’s will have their accurate active aero modes and airbrake! In Season 4, we went through every vehicle on the current car list and faithfully recreated their active aero features, so you can enjoy your vehicle the way it’s meant to be seen!
Freeroam UI Improvement - We have improved two main areas of this. First, you can now finally remove that ‘voice chat’ icon in TDUSC, so now when you remove all UI, you can finally have a nice clean look!
Another improvement we did is player cards. You can now see player cards no matter where they are on the map, but you can adjust this feature in the settings menu. This should help you find other people in the world similarly as you did in TDU2!
World Map UI Enhancement - Previously, our world map was cluttered and it was hard to sort through various sections of this world map menu. In Season 4, we have improved this massively. You can now filter through tabs showing your map, tasks, and other players, and you can also manage the POI’s found within the map itself too.
Stock Restriction Races - We found that the upgrades in TDUSC do not provide an optimal ‘TDU’ experience in TDUSC, and players enjoyed the low PR restriction races we did in our live events, so we decided to take this a step further by adding 40 stock restriction races in Season 4. Guillaume had this to say in the developer documentary:
“Test Drive DNA is like using your car in stock, no upgrade, and another part of the thing is to do more balanced races between players because we know that some cars are meta by keeping upgrades in these things. 20 other races from the progression will change and become stock races too. So in total, we have 40 races in the game with stock restrictions now”
These 40 races will be found throughout Ibiza and Hong Kong Island and we are excited to see you try these out at the launch of Season 4!
New Vehicles - In Season 4, you’ll find many vehicles arriving! Here are all the cars you can expect to see at the launch of Season 4:
Aston Martin Valour (in dealership)
Aston Martin DB11 Volante (in dealership)
Bugatti Chiron Super Sport 300+ (in dealership)
Porsche 911 Carrera Coupe VR Widebody Kit (level 1 Solar Pass car)
DeLorean Alpha5 (level 15 Solar Pass car)
Lamborghini Huracán Sterrato (level 50 Solar Pass car)
Mercedes-AMG GT Black Series (casino car)
Now, it’s time we discuss some very important topics and future features that we have heard players discuss on social media. A lot of what we will discuss in the section we don’t have a release date on, but we are actively looking into and working on it for the Year 2 roadmap!
One of the most important ones is cross-region; the ability to play with others from other continental regions, cross-play; the ability to play with other platforms. Currently in TDUSC, we do not have either of these features, which we know diminishes the MMO and player interaction experience in TDUSC. Cross-region implementation has a higher priority in our view compared to cross-play, especially based on player feedback on social media.
That said, we can confirm we are working on cross-region, but being able to solve this requires a large change in our current networking infrastructure, and with that, it means a quick fix will not be possible, however we know it’s something the community has requested greatly, and although we can’t give you a solid release date on it yet, we will make sure we keep you up to date on our progress on these features in the coming months! Watch out for our monthly Solar Club Letters for updates on these features as we continue the development of Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown.
This is a special one! We heard from the TDU community (and specifically DIMONEYMAN on Discord), and we will be bringing 8 player groups into TDUSC in a future season in Year 2! We don’t have a release date on this, but we are making progress on its current testing on our developer build. We will inform you when it's ready!
Of course we need to bring this highly requested feature to the community! We don’t have a specific season on when this will arrive, but it will for sure be in the Year 2 roadmap!
Selling your car will work similarly as it did in TDU2, however, the price of your vehicle will depend on how much distance you have driven it for. So make sure you haven’t driven the car you want to sell much when this feature arrives!
Of course Season 5 will improve the graphics and performance, but that won’t be the end of our engine enhancements. Here is what our Technical Director Fabien has to say:
“Season 5 will see the arrival of a revised version of our rendering pipeline, allowing us, among other things, to better balance between the CPU and the GPU. This is a first step, in a larger campaign of optimization and we plan to build on this pipeline reorganization to make further optimizations over the next seasons. But the rendering pipeline is not the only area we are working on to improve quality and performance. We continue to optimize the code in general, the VFX, the physics, the AI, new rendering options, and more… to make the game even better and of course, we are also continuously working to improve the stability and performance of our servers and online services”
That said, we will keep you informed in the future Solar Club Letters as we continue to work on the improvements coming to TDUSC!
A couple of months ago we created a survey form for players to give us their feedback on the current vehicle sounds in TDUSC. Based on this document, we will be working on some vehicle sounds over the next seasons. We have some of the results of the poll here below.
As you can see, we have already fixed the DeLorean DMC-12, Apollo Intensa Emozione, and the Lamborghini Diablo VT. Our sound designers are currently working on the vehicles arriving in Season 5, but rest assured the improvements on sound is something we will continue to work on over time. There are some vehicles that are not voted high that we think also need a larger attention, such as the Mclaren MP4-12C.
The Apollo IE will also see an increase in its crackles and pops and its signature transmission whine in the mid-season update for Season 4.
Guillaume also mentioned in the developer video that things such as more sliders is something we can look into adding in the future too. We hope the TDU community continues to give us their feedback over the next seasons, and we appreciate your support!
Year 2 is our love letter of improvements and features to the TDU community and this is where you’ll see the TDU DNA come alive! Let’s get right into what you can expect to see over the next 12 months!
Season 5 is another heavy hitter into the world of the TDU DNA and improvements coming to TDUSC. Not only are we bringing Taxi Missions back in a lot more depth when compared to TDU2, we are bringing physical clothing stores, and enhancements to the KT Engine, and more! Let’s get into all the details coming in Season 5!
Taxi Missions - These new missions will arrive day one in Season 5! You will be bringing a client from point A to B but there is a lot more depth to this. The players will try to do it while respecting highway code, so they won't be allowed to drive recklessly as usual. They’ll do this by having to respect the speed limits, signalization, etc. They will have to not shake the clients.
Every client has a unique persona, and every client won't be sensitive to the same stuff. So a client in a hurry will let you drive a little faster, but a sick client won't want to be shaken. So they will really be unique and the players will have to adapt themselves to them.
There still will be a restriction about cars but, the way you dress will come up, and some clients will expect you to dress nicely, elegantly, or maybe more chill. This will be completed by a new dress code UI system that will be implemented in Season 5!
There will also be requests, so clients will ask you to open your windows, close your windows, maybe switch on the radio or change your radio station. They can also ask you questions. So, every now and then they will ask you some daily stuff and you have to think about the persona of the clients and the right answer is the answer they expect.
We will have a full gameplay of this closer to the launch of the season!
KT Engine Enhancements - Season 5 will be the start of the continued improvements over multiple Seasons in Year 2 to improve the optimisation and graphics in TDUSC. Let’s discuss what players can expect to see in Season 5
To start, the world time cycles have been reworked, the city, the lighting in the cities, the bouncing lights, the rendering on the cars, and a lot of technical stuff has been changed drastically to render the lighting in the game.
Another thing we have done, especially seen from player feedback, is it will rain less and the rain puddles will appear less on Hong Kong Island. So now, you’ll only see puddles appearing when it rains.
For those looking for FSR 3.1, we will not have it ready for Season 5, but we are working on it. We are also working on XeSS from Intel and we'll keep you informed as soon as it is ready for release.
Reflections on water are also a large issue in TDUSC, and we are happy to say that we completely reworked the water shader to be able to have a much better rendering.
We also have some special treatments for the beaches. This gives us access to more parameters so the artists can get as close to the references as possible. We also reworked the beach foam and it looks more visually appealing to the player.
We also worked on shadows so they have a much better dim light.
We will share specific performance gain details when we are closer to the release of Season 5. We will also let you know of other improvements to the KT Engine that will arrive when we are closer to Season 5, and of course any Seasons after!
Physical Clothing Stores - Remember that tease we did before the launch of the developer documentary? Well this was it. In Year 2, we are going back on some already released features and bringing them into the TDU DNA light. One of the first things we are doing is turning the current menu-based clan stores into physical, walkable locations! Here are some work in progress screenshots of the locations! We still have some lighting work to do, but rest assured, our lighting artists are doing an incredible job on the final iteration of these stores, and we are excited to see the doors open in Season 5!
Economy Improvements (Phase 1) - In Season 5, we will be bringing a vast amount of improvements to TDUSC for its economy. This will be ‘phase 1’ of the overall economic improvements in TDUSC, and a ‘phase 2’ and ‘phase 3’ will follow. As our game director Guillaume mentioned in the video:
“We had a lot of complaints about how the economy is actually balanced. We know there is a reason behind it and, for sure, the community is telling the truth here”
That said, let’s discuss what players can see in Season 5 first.
Phase 1 - Season 5 will improve a lot of areas of the economy, and players can expect to see the following.
Levelling & Solar Coins increased by at least 50%!
Increased Crown Jewel payouts; 1,000,000 Solar Coins (before bonuses).
Balancing the degradation of rewards according to position in races.
Revising how FRIM works.
Increased gains on collectibles, speed traps and discoveries.
Added Solar Coins when completing Live events in addition to the reward.
The percentage of gains from driving aids will remain unchanged.
Any other improvements will be confirmed closer to the release of the season.
Phase 2 - In the second phase, we plan for this to change how some features are working such the speed traps and the replayability of speed traps or other features that have a core relation to the games economy. These have to come at some point because it improves the minute by minute reward.
Phase 3 - This has to come in the free roam. We can’t talk a lot about this as we currently have some game designers working on it. This phase may not be in Year 2, but as we mentioned above, we need to improve the minute by minute reward, not letting the people go in the races and have to repeat the race over and over again to
As usual, you will be able to find other features and quality of life improvements along with bug fixes arriving in the Season. More details will arrive closer to the release of the Season!
Season 6 is where we involve YOU, the community! As mentioned in the video, we have given you a choice of missions to feature in Season 6, and you get to vote on which one arrives! Let’s go into all the details about this now.
Community Mission Request - We have given you a choice between 4 different missions that you can have added to the game for Season 6. It is worth noting that if the mission you chose doesn’t get chosen, it does not mean that we will not consider the mission for a future update, and there is a chance we can bring it into the game at a later date! Let’s go into the details of each of the missions.
Detective - This will be a game mode that's actually oriented towards, a bit of the tail mode, as we called it in TDU2, but it's a slightly more fun tail. This will be done by looking for clues, etc. We'll have a whole cool dimension around the game mode before getting into the tailing. It's not just the car part, there will be a small investigation part too. The thing that's important in TDU is also the story side and we will really bring back the notion of telling a story through the game mode.
Delivery - In this game mode will be orientated around the multiplayer in TDUSC, by moving from point A to point B, or other different cases. It's a rather special contract that will take place in free roam where the goal is really to play with others and try to make deliveries together. So that's a game mode that can be quite cool, that's quite new, and it will avoid having to enter a lobby to be able to do things together.
Photography - This is going to be similar to the game mode found in TDU2, but with more depth. As an example, we have a prompt, we ask the player to go take a photo in free roam, and they have to go take it. This will also come with a large advancement in the photo mode camera in TDUSC.
Adrenaline - This is another game mode that people will be familiar with as it comes from TDU2. The concept was you can drive anywhere on the map during the mission, but the goal is to raise an adrenaline gauge as high as possible and burst it. You do this by high speeds, drifting, passing in between cars, etc.
How To Vote? - To vote for the mission, follow the link below. Voting will end August 4, 2025 at 12am CEST! We will be posting the results in the August Solar Club letter which will come in the following week or so after!
VOTE HERE!
As usual, you will be able to find other features and quality of life improvements along with bug fixes arriving in the Season. More details will arrive closer to the release of the Season!
Season 7 will bring a large improvement to how the gameplay loop will be performed and a vast improvement to the matchmaking system in TDUSC. Let’s go into all the details about Season 7’s features now!
Enhanced Live Events & Solar Pass - Although it sounds small, it's really important we change our Live Event and Solar Pass dynamics. We have to change that because on the Solar Pass side, it's about the grinding part that is problematic. With Live Events, the problem is that all the content is centered around racing. So we have two problems here, and we want to change that. For Live Events, we want to create other ways to complete them by adding different challenges by playing with the car of the event like we do for the race, but apply it to some other features in the game. For the Solar Pass, finding a way to stop the repeated grind for the content, and then raise the income of the Solar Pass, although we already did this in Season 4. This feature and what it entails is still in the game design stage, so we can’t give you all the details, so stay tuned for further communications about this feature for more information.
Official Racing Center - The Official Racing Center is going to be very important to the launch of Season 7 and the community playing TDUSC. This walkable interior space located at the Hong Kong Island racetrack known as the Hippodrome, will allow players to load into a playlist. You will be able to boot into ranked, or unranked races here. We are working on another feature to come with the ORC, which we are going to keep a secret for now, but as we get closer to the season, we’ll be sure to tell you!
As usual, you will be able to find other features and quality of life improvements along with bug fixes arriving in the Season. More details will arrive closer to the release of the Season!
The big one, houses! As expected, the principle is that players, in addition to buying cars, will be able to buy houses, and obviously, houses that are bigger and bigger are more and more expensive. Above all, the house ultimately becomes a bit like your headquarters. Compared to past TDU games, we really went all in on this, so let’s take a look at all the details!
Houses - In TDU SC, we're still going to keep some things from TDU2. For example, you'll have to buy your house from a real estate agency that is walkable of course. So you drive over to the real estate agency, look at the listings, and then buy your house, but this is where we take real estate to a whole different level compared to TDU2. The customisation part. When a player buys the house, it will be empty and the player will have to customize their house by placing furniture. So, the customization won't be the same for everyone and they can place the different objects anywhere. The goal is to have spots in certain places where they can place these objects, however, the goal is to still be able to control the area limits so that players can still move inside.
The same goes for other areas of the housing. It's the walls that are white, and that's it, so it is now up to you to choose the décor for the walls, the floors, and then place the furniture you want to see in your house. This means friends who may have bought the same house in the same place will have a completely different house. So it makes even more sense to go visit the houses of your friends.
We aren’t going to stop there though. The goal is that we want to extend this customisation feature to the garden, although this specific garden customisation feature may not arrive on day one of housing.
Regardless, we really give the impression that you have something unique in your house. The other part is, of course, the garages because when we talk about TDU houses, we're obviously talking about garages. Similarly, having a small house, it's a small garage, having a medium house, it's a medium garage, having a large house, it's a very large garage, and then you can take pictures in it, show them to other players, so you can really expect what you got in TDU2, but a lot more! It is also the reason we are taking a long time to develop the housing feature in TDUSC.
Another thing coming with housing in Season 8 is that you can finally be able to do things with your friends, more than what we could do before in TDU2. Depending on the size of the house, you will have the opportunity to see the cars of our friends at the house on your driveway!
To further this feature and the immersion, while we continue to develop the houses, players will already be able to see the map evolve a little and see where we'll build the different houses. This is taking a page from TDU2’s book where before the arrival of new locations we would discover places under construction with cranes, players will be able to see them
The principle is that houses arrive in the game and that will encourage players to even re-explore the island a little, so they can discover where the houses will arrive and then when they want to buy them. That is everything you need to know about Season 8’s houses so far, and we can’t wait for the TDU community to have fun with this feature when it releases, and we truly appreciate your patience as we work hard to bring you the best houses ever!
As usual, you will be able to find other features and quality of life improvements along with bug fixes arriving in the Season. More details will arrive closer to the release of the Season!
We are bringing many new car brands into TDUSC for Year 2! Let’s quickly recap what those brands are!
Pagani
DeTomaso
Mitsubishi
Mazda
Puma
Michelin
& more…
We have also confirmed 2 new vehicles which will be arriving in Season 5. The DeTomaso P72, and the Aston Martin DBS Superleggera!
Of course we won’t stop there. We have many plans to exceed what the TDU franchise offered to players previously, and we hope you enjoy this exciting ride ahead for TDUSC’s future improvements. We are thinking about many things to come into TDUSC after Year 2. From bikes, to yachts, and much more. Continue to leave your feedback on our social media as we grow TDUSC further, and further!
We look forward to seeing you experience Season 4 on July 23 with the patch notes arriving the day before. See you in another Solar Club Letter in the future, and we thank the community once again, for your continued support! See you soon…
The TDU Team
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