How Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown is driving to the future with its Year 2 roadmap

Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown’s launch last year got off to a tortured analogy about a bad start to a motor race. Did it stall as the lights went out? Did it burn out its tyres with wheelspin? Did it bog down in second gear? Perhaps all of the above? KT Racing haven’t given up on their open world lifestyle racer, though, and with the imminent launch of Season 4, they’ve now opened up about what Year 2 holds for their game.

Since last September, KT Racing has delivered two major updates, first with the Ibiza City map at the end of last year in Season 2, while Season 3 in March brought new mission types, a solo mode, more vehicles, AI difficulty selection and more. What awaits through to 2026 is more of an incremental approach to improvement, adding requested features with each season, new mission types, and continuing to engage with the community to decide the path ahead.

But first, Season 4 is set to arrive this month, bringing with its a bunch of new race events branded as Stock Races. There’s 20 new races and 20 redefined ones across both Hong Kong Island and Ibiza, all of which will challenge you to drive in cars locked to their stock value. Alongside that comes an overhaul of active aero for select cars that have moveable parts, with a revamp of the dynamic aero system aiming to recreate each car’s behaviour with aerobrake, DRS and deployment. In certain instances, you’ll have both automatic and manual control – your Bugatti Veyron will now have high and low drag modes, for example.

The UI is also getting a makeover, giving players full control over which parts of the HUD are active, adding a new quick access filter system for the world map, and catering better to groups driving together with support for up to 4 routes in the GPS and an itinerary plan for players to follow.

There’s also five new cars, this time arriving with the first paid Solar Pass of rewards, alongside a free rewards track. These include the Aston Martin DB11 Volante, DeLorean Alpha5 and more.

But perhaps most exciting for long-time TDU fans is the return of the casino. The Wintory Casino is a brand new social area which allows for up to 32 players to share the space – up from 8 or 16 players in the base game. There’s two new shops for avatar and car cosmetics here, but the big difference is that you need to buy things with casino chips, which you obviously get from gambling – or turning Solar Coin to casino chips at a rate of 2:1.

Initially there will be just the one slot machine type, but a mid-season update will bring a Golden Dragon slot machine and the ability to play poker. Get lucky enough and you could win a Mercedes-AMG GT Black Series.

This should hopefully tide players over to October and the start of Season 5, which brings major changes to the game with an overhaul of the KT Engine that adds new water shaders, reflections, shadowing and lighting, and aims to make better use of the CPU and GPU. There’s no details yet, but hoepfully this brings some big improvements for the game on console as well as on PC.

This also sees the addition of Taxi missions, where you’ll have to pick up a client and drive them to a destination following common sense road rules like adhering to speed limits and using indicators – this ain’t Crazy Taxi, alright? Along the way, clients might make specific requests, such as having you roll down windows or turn on the radio, and you might have to meet a dress code beforehand as well.

Season 6 will also add a new mission type in January, but this one will be determined by the community, with voting now active to decide between a Detective, Package Delivery, Photography and Adrenaline missions. You can head here to vote before 4th August.

Even further away are the Official Racing Centre hub in April’s Season 7, where players can gather at an island race track and launch ranked events together, and then houses and real estate won’t appear until Season 8, letting you throw money into buying properties that you can customise, furnish and invite friends to visit to check out the cars you’re displaying in your garage or garden.

There’s further things being teased, such as more Asian market vehicles appearing in Season 7, the possibility for body kits and more car customisation, car selling as well, and there are still plans for bikes at some point as well. Also high on the priority list are cross-region servers – cross-platform play less so – eight player groups and selling cars.

There’s a long road ahead for Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown, and while it didn’t get off to an ideal start, it is good to see KT Racing sticking with the project to build out their vision. The goal, of course, is to build up more momentum and bring both new and returning players into the game once more.