Last month we released the largest content update to arrive since TDUSC’s release. Season 5 brought Poker, Taxi Missions, new economy, vehicle bug fixes and more. We then followed up 2 weeks after the season release to bring an important hotfix!
That said, Season 5 is going to be the longest season in the game's roadmap, with a duration of 5 months, meaning Season 6 is planned to release in March. Before then, there will be 2 major updates. In this letter, we will discuss this in more detail.
What’s In the Letter?
Update 1 Details
Release Date
Online Shop
Bug Fixes and Improvements
Update 2 Details
Release Date
Optimisation & Performance
Sounds
Upcoming Updates
What’s Next?
Our Stance On Cheating
Recent Reports & Actions
Improving Our Tools
Test Drive Community Week
Livery Vote
Race Vote
Meet the Team Series
What Is It?
When Will It Arrive?
Community Spotlight Winner - November
Winners
How To Enter
🆕 Update 1 Details
It’s time to recap and learn everything coming day one in Season 5!
Release Date
Season 5’s Update 1 is planned for early January 2026. With the release of Season 5’s launch and the hotfix that arrived soon after, we want to make sure the next updates are polished, this meant that the release of Update 1 was pushed back a bit, however another reason is because to publish the update on consoles, we have to submit the update to the console platforms for certifications, which follows a Christmas holiday closure. This delay of Season 5’s first full update will not affect the release schedule for Update 2, or the release of Season 6.
That said, we want to remind you that Season 6 will be released in March 2026 and we will have a larger communication on the next Season release dates before the release of the Season.
Online Shop
Although Update 1 will have various bug fixes and improvements, it will be also adding the online shop. In next month’s letter, we will be able to share screenshots of the store and explain how it works in more detail. However, we can discuss some of the content you will see in it, as well as some rules of how content will be added to the store.
Bundles
Each season, we will have bundles to sell in the store. These bundles will include the vehicle, a livery, and more! With bundles, they will be on a rotation in the store, and will be rotating between each set that is available.
To note, all of the vehicles can have their livery removed, and instead, players can choose to create their own livery or use a custom colour at the Workshop. We also know that some players may only want the vehicle itself, and not the bundle. We are currently working on developing a system where players can purchase the items in the bundle individually, but this will not arrive on day one of the Online Store, as we need to make sure the bundle is discounted based on what individual items you buy from the bundle.
We’ve revealed what these 3 are, so here are more details about them!
This vehicle brings an exclusive livery and widebody kit to the current Nissan GTR in the game as well as a new sound file. What do you think?
PUMA arrives in TDUSC’s online shop in the next update. This bundle brings a new sound file, a widebodykit, and more to the reimagined BMW M4 Competition! You will also be able to find some nice sets of PUMA clothing in the rotational store, which we will discuss a bit later.
We haven’t forgotten about the offroad fans! The Ford F-150 gets a lift kit and livery with some vehicle accessory modifications for that complete look! The outfit of course is here to compliment your adventures that can be found on Hong Kong Island and Ibiza! We think you’ll enjoy those hidden offroad paths more now!Rotational Store Page
This is where you will see timed items for sale in the store. Sometimes, licensed clothing or items may have a limited time to be sold, and for compliance, we cannot add things to the permanent store, only to remove them later.
Permanent Store Page
The permanent store is where you will find a wide variety of previous Solar Pass vehicles and cosmetics (rims, clothing, emotes, etc), previous Live Event rewards, and more. There is however a rule regarding this system, and when these items get added to the permanent store. This is how it works.
Solar Pass Vehicles - 1 season timed exclusive (example: Season 3 Solar Pass cars available Season 5, Season 4 Solar Pass cars available Season 6, Season 5 Solar Pass cars available Season 7)
Previous Solar Pass Rewards - 1 season timed exclusive
Previous Live Event Rewards - no season timed exclusive, will be added in the following season
You can also find other exclusive content added to the permanent store exclusively.
Free Diamonds Claim
Another part of the online store is the ability for players to gain free Diamonds weekly. On the store’s front page, there will be a box selection where you can claim 10 Diamonds each week.
We understand there are also many questions regarding the pricing of the vehicles and other items in the online store. We want to assure you that we will make sure the pricing is an appropriate price for the players.
Bug Fixes and Improvements
Of course, the online store isn’t the only thing to expect coming in Update 1. We are working very hard on the next bug fixes to arrive not only in Update 1, but also Update 2 and Season 6 of TDUSC. Here are some examples of fixes you can expect to see.
Fixed Lamborghini Diablo VT exhaust placement
Dodge Hellcat SRT now has the correct 8 gear transmission
Removed Gas Station Augment Reality (when you have AR feature off)
Fixed The Tortoise and the Hare Race (removal of rock in race/freeroam)
Fixed the custom ‘Quality Level’ setting for any upscaling method where it reverts to its default value every time the player restarts the game
And much more! We will have the patch notes arriving before the launch of the Season as usual. We expect much more bug fixes leading up to and in Season 6, especially those from the community reports such as Taxi Mission issues, Poker, map issues, vehicle and dynamic reports and more.
Another thing arrives in Season 5’s Update 1, and that’s the ability to interact with the furniture in the world. Perfect for a real estate teaser!
On the topic of fixes and this week's live event reward being the Alpine A110 ‘US Racing 2023’ livery, we want to let you know we are looking to give the possibility of appearance liveries to be customised with spoilers, rims, etc. just as seen in the screenshot below in a future update! We’ll hopefully have more info on this soon!
📈 Update 2 Details
Similar to Update 1, Update 2 will feature bug fixes and improvements, but the main goal of it is to improve the performance and optimisation of the game further. Let’s discuss more about this!
Release Date
Season 5’s Update 2 is planned to arrive early February, 2026. As usual, a patch notes and more information on the game’s maintenance on this update will be provided close to the release.
Optimisation & Performance
We know optimisation and performance is a big discussion amongst the TDUSC community, and it’s something we continue to actively work on since the integration of the KT Engine update, which helps us achieve a better rendering pipeline, and in turn, helps us further optimise the game. Update 2 brings some more of these improved optimisations. We still plan to continue the optimisations of the game over the course of the new year, and as said before, we want to be able to release a new minimum recommended specification for the game when Season 8 arrives.
To let you know what you can expect on both PC and consoles for Update 2, Guillaume Guinet has this to say:
“As you may have noticed, the performances have slightly improved since the S5 release, especially on console; the Xbox and PS5 version has been stabilised.
We continue searching for every team's solution to continue to improve the performances in various areas of the game such as map optimisation, AI, vehicle, traffic, KT Engine, etc. Everyone is on board, and we are putting all our effort on this subject.
We can divide this task in two parts :
- Stabilize the version as it is for now (Target: S5P1 - S5P2 - S6)
- Redefine the renderer for each quality preset (PC & Console) to work with a target performance/configuration for each preset (S7+)
Just a note: We apologize for the technical issues you have encountered at S5 release due to our work on our engine (HDR problems, reflection parameters, etc.). Changing the render pipeline on our engine was a lot of work on our side and we had a lot of things to fix. Some of them have not been seen. We are currently working to improve our QA testing.”
TDUSC Game Director - Guillaume Guinet
🔊 Sounds
Sounds! We’ve heard some feedback on this, and we want to talk about it more again since the last letter.
Upcoming Updates
The Aston Martin Vantage GT3 gets improved interior cockpit sounds, and the De Tomaso P72 receives an improved startup sound.
What’s Next?
We have seen recent player reports regarding the sound changes of the BMW M4 and the LaFerrari Aperta. We want to mention these vehicles recently had a change in vehicle dynamics, which seem to have affected the sound of the vehicle. We will work on fixing it in a future update. A reminder that based on the feedback from the community in a vote a few months back, these were the cars we think we can look into next:
Mclaren MP4-12C
Lamborghini Huracan Sterrato
Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat Widebody
Lamborghini Aventador SVJ
Ferrari 488 Pista
With more to be announced in the future
Just as we said in the last letter, we can’t commit to a specific update date on when these will be fixed, but we will let you know in a future letter when we are working on them, and of course, when they’re ready!
Currently, the sound design team is working on the new balancing of the sounds in the game. To detail this further, here is what Guillaume Guinet has this to say:
“For now, we have a lot on our plate with the new content coming; the new cars, the detective mode and housing are taking a big part of the time of the Sound Design team.
I really think you will love what is coming! Especially the return of a V12 on a Pagani...
For now, we want to take our time to deliver good new content on S6.
However, fixing the existing problems is still on our pipe and we will continue to deliver as many improvements as we can among the different patches in S5.
We are looking at the mixing of the player with AI or other players. We are also looking to fix some car sound bugs like the DBS Superleggera one where the sound is very low when accelerating.
We will take time later to work on redesigning some cars too, but as we said, it's a lot of work that we don't have for S5 or S6 but it's still something we have in mind.
So no, don't worry, we haven’t forgotten the SVJ and the MP4-12C 😉! We love these cars, so how can we!?”
TDUSC Game Director - Guillaume Guinet
👎 Our Stance On Cheating
Cheating is not something we stand for in TDUSC. Cheating is something that has plagued previous TDU games, especially TDU2, and we want to assure the community that we are taking the correct steps to prevent and action players who are ruining the game experience of others in TDUSC. Let’s discuss more about this.
Recent Reports & Actions
There have been recent player reports that the community has submitted, and we have acted on all of them so far by banning the players from the multiplayer experiences of TDUSC, along with removing their times from the leaderboard. If any members of the community see something that is suspicious, use the in-game report function, and if you’re on our social media channels, be sure to let us know and we will look into it too.
A reminder, TDUSC is not the place to cheat, and we will act accordingly to those who go against this stance.
Improving Our Tools
Another thing that we need to work on is improving our internal tools to catch cheaters more easily, and create a better flow for reports so we can more accurately track and action those who are cheating. This is something we are hoping to have ready for Season 7’s Official Racing Center release, and we will make sure to discuss this in more detail when we can.
🎁 Test Drive Community Week
In Season 6, we are creating a community week live event! For this event, we will be choosing 5 community created races for players to try out, and 1 community created livery for players to win as the reward! Let’s talk about this in more detail!
Livery Vote
We’ve seen some incredible liveries the community has made over the past year since TDUSC has released, so it’s time we shed some light on that! Send us your best livery design in the Discord channel #community-week-livery and vote on which player has the best! We’ll have this as the reward for the live event!
Important Note: The livery must NOT be a replica of a real life livery nor include real logos, however, a referenced recreation or individual creation is allowed. We will be moderating the submissions and any liveries that may not be allowed will be removed from the channel. A good example of a referenced recreation is below… hey, maybe you will see this reward soon too...
Race Vote
A livery isn’t the only thing we want to have you vote on! We want you to create a race design too! This can be done using the in-game multi-route GPS system, or create a route with the below high-res images of Hong Kong Island or Ibiza! There’s no limits to how long your race can be, or how crazy it is. Give us your best shot! Just don’t forget to give it a name and let us know how many laps you want it if it isn’t a point A to B race. Submit your race design in #community-week-race in the Discord!
Winners will be announced in next month's letter!
Thanks to the community for the HKI screenshot!
🫂 Meet the Team Series
We have an amazing team at KT Racing dedicated to working on Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown’s updates, and we think it is something that should be highlighted more! With that, we’ve thought of the idea to create a new series within each monthly letter called ‘Meet the Team’. Let’s talk about it!
What Is It?
Each month, we would like to introduce you to developers who work on TDUSC at KT Racing. This can be vehicle artists, level artists, gameplay programmers, UI designers, engine programmers, network developers, technical artists, sound designers, community managers, producers, graphical designers, animation artists, and much more! We want to highlight some of the great work our developers are doing, and we think this is a great opportunity to show it.
Side note, who knows, it may be possible to even get some behind the scenes looks at some future seasonal content that the developers are working on… so stay tuned!
When Will It Arrive?
The first Meet the Team will arrive in a future letter, likely in February, but don’t worry, the next letter we plan to have ready for you around Christmas… and we of course, will make sure to leave a nice present for those TDUSC fans who want to learn more about Season 6…
🖼️ Community Spotlight Winners - October
Yup! It’s time to announce the winners for the month of November!
An honourable mention for the stunning De Tomaso P72 group photo by AndyGilbert!
Winners
There have been some amazing pictures sent in for this month's Community Spotlight, but here are the top 3 voted photos for the month of October!
Discord member Watch Man wins this month's Community Spotlight with… yeah, the team was not expecting this, but by popular vote, the screenshot of an in-game ad poster for Solar Cream wins... So congrats and your reward is the exclusive Alpine clothing hat, shirt and pants, which won’t arrive to all players until a later season, and 2,000,000 Solar Coins!
Discord member Leon_JHK takes second place in this month's Community Spotlight with their Aston Martin DBS Superleggera photo! Congrats! Your reward is the Alpine clothing shirt, pants and 1,000,000 Solar Coins!
Discord member Cake comes third in this month's Community Spotlight with their La Ferrari! Congrats! Your reward is an Alpine shirt and 1,000,000 Solar Coins!
Congrats again to the winners! By the time you see this letter, restart your game if you’re already logged in, and you will see your rewards! Post you outfits
How To Enter
First, join our Discord which can be found at Discord.gg/TestDrive. Once you join our Discord, you’ll see a channel called ‘community-spotlight’. Here, you can send the best pictures you've taken in TDUSC! You aren't limited to cars, too. Feel free to send pictures of your liveries, cars, sceneries, garage, etc. The community will vote for the best photo to be featured in-game and win some prizes!
Here are the rules:
Pictures must be high quality and not edited outside of the game or taken with tools that are not native to TDUSC's in-game photo mode
Only 1 picture is allowed in a post
You are only allowed one post per month; however, you can delete your post and make a new one to replace it.
The top 3 voted posts in the month will win prizes
The most voted picture in the month will be selected to showcase in the in-game news section in TDUSC
The thread will be wiped on the release of every Solar Club Letter
Users can only win once every 2 months (including podium spots 1st, 2nd, 3rd)
Note: Posting in this channel means you allow your picture to be used by Nacon/KT for promotional use.
❤️ Final Message
We are getting close to the next chapter of TDUSC in 2026, and we can’t wait for the road ahead. Thank you to everyone who has supported us so far, see you again soon!
The TDU Team