Forza 4

[NavNucST3]

No, I think I've tried that.

This is a good show of FM4's best side, imho, with the great work they did on copying Top Gear's cameras. Unfortunately you can also see the loss of grip issue that I discussed prop op twice, and the second one just doesn't make sense.

Two things, first...try again maybe doing full accel or brake (maybe it isn't analog in the menu screens) for RT/LT. Second, I have no clue what I'm looking at in the video comparison all I know is that playing in the base mclaren in whatever challenge it was might have been the most frustrating driving I have ever done in the game, ugh. I have no clue if it is my skilllessness or the driving model or thats how I would feel driving in real life all I know is that it is off my "I wanna get one of these when I grow up list"! So, from a PR perspective, I can imagine why people want perfect or accurate driving and/or racing models but for me I'm looking mostly for fun and "close enough that I believe it" driving/racing models.

I have no clue if I would find that in GT5 or not but I do know that I have never had more fun in a racing title before. As a matter of fact even with knowing nothing about most every autovista car me and my son, we went through a good 5-7 challenges to unlock the AV model just so we could learn about them. Maybe that is a knock against the game that an arcade racer kinda family would enjoy Forza but I certainly don't see that as a negative and from a personality stand point...I don't know...I certainly don't feel like every F,D,C is the same even if I use a saved tune but again I'm certainly not trying to speak from any position of authority.

 

[Scott_Arm]

I found there to be a massive difference between the 3 cars in the demo once I turned off all the assists. I'm not sure if Forza has the best driving model around, but it does have a good system for scaling the difficulty up and down with their assists, so the game can be accessible to kids or new racers that want to start easy and work their way up. You might have difficulty with one aspect of the driving, but not others, so being able to tune each independently is nice. I know if I were to switch to manual transmission, I'd probably put the AI racers to easy, just because I'd have a hard enough time dealing with gears and breaking, and dealing with the car in general.

 

[NavNucST3]

I found there to be a massive difference between the 3 cars in the demo once I turned off all the assists. I'm not sure if Forza has the best driving model around, but it does have a good system for scaling the difficulty up and down with their assists, so the game can be accessible to kids or new racers that want to start easy and work their way up. You might have difficulty with one aspect of the driving, but not others, so being able to tune each independently is nice. I know if I were to switch to manual transmission, I'd probably put the AI racers to easy, just because I'd have a hard enough time dealing with gears and breaking, and dealing with the car in general.

This might explain some of my frustration now that I think about it as I have most of the assists off. My normal setup is full line on (after reading dlms post), manual, normal steering as my assists.

 

[Acert93]

So do you guys recommend the standard version or put out for the extra dough for the Limited Edition (if I can find one)?

Standard, and if you are itching get the Season pass for $30 (2400pts) which will give you 6 free DLC car packs + the Muscle Car one out right now.

 

[Acert93]

Ah ok, I thought accelerate and brake were LT and RT irrespectively. I'll do a run through tonight when I get home about wheel and xid.

To confirm my pedals seem to work as LT in the game, eg for Rivals stuff.

This might explain some of my frustration now that I think about it as I have most of the assists off. My normal setup is full line on (after reading dlms post), manual, normal steering as my assists.

You are a brave man. I often go sim steering, no TCS or Stability, but full line and auto. I am horrible, I mean HORRIBLE, about shifting. I am dense, so it takes a lot of practice to get the pitch right and every car is different. And I am too tunnel visioned to see the road and the tac.

Ironically I am sick of all the GT v FM stuff. I was reading in the other thread just an absolutely forum defying stream of comments and I even went online to replicate some of the supposed AI issues. Cranked up the AI to Professional and ... yeah, some why, some how my results were not the same!

Love the audio. I had to use some headphones this weekend and threw on my wife's nice ones for her digi piano and wow wow WOW. FM4's audio is great.

I also am getting a kick out of how easy cars roll this time. My son has a decked out Land Rover. We were racing and he kept hitting some side bumps at high speed/suspect angles and he would fish tail and roll--totally awesome to watch

I thought autovista was a waste but I had a fun time beating the challenges and learning more about some of the cars.


So, when are a group of us getting online to race instead of doing StatusUnknowns bumper cars lol

 

[NavNucST3]

To confirm my pedals seem to work as LT in the game, eg for Rivals stuff.



You are a brave man. I often go sim steering, no TCS or Stability, but full line and auto. I am horrible, I mean HORRIBLE, about shifting. I am dense, so it takes a lot of practice to get the pitch right and every car is different. And I am too tunnel visioned to see the road and the tac.

Ironically I am sick of all the GT v FM stuff. I was reading in the other thread just an absolutely forum defying stream of comments and I even went online to replicate some of the supposed AI issues. Cranked up the AI to Professional and ... yeah, some why, some how my results were not the same!

Love the audio. I had to use some headphones this weekend and threw on my wife's nice ones for her digi piano and wow wow WOW. FM4's audio is great.

I also am getting a kick out of how easy cars roll this time. My son has a decked out Land Rover. We were racing and he kept hitting some side bumps at high speed/suspect angles and he would fish tail and roll--totally awesome to watch

I thought autovista was a waste but I had a fun time beating the challenges and learning more about some of the cars.


So, when are a group of us getting online to race instead of doing StatusUnknowns bumper cars lol

I simply can't compete with anyone with an automatic because I haven't really figured out the pressure for braking just enough to prevent ! and maintaining good/great speed, whereas, with manual I can downshift and "never" have to hit the brakes and I can naturally get back to speed faster. This was the only way I even got close to moving up the ladder in some Rivals.

For someone as bad as me there are actually too many Rivals options (hope I'm not offending anyone with that statement). I always find myself in the Monthly challenges completely forgetting that there are a slew of other options, of course, looking at the leader boards in some of those sections and it is clear that I'm not the only one!
What I really want is a choose your rival "playlist"/nerdrage mode. Say I choose my arch nemesis joker454 (true story) I wish there was a way that after I take that sucker down that I could just immediately jump to the next thing he is beating me in so I could summarily destroy his times one by one. No menus, just a nice little "Do you want to kick his ass in the next race?" yes? well here you go :smile: 3...2...1...

 

[Acert93]

Great suggestion btw. There SHOULD be an ARCH-RIVAL feature!!!

Btw, I agree about the wealth of Rivals stuff. It is good for people like me who already have 20+ hours into the game (a ton of split screen) but I think it can be overwhelming. Maybe a tier called something better than, "Primary Rival Challenges" and have 1 of each contest -- kind of like the Demo. 1x track days, 1x time attack, 1x hot laps, 1x cone attack, etc I guess that is what the monthly are intended to be.

Over time the Rivals menu will feed the long time gamers well as there are a lot of static challenges + monthlies. But I agree that for more, no offense intended, casual racers having fewer cars/tracks to use to focus on the core fun of the Rival challenge would have been an even stronger hook.

Btw, with online racing we can do multiclass or if you don't feel insulted, we can request the faster racers go with slower cars to keep things tighter. I have had a lot of fun racing slower cars with my son who now can beat me with 1 class above me. It helped him get better and I had fun doing it.

 

[Onkl Bjorni]

Well, looks like Graham has taken a break from designing awesome Beyond3D car liveries, I had 5 rival challenges waiting in the inbox when I woke up this morning managed too set the record straight in one challenge befor I had to go to work ;-) (Nascar challenge on Infineon Raceway)

 

[NavNucST3]

Well, looks like Graham has taken a break from designing awesome Beyond3D car liveries, I had 5 rival challenges waiting in the inbox when I woke up this morning managed too set the record straight in one challenge befor I had to go to work ;-) (Nascar challenge on Infineon Raceway)

LOL, I love this stuff!

 

[NavNucST3]

So I have a question, truly honest question about the driving model praises and complaints. Basically I want to know how anyone makes the determination of how you deem one good, bad, more, less accurate than another? I mean if you asked me why I'm so hard on war themed FPS and if sound and recoil is accurate or not it's pretty easy to give you my first hand experience and knowledge on just how shitty war actually is and its after effects on the human psyche. But how does one judge that from a table top or playseat or ms wheel or fanatec wheel that aren't the same as many/most vehicles?

Even in looking at the TG video again, I still don't know what that is supposed to tell me...is it the same person driving, I'm sure the wheel is different, the seats are different, and I'm guessing the number of people who have driven even a 10th of the vehicles in either GT or Forza is astoundingly low. I guess I never really thought of all of this until I started tweaking tire pressure and roll bars and whatever the hell else I've done in Forza. So how are these comparisons done stock everything with the same drivers and simulated G's or what? When people say one game feels better than another game does that mean either are actually accurate?

 

[Arwin]

So I have a question, truly honest question about the driving model praises and complaints. Basically I want to know how anyone makes the determination of how you deem one good, bad, more, less accurate than another? I mean if you asked me why I'm so hard on war themed FPS and if sound and recoil is accurate or not it's pretty easy to give you my first hand experience and knowledge on just how shitty war actually is and its after effects on the human psyche. But how does one judge that from a table top or playseat or ms wheel or fanatec wheel that aren't the same as many/most vehicles?

Even in looking at the TG video again, I still don't know what that is supposed to tell me...is it the same person driving, I'm sure the wheel is different, the seats are different, and I'm guessing the number of people who have driven even a 10th of the vehicles in either GT or Forza is astoundingly low. I guess I never really thought of all of this until I started tweaking tire pressure and roll bars and whatever the hell else I've done in Forza. So how are these comparisons done stock everything with the same drivers and simulated G's or what? When people say one game feels better than another game does that mean either are actually accurate?

Personally I just compare driving the Ring in the game with driving the Ring in real life, or driving cars I've owned or driven with same or similar cars in the game, and add a little knowledge about car physics. But this is not the thread for this topic, really - I agree with many we should leave out any resemblence of versus talk. We should stick to just Forza 4 here.

 

[Onkl Bjorni]

LOL, I love this stuff!

Turns out that Graham put up some impressive lap times just spent the better part of an hour trying to best his "Petit Le Mans Privateer" challenge time(his time is 01:16.405). Managed a 01:15.903 lap but unfortunately it was a dirty lap then, just as I was about to give up I did a 01:16.394 lap (beat him with .011 of a second)

Ps. I did feel a bit like I was cheating because I had to turn on traction control but a faster lap is a faster lap

And I suspect that when I wake up tomorrow he has bested me once again

 

[Acert93]

Graham, Onkl, Arwin, Robert, I don't care how you guys split it up but you guys owe me a new controller because tossed and broke mine utter frustration. Grrrr!!!!

 

[NavNucST3]

Personally I just compare driving the Ring in the game with driving the Ring in real life, or driving cars I've owned or driven with same or similar cars in the game, and add a little knowledge about car physics. But this is not the thread for this topic, really - I agree with many we should leave out any resemblence of versus talk. We should stick to just Forza 4 here.

My question is really for my own edification as I try and get better at these racers (I'm already much better in F4 than I was in 3 which was better than I was in 2...yay for only being mostly bad now). I KNOW what I can do in a bunch of different vehicles from offensive and defensive combat driving training but none of that translates to the controller or MS wheel very well for me. My mention of GT was simply as a blanket "racing game" statement not really a comparison between the games more a comparison to life. I guess I could drive the Hummer but...the HMMWV might have been the shittiest vehicle I have ever been in in my life and thats leaving the whole getting shot at and shooting aside...the MS wheel isn't the size of my vehicles (Q5) wheel so even if I went with the Q7 in the game, I can't really relate that to real-world which is what brought my question on. Well, the comments in the GT thread and here are what really brought them on but they caused me to think of how the statements relate to me and playing the game(s).

 

[Cyan]

My question is really for my own edification as I try and get better at these racers (I'm already much better in F4 than I was in 3 which was better than I was in 2...yay for only being mostly bad now). I KNOW what I can do in a bunch of different vehicles from offensive and defensive combat driving training but none of that translates to the controller or MS wheel very well for me. My mention of GT was simply as a blanket "racing game" statement not really a comparison between the games more a comparison to life. I guess I could drive the Hummer but...the HMMWV might have been the shittiest vehicle I have ever been in in my life and thats leaving the whole getting shot at and shooting aside...the MS wheel isn't the size of my vehicles (Q5) wheel so even if I went with the Q7 in the game, I can't really relate that to real-world which is what brought my question on. Well, the comments in the GT thread and here are what really brought them on but they caused me to think of how the statements relate to me and playing the game(s).

Well, as pointed out already, some people are the proud owners of some of the cars featured in those games and there are people who compare the real life model and the in-game model. I remember a comparison made by a person who owned a RWD car -can't remember which one exactly- and tried to drive the car in the game as he did in real life. It turned out to be that the behaviour of the car in the game wasn't anything like driving the car in the game.

GT series have also their fair share of similar situations, where the driving of a particular model was nothing short of disastrous compared to the real life model.

I can dig it what PD, Turn 10, etc, are trying to do when they create such amazing games, but... !!! And here's the but... call me weird or classic, BUT I still mourn some racing classic games like the original -which was my first PC game ever- The Need for Speed and The Need for Speed 3; Hot Pursuit (also the classic one, not the most modern version that came out the previous year), which had ten or twelve very special cars respectively, fine cars even now, and they all provided me with lots of hours of sheer fun and enjoyment.

In The Need for Speed -the first one- I remember they even measured the Skidpad :smile: -in Gs- of every single car. And I got to know my favourite models down to the last detail. Perhaps certain nostalgia is playing tricks on me, but I certainly miss that kind of approach.

In trying to feature hundreds of cars featured in Forza 4, some of the cars feel like generic maths formulas shaped as vehicles for you to drive. I would rather prefer 20 perfectly recreated vehicles, for instance, than 500 vehicles, but maybe that's just me. I think PD was in the right track with their Premium cars, but they messed it all up when adding the rest.

 

[Scott_Arm]

I'm sort of with Nav on this one, where I think even with a racing wheel driving games feel nothing like driving an actual car. I think there is some level of mental abstraction that needs to occur to relate the game to actual driving.

 

[Cyan]

I'm sort of with Nav on this one, where I think even with a racing wheel driving games feel nothing like driving an actual car. I think there is some level of mental abstraction that needs to occur to relate the game to actual driving.

From personal experience I can tell you that some of the things I've learnt from playing racing games worked really well in real life driving.

You sit on a chair, you can use a wheel in a very realistic manner, and the main difference is, at least to me, that you don't feel the weight of the car. Even so, this factor is quite well simulated in games. The Audi RS6 weighing 1800 Kg feels so different than driving the very light Audi A4 Touring Car or the Audi A8 LMS.

The risk factor isn't there, you don't fear suffering a car crash like in real life, but I play without assists -no Rewind feature too-, and I can still feel the adrenaline, especially in Rivals mode, where I am always worried about going offroad and being penalized for it. Basically the same as in real life.

If you watched one of my replays you would realize why I say this (I am thinking about uploading one to Youtube). I drive to the limit sometimes and I love the new simulation settings, because I usually end up counter-steering a lot. It certainly adds a new whole dimension to the game compared to Forza 3.

On a different note, I have a weakness for Audi cars for some reason since time ago and I've been playing all the Rivals challenges -three in total- featuring Audi cars tonight.

I was into racing games quite a few years ago but never went back to them, and for someone like me who barely played that genre or games at all -matters of the heart are time and energy consuming-, I felt quite happy to realize that my racing skills haven't decreased as much as I thought.

I am among the best 4000 players in those challenges -except one, where I am like the 6000th player-, and I am keeping up in the leaderboards in other Rival challenges too. Right now I am focused at Audi Rivals in Le Mans and Hockenheim, though.

Without rewind and assists I can tell you that I almost feel the same as driving a real car, and the dashboard view is a lot better than in Forza 3 because of the imrpoved graphics, too.

Anyway, I think real life driving and virtual driving involve the same basic elements. Take into account that there are driving schools where they have simulators to train pupils, for instance. Those simulators emulate real road driving conditions and are very helpful for very young teenagers whose parents don't want them exposed to real traffic right away.

 

[djskribbles]

I'm sort of with Nav on this one, where I think even with a racing wheel driving games feel nothing like driving an actual car. I think there is some level of mental abstraction that needs to occur to relate the game to actual driving.

I disagree. Arwin can probably go into more detail seeing as how he's actually been on The Ring before. But if done properly, for the most part, the only major differences are the actual feel of gforces and weight transfer in your body (but it's simulated well through the force feedback in the wheel), as well as fearing the consequences of crashing. These are a big deal, and I'm not saying that anyone that's good at a driving simulator will be able to hop into a race car and do a decent lap time. But A LOT can be learned from a good simulator + good wheel/force feedback and there are a lot of similarities with real life racing, as proven by the GT Academy competitions around the world where gamers are put behind the wheel of real race cars and surprisingly do very well. You can surprisingly sense/feel a lot of things simply through the feedback the wheel gives you.

edit: Cyan pretty much touched up on most of what I said.

 

[Onkl Bjorni]

Graham, Onkl, Arwin, Robert, I don't care how you guys split it up but you guys owe me a new controller because tossed and broke mine utter frustration. Grrrr!!!!

I feel your pain, just got 3 re-challenges from Graham.. The times he put up are to good for me, so I'll save my sanity(and tv/controllers) and yield to the better driver

I tip my hat to you Mr.Graham, for you are truly an exelente driver

 

[NavNucST3]

I feel your pain, just got 3 re-challenges from Graham.. The times he put up are to good for me, so I'll save my sanity(and tv/controllers) and yield to the better driver

I tip my hat to you Mr.Graham, for you are truly an exelente driver

I use these exact words as I'm smacking (read: beating) my couch...those words exactly