The Big Forza 2 Thread *

[scooby_dooby]

the brakes locking rather aggressively and apparently linearly (but I'll test that more tomorrow), were the things that irked me most so far.

no-ABS is essentially broken in Forza 1, it locks up far too easily with the triggers. Most everyone turned ABS on, you may as well save alot of frustration and turn it on as well.

This has been improved alot in in F2 though, so much that I now race without ABS and have no problems, and it does increase your stopping power, as it should.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

The AI in the third race isn't too good, by the way, lots of mistakes in the racing line and they really have little problems with bumping into you either

Set AI to "High" and if i remember correctly they drive like crap until you get some more serious races

 

[BenFranklinstein]

I wouldn't consider the non-ABS braking if Forza broken. The controls in Forza 2 are all around a little tighter, but very close to the first game. You need to think of the trigger as a brake peddle that is capable of being pushed to the floor. If you pull the trigger about half way you should be able to slow the car without the brakes locking up, and as the brakes fade during longer races you may need to pull the trigger all the way "to the floor". It takes a while to get comfortable with it because there is no force feedback, a real brake peddle is hard to push once the calipers grab the disk, but with enough force, even after the car enters a skid, you can still push the peddle further to the floor, which is what you are doing when squeezing the trigger all the way. You do get some audio feedback. When you are at the verge of losing traction you will hear the tires make a muffled skidding sound before they lose all traction and make a higher pitch screeching noise. When you hear that muffled sound back off the brakes a little.

You also need to remember to brake before you turn. When you turn and brake at the same time you steal friction from the tires that is needed go faster around the turn, even if you use ABS.

Forza gives you the option to lower brake pressure when you tune each car so you can pull the trigger all the way without the brakes locking, but you may need the extra pressure in those longer races when your brakes fade.

I like the way the brakes work without abs but may not be for casual gamer, it takes some practice to master and varies in each car.

 

[ihamoitc2005]

17 miles

Yeah, Nurburgring in Forza 1 is quite a bit longer than the actual track (like 20%+ or so), apart from the "autumn valley" graphical look (wich is fine in my eyes). It's wider also.

Take a look at the video of this article:
http://forzamotorsport.net/news/pitpassreports/pitpass46.htm

One person made full Forza Nurburgring at 10mph (iirc) and says Forza version is 17 miles! He says other games have correct length. I have not tested this.

 

[Arwin]

I wouldn't consider the non-ABS braking if Forza broken.

Me neither. I just think you have very little play before they lock up. I would have put a higher band on it, certainly on the controller. If though they wear as you say in longer races, that's interesting. I didn't know that and it's a great little detail if indeed you need to push them futher as they wear during a longer race (though it may not be realistic for all cars, especially those which have electronically assisted braking in the first place, but then those often don't come without ABS in real life either so it doesn't matter too much).

Is adjusting the brake pressure always available as a tuning option, or only in certain cars?

Mind you, the first thing I do in any racing game is put the difficulty settings at the highest level and turn any assists off. I played lots of sims in all sorts of different cars, and being able to lock up is one of the things I've missed most in Gran Turismo (together with properly being able to shift and drive in reverse gear).

AI is on hardest, but if you drive a half decent line they are nowhere (these are new tracks to me and I'm still a way from driving the best lines and not making mistakes, but then I guess I'm not too bad a racer anyway ). I'm just hoping it won't be just in faster cars when they get better, because I was never a fan of the super fast race cars in the first place. GT always had (way too few) higher level races in slower cars that could actually be pretty challenging. Oh well, we'll see. These are just the first races, so they shouldn't be too difficult, and most games (except Race Driver) has too easy AI anyway if you're a veteran racing game player, which makes sense.

 

[SteveC]

Scooby_dooby

I will have to respectfully disagree with you on the AI in Forza2. In my experience with the demo so far the AI will hit you every time if you are in the racing line. The setting that the AI are on in the demo has them drive exclusively in the "driving" line. It doesn't matter if they are driving 1mph or 100mph around the track they are going to stick to that line like glue.

Here is an experiment that you can do that works every time. Drive down the front straight. Move to the left of the track (while still accelerating) this is the line that the AI wants to be in and they will ram you so that they can occupy that space. If there is an AI car to your right while still accelerating watch as he slams into you. Note this is prior to the braking point. Good AI would either hold his current line or slow and fall in behind you. Bad AI would assume your car wasn't there and ram you off the road.

Here is another place where the AI does the same thing. Drive down the straight that is between the two chicanes. Make sure that when you exit the first chicane that you move over to the right of the track. This will be the driving line/entry point for the 2nd chicane. Also make sure that you are slightly ahead of an AI car. While you are accelerating as long as he still next you but the nose of his car is behind the nose of your car he will slam into you.

I think they could have done a much better job on the AI. Hopefully the full game will have a better AI setting.

 

[scooby_dooby]

Here is an experiment that you can do that works every time. Drive down the front straight. Move to the left of the track (while still accelerating) this is the line that the AI wants to be in and they will ram you so that they can occupy that space. If there is an AI car to your right while still accelerating watch as he slams into you. Note this is prior to the braking point. Good AI would either hold his current line or slow and fall in behind you. Bad AI would assume your car wasn't there and ram you off the road.

No, if you are behind them, even slightly, then they will continue to go into their line, at that point it's your who should be slowing down, and you who are showing the poor AI. It's obvious at that point that you have lost the drag race, and should assume your position behind the lead car. At that point I usually go off the throttle for a second, and take the inside line.

If you are nose to nose with them, or slightly ahead, from experience they do slow down and pull in behind you, and generally will not hit you. Though I've had rare moments where they've clipped my rear end as they pull in behind me.

I've never really experienced this on the chicane's, except when exiting the 2nd set, and the AI seems dead set on getting over to the left side. But again, as long as I'm ahead, I've never had any regular problems with them hitting me.

The AI in the demo is on medium btw.

 

[Cyan]

Set AI to "High" and if i remember correctly they drive like crap until you get some more serious races

Yes, things get tougher as you advance deeper into the single player mode.

Even on easy difficult mode, those Shelby Cobra, Corvette and Lotus Exige (this one to a point, the other two are more challenging) challenges are really hard to complete, believe me.

AI in Forza 1 was adaptative, I guess. afaik, it had some kind of percentage attached to it. That's to say, it could be set up to have a 0% difficulty or a 100% difficulty (a range in between i.e. 100% on Easy-Normal-Hard, 20 on Easy-Normal-Hard).

Looks like Forza 2 demo's AI has been set up to a very low cipher, taking into account that it's on Medium difficult mode.

There aren't trainable Drivatars anymore (something I somewhat miss) but drivatars with different personalities. It's interesting because as you progress through the campaign you should race against more and more skillful (at dealing with good players) racers.

I hope so.

 

[Cyan]

One person made full Forza Nurburgring at 10mph (iirc) and says Forza version is 17 miles! He says other games have correct length. I have not tested this.

OMG, that's freakin insane. I didn't test this either.

The actual track is 13 miles if I remember correctly. I consider that Forza Nurburgring is about 20% or so longer but those numbers are a bit -maybe more than that- on the high side.

My theory is that Nurburgring in Forza 1 is wider for online play so you can overtake people. Not bad for a 1st attempt but it's not accurate (longer, wider track, oversized kerbs). FM1 doesn't feature things like an odometer but even so it could be manipulated to make the track looks like the real thing, which it isn't.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

Il have a test run at nurb forza 1 later if i get the time.

Just gonna tweak cars max speed to 41.6 and let the driveavatar do it.

Should do the lap in exactly 30 minutes if size is correct

 

[scooby_dooby]

Sounds like the Nurb in F2 is pretty much spot on, according to BlimBlim:

Just did a nice 6:56 with the Porsche 962 on the Nürburgring. Of course the number one on the scoreboard did 6:16

Best time in real life for the Ring, with a Porsche 962 is 6:11.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordschleife_fastest_lap_times

5 second difference

 

[Cheezdoodles]

^^ They where pretty spot on in terms of lap times last time as well. I think they scaled nurburgring in the first forza in order to match the real life lap times

 

[ihamoitc2005]

Odometer

OMG, that's freakin insane. I didn't test this either.

The actual track is 13 miles if I remember correctly. I consider that Forza Nurburgring is about 20% or so longer but those numbers are a bit -maybe more than that- on the high side.

My theory is that Nurburgring in Forza 1 is wider for online play so you can overtake people. Not bad for a 1st attempt but it's not accurate (longer, wider track, oversized kerbs). FM1 doesn't feature things like an odometer but even so it could be manipulated to make the track looks like the real thing, which it isn't.

The person said he measured lap time duration x 10mph and calculate length of track. Maybe one day I will try this also.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

I got some time off tomorrow, so il tweak a car to have the fantastic top speed of 41.6km\h (2x lenght of nurburgring) and let the drivatar do the testing (i'm not gonna spend 30 minutes of my life on this)

 

[pjbliverpool]

Played the demo yesterday and sorry to say im not particularly impressed with the graphics. Aliasing is pretty bad and the colours seem a bit over bright which is hurting the photorealism. It looks ok, probably would look very good if the aliasing was sorted out but I was expecting more.

 

[Arwin]

I got some time off tomorrow, so il tweak a car to have the fantastic top speed of 41.6km\h (2x lenght of nurburgring) and let the drivatar do the testing (i'm not gonna spend 30 minutes of my life on this)

I used to do this to figure out the length of some of the new GT tracks that were hacked out of GT4 Prologue and demo discs. Just keep the counter on 60km/h and keep your front-wheel on the white track-marker, and you get a fairly reliable measurement. But what you are doing now is not necessary. Just look at the curbs. Here and there they are as wide as your car. I started the thread myself on Forza Motorsport on a German board, and it became a thread with hundreds of pages, mostly containing GT fans who enjoyed the online racing in there. At times though there were some complaints about 'their' beloved Nurburgring track not being 'right', turns were too fast, they couldn't find their way, etc. Later it surfaced somewhere in an interview I think that there had been an error during development and that they had accidentally scaled the track wrong (I think about 3:4).

They have fixed this problem in Forza 2, don't worry about it.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

Its no work at all (drivatar will drive), so i will do it anyway.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

One lap is done with drivatar.

Average speed: 41km\h
Time elapsed: 40minutes 28 seconds
Distance traveled: 27 652 metres

Real track distance: 20 832 metres

Nurburgring Nordscleife Forza 1 track vs real life scale ratio ~ 1,327:1
or as some would say 32,7% bigger.

 

[ihamoitc2005]

17 miles

One lap is done with drivatar.

Average speed: 41km\h
Time elapsed: 40minutes 28 seconds
Distance traveled: 27 652 metres

Real track distance: 20 832 metres

Nurburgring Nordscleife Forza 1 track vs real life scale ratio ~ 1,327:1
or as some would say 32,7% bigger.

That is 17 miles, no? Thank you for doing this test.

 

[SteveC]

Scoobydooby wrote:

No, if you are behind them, even slightly, then they will continue to go into their line, at that point it's your who should be slowing down, and you who are showing the poor AI. It's obvious at that point that you have lost the drag race, and should assume your position behind the lead car. At that point I usually go off the throttle for a second, and take the inside line.

If you are nose to nose with them, or slightly ahead, from experience they do slow down and pull in behind you, and generally will not hit you. Though I've had rare moments where they've clipped my rear end as they pull in behind me.

I've never really experienced this on the chicane's, except when exiting the 2nd set, and the AI seems dead set on getting over to the left side. But again, as long as I'm ahead, I've never had any regular problems with them hitting me.

The AI in the demo is on medium btw.

Re-read my post. I never said anything about being behind the AI car. You have to be in front of them driving down either the front straight or the straight between the chicanes. If they aren't hitting you it's because you are already fully past them. If their front wheel is aligned with your back wheel while both of you are still accelerating they will hit you every time. This is before the braking point. In the demo the AI cars brake way early for every turn so maybe you just think they are pulling in behind you when in fact they are just braking early. Agin, I'm talking about before the braking point.

Pretty much if the AI cars get out of the driving line they are completely out of control. They don't understand any other way around the corner except the programmed line.