All cars ultimately feel identical in races

Forza Motorsport Legacy Motorsport
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I only want OG sim racers in this thread, and not kids who’ve only played a few racing games over the years with nothing more than a gamepad, because their opinion is invalid.

Now to thread topic, and I’m not stupid, of course when you go test drive a Miata it feels light and nimble as opposed to a Mustang. But I will briefly explain why in races every car ultimately feels the same, and it’s simple… It’s the AI mechanics, and how they’re implemented, explanation below.

Let me use Gran Turismo as an example (and I can feel some of you guys rolling your eyes right now but bear with me please)
Firstly I’m not talking about GT AI, because even hardcore Gran Turismo fanboys know the AI in every GT ever doesn’t even know you’re on the track with them for the most part (many people would say the fact that GT doesn’t have legitimate difficulty levels speaks for itself), but what’s indisputable is the one thing GT gets right and it’s how cars feel in relevance to one another, as each car’s advantages/disadvantages to one another are absolutely present and very much felt.
Let me use a Nurburgring race for example at a 600pp limit, I will pick a heavy stable 4WD GTR to carry me through the bumpy uneven turns and hilly terrain, while the rest of the field is lighter FWD and RWD (both front and mid engined)
Now I can very much feel and see that my GTR is different than the other cars, I can take advantage in those tight bumpy corners and hills with my stability and grip, while I watch them just destroy me in those smooth high speed corners and straights… so each course and choice of vehicle ultimately is a delicate balance that’s completely up to you how you want to approach and play it, and it’s just like that in real life.

Now in Forza sure the AI is pretty smart overall (Driveatar system I guess) but the way the difficulty levels actually have the AI racing, there doesn’t exist what I just spoke about in the above paragraph. Yes you feel faster if you choose lower difficulty, or vice versa with a higher difficulty, but it’s very artificial and generic. You’re faster because you’re just… faster, or slower because you’re… slower… You just are because that’s how it is configured and unfortunately in Forza you never get that distinct feeling of being in a heavier 4WD car coming out of a corner on a straight, getting your doors blown off by a lighter car only to finally catch up to him as he slows for the next turn then just blowing past him through that turn thanks to superior grip, or vice versa.

So ultimately in the end, I guess there isn’t that “REALISTIC” difficulty level where the cars can really feel like themselves in relation to each other, I have no idea how GT manages to capture this mechanic while their AI is so horrendous, but Forza needs to figure it out.
Because if I want this same feeling with Forza, I can’t get it in Career mode which is where you spend almost all your time, I can only get it online for obvious reasons.
But wouldn’t it be great to have one special difficulty toggle/setting that’s there among the rest, and it simply says “Realistic” or “Simulation” and it would literally simulate exactly how the cars would behave among each other in real life… but anyway what are your guys’ thoughts on this ? Am I perhaps missing a secret difficulty level or something ?

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Good post. I’m not sure if I agree with your premise, though. I mostly tend to prefer to drive slightly underpowered cars with excellent handling (think Miata, etc.), and I can definitely tell the difference when I lose ground on long straights and uphill sections, but then I’m able to flow through the corners faster and even make outside passes somewhat regularly. If this hasn’t been your experience, then maybe some cars just show more pronounced “personalities” than others.

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When I read the title of your thread I clicked it anxious to read through your post and see what kind of justification you had for proclaiming such a load of rubbish before tossing you a literary thrashing for wasting my time.

Then I read your post…

For the record, your title would have been more “accurate” if it read, “all AI cars in races behave the same regardless of drive, power, weight, etc.”.

Now that’s out of the way, I too think that you’re right. Personally I don’t do a whole lot of single-player races because after racing online since FM2, there isn’t an AI in ANY game that I have found that measures up. In all honesty, I don’t even think that it’s possible to have competitive AI without the game cheating on the physics a bit. For example, FWD cars driven by AI launch and take off just as handily as the AWD cars before proceeding to rocket off into the distance at the beginning of the race like it had a rocket attached to its roof. That’s just how AI difficulty is handled in games.

If you think about it, and you were tasked with creating an AI or even the smaller task of just defining what makes one driver faster than another driver and quantifying the attributes, it would not be easy. The most common way of dealing with this problem is to implement rubber-band AI (like in NFS and GT), make them run off the road randomly (like in FH2 and FM4,5,6) make them drive with varying levels of conservatism in the easier difficulties (FH and FM) and finally let the AI “cheat” a little with the physics (most racing games). Some games use various combinations of all these techniques but I think they all suck at it.

I know I haven’t proposed a solution to your question but then again, if I had the answer, I would be working for T10, SOE, EA, as a developer and have patented my AI model.

Scott

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Well, same for me.

For the OP, i agree mostly to this. There is more character in the driving style of the Drivatars than the type of car they use. If you race single player it does just feels like the AI is driving in full assist mode with a difficulty level dependend amount of speed reduction. And in general they do always the same. They usually can handle acceleration on powerful cars very well, they are usually have exact brake points and are fully sticky to the brake line (so even braking in turns where no real driver would brake at all) and they cant drive long and fast turns.

So the game is somewhat easy strategy. Probably it is hard to outperform them on a straight, but they can’t turn. Find either a good line to pass in a short turn (they will brake early and to low speed), or if there is a wide turn (like the long right in Road America) - take just a couple of them going fast and wide.

This situation is different in production based single player races (like showcase races). So I have to agree to a post up there, it feels much different when the Drivatars (and the human driver) have to stick to cars without upgrades.

I worked up until now ti 3rd highest Drivatar level.

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I don’t know cars feel different to me. Rear wheel drive with high horsepower and high torque easy on the throttle or I kick the back end out. FWD car I can give it more throttle in the corners. Same with AWD but I get a better launch at the start. Big old American muscle car? Well in stock form feels like driving a boat. Very much like the real things. Put upgrades on them and they are more manageable in the corners. So for me at least they all feel different. With upgrades and tunes you could make them behave more to your liking and thus they could feel more similar. Unfortunately I don’t have a wheel and pedal setup like I did for FM4. My first real racer was GT3. Fell in love with it but even back then on the PS2 it felt like the ai cars were on rails. Then FM came out and I never went back to GT.

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This is why having misleading titles causes issues for people. :slight_smile:

You may want to read the actual post. The OP wasn’t talking about how driving different cars feel the same, he was talking about how AI cars all behave the same regardless of weight, drive-type, etc.

Scott

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You know, at first I was suspicious with where you were going with this, but by the end of your post, I found myself agreeing with you. But I must say, I’ve never looked to Forza to give me any realistic feeling, well at least, for the last several years. At one point , I used to think Forza could be considered somewhat sim. Now Forza is a game I play when I wanna kick back with a controller in hand. For realistic I go to other titles, specifically on PC where I use my wheel. I get what you’re saying though and it would be great if Turn 10 catered to those of us who are all in when it comes to “sim-racing”, but it’s quite obvious and I’ve accepted it, that Turn 10 wants to appeal to a greater audience because that’s where the money is and that is completely understandable. In the end Turn 10 is a business after all.

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if you really believe this sack up and turn on simulation steering.

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Great replies guys, appreciate them… and yea I guess I could have gone into more detail, but I thought the post was long enough, and since I don’t remember posting on this forum before I had no idea what type of people are on here, so I didn’t want to bore anyone, but so far bunch of nice guys I see.

After fully reading everyone’s posts, yes I understand it’s a great challenge coding AI… I think the Forza guys came up with a miracle with the Driveatar system, that’s one of those once in a generation of a genre great ideas.
BUT… I think the next step in AI could see them implement that “realistic” or “simulation” difficulty setting I mentioned in my original post that would disable any sort of “slingshot” or “extra magical grip” type variable to a race which currently exists.
I understand Forza isn’t meant as a hardcore sim, so I don’t necessarily mean the actual physics of the car fully 100% behaving like they would in real life like some sort of ultra hardcore race sim.
I just mean the behavior of the cars as a group where they all behave in order as they would in real life, all with advantages and disadvantages that work for and against everyone in the race, both player and AI.
Like Scott said for example things like FWD cars launching off the line as fast as AWD cars, that’s like I don’t care if I’m on ALIEN difficulty level, a Type-R Integra should never be able to stay door to door with a 4WD off the line, even if the Type R has twice the power, that’s just not how cars work for the most part.

I really wonder if these “cheats” the AI uses, I wonder if they are extra additions on top of the base code of AI behavior, or if it’s something so deeply hard-coded into the base that it’s impossible to change without rewriting the whole physics system of the game.
Because if it’s just extra lines, then it’s something they could either cut out, or replace or tweak… but if it’s in the actual base code then it can’t be fixed unless you built a whole new game/physics/ai engine from the ground up… which I know is unrealistic and they probably won’t be doing even into the next console generation

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If you are talking about career, then maybe to a degree you are right, but bear in mind AIs drive upgraded cars. Upgrading (or quick upgrading) always felt to me to be reducing differences between cars, making them more alike. But even then, for example light, nimble cars like Lotus struggle on tracks like Monza.

In showcase races, I have only done few, but where the field is mixed, there definitely are differences in cars. For example in GT endurance race in Road Atlanta, I always hate to get stuck behind the Bentley, because it pulls away on the straights, and then I catch it in corners.

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I think there will be some standard algorithm that is balancing all the AI cars in career mode to drive the same way. What I mean is imagine the AI is just one person and they tune all the cars for their driving style and then clone themselves so they are driving every car. In essence every car will then drive pretty much the same way with differences just not noticeable. If it was possible to disable upgrades so all cars driven were stock then there might be more variety. Pretty much what you just said.

I have noticed that with my own cars that I upgrade myself, you get that feeling of difference between it and the AI cars. An example would be a race series I did using the Honda NSX. I upgraded it myself and it was amazing in the turns but had little acceleration/straight line speed compared to the AI. They would pull away from me at launch and I would take a few of them at the first corner. Then one or two might overtake me if the straight was long enough that they could catch up and then I would hopefully not be too far back that coming into the next corner I could take them as I was carrying in and out more speed.

It felt awesome to have this back and forth racing. I finished in 7th place against the AI on the first track and was ridiculously happy because of how good a feeling the race was.

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All cars feel the same you say? Are you using normal steering? If so, they will feel the same more or less.

The best way to enjoy the game is SIM steering, 0/100 deadzones, and ALL assists off.

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I think i get what OP is saying.

Single player Races are usually not a battle with one or two cars who are better in corners while you are better on straights.

Driveatar Difficultly levels just move the whole A.I. pack slower (lower difficulty) Or faster (Higher difficulty)

So in my mind i would say all A.I. cars handle the same, they just have higher or lower Acceleration, top speed and cornering abilities depending on the choice of difficulty.

Great post by the way! :slight_smile:

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I think the only cheats the Driveatars are using is all assists on. I run with all assists off except auto clutch. Now in FM5 when I looked at a replay you could see on the ai cars when tcs or stm kicked in. I have not verified in FM6 but I would not be surprised to find that this is the case here as well. Maybe someone could verify this? Other than that the slingshot myth I don’t buy. Sure it seems like that sometimes but I have watched several videos where it turns out I made mistakes or ran a more conservative lap allowing the ai to catch up. Sometimes they just run a good lap and I did not. There are also times when I make a mistake in a corner. Slow entry speed, scrubbed off too much speed in the turn and a bad exit. If you spin the tires or kick the rear out on exit you can loose a lot of time recovering. So it looks like at the time that ai slingshot past. When in truth they just out braked you, carried more speed through the turn and had a better exit and got back on the throttle faster than you did.

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They do use assists - at least TCS since none of them kick up smoke or spin their wheels at the starting grid.

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First of all, Great post.

Actually you can see this to a degree even in online, with upgraded cars.
Sure in online there is driver difference, and difference in tunes, but driving muscle car compared to sport compact with roughly equal statistics (PI / power to weight / Acceleration / handling / speed) it becomes very obvious, and I’d say it is partially down to how grip is done in game.

While most cars are tuned with balance of minimal handling needed to maximum amount of acceleration is where it comes so hopelessly unrealistic. and the best examples of it are 600+hp C class power tunes. (Mercury Cougar in FM5, Mazda Cosmo in FM6) these cars were running slightly upgraded tirewidth, and Cosmo running 600+ and Cougar 800+ hp on Road America East (or was it west?) with “stock” tire compound. That means 60’s or early 70’s tires by my math those cars shouldn’t be able to do anything but put a massive smokeshow up.

Also if I compare real life 370Z and in game 370Z the grip is unbelievably unrealstic. Starting on rolling on 10mph, and putting your foot down you should be able to brake traction just because you have more power/torque than grip. To gain this on Forza you need 50% grip reduction (0.50 grip handicap), While cornering and braking grip is pretty much what it should be.

Now if we assume that all cars have similar levels of extra grip on acceleration how much are FWD cars gaining on it, and how much is AWD cars losing on it. My bet is that it’s a whole lot. but then again if this sis so, then we would end up going Forza 3 way, and AWD swap everything, to gain that stability, and grip out of corners and that doesn’t sound too appealing to me. To counter that, the weight should become even larger thing that it is now, and currently we already have bunch of cars that are nearly unusable due heavy weight. (SUV’s and Large Sedans like M5, Charger, 300C, RS6 and 7. But then again I have personally seen how modified Chevy van (Similar to vandura in game) has beaten E36 bmw M3’s on trackday and that van had full interrioir which had at least 1700lbs of weight. and I know that all the cars on track were on street tires and the van pushed only 400hp although granted the BMW driver wasn’t too great of a driver. then again the van driver wasn’t anything special either… but the BMW had around 3000lbs advantage. while the van had only ~80 hp advantage. and automatic 3 speed gearbox wasn’t actually too advantageous either… and the oddpart is the van actually outhandeled the BMW.
Just checked on PI with no weight reduction and widest street tires the vandure is still 130PI down from where the M3 starts. and built in similar PI pushing 700hp… and I’m unable to just add weight to the vandura, which would push it going nearly to 1000hp.

What I can conclude from this, the game isn’t too realistic, but considering the amount of upgrading we do in it, it’s quite reasonable.

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Drivatars use a simplified physic. It’s impossible to run 24 cars on track with same physics as the players. So the imagination that drivatars race on the same level is wrong.

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Ah a lot of the stuff you guys have said makes sense yea, especially the Driveatars using assists, that would explain a bit but not everything.
And I have been savoring those single make production races that you guys mentioned, I had assumed they would be more realistic I guess from your guys feedback this is true…

As great as the Driveatar system is (the idea anyway) there seems to be some big holes in it’s implementation, and I really think Turn 10 would have us assume (almost even try to fool us) that each of the 20+ cars on the track are using a separate Driveatar profiles, meaning each car is thinking and driving for itself in it’s own style and manner, because that’s exactly how they describe the Driveatar system to work (unless I’m wrong and I misunderstood it)
But common sense would dictate even an 8-core top of the line Intel CPU would have a hard time doing all that computing at once, nvrmind an Xbox One.

We have to settle for how it is now I suppose, just copy pasted slingshot Driveatars using assists slaves to the difficulty slider as opposed to realism. And on the same note I guess we live in 2015 an era of ALWAYS ONLINE, and this is what Microsoft clearly expects of us, to spend a majority of our time racing online.

I still think Turn 10 has the ability to tweak the system further but are probably preoccupied with other things, so who knows maybe we can get a “sim” or “realistic” slider that addresses some of these issues in the next Forza game, let’s hope.

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When you as a player drive a car stock i think that they do feel different.

One you add upgrade parts of the race variety you have essentially taken a unique car and turned it into a “Forza mobile” with said weight, bias, engine location, and drive type and that is why upgrades cars all feel the same; they’re all “Forza mobiles”.

The AI also use upgraded cars in career. If the chapter cap is above stock then the AI will upgrade the car.

If the uniqueness of a car is lost with upgrades on the player side, why should we expect a difference on the AI side of things?

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I don’t see why the following tidbit was necessary in your actual post…

… considering you’re basically talking about AI implementation rather than your own car behaviour or feeling.
Saying someone’s opinion is invalid because of some arbitrary requirements you’re setting up is just ridiculous.

As for your post I’d agree.

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