Regardless of what strength I give the avatars they always hold the road turns at virtually any give speed. I’m an experienced driver but this version of Horizon seems incredibly frustrating to keep up with cars that appear to be defying the law of physics. As soon as I push the limits I’m the only one understeering, fishtailing, etc. We’re all doing the same speed but the avatars never wipe out.
I’m curious if it’s just me or others experience the same.
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In before the forum admins remove this thread as well! Multiple complaints about this, the admins are sweeping a lot of these issues under the rug by removing these posts! I 1000% agree with you and so do 99% of other drivers! Seasons like Autumn and Winter where you slip and slide are broken as hell!
It appears most of you are new to the Forza series given your “Driving Since” date?
Here are the facts:
The AI in the Forza Horizon series CHEATS.
There is no doubt. There are countless videos online that show how they don’t obey the same rules, or laws of physics players do e.g. They can go around check points without being penalized; AI are not effected by environmental hazards such as fences, debris and water; certain class cars that would in never keep up with other classes in the real world can somehow over take those lower classes and maintain impossible speeds; Blatant rubber banding can also be seen in races where you can break away from the pack, but seconds later the lead car is right on your tail (either by speeding up, or teleporting in behind you).
Anybody who tells you otherwise is LYING, or has an agenda of their own (the “get gud” posters).
To further back all of this up, players who mod the offline developer version of FH3 that was mistakenly released a few years ago confirm the AI gets a % speed boost, % weight reduction, and % grip boost depending on the difficulty level chosen. So, they are always ahead of the player no matter how well he/she tunes their car… That makes upgrading (tuning) in Forza Horizon completely useless.
As to the particular problem described by the OP:
This is what is known as the Rogue (Runaway) Drivatar. It started in Forza Mortorsport 5, and has never been fixed in the Forza Horizon series. A patch was issued in FM6, to stop Rogue Drivatars because it was acknowledged as an actual bug, but the patch never made its way to Forza Horizon because it’s a different (but similar) development branch.
Those are the facts.
Welcome to the world of the most lazy & outdated racing AI ever to be in a game in the last 20 years…
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This is confirmed by the names of friends from my Friend’s List who don’t even own, let alone play Forza Horizon games appearing in races.
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YEA ive noticed this to. to make a street race fun i have to jack up the difficultly. but a race with alot of tight corners or off road were its slick i cant keep up on low difficulty
I know right? Ever since they added the stupid drivatars into forza motorsport 5 ive noticed quite a lack of realism coming from them, its like they hug the road in such a way that it feels robotic, its like they’re on some sort of rails or some thing, some of them arent even smart enough to get out of the way of traffic, and this always used to be a problem since Horizon 2.
I remember in horizon 2 i had like a crazy 70,000 skill combo going on, and all of the sudden this drivatar is driving on my lane, i hit the brakes full on and he just keeps accelerating and crashes into me like it was nothing, and the most annoying part is, that they always spawn around you to feel like the world is “alive” yet when you play forza horizon 4 on the xbox one S version there is rarely, and i do mean rarely a car being acted as traffic.
And do not get me started on icy or rainy conditions, those mofos will stick to the road no matter the consequences, hell they could be driving on duct tape tires, they would still perform just as well if not even better then the guy that has traction control off, abs off, stability control off, and basically all of the safety catches of the car off.
If im playing with traction control off, i am expecting the drivatar to play with traction control off, after all its not fair they get to stick to the snow better then me on snow tires, there is a reason why i stopped playing forza horizon after the 2nd one, and going back and buying this game reminds me why i actually hated horizon 2 in the first place. Horizon 1 was a dream, it reminded me of need for speed mixed with a bit of realism from the xbox 360 days. Also no matter what you do the drivatars will always and i mean always will get in your way
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Wrong. They condense them into a single thread so there’s not multiple threads of the same topic. It helps the devs see outstanding problems and make’s the forums move faster.
Ps. Talking about admins, cursing is against ToS and will get you banned if you do it enough
That’s because they clip through the environment unless you are close enough to the AI to toggle collisions for them. I race with the unbeatable AI, and I’ve seen this a lot on all races.
It’ll be interesting whether or not they (i.e. PG) issue a fix for this or just ignore it.
Sounds like you might have experienced Lagged AI, if you were in a convoy with your friend. I’ve had this happen to me too. The AI was acting like someone with a bad internet connection. Even rammed my friend off the track.
Fun fact, I’ve been studying how AI works in Forza games since FM5 and the introduction of drivertars. I had a theory, until January of 2017 confirmed my suspicion.
Do you remember when PG messed up and accidentally released the developer version of FH3/ Subsequently ruined the announcement of the 2017 Bentley Continental Supersports?
Well around that time, videos came out of people playing the dev build and showing off all the stuff. One of the things that was in the dev build was power and grip multipliers.
I suspected that FH3’s AI was using multipliers allowing cars to ‘defy’ the normal physics that the player is using in order to keep up. Honestly it was the only logical answer after seeing the AI almost flip their cars (SUV’s in this case) in order to keep up with me. And post ridiculous lap times for the PI level and no tune. FH4 is similar.
How the AI/(Drivertars) work in the FH series as far as I know.
Imagine a large circle around your car that moves with you. The AI has to be within a set distance from or in that circle. And depending on how good you drive/how fast your car is, will deploy grip/power multipliers in order to keep up with you. Now this is more noticeable in circuit races, particularly the 50 lap ones because the game wasn’t intended for 50 lap races. Having done hundreds of 50 lap races in FH3 and quite a few in FH4 and thousands in the FM series, I’ve had quite some time to study their behavior.
So the takeaway here is they clip through all objects unless you are close enough to them where collisions are enabled. They use grip/power multipliers when necessary. And they need to be a set distance from you if you are ahead. All while usually posting faster lap times than you. This makes cross country races ridiculous even with tunes. So in essence, yes you are racing cheating AI. Does this make the game fun? Well it depends on what your version of fun is. Can you beat them on Unbeatable? Yes, sometimes it takes some retries on sprint races to win by a second or two.
If your theory is true, it explains a lot.
Meaning, we all know the AI cheats, but how they cheat has always been a mystery.
I was aware of the multipliers from the developer version of FH3 accidentally released a few years ago, but not the “Circle of Influence” (COI) you theorize. Someone else speculated it might also be related to the world itself not being rendered for the AI that is out in front of you? Thus, why they can drive through solid objects like walls, but it will still be intact once you reach it. Your COI explains how this might be possible if the AI aren’t within the proper radius to trigger collision with world objects as well.
If all of this is true, it makes sense because Forza is primarily a console game that needs to manage memory and CPU cycles a lot more efficiently than a gaming PC.
My guess is “No”… Mostly due to consoles limited hardware, but also because they don’t want to admit how limited (bad) the AI is in these games?
Die hard Forza Horizon fans know the AI cheats and is primitive by today’s standards, but the average consumer does not… Nor do many of them care e.g. If it’s too hard, they’ll just turn down the difficulty.
The problem is it seems to effect ALL the difficulties at one time or another. Even the lowest Drivatars (“New Driver”) can behave like “Unbeatable” and vice versa. The inconsistent behavior may, or may not be related to any of this, but it makes sense considering the entire system may depend on the player’s car / driving ability. Even at lower levels, the AI might get “confused” if it isn’t in the COI and revert to either an overpowered, or under-powered state, perhaps?
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I guess This thread was merged. Hmm. Well anyways as far as clipping goes I got your proof here.
So this is an AI in first place clipping through the scenery. Obviously it has loaded, I even went as far back as where my car was and looked and the fence was loaded. And ironically the camera stoped there right at the point where the AI is clipping. In it’s own COI so to speak.
Heh “Circle of Influence”. I like that. But yeah, same logic apples for pop in, LOD’s, world detail, etc. Would AI really be out of the question?
As far as it scaling to the car/abilities I can confirm that. I was doing a 50 lap co-op race with a friend (he also races on unbeatable) he isn’t the same skill level as me though. In that race the AI took off and was lapping my friend as was I, naturally being more used to this speed/behavior of the AI. He was kind of dumbfounded about it, he claimed that solo he can usually take on the unbeatable AI.
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I have the PC (and XBOX) versions of FH4, and have done tests at 30fps and 60fps to see if there is any difference in AI responsiveness on the PC version.
As you may have guessed, at 30fps, the AI behaves a little better due to things not being rendered as fast, but it’s still broken with Rogue Drivatars, clipping through objects, driving according to their own physics (% boosts, etc). The real difference at 30fps is the difficulty scaling in Solo races in my tests. “New Driver” behaves like new drivers, for the most part and I can beat them easily as expected. It only starts to go off the rails around “Highly Skilled” where we start to see the problems we’ve been discussing. Anything above that, and it doesn’t matter if it’s 30fps, or 60fps. This just confirms players don’t need to tune/upgrade in Forza Horizon unless they want a (unfair) challenge at higher levels.
I also noticed different levels of motion blur also seem to reign in the Drivatars a little… Which wouldn’t be out of the question if their navigation is tied to frame rate and rendering calculations that are increased by adding motion blur of varying levels.
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Very interesting stuff indeed. I also play on the PC, I have an Xbox too but don’t really play on it since the Forza series moved over to the PC market. Anyway I usually play at 60fps so I’ll have to check that out myself. I don’t think I’d switch for less OP AI though. I do tune though, I mean I pretty much have too since the base tunes in the game are straight up garbage. Anyway very interesting stuff!
So I tried this challenge. I didn’t put a tune on it, invested a majority into power, I think it was 107hp or something D500. From the start they take off like usual, I get to the golf course and I’m in 7th, got to the jump next to the nice house and one of the AI clipped into the wall. Took 6th, at this point 1st-4th have taken off so far ahead I would never catch them in a million years. Eventually come up to the finish point in the rail yard all while fighting for 6th figuring I was going to finish in that spot sure enough I noticed on my map they have all stopped. I thought well that’s weird, I get up to the finish line and find out that they all took the jump right before the end and crashed into the wall, all except one. So I managed second in a un-tuned D500 Baja Bug. Close but no cigar.
I tried the same event with another car the,(my challenge lol sort of) BMW Isetta, completely stock just for fun. Start of the race they all tear off, on the first jump into water they all get bogged down. The top five end up getting away and pick up speed like crazy and here is where it gets interesting.
They all end up not clearing this jump including me. All except for one.
The AI in first clipped though the scenery aka the jump and made it through. Truly that is unfair right?
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I think I can prove the unfairness.
The Baja Bug Challenge!
Build your best Baja Bug to D500 and take on Unbeatable drivatars on the Titan exhibition race for Offroad Buggies…
The imbalance becomes clear as soon as you start the climb up the ridge. If you had any lead, you will lose it to cars flying past as your car loses momentum up the hill.
Best I’ve managed is 7th place with the leading cars at least 10 seconds ahead!
Can anyone win?
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First race d500 baja bug unbeatable ai finnish 8th
second race d500 baja bug expert drivatars (my normal difficult setting) finnish 3rd 40s! afer winner.
third race s1 extreme offroad unbeatable ai i won by 2s.
4th race s1 extreme offroad expert ai i won by 2s again (actually only reason why i even won was because ai driver mess up corner 30s before goal line)
And earlier today i race two 3lap races in goliath with only difference being ai difficult, in first time highly skifull and second time unbeatable and both of those races i won with 6s marginal. i drive with vulcan he s998 and best lap time was 8,35 and one ai driver drive under 8,30 with s1 class hsv drifter!
What infuriates me more than anything is when I will out-drive the AI, be in the lead, nearing the finish line and at the very last moment they get a speed boost out of thin air and cross the finish line first! It’s so blatantly a cheat because not only does it look like a cheat, it feels like one, too… Especially if it’s a lower spec vehicle than the one you are driving. SMH…
Literally never had this happen to me, played on unbeatable, first place on all races, don’t know what other people are getting.
LOL, you clearly have never driven the Baja Bug on Titan. You won’t even get close on Pro difficulty.
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Well, that’s not doable because the car has too much handling for the class. You cannot get enough power. Also, about the whole “obstacles respawning before you get to them” thing. The AI never actually hit them if you’re too far behind, there’s a certain range before the AI become unstoppable by anything, the goal is to try and stay as close as you can as the race starts, but with this bug, that is not a possibility.
Then don’t drive the Baja Bug on Titan. You know you’re not gonna win so why keep doing it?
For the hell of it and to prove a point that not all cars can be driven to win on higher drivatar difficulty levels, even against a field full of the same car at a lower PI level. This thread set out to show up the game’s inadequacies and imbalances in the AI after all.