Cars - Some AWD Haldex cars behave like FWD


Many AWD cars behave like FWD cars

you need to upgrade the diff and customize the balance

FYI - these haldex cars are FWD biased in real life. I own an RS3.

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Not really, i also drove both S3, RS3, R and front wheelspin isnt possible. Even in Horizon everything works fine.

Playing through the game, and in the first career cup ‘Practical Performance’ chose the Golf R.
Noticed that it handles more like a front wheel drive car than an all wheel drive one. I know the car is front wheel biased, but having had the chance to drive more than a few R’s on track in real life, something isn’t quite right with how the car behaves in game. If you drive onto a loose surface (grass/gravel) and launch the car at full RPM, the rear wheels do not spin…

I have been lately testing many different AWD cars which have some issues on AWD operation. Problem seems to be AWD’s slow and weak response to activate rear wheels when front wheels start to lose grip.

The problem is really noticeable on 2022 VW Golf R & R32 and is also clearly present in Audi 2015 S1 & RS3 (noticeable even on TT RS on some situations). This problem may appear on some of their other cars too but isn’t limited to them. Some other cars (like MB A 45 AMG) also suffer from this issue. Race differential helps to a degree but you really shouldn’t need it to car to feel AWD.

I know these are not exactly drift cars but front wheel spin of some cars and general inability to get these cars to throttle-oversteer with decent steering angle on a soaking wet track on slower speed or even on grass makes me think something is not right here.

Overall driving physics of the game seems fine and FWD & RWD cars rotate nicely on acceleration. Even AWD driving physics are ok as long as you don’t actually need / want the AWD to do it’s job.

This may be related:
https://forums.forza.net/t/vw-golf-r-not-all-wheel-drive/628044

Tbh motosport simulates awd on this cars like it should, all of the cars u named, are FWD cars with additional rear wheel drive, not fully made awd cars like WRX or EVO. If u install race diff u will see in golf R that its default center diff values is =9% (heavy front bias). If u want to slide u have to install race diff and change center diff to 75% or something like that.

Unfortunately though, that’s not how the cars actually behave in real life. A newer golf R WILL rotate on a wet track with sharp steering input and heavy throttle. It will also absolutely spin all 4 wheels on a hard launch. I’m aware these are Haldex cars not true full time all wheel drive, but something is wrong here

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You nailed it. Glad I’m not the only one who noticed something is a bit off!

Thanks for your message, it gave me an inspiration to buy some more cars and see what kind of torque split they have when stock and you are right, Golf R (as many other cars) have a very heavy front bias (which should not be there). It looks like these cars’ baseline (passive) torque split % might have been set to game’s actual (active) torque split value.

After some research I came to conclusion that all the cars listed below have incorrect differential front / rear torque split values on stock cars. If sport differential upgrades are supposed to use these same values then they might need some updating too.

The cars I have found so far are:

Audi:
-2020 RS3 Sedan
-2015 S1
-2011 RS3 Sportback

Mercedes-Benz:
-2013 A 45 AMG

Volkswagen:
-2022 Golf R
-2021 Golf R
-2014 Golf R
-2003 Golf R32

All of these cars are capable of center differential 50/50 front / rear torque split on stock differentials. 2022 Golf R also uses torque vectoring between 100/0 0/100 left / right.

This does not explain why many other AWD systems feel a bit sluggish to react but this torque split issue might be the reason for all the front-wheel spin these models are having.

I agree on how these cars react (and should react in the game in my opinion). A stock 2022 Golf R with it’s torque vectoring is well capable to go throttle oversteer even on dry surface and the normal Haldex cars like previous Golf R / Audi TT/S/RS do step out their rear-end when driven “enthusiastically” on a wet surface on slower corners.

Cars like '22 Golf have incorrect differential values but other AWD cars seems to suffer from the understeer as well. This may be due to what I would call unrealistically high acceleration grip level of AWD cars. A stock Evo X for example just basicly understeers and bogs down in any gear / weather / corner and STI S209 isn’t much better.

After more research I have not found any other cars with clearly incorrect differential values.

All the listed cars I checked have the same issue replicated on sport differential upgrade as well. *Due to car level I was not able to check every single car’s sport differential but I assume that the problem is also present on those.

If I have missed some car(s) which clearly have a wrong stock (and / or sport) differential value please add them to this list.

Audi:
-2020 RS3 Sedan
-2015 S1
-2011 RS3 Sportback

Mercedes-Benz:
-2013 A 45 AMG

Volkswagen:
-2022 Golf R
-2021 Golf R
-2014 Golf R
-2003 Golf R32

After countless hours of car testing using different car views and telemetry I thought I keep the monologue going and share what I think is going on with the non-listed cars.

In my opinion the main problem with many other cars seems mostly steering related, not AWD itself even if it many times feels so while driving. The higher grip levels of the new game may play a part in this but the main issue here is cars’ unwillingness to turn wheels when you need them to.

Example 1:
I drive to a steep slow speed right-hand curve and try to throttle-oversteer car quickly out of it. Even if I use maximum controller steering to right, front wheels turn only to 5-10 degrees resulting car to go wide / off the track and most of the steering angle is locked out for a some time even when the car is obviously lost grip due to acceleration. Of course steering to another direction works fine but it’s not what I need the car to do when I am trying to get car to oversteer instead of understeer.

Example 2:
I’m slowing to a left-hand corner and upset a car to lift-off oversteer (which by the way works really nice in FM). I turn left, push to full throttle and car rotates to a nice long drift. In the middle of the corner slide angle starts to get too steep and I counter-steer a bit. This, again, immediately limits the left steering angle to that only few degrees while the car is in 20-30 degree four-wheel drift going thru curve. Obviously this results car going wide, loss of control and car’s front end meeting the track outside fence. After that, car suddenly gets it and turns wheels to full lock left. Too bad it’s 5 seconds too late.

As I mentioned, I use only controller to drive on FM so I am not sure if this is only a controller related issue or do wheel users experience the same.

Tbh subbies awd is working as intended, drivetrain is understeery cuz these are rally cars, u need to trailbrake / lift oversteer on corner entry, and then u use understeer (4 wheel drift) on exit, if u want rwd like feel, lambos should be better. Horizon had similar awd problem where are cars were understeery, but thats how it should be lol.

I was not talking about understeer, in fact I prefer cars that have tendency to understeer so it’s not the problem here. As I wrote in my earlier post even these cars are very easy to get lift-off oversteer but (at least) some cars and/or tunes do not allow sufficient steering angle to follow thru that slide.

Subarus don’t seem to have serious lack of rear-wheel drive like the cars listed here. I have not tested Subarus enough to see do they suffer from this steering angle issue.

The third thing of course is the inability to throttle oversteer due to grip on many over 300 horsepower cars even on first gear turn of which I wrote on one of my earlier posts. These cars should not act this way on a completely wet track. That really is an understeer issue but I guess it’s a feature of the game and maybe should have it’s own topic.

I tested 2011 Subaru WRX STI. Subaru seems to allow a bit more drift steering angle than my 2018 TT RS but something odd is happening there too. If I try to do donuts on grass turning left, car may suddenly turn wheels to almost straight even if I keep controller steering all left. TT RS does this exactly same thing when turning left. Maybe other cars too, I don’t know. I have not managed to replicate this when trying to do donuts turning right on either car.

I tested my controller to see if it could explain this but my controller seems fine and this same thing happens also when steering with D-pad.

They have a horrible setup as standard. Besides, cars like the 8r are badly made. It has some good chassis and tuning improvements and according to Forza it is worse than a 7r or 7.5r or it behaves the same. when the 8r beats the 7 in everything… I hope they do something and not just leave the jdm op😡

Just found this topic (for some reason I didn’t find this earlier with search). On another topic I have listed all the cars I found which have incorrect torque split on stock differentials. If I have missed any, please add them to the list.

All the listed cars I checked have the same issue replicated on sport (and maybe race) differential upgrade as well. *Due to car level I was not able to check every single car’s sport (or race) differential but I assume that the problem is also present on those.

Audi:
-2020 RS3 Sedan
-2015 S1
-2011 RS3 Sportback

Mercedes-Benz:
-2013 A 45 AMG

Volkswagen:
-2022 Golf R
-2021 Golf R
-2014 Golf R
-2003 Golf R32

These cars having Haldex or any other FWD based (or biased) awd system doesn’t change the fact that these cars should be able to put 50% of the torque to rear wheels.

Haldex (and other similar systems) have variable torque split based on driving conditions. It can vary from pretty much full FWD to 50/50 AWD. Their baseline torque split is usually somewhere between 100/0 to 90/10 F/R and If any slip occurs, torque split changes pretty much instantly and goes up to 50/50 if needed. Also these cars typically monitor many other things such as throttle position, steering angle, ambient temperature and so on and this affects to torque split. If AWD system presumes that slip may occur soon it changes torque split towards rear even before any loss of grip have happened.

What this have to do with the game then? As far as I can tell this game does not have an active torque split system, meaning the value won’t change much (if any). This isn’t usually a big issue. On AWD cars which have a center differential you just add their baseline value which may be 45/55 or 50/50 etc. and the cars drive pretty realistically. On actual cars torque split usually varies a bit but it’s typically pretty close to baseline value even when the grip is lost. No problem there.

Haldex cars are completely different when it comes to what value should be used to get realistic driving experience in the game. If this is ignored then we have a bunch of new two-wheel drive cars. Using baseline torque split here makes these cars pretty much complete FWD cars because games typically does not take into consideration the huge variation of torque split these cars have depending on driving situation. To address this issue games typically use maximum 50/50 as torque split value and it works pretty well. I’m pretty sure FM developers are well aware of this and some haldex cars such as Audi TT RS already have the correct 50/50 value. Why some other cars don’t doesn’t make any sense to me. Maybe just an error on game development.

It wouldn’t be the first time this have happened, old Gran Turismos had Audi TT 1.8 quattro values incorrect and the car was basicly FWD which was corrected on different mk1 TT version on later games. I wish online updates would have been possible back then…

Related topics:
https://forums.forza.net/t/vw-golf-r-not-all-wheel-drive/628044
https://forums.forza.net/t/weak-sluggish-all-wheel-drive-on-many-cars/647381

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