We all find Forza Horizon 4 very realistic (typical Scotland roads and scenery), with the option to drive many luxury cars that we often can’t afford to buy or drive in real life. Some of us even have ‘driving simulators’ (Xbox steering wheel and pedals) for a more immersive experience. This made me think and wonder how do we prefer to drive inside Forza Horizon 4 and how this may be reflecting and/or affecting/shaping our real life driving behaviour:
Do you try your best to observe real life traffic rules inside Forza Horizon 4; for example, speed limits 30mph or 60mph depending on road, driving on correct side of the road, etc.
OR
Do you enjoy driving inside Forza Horizon 4 in a free, Wreckfest-style way, unchecked by any traffic rules or conditions?
OR
Is it a mix of both 1 and 2 above?
AND
Does Forza Horizon 4 and your preferred behaviour inside it influence your real world driving behaviour in any way, and how?
Please feel free to share your answers and thoughts below.
Dont fully understand your point of view. Forza Horizon is still an arcade game. Driving physics are not realistic (eg. streering wheel only going 90°, body weight and roll, how tire width effect grip level…).
In real life nobody (no sensable person) drives in a wreckfest style way on the road. For one it is illegal and two, … you know … you get hurt pretty badly… And since its a game where you cant feel the g force I dont see it being able to effect your real life driving skills in any way. No feel for the pedals either.
I’ve red that the same way as the researches regarding violent video games. Battlefield didnt make me want to go to the millitary, cs didnt make me blow stuff up and Forza didnt make me drive like a maniac. I speak for myselfe here. And tbo I have yet to meet someone who was effected by any of this…
Forza Horizon 4 absolutely shouldn’t be affecting your real-life driving. It might look realistic but it’s driving model is still greatly simplified, especially in the current season of Winter which would be atrociously dangerous to drive like that in real life.
Good I didn’t know about that when I was doing touge runs in the nearby (100km from me) mountains few months ago
Tune or build? I see that you are referring to physics, but that sentence is put in a way that i’m not sure.
Tune - well, it is not simulator, there will be some differences in settings of the car that wouldn’t work IRL.
Build - as owner of Nissan with Toyota engine and BMW gearbox I tend to disagree.
What do you mean? I’m playing on PC, so I have no experience with FH3.
As for OP. I assume question is related to freeroam. I almost don’t drive in freeroam, usually fast travel. I only do it when I wait for my convoy to connect or testing new setup on car (and I do it only on Bamburgh track layout location).
About relation between my FH4 and IRL driving, I would say there is none, but I think it is more related to my age. I’m past the young and overconfident/stupid age, but occasionally still will drift the roundabout, do some touge runs or accelerate heavily in tunnel
I was mostly referring to tuning, but there are a few unrealistic builds too… like putting a big ol honking V8 with a supercharger in a ford focus RS.
PS I would love this game to become a simulator. Forza Horizon format and car list with uncompromising physics and realistic (and highly detailed/flexible) upgrade system is my dream racing game.
It’s been a while since I played so I’m mostly going on memory, but FH3 basically just had two surfaces: Road and not road. Cars were also a bit too perfect. You didn’t get the same lumbering roll out of a loose suspension, or the jolts and pops of a tight suspension. Everything was a little bit more samey. It wasn’t particularly bad in any single area, but there were a lot of little improvements in 4 over 3 that added up to a lot. Also 2-wheel drivetrains were just straight up throwing in that game. There’s still a gap between 2-wheel and all-wheel drive at the “same” PI in 4, but it was far worse in 3.
BTW 3 was available on PC too. I say was because they had to stop selling it due to licensing issues.
I do have an old Logitech Momo wheel, but haven’t used it for ages (not even sure if it works with FH4), have Logitech F710 gamepad, but use it only if I feel lazy and actually try to slowly cruise around.
My main control thing is keyboard + mouse, so going slow is not really a thing, so speed limits are not my thing in FH4, although I don’t really like super fast cars - I mostly drive S1, A, B and C class cars, very rarely S2 and X only for weekly PR stunts
So:
I do try to drive on correct side of the road, but speed limits are not my thing, do try not to hit anything (even ghosted players), yes I use brakes :), but if it happens, it happens.
not really a Wreckfest, but from time to time I like to go offroad in my Prerunner (especially in winter), still trying not to hit anything solid, Hitting other cars … hmmm … intentionally only for trade paint skills
you decide from above
not really IRL driving, just had to get used to drive on the other side of the road. Switching from FH4 to GTA … well suddenly everybody is driving on the wrong side of the road, flash lights at me and honk … lol
Well, I’ve played a lot of FH4, I live just outside Edinburgh and I drive a Mustang IRL. Not once have I drifted round a corner, driven on the wrong side of the road or tried to drive past a speed camera as fast as possible. And not once have I driven up Arthur’s Seat and then tried to jump from the top of the Salisbury Crags. So I’m going to say that FH4 doesn’t influence my actual driving
I find that Forza (and some of the other racing games I play) actually make me a more careful, law abiding citizen on the road. In real life, my car is a necessary evil, and a chore to drive. I drive a hand-me-down. I hate it, and if I really wanted to I could get a car I actually like, but driving used cars is better for the environment and I can’t argue with the price I paid for it (free).
Forza isn’t that realistic though. The physics engine is impressive, especially for a casual, open-world racer, but there are areas that need improvement if I’m going to consider it real life. Bump and weight transfer are severely muted. I suspect this is to make PvP bearable while still allowing contact, or to prevent people from going from road to offroad and losing control. Loose surface physics also need some work. They are still a bit too much like road with a grip slider turned down.
It’s also possible to tune a car in an impossible way IRL. So not entirely realistic. I give the physics a B. Good enough to find nuance in, but not good enough to replace the real thing.
I will say one thing though, they are trending in the right direction. 4 was a great improvement over 3. I’m very excited for them to continue that trend into 5. I really, really hope they do at least.
I use both styles and a sort of in between style where I drive as fast as I can (switching lanes to avoid other vehicles) and try to avoid hitting any other objects. Sometime I just pick a souped up old classic like the Austin Healy (a car I owned in the early 60’s) and just randomly drive slowly around Mini Britain for an hour, often stopping and parking to enjoy the scenery).
I’ve often wished that a car I’ve driven in real life were in the game, or any other game, so I could compare how they ‘feel’ in a video game compared to real life. But in real life, I’m capped at about 120kph on the highway (I might rarely pass 130 if I’m trying to pass, and Smokey’s not around) which is practically crawling by game standards. So I I don’t know if there’s any real way to compare.
This sounds kinda stupid but forza has made me a better driver and I’m way more sensible, lmao
after crashing into 5 billion trees on forza I guess it just made me think a bit,
Fh4 isn’t so bad for me to play before real world driving. I do have a rule that I don’t drive immediately after gta5 though. And no, I don’t cosplay European driving.
" Research investigating these games, including older ones with much less realism than FH4…"
Realism? Where? The scenery looks good but gameplay is cartoonishly simplyfied. And FH1 was the closest to
realism these games has ever been.
The worst thing about todays FH4 is the AIs behavior. Theyve been adjusted lately (this spring) from beeing
just annoying into beeing pure terrorists. Strange this, how the gamemakers ruins their own game on purpose
