Fix the stock race/drift suspension tunes to make the game better for everyone

Forza Horizon Legacy Horizon FH4 Discussion
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I take issue with the stock setups (high rear spring and front roll bar). It hurts casuals the most. If tuning wasn’t so obscure, it wouldn’t be a problem.

If there was an option to tune race suspension with a few simple sliders (spring stiffness, spring balance, anti-roll stiffness, anti-roll balance, total damping, damping balance, bump ratio, etc), or the current depth for those of us with the experience, new players would get better at driving much faster and we would all have cleaner races, better competition, and more fun. If the rear spring rate is even a little bit too high, taking and landing jumps without spinning becomes nearly impossible. If it’s too low, the car doesn’t want to rotate. Does the person responsible for the stock tunes not understand the game? Or do they not understand that most young people, and players coming into Forza Horizon overall, have no warning at the seriousness of tuning?

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Tbf it does give a guide next to each tuning section. If the car won’t rotate with softer rear springs, go for lower deceleration on the diff.

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From my experience some of the pre-adjusted race suspensions are pretty spot on - especially those from pre-tuned cars like the FE-versions. On those I have to tune only very small bits if any. But on older race/sports cars the race suspension is mostly way too soft, on sedans and SUVs too. Porsches are extremely prone to oversteer with the race suspensions because the spring balance is off (too stiff rear springs). That’s why some of my friends used to put rear spoilers on every RWD Porsche to make it drivable - while they could be easily driven without a spoiler if adjusted correctly.

Judging by the FE-versions or modern race cars in FM7 which don’t need much adjusting the persons responsible seem to understand the mechanics. Why some cars turn into complete trash with a stock race suspension is something I’m wondering since “ages”. Imo race suspensions should make the cars “race-ready” on their own and it should only be on us to adjust them to our liking.

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I’ve noticed that. I’m still confused why many cars with tire upgrades will have 225, 245, 265 front for example, and 235, 255, 275 rear tires. Most real circuit builds go square width for 50%+ front weight. Otherwise, they’d understeer!

Most cars in FH4 suffer from it. FM7 springs are decent out of the box. The the offroad Taxi missions were terrible. So easy to spin a bit one way in the air, land, and bounce off the ground again spinning fast enough to do a 180 in the air. It’s times like that why I keep rewind on.

When I set up cars in FH4 I balance the rear springs to the lower 0.5% of matching the front (if the front weight was 51, and front spring was 515, the starting rear spring would be 485 (would be a heavier car for that much spring)) to ensure I’m not in the realm of oversteer. I then do 10-20 laps at Astmoor Heritage Circuit , slowly increasing the rear spring as I go. Because it’s mostly sweepers, with multiple trailbraking entries and full-power (most cars) exits, you can hold the steering at max and modulate the throttle/brake, feeling out exactly what the car wants to do. When the front rate is too high, it feels very stable but can run wider than expected. When the rear rate is too high, I find myself diving inwards a little too early, with a general sense of instability. Much higher on the rear and it might start to oversteer, especially if it’s less than ~43% front weight. The first game I felt such sensitivity to spring balance was CarX on PC. Unfortunately they changed it in patch 1.4.8 and I don’t enjoy it any more. Around 100 hours in FH4, I realized it’s the same. Roll bars need to be balanced as well, and it helps when dialing in the perfect spring rate, but they aren’t as sensitive until you’re well more than a few % off matched, either direction.

GT Sport displays springs in tuning in Hz, ride frequency. For circuit racing usually you’ll want the exact same frequency, unless the car has specific issues with oversteer. Even FWDs in FH4, I like to match the rates, then use 1 front sway bar and 20 or more rear, to get the inside rear wheel off the ground. On square tires, 60%+ front should be relatively neutral with such a setup. On FWDs with 225 front and 205 or 185 rear for example, you can start dialing up the front roll bar, for better steering response and to avoid oversteer. In AWDs or RWDs with proportionally larger rear tires, larger rear sway bars are the best way to achieve neutrality (if necessary). Ditto for undersize rear tires; a lighter rear bar is better than lighter rear springs.

TL;DR My experience with FH4 improves dramatically when spring rates are balanced within 0.1% of ideal, which requires extensive testing. Not only that, nobody seems to talk about it, if they do know, which is shame. I don’t think this sort of thing needs to be protected knowledge. Everyone’s experience would improve, from singleplayer to multiplayer to the people who’re working on the next Forza Horizon map, if they are, and don’t know this yet.

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I’ve become a little bit lazy and just use FACR’s suspension calculator to do the math for me. It’s extemely potent but you need to know what you are doing. With my predefined setup for the calculator most cars come out nearly perfectly (for my driving style). Then I only have to adjust tire pressure, gearing, aero and diff. Saves me a lot of time and I can spend more of it in creating builds.

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So… I upgraded the RS3 LMS for the rivals event at Dubai, and went to that page. Plugged numbers from another car in, messed with the sliders… plugged the RS3 numbers in. Every adjustment was centered except the Bumpy/Smooth slider, that I forgot to center back to 0. It was +67%. The numbers that calculator spit out with those settings were within 5% of the default springs and dampers on the RS3. Is FACR associated with Turn 10? Or are T10 using that calculator?

Edit–63% FACR damping ratio for the matching bump, 72% for the matching rebound. Springs at 11 more in the front and 7 more in the rear in my default tune, possibly because of the upgraded turbo. Lots of the same math going on regardless. I don’t understand why the base game can’t have a tuning mode like that by default, as a replacement or as an optional mode, to help put together base tunes. Well-tuned cars don’t drive themselves. It’s not like it would hurt the competitive scene.

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I don’t know but his calculations are extremely spot on for cars like the RS3 LMS. If you use 61-63% at the bumpy/smooth in FM7 it’s practically identical. For Horizon I use 45%. The only thing you need to know is at what weight limits you have to manually increase/decrease the damper stiffness.
The aero calculations are also mostly spot on - meaning for a lot of race cars (which don’t use the standard aero values) it perfectly matches front max aero to rear min aero at the given weight distribution.
With the over/understeer sliders I’ve yet to find a car that I couldn’t bring to being driveable with this calculator.

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It’s all the same math. I made a spreadsheet for myself a few days ago, to keep from needing to use my phone every time I start or refine a tune. You can see it here, and make a copy for yourself to edit the values in the top section to use if you want.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NNoONQObAXzHwfpuzRwXpy2MdAxhqL2as4v0n_c3VHw/edit?usp=sharing

I’m still working on the default values (100 multiplier in ARB, Spring and total damper). Other than that, with the correct multipliers (97.5 total spring and 83 damper are equivalent to -50% spring stiffness and -50% damper in FACR’s calculator), it spits out the exact same numbers as FACR’s calculator, without the convenient GUI, and infinite resolution (for better or worse) of adjustment. My next hurdle is getting it to read the actual ride frequency, in Hz. I couldn’t for the life of me make either of the equations I found work, neither did they spit out the same numbers. Absolutely maddening. L:

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You can use QuickTune H4 and it will get you reasonable numbers out of the box.

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I’ve tried both of your apps, and I would recommend FACR’s tuner over it to anyone in Motorsport or Horizon, for quality of tune output, customization, and price (in that order).

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QuickTune is great for players who are not very familiar with tuning in Forza because it delivers good tunes out of the box.
With tuning knowledge FACR’s is stronger than QuickTune and my go-to.

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Out of interest: do you have an example at hand were you feel FACR approach leads to a better/faster tune?

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Since I have my fixed settings in FACR’s calculator it instantly provides me with values that don’t need much adjusting if any. That’s probably because the spring/ARBs/damper balance is spot on with the Forza mechanics (as GreatFlea815883 noticed while upgrading his RS3 LMS).
With QuickTune I had to manually adjust various values. Especially on cars with a big unbalance in weight distribution (like those 40% Porsches or 60% FWD Hot Hatches). That’s why I decided to use FACR’s for everything and haven’t tested QuickTune for FH4 until yet (tested it for FM7).
As a beginner I would chose QuickTune though because FACR’s requires pre-sets + knowledge and is only a suspension calculator.

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Thanks for clarifying, I still would like to know an example in F7 where you get a faster setup with FACR cause I’m always interested to make QuickTune better, send me a PM me if you like, thanks.

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I don’t get your point, as “young people” with no tuning experience just download one of the easily downloaded free tunes by experts.
It’s just not an issue. It is made very easy for people to get a well tuned car from the outset.
I get you want to tune an tweak yourself, and the game totally accommodates that.

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Lets pretend you are new to the game - or new to Forza scene. You go to download a tune. how do you know which one is ACTUALLY “expert” tuned?

9/10ths of the tunes are not even TUNED! they are just parts slapped on and saved/shared with neat titles. They aren’t going to come here to the forum (nor would I consider that convenient) to find out what tunes might be made by someone who knows what they are doing.

Stating that is “easily” is just insanely naive.

I am a long time Forza memeber but I still don’t “tune” properly. I put on parts and adjust the things I know well enough (diff, susp height, trasmission gearing, aero, etc) and can generally come out with a car that drives the way I want with a little tweaking - but I almost never touch stiffness/rebound/etc because I don’t really know how It works. yes I’ve read the silly descriptions - that literally has no help in actually making changes. I could use one of the calculators but it just isn’t worth that much effort to me.

I 10000% concur with the OP. Make “race suspensions” already tuned for the car :).

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Though it is easy to download tunes, the way I see people struggle to stay on the road sometimes suggests many don’t know how critical tuning is, and would happily slap race suspension on and call it done (I used to play FM4 like that). Those same people are often new to Forza, tuning, and/or racing entirely. With better stock setups, they would play better as teammates, race cleaner as opponents, and altogether have and create more positive experiences within the game. Isn’t that a win-win?

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To be fair, a lot of the poor driving online in racing games (not just Forza); comes down to lack of skill. Not to mention some people just lack the desire to race cleanly as well. Its a much worse problem on the Forza Motorsport side of things, which is why a lot of us are patiently waiting for the race regulation update to arrive. One of the biggest problems, is the low amount of laps. It creates a scenario where people feel they need to ‘rush’ to the top of the grid, and that brings forth less than desirable racing practices.

The other aspect on this, is that some just like to grief. Yet another big issue with Forza online gameplay.

Tuning, although it does make a difference. Isnt as big a factor as you may think. A bad driver is going to be bad, no matter the tune. A good driver is going to be benefit from a good tune. A fast driver will be fast, no matter the tune; in the majority of cases. And a slow driver will still be slow. Fact of the matter is, people will only improve; if they want to improve.

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I strongly disagree. Many of the default tunes have too much oversteer for inexperienced drivers and other issues that makes it even harder for them. As an example, my teenage sons don’t play often and therefore aren’t great drivers. They often download my tunes and immediately find driving easier because I tend to build stable tunes that are easy to drive.

Whenever I change tune a car, I always find my settings deviate quite a bit from the defaults set by Forza. For example, rear toe set to negative helps keep the car straight at speed for the inexperienced. I’ve learned to race stock tunes well but as soon as I use my own settings I find the cars much easier to drive.

In fact, I’ve owned some of the cars in this game the driving of these cars sucks compared to the real ones. For example, I’ve owned a 1985 Mazda RX-7 and an 1966 Alfa Romeo Giulia. In real life the cars were completely neutral and very well balanced. In game, they tend to oversteer unless I tune them.

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As I stated in my post, those who have a desire to improve; will do so. A tune can help, but, the skill of actually being able to drive makes the biggest difference. And is often the most neglected aspect in racing games. You made the exact same point as I did, which is shown in the next quote.

You have spent to time learning to improve your actual driving ability in racing games, which again, is what I said happens when there is a desire to improve. You may say you disagree with me, but your post is actually just proving my point.

Ok, thats fair enough. But in all honesty, equating real life road driving to a racing game; really leaves a lot out in the cold. Even if you took them to a track day, or pushed limits on the public road (which I hope you didn’t with the latter option); there is still a lot missing when you translate that experience to the virtual realm. We get a lot of sensory information in real life, as well as a better view. Physical, visual, and audible sensations are very much abundant in the real world. The sensation of speed is totally different in a game, and we have to train our minds to take note of different cues in order to drive competently. Which are mostly different to what we use when driving a real car. Not to mention there is also the lack of fear to take into account, there isnt any in the virtual realm. So we push harder and try to drive faster then we ever would in a real car. We completely lose the physical sensations when sat playing a video game, even those of us who use racing wheels lose a lot of the physical sensation too. More often than not, even the audio and visual cues dont always line up to real life also. It all adds up, till we learn to adapt.

As I said in my previous post, those who want to improve will. Those who don’t, wont. A tune only benefits those who want to improve, those who have improved, and will help the fastest in game shave a few tenths off their times.

There is a very fine line to what a tune will do in Forza though, and although a tune can help improve the drivability of a car. Its player skill and willingness to improve that will make the biggest change, until a person is at a higher skill level.

The sort of people the OP is talking about, usually just dont really care. My other half has no desire to improve with racing games, but he is sensible and avoids online. One of my IRL friends is also the same, but again, he is sensible and avoids online play. A lot of people just dont care, but also jump in on multiplayer. Tunes will not help those people, as they just dont care.