Forza H2 Companion App?

I don’t own a smart phone and I’m not very familiar with the whole companion app idea so I looked up some videos of Smartglass for Forza Horizon. I’m not really getting the point or appeal of this stuff.

So it looks like you can pull up the game map on your phone/tablet while you’re driving around in free roam. Sure, that’s pretty neat but why not just pause the game or look at the mini map on the TV? The one clip I watched had the guy constantly running into things because he was looking down at his phone and not where he was pointing his car. He was probably just a bad driver all around, but it didn’t seem like the app was actually helping him in this case. Ok, so you can also pull up the same game map when you’re not even home playing the game. How is that different from viewing a high-res picture of the map you took with your phone or finding one on Google? To anybody who has experience with this app, please feel free to weigh in. I’m genuinely just trying to understand how this stuff is useful at the end of the day.

Somebody in this thread suggested that for a FH2 app it would be nice to view and tune cars while they’re not at home. Another person was talking about tracking driver level, achievements and stats. Look, I love Forza as much as anybody else here and plan on playing the new game for hundreds of hours, but I do have a life outside of Xbox. I’ll just wait until I get home and can actually play the game to do these things, especially upgrading and tuning cars which sounds like a waste of time because you wouldn’t even be able to test drive them until you fire up the game anyway. Achievements I can look up on xbox.com. Driver level? I’m pretty sure that didn’t go up any since I last played the game 6 hours ago.

I’m not saying that I’m opposed to this idea. If people want it and the developers can deliver it without neglecting updates or add-ons for the actual game then I’m all for it. I just hope they don’t implement something like EA did with the latest NFS title where you actually had to own a smart phone to unlock certain vehicles in the game.

It’s like this, the point of the GPS or speedometer features would be for those with racing setups, most of them have phone mounts cause a lot of PC racing titles have those features and it makes a more immersive experience. As for the tuning, upgrading, and just being able to view your cars in your garage on your phone. That’d be useful for when you’re bored during traveling or anything really I mean you’re telling you’ve never played on a handheld or a mobile game? Basically the same exact thing.

So looking at pictures of cars in your virtual garage that you can’t drive is the same thing as playing a handheld game where you are performing actions and progressively leveling up?

And I don’t understand how having a mobile phone sitting next to my racing wheel makes the experience more immersive. Isn’t that what cockpit view is for?

Can you read? lol I meant if you’re bored you can upgrade/tune cars that you own or buy a new car and tune it up and such and you started talking bout how you had a life outside your Xbox, but it’d be no different then sitting in the car playing flappy birds lmao It’d be a lot better using your device as a GPS or speedometer that’s actually in front of you rather then reading a mini map in the bottom left corner of your screen, not realistic at all, or trying to read the speedometer on the car you’re driving which most of the cars in Forza are very hard to read there speedometers unless you’re in the perfect lighting.

My point is it really wouldn’t be hard to do a companion app or add some function to the smartglass atleast and maybe the majority wouldn’t use it but there’s a high number that would.

Game on one screen, map on the other. It’s like a multi-monitor setup except much easier and with a wider range of compatible devices. =)

That particular example is with my laptop but with touch-screen devices you also have the added convenience of a touch-screen map interface.

Thanks for posting the picture. That looks kind of cool, but I still don’t understand why you would want a second monitor/device running just for that when the game has a mini-map feature.

Simple really - the mini-map shows a very limited amount of information by comparison. The full map gives you a much better indication of where you are in the world, as well as showing events and players all around you, not just straight ahead.

There’s probably other things too but admittedly it’s been a while since I last played it.

For more realism, the mini-map feature in games isn’t at all realistic, having a device act as a GPS basically would be a lot more realistic and immersive.

With the greater opportunity to travel overland, having a better quality map nearby might well be a good idea.

You will never see an app that allows manipulation of saved game content such as you describe (upgrading, tuning, etc.) for reasons we shouldn’t have to go into here.

No offense but you must not know too much bout technology. The Crew has already announced that you’ll be able to view your cars, upgrade them, and customize them anywhere at anytime via there companion app. Everytime you sign on the XB1 all your online data gets synced from the cloud and a copy gets saved onto your XB1. Meaning if you turn off your internet, get on the XB1 and open up Forza and buy a car and you turn off the game and then re-connect to the internet and get back on the game later, the game will sync your last online data and overwrite your local saved data meaning that car you bought will not be there. All games with online on the XB1 gets seamlessly synced to the cloud everytime you load that game up. It’d be easy for you to be able to access your cloud storage via phone or tablet and play with the data and when you get home and back on the XB1 it would sync that data over to your local saves. There’s several other games where you can change your character or loadout from your phone. It’s no different then mobile purchasing or editing your account info from your device now.

I know plenty about technology but far more importantly than that, after seven long years, I know this game franchise, this developer and the long histories of both. Without significant fundamental changes to the security of the Xbox Live platform and the console hardware, you will never see an app that allows manipulation of saved game data in a Forza title.

All the money in my wallet against all the money in your wallet says so.

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It wouldn’t sacrifice the security of Xbox at all, once again The Crew is going to have the exact same functionality and it’ll be on the Xbox as well. Rather or not they will do it who knows, I’m not saying they will, I’m saying they could do it safely and should do it.

Seven years ago, with the release of Forza Motorsport 2, you could actually copy Forza game data (gamesaves and UGC) to a USB thumbdrive. That was quickly exploited and led to a significant number of problems for both Turn 10 and Microsoft. Problems so significant that Microsoft, Xbox Live and Turn 10 issued an emergency patch to prevent this one feature working in a single game. To this day, any Forza gamesave can only reside in one physical location accessible to the user. You can move that save from one storage device to another and back again as many times as you like but you cannot make a copy of that data without using third party means that are illegal and violate all warranties and agreements between the user and Microsoft. That was the case from that day until today with the restriction continuing into the next generation of consoles with the Xbox One.

Again, all the money in my wallet against all the money in your wallet says you will never see any non-console means of manipulating data in a Forza title without significant fundamental changes to Xbox Live and the console itself.

You can believe me or not but I know the money in my wallet is quite safe.

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[Mod Edit - Hieronymus (Modding discussion removed)]

Well that went so very badly so very quickly.

I have to admit, I’m a bit stunned you would post what you did but then cheaters always find new ways of surprising me.

Thread locked.

Have a nice day!

NB: In the future, if a moderator edits a post of yours, you don’t get to change it back as if nothing happened.

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