I’d have to agree with you on this with FM8. They’ve taken it a step down from where forza was headed with FM7.
I’ve been following your experiments with the AI. And I’ve been seeing results mirror yours. But one test I did I found particularly interesting. I started a race at Maple full lvl 5 rules 3 normal driving. Got a good jump into the lead from position 3 at the start and held it for about a half a lap. Then I paused and switched to AFK driving and let the game finish the rest of the remaining 4 laps. It was utterly crazy watching the system beat itself and not once did the AI ever challenge for first.
That’s what I do when I’m forced to race VIR in the FOMO content, select 3rd for the start, blast straight to first in 5 seconds against unbeatable 8 then hit pause, set to afk and come back with a cuppa half a lap to go till it’s over and still in 1st place cause unbeatable 8 just will not overtake, sit back down, switch off afk and finish the last few hundred meters to the best spot on the podium and the hardest part of that race was the 10 seconds it took me to select the driving aids!
That depth of field blur was awesome in Project Cars 2.
I liked how it was a bit unpredictable and when it came on it made you feel like you were in the zone, then you hit the brakes and woosh it was gone as your head tilted slightly and started to look to the Apex.
Also if Forza did decide to offer a Helmet cam it would work great with the physics model I reckon, you would see more of the movement of the vehicle around you as it went over bumps and the likes
Protip: you can create set your game to have two groups, set group 2 to one player max, turn on group grid ordering. That way, all the group 1 cars are first, and the group 2 car is last.
Then, in the event before you start, go to the driver list, find yourself, press A, move yourself to group 2, then find the AI in group 2 and move it to group 1.
The nice thing about that setting is you can set car restrictions for the AI only. E.g. if you want to crank up the challenge, you can set the AI to have higher-PI cars than you.
Also, on the Nordschleife in particular, I find that a 1.5-2 second rolloff delay avoids the AI crashing into each other at the start. Makes for a nice evenly spread out field.
I think I’ve ran VIR maybe three times without using AFK. I hate that track so much. Maybe if it had racing curbs and markings like Mid-Ohio and Lime Rock Park it would better.
Sounds like more work than should be needed but I’ll try it out when I next feel like having a race, I prefer just doing Rivals as it cuts out all the loading screens, select your car and do a lap, if I need to make some changes hit just exit and hit next rival and it’s straight back to the pits. Only need to leave if I want to class up the ride
Tried the rolloff delay and it does make for better racing albeit sitting there for a minute twiddling fingers gets old. If only Turn10 could get the A.I dialed in and add challenge the grid.
Remove RT and address the crushed shadows. Sometimes this game is outright wierd. Chrome bumpers on other cars are black, colors dissappear when the shadows cover the dashboard in cockpit view, A pillars never get any light. Turn 10 treats absolutely black shadows like its a playable feature.
I mean… Removing RT is easy… Just play in performance mode. It is literally already labeled as “Recommended” in the menu because Turn10 absolutely knew that their RT implementation was bath water…
It was never intended to be. The problem was Chris Esaki saying it was “most advanced racing game ever made”, which led people to think it would be.
Reminds me of when Microsoft announced the Xbox Series X as the “most powerful console ever”, the “monster that eats other monsters”, and, when it arrived, it began losing in comparisons due to several wrong choices on Microsoft’s part (slower GPU clock, slower SSD, etc.). They immediately changed the marketing words afterwards.
Thing is, Forza doesn’t have to be a very serious simulation, but FM is squeezed between FH and serious sims, and struggles to find a market for itself because of it. This is the real problem FM has to face, and one similar games would too if they ever came to PC.
I play at 1080p. DLSS is pointless at this resolution. The game will be trying to sample from sub-HD images, to create a HD image. The result is going to be an even blurrier mess than just running at native. Even DLAA at 1080 is degraded compared to native. There’s not enough detail in lower resolutions to create a HD result.
Newsflash for you: Gran Turismo is much more famous than Forza Motorsport (it really is, I’m not making this up), made the move to serious racing much earlier, and doesn’t have a Horizon equivalent stealing players from it.
Turn 10 designed this game around Ray’s Tracings… So why not fully embrace all the tech and optimize the game to my tastes. So, I switched Raymond’s Sillouetts back on, and then taking MAK 11’s suggestion, I turned DLSS on, and set it to Ultra performance. Seeing that DLSS on U.P. is going to make the game look like butt, I might as well fully embrace the posterior and set the details accordingly, which means I set it to low.
Things like particle effects are on low. Motion blur is a bit redundant to even turn it on, afterall everything is blurry so, it got turned off. The FPS initially was set to 60 VSync, but it was pretty muched pegged at 82 FPS, something I thought was impossible. I have since set it to Unlocked VSync and its dancing again. I couldnt maximize the RT settings, apparently Ray Tracing is still too heavy of an ask when setting the game to vasoline smeared lens mode, but I did have room to do something about the washed out colors and used NVidia’s game filters to add some extra Vibrance in the color filter.
The end result, I have all the frames. Yes, even your frames are belong to us! The game jumps around 103Fps to 134Fps, but no chugging. The only downside, I’m playing with the details of a 1970’s beauty lens. The interesting side effect? DLSS adds a heat shimmer effect to everything, making the game look like Sega GT 2002. If I could link YT’s SGT 2002 music to loop and play while I am on track, this would be epic modern-retro nostalgia. Oh well…
But, I do take back what I said earlier about not getting consistent framerates…
Kind-of take it back. I shouldn’t have to set my PC to Sega Dreamcast, to get good fps performance.
Forza’s inauthenticity is not due to the A.I. The game is not structured like a more simulated focused racing title. You don’t have flag rules, proper penalties, realistic ways of serving penalties, damage from abusing the vehicle, race ending failures, proper race timing or, proper race structures at all.
The A.I. is a quality of life issue, like the FPS I was just harping about. The game can be more serious even with craptacular A.I.
News flash for you: Gran Turismo is much higher quality than Forza Motorsport (it really is, I’m not making this up), which is why it’s so much more popular.
PlayStation owners have plenty of other options/alternatives for racing games besides GT:
the Need for Speed series, the Crew series, Assetto Corsa, the F1 series, WRC, & more.
…but all of those options don’t “steal players away” from GT.
There are no other scapegoats or justifications or excuses for the single simple fact that FM23 has a major quality problem.
Every aspect of the game is a step backwards for the series & for the genre:
functional reliability/stability/performance, gameplay design, UX & QoL, visuals, audio, AI, penalties, etc.
…and stacking so many low-quality aspects together in one package just makes for one big mess where the stink is inescapable no matter how you try to play it (single-player, mutliplayer, tuning, painting, etc.).
FM23’s struggles are not the genre’s fault, or the console’s fault, or the market’s fault, or anything else.
All of the game’s struggles to gain traction with more players are because of nothing else except the game’s bad quality.
Do you really think Forza Motorsport was ever at the same level of popularity as Gran Turismo? The “best” Forza Motorsport game (FM4, arguably) was not able to dent Gran Turismo’s popularity despite the 360 having a bigger userbase than the PS3 at the time, and despite FM4 going against one of the “worst” Gran Turismos (GT5). They were never comparable at commercial level.
Once Microsoft released a more casual friendly Forza (Horizon), and once Horizon started to gain traction, it became obvious Forza Motorsport would struggle, and this is regardless of what it was. There’s evidence online that shows FM6, a “return to form”, sold less than FM5 (the “worst” Forza Motorsport). All three Forza Motorsport games for the Xbox One have pretty bad sales numbers. Combined, they sold less than GT Sport. All while FH was selling more and more, despite being on Game Pass starting with FH4.
The other franchises on PlayStation are unable to steal players from Gran Turismo because they are not Gran Turismo. There’s no casual friendly version of Gran Turismo on PS. On Xbox, there’s Forza Horizon stealing all the casuals from Forza Motorsport. You can’t deny this, because it’s the truth. The decline of Forza Motorsport coincided with the ascension of Forza Horizon, especially after FH3. Gran Turismo has no such game to contend with on PS.
In fact, if you watched the marketing for GT7 closely, you’d realize Sony, understanding the amount of brand recognition GT has, has started to pit GT against FH, not FM. The only move Sony did against FM was the Spec II update for GT7, and this is even arguable, because a Spec II update was always in their roadmap. In official marketing, Sony has released GT7 teasers during FH’s release window in a clear move against FH. The game design of GT7 with its easy and linear Menu Books is also heavily tailored towards casual players.
The lack of quality hurts FM, but the franchise is unable to grow anymore because it stubbornly stuck to its simcade roots when Forza Horizon delivers a better casual experience and sims like ACC deliver a better hardcore experience.
That’s what I do when I’m forced to race VIR in the FOMO content, select 3rd for the start, blast straight to first in 5 seconds against unbeatable 8 then hit pause, set to afk and come back with a cuppa half a lap to go till it’s over and still in 1st place cause unbeatable 8 just will not overtake, sit back down, switch off afk and finish the last few hundred meters to the best spot on the podium and the hardest part of that race was the 10 seconds it took me to select the driving aids!
