Over the course of 10 years, the Forza Motorsport franchise has seen quite a change in the way that the user interface is designed, particularly in terms of the color palette used. Of course, we all spend a fair amount of time in the menus throughout Forza gameplay and how everything looks is somewhat significant in enhancing our user experience. The original Forza Motorsport and the two subsequent iterations featured whiter and brighter tones for the UI. It wasn’t until Forza Motorsport 4 that everything (including the ForzaMotorsport.net website) transitioned to the darker theme. Additionally, the move to the Xbox One brought on the tile format.
Seeing as the logo for Forza Motorsport 6 alludes to the idea that the brand colors are, again, predominantly black and white, are there any changes that you expect to see to the design or layout?
I, for one, am hoping that the menus are arranged in such a way that all of the gamer’s content is available in one location, making it easy to access anything we’ve created within the game. Apart from that, I’m good with the tile layout, although some appealing visuals somehow integrated like what EA did for Madden 2015 would be nice.
I don’t mind the tile layout either. I hope the UI is more responsive in FM6 than in FM5 and H2 though. It’s reactions feel slightly delayed and it seems to freeze fairly often, whereas FM3 and FM4 it felt instant and fluid.
Good points, B FIFE22. Another part that I forgot to mention: could Forza Motorsport 6 finally be the title that Turn 10 goes away from the infinitely long, linear list of cars and, instead, provides a way to index or organize them? Personally, the approach the series has used as it relates to displaying “My Cars” and “Buy Cars” has been particularly cumbersome.
You mean like in FM4 where you could group cars based on whatever criteria you desired? Or are you referring to the annoyance of having to scroll over every single brand and car just to get to the VWs in the buy car menus?
For me it got to the point where I would only buy a car if I needed it badly because I got sick of the endless scrolling and I stopped building cars for different affinities because it became too cumbersome to look pre-race for the car I wanted to race.
I hope everything you need to do is on one page and then sub menu from there. I hate the way you need to go to another screen to buy cars. I also hope they keep in mind that not every one is a fan of or owns a kinect camera with a built in mic. I also hope that all users content is in one central location. To this day I have no idea how many tunes I have and for what cars.
Adding to this they should make it like FH1 where you can see the designs of the car you’re currently in with the press of a button. With FH2 the newest is first, you have to go through all the designs of the cars to find a previous one. Imo that was a bad design choice.
if they aren’t going to put telemetry back in replays i hope they find a way to read the info you need without blowing the corner. currently i have consistency or telemetry, i need consistency and telemetry. if i look at the telemetry i blow the corner, and lets face it the corners are what telemetry is needed most for.
There should be a way of watching telemetry in your own replay, but nobody else’s.
Currently the best way I’ve figured is to DVR a lap with the telemetry up, and watch it back after. It just isn’t to drive the cars hard in the corners whilst reading telemetry at the same time.
I really dislike the approach of “remove telemetry for the benefit of the few, but to the detriment of the many.”
As discussed in another thread, make it optional, like tuning settings were in FM2. Absolutely no problem with it defaulting to OFF. Heck, I’m even fine with NO telemetry downloaded when watching replays from the Top-500. For that matter, I wouldn’t even care if you couldn’t watch replays from the Top-500 to begin with!
I know it is a popular sentiment among a certain group on this forum, but the whole attitude of “the only reason people could possibly want to see telemetry in replays is so they can cheat their way up the LBs - so remove the option” bugs me to no end.
Funny part is you can still see the build. Before the only thing you could really take away from viewing a replay was shift points. Don’t think FM5 replay policy has changed the lb’s any. Hope those emo wienies are happy the 5 of them who would dash board there repays in a hopes that they wouldn’t get beat.
I suppose tiles will stay as it’s the way of Windows 8 and above. Best way I can describe the FM5 layout is sloppy. Having to back out of menus to access a much used area such as car choice or tuning could have been easily avoided. All it needed was a few more shortcuts and an orderly system for viewing cars. I don’t downlod tunes or paints but my boy does and this is also an area of the interface that needs work. It’s a pity because it’s probably 80% OK but the missing 20% has such a big impact. Interesting question on colour. I actually find the current scheme a bit hollow and drab. Not sure what I’d replace it with but it needs a little more pep. It should reflect the excitement of a race weekend somehow.
IMHO when FM5 launched there had been little time to develop the functionality of the ingame menus. At least i hope thats the excuse. but we’ve been here so many times before its better to look forward and aspire!
Given the likely scale of the new game there must be a way to curate/customise your own menus. You are likely to have hundreds of cars in your garage, many tunes and liveries. Depending on your priorites you might want to re-order your access. It surely cant be that hard as its only a filing system.
In my perfect FM6 world i would like each car to have a cover page which can be clicked on to open like a glossy magazine. Inside the screen is split into two pages. One half shows stats, tuning and paint information. The other half shows your history in the car ie. No of races, winnings, possibly number sold if the auction house returns. It may be that each of these pages will lead to a more detailed section. Anyway thats how id like my game to be.
I would also like to be able to set up the order in which my garage cars appear (effectively create a favourites list). This would be very helpful for online or championship racing.
Is there any word on if we will be able to go back to the old way of choosing the car make we want either for purchase or for our owned cars. It would be nice to be able to change a few more things when tuning a car such as boost pressure, please don’t beet me lol.
I too am fine with the tile setup but customizing cars and selecting different menu items should be fluid and fast like it was in FM4. Forza 5 and FH2 menus are so slow and constantly hang up, it’s a serious nuisance to customize cars.
I am pretty happy with all iterations of UI, I think they do a decent, not perfect, but decent job. The last version (or current 5) however, maybe the front page was getting clunky with too much information… but w/e.
I do agree about showing more tuning info per car and hopefully optimize the transitions to be faster, and less slidey/fadey.
If that means you do away with animation and everything just snaps, I am fine with that.
One thing I think could use better placement is where you can access the “Difficulty” options, I always found this very hard in F5, I think you had to damn near start an actual race, and be on the grid to access them? say for instance Im playing online and we are racing hyper nutter cars, I may want to switch on Traction control, but thats on for everything offline, so when i go to tune and test a car offline, the TC is on, and there is no where easily accessible to switch it off? other than the above going to career and starting a race, that takes a heap of time and effort for a simple on\off option