How important is lap time information in race?

Forza Motorsport Legacy Motorsport FM7 Discussion
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After watching the following game play video

I noticed that yet again the best lap time for the current race is missing and only appears briefly after passing the start/finish line. Forza 4 had your current best lap and you could easily see how much u was up or down on the current best lap for that race.

So how important is this information to everyone? It seems like a fairly simple feature that keps getting over looked but why?

I can’t answer the second question but personally I find this information very important. I’d go as far to say I not only need to see my best lap for that race but I’d like to see my best lap on the lb as well with splits for both times

This isn’t ment to be a request thread, I’d just like to start a discussion that deals directly with the in race UI in order to gather everyone’s views in 1 place. I find it difficult to discuss things in the request thread and its going to get real busy in there

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I missed it from FM4 and it should be there all the time - or at least give us the option in the settings, then everyone is happy. Could be implemented in five minutes if they want.

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For comparison, Gran Turismo Sport:

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I like that I can see the gap ahead/behind at all times, and my most recent laps. The instrument panel is a bit excessive but all of the race information is pretty solid.

Visually I like the HUD shown in Forza Motorsport 7 so far; it just needs some extra information. That being said, I wouldn’t be surprised if what we saw was just a limited mockup for a demo with certain UI elements removed. I would expect at minimum to see what we had in Forza Motorsport 6.

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I’d pretty much given up on Gran Turismo but one screenshot has me interested again.

I’m all for a stats overload (configurable of course). My times are far from the best but just squeezing small improvements lap after lap keep me going. Given that drivatars still prefer to crash than respect your space or yield I expect I’ll mostly be sticking to playing for the hot laps rather than the racing again so stats are fairly critical.

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I don’t race with any HUD at all as I find it quite distracting and it motivates me not knowing my times as i keep thing Damn I need to push harder! So this to me is a little excessive. Saying that in rivals i do like to know my best lap time so I can see where I’m looking time in what sectors. Forza should imo have a small board where it shows:

  1. Best lap and sectors
  2. Last lap and sectors
  3. Current lap and sectors

The radar thing on GT is a little off putting to me but tbh so are proximity arrows in Forza so I’m not really fussed about it being outdated there. I think there should he an option to have a rear view mirror in all views for those what wish to run it as well and i quite like the distant ahead feature in Forza but I would like it to be adjustable between feet, meters and split time.

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Wow I love the radar makes our proximity arrows look outdated

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Wow that GT Sport HUD looks really nice. Much better placement of all the UI pieces than Forza.

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great post! (dont have the time to write why other than i agree with you GTR TYSKIE)

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information overload except for the rear view. would be nice to have a rear view in near and far chase modes…

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I don’t know about the GT Sport hud. It has way too much going on. I think I much prefer the proximity arrows. But on topic, during a race viewing lap times is not important at all to me. I actually have my lap timer in Forza 6 set to conditional where it goes away except at the end of each sector. The least hud elements the better to me but some things are just needed like the distance meter and the tach when driving a car like the Ford GTLM which doesn’t seem to have one.

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Best lap, current lap, last lap and sector times are all essential in racing. Having just done a 100% race in F1 2016, looking at sector times and lap times was really important to my race as it was a wet-dry-wet-dry-moist race. I was due to make an extra stop that would have dropped me from 2nd to the bottom half of the top 10, instead I won making one less stop by working out that losing 2 seconds a lap by staying on inters was better than stopping for wets and the inters again in 5-10 minutes.

Sector times are really useful for working out where you are losing time/where your car and car setup is working.

I personally wish the distance ahead/behind would be done away with as I find it useless and stupid. In real motor racing the gaps are measured in time not distance, because with time, you can work out if you will catch the person ahead in the remaining laps or not. Plus distance fluctuates and time doesn’t when it comes to corners and straights. Imagine if they did that with lap time and how confusing it would be, lap 1-1:30.215, lap 2-1:30.215 - 12 feet, lap 3-1:30.215 + 20 yards, I wouldn’t work in that sense and it doesn’t work for gaps between competitors.

Don’t like the angled in look of the HUD to be honest, it almost felt like I was straining my eyes.

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timing data is very important to me. If they would give us the option of having it up all the time I’d be quite happy.

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Like others have said, I’d love to see them go back to how the timing and scoring was shown, before. I guess I really need to go back and play a short stint with FM1, go replace my copy of FM2 and play a stint of it, then FM3 and FM4, but I think in all of them, the current lap time, last lap time, best lap time, and overall (full race) time were all shown, full-time. That seems correct to me, and is what I’d want to see.

It is important to be able to see these times at any moment, to me, so that I’m not limited to just a few seconds after passing the start/finish to look and see how my current/last lap time compares to my best. If there is a turn immediately after the timing line, it can be too risky to bother checking the time during that window of opportunity, leaving the driver unable to check their times because they’re no longer shown…

Following that, I’d like to see both sector time (no relation to the car ahead/behind me, just my position on track), as well as gap to the car ahead/behind. THESE are the times that can come and go as needed, and be color-coded red/green or marked with +/-… If I’m not mistaken, these times were shown in the previous games, as well. They were vastly important to me, in order to judge whether I can ease up a little or need to push myself harder, or if I have created a sufficient gap to pit without losing position. Incredibly important during a long race. While slightly less important in a shorter sprint, being able to get a feel for how you’re doing compared to the next guy is still very important, at least to me…

Like someone else said, it would also be nice to have simulated mirrors (center rear view, possibly even left and right side views) in the exterior views. As has also been mentioned, ALL HUD elements should be optional. If you want to run with no hud, from cockpit cam, and just have no clue what sort of times you’re running, cool. But for those of us who understand that the HUD can be seen as being simulated crew radio traffic (“so and so is some seconds behind you” → +gap, “that was a good time in that sector” → green sector time, “you need to push harder” → -gap/red sector time/slow lap), it would be nice to have access to as much timing data as we have had before in other Forza titles.

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Since Forza notoriously lacks a good career mode, most fun from grinding it out comes from watching your times get better. So yeah, it would be a hell of an improvement to actually have WAY, WAY, more info about my laps and lap times.

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I hope this isn’t so. I love the lap time data and am clueless why it is not a HUD option already.

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Some really great responses here guys. I think we only have 1 person who isn’t that bothered but so long as they can turn it on or off I don’t think it will cause any issue ti those that want less information.

I’m still confused as to why this has been left out since fm4. Do we think it’s just been over looked? Or am I missing something here. What benefits are there from leaving this feature out?

Answers on a postcard to

Bring back the best lap time
Po box why leave it out
Le Mans
Racng line on
:slight_smile:

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I really really really really like this HUD.

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Sure, it’s a little busy, but the placement of all the elements is superb. I HATE the way Forza puts the speedo/tach all the way in the bottom right corner. I have to take my eyes off the road every single time I check my gear or speed. The placement here is dead center, just below the horizon, which is exactly where it would be on a real car. I’ll admit the radar is a bit cheesy looking, but i much prefer that to the annoying arrows buzzing around the edges of my screen like a bunch of fruit flies.

The map is also in a great spot, right above the horizon on the right side. This is where my eyes are naturally gonna go most of the time, and it is so much easier to see rather than jamming it down in the bottom left corner.

Speaking of which, what do we notice about the bottom left corner? IT’S EMPTY. Because most people naturally do not draw their eyes towards the bottom left corner. Everything in this HUD is set so that all relevant information is near the two things you’ll be looking at the most: the horizon and the rear view mirror.

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One of the things Project CARS got right was allowing you to place the individual HUD elements wherever you want. Forza could adopt that, and then everyone would be happy.

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And that could be why they won’t do it. The one thing they have shown with that lack of customisation is a lack of desire to make everyone happy. It would be amazing!

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I don’t think that’s fair. They’ve done at least a couple things for FM7 to make us happy that were community requested. I specifically asked for these. 1) My understanding is that career mode will now have championships with cumulative points. 2) My understanding is we can now choose longer or shorter races in career mode. These were both specifically requested. I specifically asked for exactly this. So, they haven’t done everything but at least they have done some of what has been requested.