I’ve been racing on forza for a while but have always had assists like traction control, automatic shifting and ABS, is there a big benefit to turning them off and does anyone have any good tips for not putting the car into the wall immediately afterwards.
Control!
Throttle and brake control are key to running no assist and keeping your car on track. In real life you would not drive full throttle into a sharp corner, it is the same in game… Listen to your tires… any spinning, sliding/drifting can be heard. And your forward motion takes a dive when this happens. Try to develop skills that keeps you on track and heading forward with least amount of tire sounds. Anticipate upcoming corners and brake before getting to corners, accelerate out of corners in a relaxed way, giving car gas after clearing corner on straights. Try shifting at different rpm’s. Some cars do better at control using half pedal where full horse power is not at max yet. Smooth acceleration and braking always. Control is key!
Yes and its most notable in lower class cars. You can get away with those assists in some of the higher class vehicles but it varies. In the vast majority of classes and homologation groups you’ll be seconds faster.
Learn one at a time.
Manual will make you seconds faster once you learn it. Automatic shifts at really bad times and usually bogs the engine down. Manual also allows for faster shifting and you’ll gain a few tenths for every upshifts you make. The bigger the track, the more time you’ll cut.
Manual with clutch (with clutch on controller being switched from LB to A button) allows for even faster upshifts.
TCS in most classes also bogs the engine down a lot. In the fastest cars you won’t lose any time since the cars have a ton of power and spin tires like crazy with no TCS. This basically will depend on what cars you like driving.
ABS off will save time but there’s many people using it that run really fast laps. If you can control the car well, ABS on won’t prevent you from doing well. You will however be out brakes by similar skilled players if they know ABS off. Generally the trigger starts rumbling when you are about to lock up. Takes lots of practice to get used to it.
It can take seconds of your laptimes once you get it right.
Keep the full racing line on, turn of TCS, ABS and shift manual (leave the clutch for now, as you will have your hands full at first).
Take a lower class car out (start with something that grips, but does not have loads of power) and get a feel for it.
Try to get a smooth flow of braking, cornering, throttle control.
Play around with breaking into the corner and keeping some throttle through the corner to keep the pressure on.
Takes some getting used to, especially when you have been playing with a controller, full brake, corner, full gas won´t work anymore.
But the experience and the fun you get from the game will be far greater. If you are playing controller, try sim steering as well, to get more feel from that.
For the manual shifting, is there any particular trick or technique in finding the shifting points and making it instinctive or is it just a lot of practise?
Take the car to your favorite track and see how late you can shift. In many cases shifting as late as possible is preferably and is easiest. You can ignore the red area of the tac since you can usually shift well past that. Just try not to shift too late or you’ll hear a very loud ping noise.
Get this down first and then you can start figuring out optimal shift points as described above.
Generally the cars with the most tricky shift points are V8s or any other engine with huge torque figures. There are many examples where shifting early and staying in a higher gear in the corners is better due to better corner off acceleration via torque. This violates what you will learn by shifting by ear.
Same is also true at time for supercharged motors.
For vtecs, rotary, and most turbo engines, shifting late as possible is faster since the car makes the most power in the top end of power band. These are cars that benefit the most from tuned gears so that you’re always in the upper part of power band.
The easiest shift point to use is shifting just before your car hits the rev limiter (In most cars in the game this is 7000rpm). You can find when the engine hits the rev limiter by taking the car for a couple test laps and just running out the gears.
Do a couple laps practicing your shift points and listen carefully to the tones of the engine. After a couple laps you should be able to shift at the same point pretty accurately based off the sound of the engine alone (this is called “shifting be ear”).
If you want to get really technical, look at the dyno chart of your car’s engine. This chart will have two curves, one for torque and one for horsepower. Your shift point should be at the rpm just after the peak of the horsepower curve. The point where the curve starts to decline is the “end of the power band” of that engine. And to take it a step further, you usually want your torque to be at its greatest in the 2nd half of a turn, so you can decide ratios and gearing for turns based on that if you want to tune your car “perfectly” for a track.
Here is a track tip: Run some hot laps in test mode before a race and try to remember exactly where each of your shifts occur on track. This will help in 2 main ways.
- This will help you get into a rhythm that will help you place less focus on lapping and more on racing your opponents.
- Shift points are a good gauge for whether you took a turn better or not. Quicker rpm build means better acceleration, so an earlier upshift means better acceleration out of a turn. A later upshift means worse acceleration out of a turn. Lap times are good for gauging your progress from lap to lap, but watching rpm can pinpoint which specific turns you do better from lap to lap.
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Brilliant, thanks
I’ve always been 3 seconds on ave off the fastest time on any leaderbaord in every Forza game since Forza 3 but since Forza 6 and now 7 some leaderboard times are drastically faster 10-15 seconds faster in some cases… what changed is there something I’m missing here?
I’m thinking there’s something Turn 10 added to the game that gamers can exploit now… you’ll notice on a few leaderboards the top 10 there are 8 tiems close together and top 2 are 5-6 seconds faster. I know the game just came out and there will be more within the top tier times but that is some serious discrepancy between top times.
For rain tracks, yes. There’s a glitch where you can run friction assist but the game thinks you’re not for leaderboard times.
For others, please provide an example.
The VIP event for example at Dubai… heck even Raceboy can’t get within 15 secs of #1
Thanks to people who posted replies, this was helpful for me. It is strange though, you have all the car options, but for posting good times it seems like you would be better served by limiting yourself to small number of cars and getting to know them well.
Running no assists will greatly improve your track times, it takes time though, it takes lots of practice to get good without any assists, it took me about six months before I learned how to play with completely no assists turned on, each month I would turn off a couple assists, and I would then spend the whole month learning how to play without that assist turned on, and then once I mastered playing without that specific assist turned on I would go to the next assist the next month. Now I’m playing with no assists, no braking line, no nothing, and I can tell you from my personal experience that playing without any assists greatly improved my track times, just member you’re not going to become a pro with no assists just over night, it took me around six months before I became decent with no assists as I already said earlier, back when the first ForzaRC event happened that’s what inspired me too learn how to play with no assists, and I’ve been playing with no assists now since roughly around January 2017, December 2016, and I’ve been playing without the braking line since roughly around May 2017.
I don’t believe this because I’m the exact opposite. I used to run with assists off and turned them back on and tuned for that instead. My lap times have drastically improved and I can make top 50 times on the leaderboards.
Also I use the racing line to tell me where the corners are. I could care less about where it tells me to go or when to brake. It’s even worse racing at night in a car with no jeadligjts. Sometimes the lighting on tracks are completely jacked up. I could turn if off and remember exact landmarks but every car is different. Trying to remember every single track in every single car that you tune is asinine and a waste of time IMO. I already spend dozens on top of dozens of hours tuning my cars.
Feel free to call me a noob. Get back to me when you can make top 50 times with any setting.
I have many top 50 LB times on FM6, I’ve yet to make one on FM7, on FM6 though I’m 8th in the world on VIR Patriot in C class using a 1992 Volkswagen Golf Gti, using my own tune too, and no assists, and on FM6 the last time I checked I was 50th in the world on the Nordschleife rain track in C class using a 1992 Volkswagen Golf Gti, using my own tune too, and no assists except the braking line.
I simply can’t drive using all assists turned on, it’s miserable trying to play with all assists turned on, I don’t like having my hand held by the game, it’s a much more rewarding feeling when you win a multiplayer racing using no assists, because it was you driving the car not the game holding your hand the entire time, and essentially driving the car for you.
Manual is always better than automatic
Traction control depends on the car and the track, if you have a lot of torque and hp keep TC on. If less torque than HP you can take it off.
Racing line doesn’t matter and I don’t care what anyone says. Stability is meh. It just tries to keep your car from spinning out and you shouldn’t be driving/tuning in such a manner anyway
If you want to get really good at any particular track, try running it with all assists off and no braking line crutch. Set it up in Free Play for 20 laps or more, and no AI drivatars (just you). You’ll probably mess up badly on the first few laps, but after a few more, you’ll start to instinctively figure out where to slow down for your turn. After you get that down pat, try different shift options through the turns and straights to see what nets you the best lap time. Sometimes staying in 3rd is better than downshifting to 2nd, and vice versa. Practice taking the smoothest line possible on all the corners, and minimize tires breaking loose with throttle control coming out of the corners. Every time you swing wide in a turn or spin the tires you lose 10ths, and they add up. Your best strategy is to know every turn coming up before you get to it and what gear you need to be in so you can accelerate out of it perfectly. After that try it with brake line on, or run against a faster rival ghost to further refine your lap times.