Meet the Most Accessible Forza Motorsport Ever

Sept. 22 update: Accessibility Support FAQ at Forza Support:

Blind Driving Assists

YouTube - [Audio Description] Forza Motorsport - Blind Driving Assists

Accessibility consultant Brandon Cole demos and discusses how he utilizes the supplemental audio cues to navigate the tracks of Forza Motorsport, and Neha Chintala (Gameplay & Accessibility Producer) and Todd Helsley (Senior Sound Supervisor) discuss how Turn 10 Studios brought this all to life.

From Blind Driving Assists to One Touch Driving, Meet The Most Accessible Forza Motorsport Ever

by Neha Chintala, Gameplay & Accessibility Producer, Turn 10 Studios
Apr 27, 2023 @ 9:00am

All of us at Turn 10 Studios can’t wait for players to experience the generational leap in fidelity, immersion and realism when Forza Motorsport launches this year. Just as the team has been busy building the most technically advanced and authentic racing game we’ve ever made, we’re proud to have achieved another goal: Forza Motorsport is our most accessible game ever.

While there are several accessibility features to look forward to, and each one is important, on behalf of the team at Turn 10 I’m excited to share in-detail about a few of our new and innovative features that will enable more people to play.

Blind Driving Assists

Blind Driving Assists (BDA) is a feature set that was built for players who are Blind or have Low Vision. After years of research and feedback, we have spent the last two years building the feature with direct feedback from Accessibility Consultant and Blind gamer, Brandon Cole and others from the Gaming & Disability community. Throughout our development, Brandon and other Blind and Low Vision players have been providing invaluable real-time feedback to help us create and refine the various Blind Driving Assists.

Blind Driving Assists work by providing a set of supplemental audio cues designed to help Low/No Vision players navigate the tracks of Forza Motorsport. The feature set was driven by the Audio team at Turn 10 and built in close partnership with our accessibility team throughout development. Players can listen to detailed descriptions, as well as a preview of each audio cue they will encounter on-track from within the accessibility menu. Once the player has familiarized themselves with the different audible information, what they represent, and how they all interact with each other, they can head to the track to try out the feature.

Blind Driving Assists also provides players with audible information about their position and orientation on track, approach and progress through turns, as well as information about the car, such as how much deceleration is needed, when to shift (if playing with manual transmission) and more.

It was important to the entire team that Blind Driving Assists operate as a set of features, rather than a mode. We wanted Blind and Low Vision players to experience Forza Motorsport as it was intended, by providing the audible information that would allow them to make their own driving decisions. And because of this, Brandon will be the first to say to the Blind and Low Vision community that this feature is not ‘pick-up-and-play!’ There’s a learning curve while you discover how to drive by relying on the audio cues. Once players get used to it, we think it will be a game-changer. We’ll share more for the community closer to our launch.

One Touch Driving

Another innovation in Forza Motorsport is the ability to race with whatever amount and combination of inputs you need. To develop this feature, the team worked with Xbox User Research at different stages during development to bring in players with various mobility and stamina disabilities. These features are built for players who may have trouble pressing multiple buttons simultaneously, gripping a controller, or maintaining button pressure, and they allow deeper levels of car control customization than ever. From the basics like automatic shifting, through enhanced steering and braking assists, to the all-new throttle and pit entry assists, you can create the experience that’s right for you, and play your own way.

Screen Narration

Something we are excited to offer to our players is a screen narration solution that can be adjusted to suit an individual’s preferences and informational needs to help them navigate and play the game. Making up the base of the system, we have volume, pitch, and speed controls, as well as the ability to select your narrator voice.

In the spirit of offering true customization, there are some brand new settings that provide control over screen narrator and its verbosity, such as reading list positions, navigational keywords, button hints, and more. This can help eliminate information overload and provide the ability to adjust as needed as players get more familiar with the game.

The Most Accessible Forza Motorspor t Ever

The accessibility features in Forza Motorsport don’t stop there. Here’s a list of some of the many great accessibility features coming to Forza Motorsport.

Feature Descriptions

  • Blind Driving Assists: Blind and Low Vision players can use informational audio content during gameplay that will help them navigate tracks, improve their lap times, and complete races. Players will be able to enable each set of cues individually as well as adjust their pitch and volume to best suit their needs.

  • One Touch Driving: Players have the option to choose their own combination of enabling braking, steering, and throttle assists to reduce the number of simultaneous inputs required. These driving assists will allow users to customize their driving experience and play with as few or as many assists as they wish.

  • Screen Narrator: Players can enable narrator to receive information conveyed through the UI and to help navigate menus. In addition, there will be options for players to customize the narration system, offering new flexibility to choose what information is conveyed.

  • Dynamic Audio Description: Players will have in-game cinematics with custom audio descriptions that change based on time of day and weather conditions.

  • Text-to-Speech/Speech-to-Text: Players can utilize these options to participate in multiplayer voice chat to send synthesized voice to other players using text-to-speech or view incoming communication from other players in text form, utilizing speech-to-text.

  • UI Colorblindness Modes: Players with tritanopia, deuteranopia, or protanopia can change certain colors in the UI theme so that UI information and focus states can be easily distinguished, as desired.

  • World Colorblindness Filters: Players with tritanopia, deuteranopia, or protanopia can add a filter to the rendering of 3D objects like tracks, cars, drivers, in-game cinematics, etc. to make color information distinguishable, as desired.

  • Controller Remapping: Gameplay controls can be remapped through the settings, offering additional flexibility to a players’ desired control scheme.

  • Subtitles: Players can enable subtitles, as well as adjust subtitle font size and subtitle background opacity.

  • Audio Customization Settings: Players are able to independently customize the volume of various groups of sounds to create their preferred audio experience.

  • Opponent Difficulty: Players can customize opponent driving levels when racing with AI.

  • Text Scaling: Players can adjust their menu text to various scaling options. In-game HUD will also have some re-sizing support.

  • Contrast: Players can raise the contrast for UI and HUD elements from the default to varying additional tiers, each providing higher contrast ratios to improve readability.

  • Moving Backgrounds: Players can disable moving backgrounds, making it easier to read or navigate menus.

Turn 10’s commitment to accessibility is ongoing. We’re always listening to players and striving to create features for more players to play the games they love. We’re incredibly proud of the work being done to empower more players than ever before to experience Forza Motorsport.

Forza Motorsport is coming this year to Xbox Game Pass, Xbox Series X|S consoles, Windows PC and Steam, and Cloud Gaming (Beta). Stay tuned for more!

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What did you think about this video and feature?

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3 Likes

Great video.
I just have a question, are all of these gameplay footages are from upcoming Forza Motorsport?
Because I noticed 3 different huds.

5 Likes

I love it when game developers have their priorities straight.

3 Likes

Finally something I can give T10 credit for; making the game more accessible is a great thing and it must’ve been difficult to create this system.

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Im honestly a bit split by this. In one area i am ecstatic to see the game being more accessible to more people but in the same respect, honestly, how many blind gamers are out there? Like spending dozens if not hundreds of hours programming this in to increase your player base by such a small percentage. I mean the number of people that will pick up this game because of this feature can probably be measured in the hundreds, which on a game that ships millions of copies seems a bit counterintuitive.

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The more I consider it, the more this seems like an elaborate “tell me X without telling me X” way of saying “Do not expect this game to move the needle in any appreciable fashion.”

It really looks like they just reskinned a previous entry. The question now is which one.

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Each and every motorsport game has brought something new and innovative into the series thus far:
Hopefully my memory is at least somewhat accurate here.

  1. First racing game i can think of that introduced a suggested driving line, as well as one of the best damage models of any game at the time
  2. Ill be honest, im not sure what if any innovative features were added into this one. Just an all around upgrade from 1
  3. First racing game i can think of that introduced a rewind feature
  4. Autovista. As well as the kinect which although was an abandoned feature was interesting if at least for the eye tracking for more realistic cornering
  5. Haptic feedback
  6. First to introduce weather into the series if i recall correctly
  7. First to have time progression if i remember correctly

Although better accessibility seems like a bit of a lackluster innovation (for most players) at least they have made some sort of innovation to the series

Didn’t 2 introduce a more advanced physics model? I remember everyone struggling with the throttle control concept as opposed to FM1. On most cars you could just mash the throttle out of a corner in 1, in 2 that wasn’t the case.

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It is great to see more accessibility features added to the game. The more people can play the better. On the other hand, it’s still doubtful whether the game will be a step forward in any other respect. When a great game is being made more accessible, it’s awesome. But if it’s just the same game as before with a few bells and whistles that look good in marketing articles, that’s ultimately not so great.

Accessibility is always welcome but probably affects fewer people than how many the Forza franchise has already lost due to losing its way. I wish the core experience was reinvigorated first, instead of giving the old one a new coat of paint.

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Perhaps some people involved in the development of this feature had good intentions, but it mostly just seems like an attempt at gaining brownie points, which has apparently worked, since a lot of people have had, for the lack of a better phrase, mushy responses.

I may not be a developer, but even I can tell that this was a lot of work that could have been spent elsewhere, especially for such a niche audience I didn’t know existed until today.

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I sort of didn’t want to bring it up out of respect for the effort, but this did occur to me: if I was Turn 10 PR already taking a lot of heat for the way promotion of this game’s gone, a video like this would be a nice middle finger to critics. “You want us to talk about the game? OK, we’re talking about it. Criticize this.”

I guess we’ll see how it works out, because once you look past the noble fluff, there’s still 30 seconds of gameplay that doesn’t look all that great for an XBox Series X premier title. And, as I said elsewhere, what kind of side effects are these assists going to have on the physics model? Because you can have simulation or you can have accessibility, but you can’t do both.

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Just don’t be surprised if this is brought up again in a negative light if Motorsport 8 not only fails to meet expectations, but underdelivers on frequently-requested features that people have been asking for since the Xbox 360 era.

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While this is applaudable, I hope that T10 is also focused on making the gameplay, progression, and general experience fun and appealing. It would be a shame for them to allow more people to play a game that’s bad in the first place, accessible or not. If it is good, then it’s great that more people can enjoy the experience.

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They showed 4 different things but that’s just modes

  1. HUD less
  2. Regular HUD in full mode
  3. Telemetry view (same old)
  4. Just Speedometer

What I noticed -

  1. HUD positions of elements probably can’t change as that was not demonstrated.
  2. The feature list above says HUD can be scaled but it was not demonstrated in the video
  3. We probably may not be getting telemetry logging for later reference or 3rd party support as the telemetry HUD is exactly as before.
  4. There’s no radar or spotter which would be part of accessibility promotions if they had it I guess.
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There’s a good chance that what I’m going to say may sound a little uncouth, but applaudable as this new “feature” – I guess that’s what it is – seems to be, if you’re going to do something like this doesn’t it make more sense to talk about it after you’ve started discussing aspects of the game that the lion’s share of players are looking for? New cars and car models? New career progression? New I’m-not-going-to-rehash-it-here-because-it’s-all-been-said-a-million-times ?

Doing it this way, there was no chance it wasn’t going to illicit the response it’s getting both here and elsewhere, that of the “come on, guys; show us something we all want and don’t waste resources” variety. They’re shooting themselves in the foot because the way they’ve done it takes the sheen off of the announcement.

Imagine if they’d announced this along with some new gameplay info: “In addition to this great new content players have been asking for and we’re thrilled to offer, we are showing our commitment to players of all abilities by introducing this great new accessibility feature.” or something to that effect. Then, what you’ll have is nothing but nothing but happy responses because so many bases have been covered. Instead, they half-baked it, like they’ve been half baking every announcement up to this point.

It just once again smacks of T10 saying but not saying that they just aren’t going to be able to – or haven’t been able to – deliver the features that so many of us want. It could be seen as yet another distraction away from that fact. Which, of course, is appealing to the marketers, if not the core player base.

To this point, they have not been talking about a game concerning lowercase “m” motorsport; they’ve been talking about a tech platform and a marketing buzzword generator – “accessibility”; “ray tracing”; “built from the ground up” – that would make ChatGPT blush.

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Thank you for saying this better than I or anyone else likely has to this point.

Have you ever known another game to have two 5 minute+ “gameplay” presentations yet still know essentially nothing about the game? like you say just marketing jargon 5 years into development

This is a general issue with Xbox as a whole. Yes, this new feature is awesome. Including more players is awesome. What’s not awesome, is that these pushes for accessibility are not paired with actual great games. The Xbox leadership likes to play the good guys, celebrating everything-months, promoting accessibility, but at the same time fail to deliver great games, on which the success of a platform should be based on. It’s like Xbox is becoming less of a place for fun gameplay and more of a moral beacon for the industry.

The leadership’s mentality is now apparent at development studios as well, they seemingly put more effort into these (otherwise awesome) features than the core experience. I say seemingly because the PR of Forza has been inadequate so far. Marketing buzzwords and b-roll footage but no real gameplay. The only real gameplay we’ve seen was done by a blind man playing a build that looked like FM7 in the best case.

Maybe Turn 10 and Microsoft haven’t noticed but they still have core fans, and audiences are looking for the next big thing on Xbox. Don’t be surprised if they’re looking for an actual game behind all this inclusivity marketing.

Back when other assists were introduced in Forza (driving line, one button driving), they weren’t pushed so heavily. The focus was on delivering a great game, and in the meantime it was mentioned that yeah, our game also does this. And it was awesome. But right now the focus is reversed, we haven’t been shown the actual game but we know about new assists and marketing lines.

Inclusivity is great when it’s based around great game experiences. But at Xbox, we mostly see the conversation about diversity and inclusivity without the delivery of actually great experiences. This is not a Forza problem, this is a general problem with the direction of Xbox.

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