I remember seeing an interview with Dan Greenwalt prior to release where he said there was a new suspension tuning system coming to FM6. I was really looking forward to this hoping that the tyre temperature telemetry would be more like FM4 than FM5. There doesn’t seem to be any different telemetry on FM6 to FM5 and I can’t see what this new tuning system is.
I can only tell that the effects of tuning tyres and suspension are not the same as they were on FM5 (which was amazing) and the physics seem to be a bit squiffy. Tyre temperature seems to be the same across all tyres compounds and finding the perfect temperature and pressure is near impossible. The fun has definitely gone out of test driving your car to get the optimal tyre and suspension set up. Surely this was supposed to be an improvement, not a massive step backwards? Or is this just another glitch?
I should also mention drag racing here:
You can’t tune the tyre pressures and suspension properly in Test Drive mode if as soon as the track loads the stopwatch starts and your engine revs are at 0rpm. Yes, you can use the clutch but then the stopwatch has already started. Test Driving on drag strips needs a 3-2-1-go start and info on your run at the end. This just seems like lazy programming. It was missing from FM5 but wasn’t such a problem as you could still set up single player races to test your launch. In other parts of the game, like career mode, they have actually added the tuning tab at the top of the pre-race menu. This would be fantastic for drag tuning but there are no single player drag races.
I hope some of these issues will be addressed by Tuesday’s patch but I must say I am as confident about that as I was at the start of the England v Australia rugby match last night.
Prove me wrong T10!