Hey,
First post on the forums, be gentle with me! So, I’m a real late-comer on the Forza bandwagon, I played a little bit of FH3 and some FH4 but longed for proper track racing. I put obscene amounts of hours into some of the older Gran Turismo games, way back before multiplayer racing was even a thing. I saw FM7 was 50% off this weekend so decided to give it a try.
I have a T150R wheel, which I’ve only ever used for ETS2, and a 360 controller. I play on PC exclusively.
I thought I’d give controller a try first, so I jumped into free play, took off all the assists and it felt horrible. Huge amounts of understeer through the slower corners and the back of the car was constantly coming around through the quicker flowing corners.
Ok, now I’m not a complete noobie, I understand weight transfer and braking points and all that, so it must be controller, right? Plug in the wheel, and… yeah exactly the same. Trail braking just results in massive oversteer and on tighter corners I just can’t hit a damn apex for the life of me. I’m just bad, right. Then I thought, oh let’s switch it out to cockpit view, not gonna be able to see a thing but give it a try. And then it clicked. Suddenly I was picking my braking points up, feeling the weight transfer through the wheel match what was happening on-screen and beginning to hit the apex of corners well. I spent a few hours just lapping Brands Hatch Indy in the MX-5 cup car and started to feel like it was coming together, my lap times were coming down and I was getting something resembling a decent consistency lap after lap. Being able to modulate the throttle and brakes into and out of corners and shaving off tenths of a second had me hooked.
So, after all that, I decided to do the first hot hatch single player event. I made a few mistakes along the way but with the AI on normal I lapped half the field and at the end of the race something came up on the screen saying my lap time was in the top 1000 players. Now I appreciate that doesn’t make me a good or quick driver by any means, I’m a whole 7 seconds off the number 1 placed driver, and I don’t know whether I should be proud of it or not given I’ve not touched a FM game ever, but anyway that all got me to thinking about multiplayer.
I searched up a few of the bigger FM7 youtubers and quickly realised they all exclusively play MP in chase cam, on controllers. Chase cam obviously gives much better situational awareness than the interior cameras, especially when trying to overtake or defend into a corner. And it seems that all the very quick and good drivers all use controller, and not wheels.
I’m really in a dilemma about this, I’d love to get into the multiplayer but feel like I’d be at a considerable disadvantage by only being able to be even remotely competitive in cockpit cam. Also the cars seem to be a heck of a lot more twitchy using a wheel compared to controller, I find with the wheel oversteer induced by trail braking into faster corners is killing me while people using controllers just have a much more planted car while doing the same thing. I know tunes are a thing, but this is happening even with things like an Aventador or a track toy like the Caterham.
So, what do?
Do I just suck it up and race in multiplayer using 1st person view and the wheel, and potentially be a danger to everyone around me because I can’t see around me nearly as well as everyone else can, plus there’s the apparent twitchyness of the cars with a wheel meaning I’m having to compromise where I’d ideally like to brake and turn in. Or do I concede that FM7 is designed to be used with a controller and in 3rd person view, and put the god-knows how many hours into starting training my brain and muscle memory to be able to pick a braking point and being able to even get close to an apex with a controller?
TL;DR - FM7 noob can’t drive with a controller and chase cam, feels like she’ll only be competitive in MP if she ditches the wheel and cockpit view. Confusion happens.
Opinions/advices are welcome. 