I don’t think it’s just a question of ability / skill. I can drive vast majority of cars with sim steering and set some decent laptimes, but I always feel I’m tip-toe-ing round corners, and the whole point of the game becomes ‘how not to let the back step out’. With normal steering it just feels better, feels like I’m in control and pushing the car to the limit. And I don’t see e.g. GT drivers fight the steering wheel anywhere near as much as I do when on sim setting.
Bottom line: I prefer normal, therefore it’s better (for me).
I find sim steering to be not very good in Forza. It was better in 4 before the patch but after wards there has always been an issue where the countersteer seemed to be at a different ratio or something like that causing a loss of control when the need for countersteer is present. In 4 after the patch it was even recommended that Fanatec users use normal steering and after trying both I was/am in full agreement. It seemed that sim steering was only working properly when set at 270 which of course is not good to use. It may have been better at 900 but at the settings I used it was not good at all. FM6 seems the same as it was after the patch in 4 so back to normal. Normal feels a bit to easy to control a countersteer and sim a bit to hard. Somewhere in between would be the most realistic but of the two normal is the better one.
I’ve always used simulation steering and recently changed to normal. It’s much, much easier, as when you do slide you don’t over correct and end up backwards.
Wasn’t sim steering introduced in 4? I forget now. I remember I used it as soon as I saw it and never looked back. I’ve never had a problem with sim steering until I started using a wheel.
I am pretty sure that it was introduced in 4. I was using a Fanatec Turbo S wheel from the beginning in FM4 and using sim steering. A few of us had been doing a bit of drifting early on to get a good feel for it and were doing pretty well at it until the patch came out then all of a sudden the cars were much harder to control was you tried to counter steer. Doing some experimenting I found that if I set the wheel to 270 everything was fine but if I went to 480 or 640 or anywhere in that area it was just really bad. It seemed like everything was fine until you began to counter steer and then it was like the counter steer was working at a different ratio than what you were using resulting in violent snap backs, massive fish tailing and quite often total loss of control.
This is precisely what I experience in FM6 with a G920.
Sim steering means counter steering feels completely wrong above 270 DOR and it feels wrong somewhere after you pass center and you can’t predict what angle is going to cause the snap back. You just can’t feel when the wheels are aligned with the slide.
With normal steering I can feel a lot more when the front wheels are pointing where I need them to be and also set the DOR almost anywhere I like.
Interesting. First few days of the game I played sim setting and 540 and 720 DOR with that wheel, and don’t remember having any issues. I won’t be back home till next week, but I’ll do a like for like comparison when I’m back.
EDIT: Actually, it was only 720 DOR, now that I think of it (540 feels almost like controller with that wheel)
So, I did my hotly anticipated like-for-like comparison of normal vs simulation steering with 900 DOR on G920. To be honest, after doing it I’m sort of split 50:50 in terms of which one I prefer, as it seems that each setting has some upsides and downsides, with maybe slight edge towards normal.
Very broadly, driving on simulation feels a lot like driving a car with much lighter rear end, in comparison to normal. The car oversteers much more happily throughout, from corner entry to exit. So as long as you can control the car, turning is ‘easier’ in simulation. Normal feels much more understeer, with the rear end quite heavily planted.
In this respect I prefer simulation: I like how the back end of the car moves around under braking, it also feels more slippery on the curbs. On the other hand, I could oversteer a low powered FWD car while accelerating heavily out of a corner. I was struggling to achieve that on normal, which is what I would expect. Also on normal it’s easier to push the car harder, going deep into the corner at the apex and wide on the exit.
Also, in simulation the weight shift seems to be more dynamic. It’s very easy to lose the rear end on corner exit, countersteer, and then spend entire straight going left, right, left … trying to bring the car back. It felt very, very unrealistic, I’ve never seen anyone do anything like that, ever (not on purpose I mean).
Finally, it seems simulation is a slightly faster, I think because cornering is ‘easier’, as I explained above.
I think sim steering is fine with a pad until you want to drift so it hugely depends how you play the game really.
4 and 5 I used sim but I’ve stuck with normal so far on 6. 4 always seemed better with sim steering but not there doesn’t seem much difference until you counter steer slides.
If most of us agree that sim=wheel and normal=controller, Turn 10 should stop giving additional XP for using sim steering. Yes, it does make the game more difficult, but in an unnatural way.
Sim steering with controller and no assists. Normal steering feels limited to me. It’s much more challenging and fun for me. Counter steering is not easy to handle but with practice is no problem. And even real race driver spins from time to time. It’s so much more fun to drive the cars on the limit than with normal steering. You have more control but must be gentle with the steering. Throttle off issue can be solved if you try not “falling” into corners. Cars with that issue I always try be on the throttle in the corners so you can work against oversteer. Better go a bit slower into corners and than soon on the throttle. Sim steering give me even here more feeling and control for the cars.
@mtcerio I don’t believe most of us agree with that conclusion, in fact it’s the other way around for me. Though for me the experience or credit bonus for sim steering is not the point anyway, For me it’s really about having the right feeling with the wheel.
Last night I had a great time playing with a few cars because I had a good feeling for when I stepped past the limit of grip and I could tell how much I had stepped over and was able to catch and correct the ones that were catchable. Same conditions with sim steering on is like a roll of the dice as there is no feel.
@niowluka I find that lower DOR means I have to also lower FFB strength. 540 is about the limit I can tolerate with 100 FFB.
Thanks, but for me 540 just doesn’t feel like driving, such minimal inputs it requires. Actually, couple of days ago I maxed out 900 DOR and it’s perfect. Haven’t tried P and X classes yet, but works great up to R.
This would be the case if t10 modeled the correct steering angle for the cars, but they don’t.race cars don’t have a lot of steering angle but on forza they seem to have as much as a street car which is unrealistic, which means using the dor similar to RL will give you super sensitive inputs
I think you kind of missed the point, if you try to set your DOR lower in forza you are getting an unrealistic and IMO an undesirable sensitivity in the steering, but whatever floats your goat, everyone is different
Steering angle= angle the wheels turn relative to the car. Race cars usually have around 20 degrees (this is just a rough figure, it can vary), street cars can have as much as 40 degrees.
I swear every car in the game has the same amount of steering lock angle, I saw a video today of someone drifting an open wheel race car on forza 6 and was easily hitting angles of 45 degrees, compleatly unrealistic.
Yes I do know that, but the game setting doesn’t work like that.
The game DOR affects sensitivity: lower DOR means high sensitivity: small inputs on the wheel result in big change in the game. In that respect 540 is less realistic than 900, even in racing car.
I compared onboard videos of GT cars with the game, and even at 900 I still turn the wheel less than real life.