It would be nice to have more accurate to reality tuning, but this is a video game and just like every other racing video game simulators included, things arent particularly accurate. Every game has meta tunes, because tuning is just another system to be gamed.
Thats not to say its not worth tuning your own car. Everyone is different and has certain preferences, but it would be wise to have a meta base and tweak preferences from there to be more competitive.
I don’t know what any of these sliders are supposed to do for the most part, the game does little to clear the fog on that, and frankly I’m unable to perceive any meaningful change most of the time.
The things I actually adjust are: final gear setting, sometimes last gear setting too; ride height; brake pressure; aero; differential. Which is enough to ensure I don’t lock wheels all the time, but certainly doesn’t make for very fast lap times.
I won’t download tunes for a throuple of reasons. The biggest one is I can’t tell if it’s even remotely adequate before testing it, which is a waste of my time. The second one is there’s no way to adjust them, no way to remove ugly wheels or bodykits, no way to change brake pressure more to my liking, etc. The third is I kinda like the idea of my time being a reflection of my overall abilities.
I taught myself how to tune back in the Forza Motorsport 4 days, so for the most part know my way around the menus and what I want to adjust when I desire a change in car behaviour.
That being said, I almost always opt for a downloaded tune instead. I don’t feel the time investment is worth it for me to build and tune my own cars anymore, as I don’t have the amount of free time I did all those years ago. Also I’m not racing in competitive leagues anymore so there’s less of a need for a 100% optimal tune (and the hundreds of testing laps that are required to build it); I just need something that’s reasonably fast for Featured Multiplayer and not a pain to drive.
The searching experience is sub-optimal as there’s no true barometer of how “good” a tune is when you search for it (especially when people use clickbait file names).
Therefore I almost always get my builds and tunes from the top of the Rivals leaderboard, or if somebody beats me in Featured Multiplayer by a significant margin. The tunes used by these players have proven their effectiveness in the hands of other drivers, and after a few laps in said tunes I’ll know if they’re a good fit for me or if I should keep searching. Whichever car/tune combo I get the best laptimes out of, that’s what I keep.
On a related note, the building/upgrading process is mostly a game of “how can I exploit the PI system’s flaws”. I don’t trust the PI system when cars of the same PI can be multiple seconds apart, so that’s another reason to go to Rivals and download the “optimal” builds.
I’ve been back to Gran Turismo 7 these days and I must say that I like the fact that I can race directly, on equal terms without having to worry about finding a good tune to be competitive.
I’m not saying that Forza should do the same, tuning is something that has always characterized this saga, but some series like TC,GT, GTP, Proto, should be able to offer some races in equality, for example, every certain hours or days.
And I think that the specific series with the same car, like Mazda MX-5 Cup, Ginetta, Formula Mazda, etc, the tuning should be fixed or at least mostly. A good tune makes the difference and in this type of series it’s taking the fun out of it.
Example
More options for tuning would be nice. Like boost control, timing, and launch control and adjustability of these components. And a proper dyno to tune it all on. Just more everything, we do to real life cars. … and nos too haha. Not fake need for speed style, realistic
Nitrous oxyde would be an interesting addition, though only if they allow to tune how much danger we add to the manifold.
I often get lost in the weeds when it comes to tuning. Part of the reason is the tuning sliders are burried in a sub menu while in the test drive. If I could enter test drive and instantly bring up the tuning menu by holding “A” and pressing the menu button. That would be a tremendous help for tuning sessions.
Also a spidergraph that shows how your setting changes are effecting the tune, not the car’s overall performance would also be helpful.
For Forza, and many other titles where tuning is available, the descriptions do not tell the player much of how each setting effects the car, and how those settings are effected by adjusting other parts. Seeing direct results from tuning, and probably how other settings are effected would help me with tuning.
Also we need a transmission tuning mode, where we can instantly and repeatedly launch the car after making adjustments…
I think Project CARS had a system where you could answer some multiple choice questions along the lines of “is the car oversteering or understeering?”, “is it oversteering in corner entry or on exit?” “Is the car loose on-throttle or off-throttle?” etc., and the answers would then lean towards suggestions being highlighted in the tuning menus.
I think for many people that’s the kind of thing they’re seeking answers for when tuning. You don’t really “tune the car to go faster” (that’s what upgrades are for), you tune to fix the problems you’re having with the car’s behaviour. Many people don’t even know where to start as you have 20+ sliders to deal with and the walls of text are overly complex.
At the moment that requires a lot of past knowledge or external research and isn’t very intuitive to the casual player. I think a more simplified approach (“slider to the left = car rotates more when braking” etc.) would be helpful in breaking the knowledge barrier to vehicle tuning.
Yes! Something along the slider lines would be a massive help. And I do remember encountering the PCARS 1 Tuning help. I didn’t spend a lot of time with the sim to really get into it but, it was an incredibly cool feature.
Forza w/o tunning, is not Forza 
Altrought I use close to default tunes, I always have to fine tune every single car I touch.
Well tbh tuning in Forza is mandatory if u want to be fast, most of default tunes just don’t want to turn, even slapping 100/0 diff alone can improve your lap time significantly.
It would also be super helpful to be able to tune cars from within rivals, rather than set up a tune, find it isn’t quite right and then have to back out of several menus, lose your split times and then start the process again. There would seem to be absolutely no reason why this can’t be implemented - it would obviously dirty the lap.
I so much agree.
I’m not fast, never both with hot-lapping. But I’ve been trying the forum Rivals challenge here, for a change of pace.
First thing I encountered… The menu runaround when I wanted a small tune.
If I could enter test drive and instantly bring up the tuning menu by holding “A” and pressing the menu button. That would be a tremendous help for tuning sessions.
+. I’ve never understood why, in games where car customisation is important, developers tuck this menu away in other sub-menus, sub-loads and other click-click-click that cause nothing but annoyance. In a racing game, access to car customisation should be as fast as possible.
Also a spidergraph that shows how your setting changes are effecting the tune, not the car’s overall performance would also be helpful.
Various charts and graphs make no sense, they only take up space on the screen nicely. It is impossible to present any reliable information about the car in this form.
For Forza, and many other titles where tuning is available, the descriptions do not tell the player much of how each setting effects the car, and how those settings are effected by adjusting other parts. Seeing direct results from tuning, and probably how other settings are effected would help me with tuning.
The problem is that it’s impossible to describe. There are hours and hours of reviews of how this or that suspension element works in real life, the nuances of its setting and other things, in different track conditions it can be set up differently, players with different styles of play, also set these things up differently. To describe briefly how all these settings still interact with each other is even more impossible.
The only true method is track testing.
I would really enjoy if you could implement new options and update the physics accordingly.
From the last Forza Tech engine to the current one, the only aspect that changed in tuning is the roll center and anti dive/squad, and sport brakes are adjustable now.
Notification on what’s new from creators would be great.
Doesn’t need to be an in-game mail for every single upload, but maybe a daily/login digest of “here’s what some of your favourite creators have shared”, along with a button to take you direct to their Creative Hubs.
I prefer to not bother with tuning. I don’t want to take the time to learn it and I don’t want to take the time to test other players’ tunes. Usually when I do tune a car it is to eliminate or minimize the understeer so prominent in most cars in Forza.
The main issue with tuning in Forza is that it doesn’t impact the Performance Index. Tons of cars are extremely underperforming while having the same PI as an actual overpowered car that gains its power from very specific, or even outright broken tuning (Porsche 550). This, and the fact that in-game tuning tips aren’t really precise at describing what each tuning setting may do to a car, makes me not want to take time to fine tune each adjustable part on my cars, because I’m usually using those underperforming cars that I like but don’t win races with.
Tuning doesn’t have to be simple, in fact it ought not to be, and upgrade functionality updates are long overdue. Look at differentials for example, on 4WD/AWD cars they shouldn’t be locked to just one setting, as electronically-controlled differentials have existed for longer than Forza at this point. Adjusting the minimum and maximum power delivery outputs for each axle depending on grip sounds like something that should be found in a next-gen sim (or at least sim-leaning simcade). And with the recent addition of NASCAR, we should be able to adjust different values of tire pressure and camber on each wheel separately, but that’s not present in Forza.
Yes we need a safe file update, so that more values can be saved, like individual values for each wheel. We need much better safe files and more safe files capacity.
I wonder what they’ll mess up with the tuning now…