This is my first post on the forums. I am a “system seller” customer, AKA I purchased the Xbox1 Just for this game, and own no other games or game systems. I also have a Thrustmaster TMX PRO, and built my own wheelstand and seat setup for this game exclusively. I wish I had not wasted my money.
I have been a real track day enthusiast for over 8 years now, and I know how a real wheel feels, and I know how real cars perform and handle. For the life of me, I can find no combination of settings on my wheel or controller that even come close to having passable physics of an actual car. I am not nit-picking either, there are massive oversights in this game.
If I am at 50% braking and I want to tighten up my line heading into the apex this seems impossible to do with weight transfer. Applying more brakes never seems to add any grip to the front of the car at all. This is terrible. If there was one thing any real race driver does in a car it is managing the amount of front to rear weight distribution with the pedals. Somehow all the game knows is brake pedal = more understeer, and you can never ever come back from understeer no matter what.
The tank slappers, omg the tank slappers. They come out of nowhere. Just a hair too much gas, and the next thing you know you are in some impossible to correct tank slapper. It is absolutely ridiculous. I could go to full opposite lock and it wouldn’t even come close to catching it. I am not looking to drift. I am ultra smooth on my inputs, and I have the pedal stop mods not to lock up the brakes too. (75% then rubber) This is ruining the game for me.
Input filtering. Why does this exist? You can not stomp the pedals down, but the pedal releases are undamped. I bought the wheel and pedal setup so that I could provide my own inputs to the game, fast jerk movements of the wheel to catch a spin? nope. filtered. Sudden stab of the brake to 74%? Nope. Filtered. Instant release of the brake pedal is fine though? I really wish input filtering was a setting.
Why is the game completely different, and seemingly MUCH better with a controller? I should have the capability to be butter smooth with my wheel angle and pedals, but I can turn faster times with the controller. It is blatantly obvious there is a lot of difference in how the game runs with the wheel as the entire game restarts when I turn the wheel on.
It seems as if one of the things that are REALLY REALLY wrong with the game is the modeling of engine braking in general. Brake and throttle release are damped when increasing but undamped when reducing. I believe this causes the tank slapper effect if you assume the controls are analog to your inputs. They are not. Engine braking and the resultant weight transfer to the front of the car seems to be entirely absent in the game physics. It seems as if it is modeled as 0-100% positive torque to the rear wheels when in reality it is -25%-+100% where getting off the gas puts real weight on the front end and reduces the rear. Forza 7 seems to just lock the rear wheels and send you into a spin without getting that extra front grip that you wanted.
The tracks are perfect, the cars look perfect, the graphics are mind blowing all over. It’s an absolute travesty that the feel of the game seems to be engineered by someone who has never even been behind the wheel before. Steering weight proportional to lateral G of the front end? Forget about it.
So if you are looking for the most beautiful version of pole position 2018, you have come to the right place. If you want to feel like you are driving the car, I don’t even know what to tell you.
Your responses:
I am not looking to start a flame-fest of me or the game. I STILL REALLY WANT to enjoy this game.
I want to arrive at some settings configuration that makes the game enjoyable and fun. It is currently amusing but feels not at all “real”. I am impressed I can feel every curb of WGI, but I am equally frustrated I get zero communication of my lateral G thru the wheel, or what the front tires are trying to communicate. I feel like altering the settings just makes the wheel harder to turn, but there is no increase in communication. I feel the wheel force should be the sum of the force on the two front tie rods and nothing else. You can have damping on top of that, but I would prefer the FEEL of a direct mechanical rack for my wheel feedback. This seems to already be possible, as the game does an excellent job of simulating curb kick, but the programmers seem to be confused about steering effort for the sake of effort, and effort that is the result of spindle geometry and tire forces. All steering settings seem to apply a rubber band effect from 0 degrees, and viscosity on top of that. There seems to be no tie-rod based steering effort when this should be 100% of the steering effort. The steering center does not move regardless of the angle between you travel direction and the front wheels.
I match you almost point for point. My only games are FM6 and FM7 (though I’ve played some others on my son’s and SIL’s), I purchased the console for that purpose, along with a TMX Pro plus stand and built my own rig around that using a custom made (to fit me) sport seat originally made for the rock crawler that I sold. And I recently added a dedicated 42" QHD TV to get the “rig” out of the living room. So FM has been a system driver for me too. I also did a lot of various motorsports (2 and 4 wheel) back in the day, but too old and busted up for that now.
Anyway, like you, I’ve struggled to align the FFB haptics with what I know. In the beginning it was difficult. The wheel isn’t quite right, and without the “butt dyno” giving me input on G’s, the feel through my butt and feet vs the wheel, plus full fidelity “real” surround audio, it’s just not ever going to be the same. But over time, I’m beginning to adapt. I suspect a higher end wheel might help, but I’ve reached the end of what I’m interested in investing in this game. I’ve also about reached the end of my interest in this game. The logical progression some time back would have been to go online and race real people, and I wanted to do that. But with the complete idiot dominated open season T10 decided to support in their online play (can’t risk losing those sales!!!), I don’t find it the least appealing. I sniffed around the online focused games but their FFB isn’t any better from what I can gather, though the play certainly seems huge leaps better than FM7 online.
But back to the FFB. There are threads here regarding what is reported to be the game saver for FFB on PC (didn’t apply to me, don’t recall the name). And there is a video on youtube by one of the guys here regarding how to improve things through the xbox settings. I followed along and adopted those that seemed to work some time ago, and it did help. Beyond that, I’m interested to see if you find any good answers short of a full motion sim rig. But I don’t think it will ever feel right through nothing but a wheel FFB…
I think you spent an awful lot of money, without doing any research at all. Forza has never been known for excelling at wheels - as BadDog mentions, there are some community members that have been able to adjust the game’s native FFB on PC via Emuwheel & there are settings that will help. Look for a thread called FFB is it fixed up? or something along those lines.
Forza has always and still does as far as I’m concerned, provide the best driving experience you can have with a controller. I bought a wheel this year and have been able to set decent times with it, some of them I was unable to beat on my controller. I also know a couple of guys who are consistently quicker than me and able to post top times on their wheel, so it can be done.
Some of it comes down to wheel settings, some of it down to the tune and obviously driving ability - & by that I mean driving ability in game. If you’re not used to playing games, you’re going to need some time to adjust to the game mechanics.
I wish you well, it’s taken me months to get somewhere comfortable with my wheel and settings and still drive with my controller more often than not - it’s easier than messing about getting my not so fancy wheel set up in front of the TV and the feedback through the rumble on the controller is superb.
I’m on Xbox1X by the way with a Logitech G920 wheel set up, when I can be bothered to rearrange my furniture
Sounds like you havent got a wheel... With wheel its allways sim, even when you change it to normal. It came with F7. F6 it was still possible to use normal. The key to be able to survive from slide is low dor, like 270 and 360, and right way of using brakes during it…
Not for me.
I’m on the one x, with a tx base on v53 firmware.
There is night and day difference between them!
I’ve left it on normal as it seems more natural and less twitchy.
I’ve just done a bunch of testing to see if there was, there is.
Finally tried normal steering again and man, it truly has an effect now. It feels like when you turn the wheel, it takes half a second before the car start to turn. Awfull for me. And apologies me saying it makes no diffence between sim and normal. Still saying it wasnt like that earlier this year when tried it last time. Newer the less, my TX is broken after two year of usage. Previous lasted almost same time. In both cases the ffbhas become so weak, like there wasbarely none of it left -even after I have turned all forces to maximum. The wheel isnt centering properly anymore.
This two year lifecycle is quite common with this TX wheel base, I have understood. Its not what you would expect from an article costing 350 €. Not going to buy third TX or little cheaper TMX or Logitech G920 as I had tried one for a week. G920 is not quite on.TX level, but will surely last longer. Ill purchase Thrustmaster TS-WS Racer Sparco p310 which is about twice as expensive as TX, but should be much more durable and bit more sharper. Time will tell if purchase is worth if money…
Normal on, it will pretty much assist you on which way the wheels are meant to be pointing, kinda like real life, if your car steps out, the wheels kinda naturally want to keep pointing straight ahead, but the game does it slightly aggressively which feels wrong.
Switch it to simulation & there is none of that, the slightest movements on the wheel will cause the car to over react & it feels like it prematurely goes in the direction you want it to, which is why it spins out so easy with the slightest oversteer corrections.
That’s how it feels to me, others will tell you that in Normal, the steering & momentum changes are dampened, which is why it is easier to control.
Even Blu, who you have mentioned in your post, is a huge advocate for Simulation steering & says he prefers using it over Normal, but he runs Emuwheel, 3rd party software to custom map the force feedback settings on his wheel, to make it feel more life-like for him & easier to control.
Now, as i said, IF you have a wheel, do one of the Cone Challenge races with the steering set to Normal, then do it on Simulation.
If you shwitch between them and you feel some diffenrence, it`s in your head…
I suggest to go and read the larger threads concerning wheels and ffb. After they disabled normal steering from wheels in Fm7, sim came more playable with controller. But is sim assisted or not like normal is, that`s ”not entirely accurate”…
Regarding your comments on damping, for the steering at least, you can change it from “Norman” (apparently they think synonymous with a controller?) to “Simulation” and improve that part. The pedals have no such setting, but at least the steering input seems much more direct and tolerable.
And good points on Forza focus. I didn’t expect to get “hooked” on video game racing, but as I said, I’m too old (slow is dangerous) and busted up to do the real thing any more. And FM6 then 7 scratched an itch better than I expected. However, particularly given T10s focus on silliness like drift and social networking at the expense of real racing game play, I think I’m destined for the more “sim” more online competitive options in the near future. I don’t have the time or inclination to play leagues and such, but I’m still having some fun with FM7 tuning and trying to find that last few tenths to beat Mechberg (curse him for cutting the time again! LOL!) in the Bounty Hunter, it’s working ok for me the hour or so I get to play roughly 4 days a week.
Original post author hit the nail on the head. I’ve noticed that the clutch pedal was not 1:1. When I stomp on physical clutch pedal I am using, there is a delay in getting to 100% application (or release in this case). In reality, every clutch I have ever used did not have some sort of delay when using it. Why is this delay applied to wheel users? That explains why I get missed shifts in Forza, even when I have the maximum limit set to 25% of the pedal’s travel.
I agree with x8o8drifter. Spend some time on tunes.
I don’t have a problem with loading front under breaking for more front grip. As for tank slapping, powerful RWD’s will do that. I’ve done some track days in serious RWD’s. TC off(ish) and rear can surprise you just like FM7 - throttle and steering angle control.
I have some serious issues with FM7 but the ones mentioned here aren’t them.
Try to turn the cars, I think some of your problems will be solved. Takes time but it’s worth it. I hope it works out for you since you’ve spent a bit of money on it. Also, try other Sims. None have comparable graphics or track choices but driving experience is a little better and other aspects such as pit strategies and HUD options are much, much better.
Interesting. I’ve been using Sim since FM6, didn’t realize FM7 automatically switched (or rather ignored normal) when wheel is active. I can’t drive at all with a controller on any setting, my brain/hands are apparently just not wired that way…
I’m retired and got in to this for something to do. Haven’t done games in 40 years. I’ve got the TX with the T3PA-PRO pedals, Put the load cell on the brake good for 3 seconds a lap. Played for a long time fine tuning FFB. I’ve made it feel like a little power steering. This is what I came up with. Vib.=5, FFS=51, wheel rotatation=depends on what car 330 to 900, SL=50, FF under=133, FF Mimimum=119, wheel damper=12, Center spring=4. I do set to normal. If your using a wheel you need to learn to tune the car. Theirs no tuners for wheel users. Almost all cars understeer. Low and stiff LOL.
