The problem I have/had with Horizon’s 2’s physics is how crashing into objects at high speed can redirect your car into a different direction faster and with more exit speed than actually taking a turn with a perfect line. For races where there is wall near a fairly sharp turn, you can go to Rivals and watch the ghost of the fastest times and see that people gain seconds by smashing into walls at full speed.
That’s a completely broken system. Physics for dummies. It’s been years since Project Gotham Racing, but still no improvement on something that has no business being in a racing game when there are so many better ways to simulate impacts that would be 100% fatal in real life.
Crash into a wall with a lot of force (Forza games have been tracking G forces in telemetry for years)? Kill the throttle for 5 seconds. Or treat it like missing checkpoint and have to wait for the car to respawn again. Or something.
I understand that a game like Horizon is going to promote driving expensive street cars with almost no ground clearance offroad. But promoting crashing to be faster is a bridge too far, in my opinion. It would be nice to see this addressed.
They have announced that rewinding will cause a dirty lap which was a big problem in horizon 2, its possible that other things might also dirty a lap like banging off walls.
As I don’t believe I have seen any FH3 demos use simulation steering, I’ll reserve judgement for now.
I like the niche the Horizon series seems to have gone into as there is more grip and control than sim games but the cars still feel and behave like cars. Physics in games like NFS and The Crew don’t even vaguely resemble real cars, Horizon feels like real cars but with the sim edge knocked off making people as talented as they feel they could be.
3 hours in and I’m enjoying the game but to me the handling feels pretty wrong.
Off road feels pretty good and as far as i can tell is almost completely unchanged from horizon 2.
Unfortunately upon arriving at Surfers Paradise for some good old urban street races I’ve discovered the cars don’t like going round corners!
Tried 4 or 5 different car classes, all with race tyres fitted and the understeer is just awful. Not to mention braking actuation seems to be all over the place with wildly inconsistent feedback from the controller’s vibration and also tyre noise.
The physics is a big step up from Horizon 1 and 2. I feel like its closer to motorsports physics and the frame rate looks way better now. I still wish the road, lane width was a little more narrow however, the roads are way better looking than Horizon 2’s roads. Horizon 2 was beautiful, but the roads were wide enough to fit the space shuttle which was a huge turn off for me. No, this game is not just meant for kids. Im a successful professional who still plays video games. I love cars but I don’t care for racing. I just like to cruise, listen to great tunes with some cold drinks or a huge venti coffee in the morning while hearing the awesome Tubi exhaust coming out of my Ferrari. The Horizon series sure pumps Serotonin into my body. I freaking love Horizon 3! Its very close to my ultimate dream game. Its going to be a while until I get a Lamborghini in real life so Horizon helps with the wait!
Couldn’t agree more. I’m not sure where the OP is getting the less arcade feel but I honestly wish it was closer to the original Horizon rather than Motorsport. Leave the realism to Motorsports and let the silliness run rampant in Horizon.
Just got to say I really enjoy the physics on Horizon 3, takes me back to the good times of FM3 and FM4.
Maybe I shouldn`t say physics but rather car-handling or feel. I am refering to playing with a controller btw…
Imo FM5 and FM6 lost a lot of what made the driving in previous Forza games so great. It changed from “push-to-the limit” to “try-to-survive-iceskating”.
And the feedback about what the cars do suffered, visually, haptic and with uninformative sound.
Now Horizon3 on PC is for the first time really compareable to Motorsport due to running at the same 60fps framerate, albeit a bit unsteady.
And man I like it.
-The feeling for grip is back, e.g. on RWD cars I know exactly when the tires bite and how much throttle it takes to get a nice powerslide.
-The tire-squeal gives proper feedback indicating a drift, and for a change I can hear my own car again. Much better sound design than Fm5/6.
-The body movement gives good visual cues when the car gets unstable, good feedback about elevations and bumps.
-The cars feel good out of the box, upgrading is optional, I don`t feel forced to test 20 tunings till I find the one that makes a car driveable.
Also, for the first time ever, normal vs. simulation steering makes sense to me with a controller. “Normal” really does what the description says, it mutes some physics effects.
“Simulation” is much harder, but great fun imo … makes every jump a challenge, you need to account for weightshifting a lot more.
None of this is about Arcade vs. Simulation, I just find the driving feels more “right” on Horizon 3 than on recent Motorsport titles.
Would be great if Turn10 would find back to their old strength, maybe care a bit less about the math of their physics but more about how everything translates over to the player.
FM5 and FM6 physics are really good. On controller you know exactly what the car is doing especially with trigger rumble. I hope they don’t change it because it feels perfect.
FH3 physics feel a bit muted and overall are very easy. It’s not bad though. Its just right for all skill levels to pick up and play.
I’m pretty disappointed in horizon 3 for the wheel😞 I usually use 900 for horizon 2 and fm6 but in horizon 3 it full locks before I get to it. Horizon 3 is more assisted than the last horizon.
Just got the game and already horrified by the NFS driving style. Flying around tight corners at over the top speeds isn’t very enjoyable for me. I would love it if they added a sim mode!
I appreciate the hard work both T10 and PG have put into Horizon 3, I really do. It is one remarkable game.
But I’m seeing the same physics annoyances that are present in FM6: car not going to the desired lock properly if you brake hard right before a turn or trail-brake or even feather the brakes mid-turn… the car understeers and refuses to turn further, EXACTLY like they did in FM6.
On a few occasions, I’ve encountered the dead steering bug as well… where vibration goes dead… the driver stops turning any further, even though you’re going really slow, and the only thing you can do is somehow bring the vibration back to continue steering or really really slow down… at which point, the AI cars are a good few meters ahead already.
Physics seem like almost an exact copy/paste of FM6. I wish the developers would reconsider reworking the steering mechanics at least, because they work very strangely on the controller… causing unusual understeer and wheel to wheel lock issues when going into deep turns on-brakes or feathering the brakes mid-turn. [Mod Edit - forum Code of Conduct prohibits profanity - MM]
Same controller steering mechanics have carried over to H3.
It does - correct but only if you’re aggressive or careless with the brakes, not when you feather them to adjust your speed or get the nose to bit down a bit harder. I have a bit of track experience BTW. And in real life, a car’s steering does not freeze up or the wheels do not refuse to turn if you brake. Interestingly, this issue has been prevalent in only FM, not FH. It did pop up in H3 though, but I believe they’ve ‘secretly’ addressed it in the latest content update.
It’s much more complex than that. If you lock the front brakes in a real car (where the front brakes usually get the most pressure, because of the front weight transfer during straight-line braking), then yes–you’re going to plow through the turn. But with controlled braking into a turn, you should be able to make the front wheels want to stop more quickly than the rear ones, leading to a favorable tail-out attitude through the corner. I always bias my front brakes more heavily than default in the Forza games when possible, to facilitate this. It works better in some cars than others.
id rather have horizon with motorsports physcis, on “normal” mode drifting ferrari italia is easy fun and everything even though this car isnt supposed to be drifted around…
on “simulation” mode i can hardly ever get a turn “correctly” (not ending up 180 or in a ditch) in THIS ferrari, 488, 512 tr… have to check is this just an issue with MR cars and fiddle a bit with tuning them also caterham on sim mode feels crazy… why is it harder to control it than in other “proper” sim games and here, in arcade horizon its almost impossible?
still having lots of fun regarding this unfulfilled preference of mine and lots of glitches on pc
Play Forza with a wheel and you have complete steering freedom… you won’t get that annoying dead steering bug or unnecessary understeer woes you do on a controller while playing FM6. The steering linearity option is a nice addition in H3; hope they take this to the next level in F7 and give controller users more steering freedom.
I find the physics real “enough” yes it’s not absolute hard faced realism but you’re trying to drive a ridiculous car at ridiculous speeds on pretty much real world roads without pace notes…
Unless you want your horizon experience to be a series of catastrophic crashes followed by rewind/restarts it does what it needs to do.
