Turn 10, Why not convert Forza 4 circuits into Forza 5 and add a little more eye candy!

The question many of us Forza fans have been asking Turn 10 from the very beginning of Forza 5’s release, and that is why didn’t Turn 10 add all the previous circuits from Forza 4 in the latest version!

Turn 10 were quick with their response to this question by informing the Forza fans that the latest version of Forza 5 was obviously developed from the ground up to take advantage of the new generation console’s power and technology. Therefore Turn 10 spent more time laser scanning each circuit which would’ve been very time consuming indeed, as well as putting more work into making sure each circuit that was selected for Forza 5 was constructed with precise measurements and detail as the real world circuits.

They also mentioned that some of the circuits in the previous version were not accurate, in fact real circuits like Silverstone had been refurbished recently in the last few years, so it was important to update and reconstruct the circuit as their real counterpart!

Turn 10 had taken advantage of the new technology that the new generation console could deliver as in performance and the more advance graphics capabilities. Therefore it had taken time developing and rendering higher textured scenery, lighting and shadow effects and most importantly the car models, than what it took the team at Turn 10 to construct the previous version Forza 4!

I can totally understand that part of Turn 10’s goal was to make the most realistic looking version of Forza to date, since it was one of only a handful of games that was released for the next generation console, the Xbox One’s day one launch, and this is why they wanted the to circuits to be perfect replicas of the real circuits.

Now that’s been explained, which I know a lot of you were already aware of the above information, however I’m mentioning this because it’s relevant to the question that many of us Forza fans have been frustrated about, the fact that this could potentially be a way of keeping fans happy by simply converting the existing circuits from Forza 4 to Forza 5!

Now by doing so, you guys at Turn 10 could update the graphics on each circuit with a little more eye candy, as well as the circuit taking advantage of the new lighting and shadows, but they don’t have to be as detailed as the existing circuits, and I’m sure a majority of fans out there would prefer to have these circuits added to Forza 5, even if they’re not laser scanned to the exact measurements as the real circuits.

My thoughts are, If it means I had to pay extra for the converted circuits as separate DLC’s, providing they’re reasonably priced I would certainly pay extra for them!

The questions in a nutshell!

First question to the team at Turn 10

Firstly, Is it possible to convert the circuits, or at least some of the more popular circuits like Nurburgring Turn 10? (That’s only if you guys at Turn 10 have not already started on developing the Nurburgring)

Secondly, what does everybody think about paying for DLC versions of some of the previous Forza 4 circuits, if they were to convert them and add a little more eye candy, with the Forza 5 shadows and lighting. What you pay the extra for all the courses or at least a few?

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I think we should all only speak for ourselves on issues such as this rather than “being sure the majority of fans” have the same view as us.

Yes many people have expressed disappointment at the number of tracks. I have.

But I would prefer tracks be added only when they have been done to a high enough standard. I would pay for them but would prefer them to be of a high quality.

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This is my view exactly.

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If I am paying for extra circuits I do not want a ported version with slightly better graphics. I want additional 100% accurate lazer scanned versions. I would have rather had the ported versions of everything at launch. And have the choice of purchasing updated version.

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I’m sure it’s possible, but I’m not sure about practical.

Turn 10 wants to maintain a certain level of standards and quality. I’m fairly certain there are two (at least) reasons for this. One is appearance. Porting and touching up tracks wouldn’t create a similar issue that plagues another popular console racing game. You have some of the game that looks amazing, and some that looks “eh”. If they had just done that to increase the number of tracks for Forza 5 we’d see just as many complaints about “why do some tracks look so bad compared to others” with people saying Turn 10 should have made all the tracks look as good as Prague. And it’s possible that spreading out their time across more tracks to simply put them in the game would mean less tracks (of the ones we do have) would look as good. As they don’t have an infinite supply of time and resources. And the tracks would not match up to the quality of the cars on them.

The other could be in how the tracks themselves would feel. Without being rebuilt, and rescanned for accuracy with the new physics in the game it’s possible the old tracks would simply just feel wrong. Maybe way too much grip, or not enough. Or alternate inappropriately all through the track. So the game could not only have an inconsistent, and less realistic look, but also an inconsistent and less realistic feel all through the game.

I might be wrong on the latter, but from what Turn 10 has said it is pretty clear they wanted to maintain a high standard in quality. There’s nothing wrong with wanting more. It means we love what they deliver. We could have gotten 30 tracks in Forza 5, and there would still be “I wish _________ track was in Forza”, because we love driving in Forza and can’t get enough. We just need to give them time to get the content out to us. It may take time. It took until Forza 4 to get to that level of content. I’m sure by the time we get to Forza 7 the content in the game will dwarf the amount in Forza 4.

What about the fantasy tracks from the previous Forza’s? Fujimi, Rally Di Positano, Iberian, Ladera, Camino etc. They don’t have to be laser scanned since there not real tracks. Why not include them???

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If I were to guess, perhaps it is because since they aren’t laser scanning the tracks they would have to go in and rebuild the tracks buy hand to make them with the same level of fidelity of the laser scanned tracks. It’s still a matter of having a finite amount of time and resources to do it all. Why we don’t have them all is clearly due to that. But we can theorize and debate about why we have the rebuilt Alps instead of Fujimi or Positano all day long. Obviously a judgment call was made, and perhaps it had to do with which could be don with the time and resources available.

If they could have given us more tracks with the fidelity/quality standard they wanted for Forza 5, they would have.

Because they’re inferior 360 models. Bernese Alps was a fictional track that returned for FM5 and it still took at least nine months to build for FM5. If you simply copy-paste from 360, you have last-gen content running on One, and it will still look last-gen. To look like it’s for One it has to be remodeled for One. One doesn’t magically make a last-gen track look better.

I think if you had a separate lobby titled something like “flashback” or something it would be very popular. Two DLCs would be available, one all the old tracks, the other all the missing older cars. Same new light engine so they’d look a little different, and the same physics.

If that were to happen I think it would be very popular. But then you’d have the GT series critique about car details if they integrated it into the main game.

At the end of the day its just up to where the devs want to take it. The sim crowd have been making requests for years, its time to just realize we are "in for the ride " so to speak. They’ve decided to make everything “next Gen” and I doubt that will change as it is an integral part of their fm5 philosophy.

That would be sweet if they could just add as DLC but the cost of employing staff to re-texture the old tracks, add new lightmapping and a load of extra details,models etc probably isn’t the company’s priority, especially when we all just shelled out on a ton of cash on a new console, people would bitch and moan that the dlc tracks lack detail, HD textures etc, It’s a lot of work these days making games, look at the lack of triple A titles on either next gen console, it takes 40% longer to make a game today, 200 cars and a bare minimum amount of tracks is purely microsoft pushing turn 10 to get the game in a stable shape to release as a launch title, had the game have had another 9 months tops it would have had 100 more cars and at least 5 more tracks.
Forza 6 however will be epic as FOOK.

Just my 2 cents, love forza 5, my first post.

peace

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I agree…the OP foots the bill for the tracks and then no reason we should not have them

I seem to recall when Fm4 came out that Dan in interviews was saying how new tracks such as the Hockenheim were laser scanned to milimetre perfection. Now we’re told the data wasn’t ‘A’ standard and therefore tracks didn’t make the cut. Yet hockenheim is more true to life in Fm4 than Laguna Seca was, yet Laguna made it through to Fm5. I know we’re not privvy to any of the developer decisions but sometimes I feel they (T10) are contradictory/misleading in some of the things they say.

I also don’t like the way the DLC issues were fixed in a matter of days yet big problems from the main game have not been touched yet. If we do get a track pack I think it’ll be quite expensive and like Fm3#s Nurgburgring all over again, a small handful of players forking out for it and unable to run in public lobbies.

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Since T10 have stated it now takes them 9 months to make a track, I dont believe that we would have had at least 5 more tracks in the game within a 9 month period. It just doesn’t fit with the information that has been provided, I would say there could be two tracks at most, and that is pushing it. As for the cars T10 state they take around 6 months to make as well, so again, I dont believe within 9 months we would get an extra 100 cars.

It could be that Hockenheim was T10’s first attempt with laser scanning equipment for use on a track, which means they ultimately might not have been happy with the finished work. The 3d artists at T10 (or any dev studio) are just that, artists. Artists are never ever happy with their finished work, even if other people love what they have done, the artist will always find fault with their own work. I wouldn’t really say it was an overly popular track in FM4 either, whenever I was in a lobby (private or public), people would always want Hockenheim skipping. personally I loved the track, but online I never really got the opportunity to race on it all that often, there was always a “vote to skip” on that track. It was also the same whenever the ring would show up as well, so I used to race that in a private lobby with friends all the time.

Since we only know what T10 tell us, we may never know all the reasons certain tracks vanished; but I do know they have seriously upped the quality this time around. It is a time consuming thing to do all that 3d work, and I think to get a game as full as FM4 was; we could have been waiting till 2016 at least (my personal opinion).

They say it takes 9 months to make a single track but i’m pretty certain they were not making 1 track at a time, otherwise there’d be like 3 tracks in Forza 5. The guy saying there could be another 5 tracks had the game been released 9 months later sounds about right.

What hoppers were you racing in? I can only speak for the s-class hopper because i don’t race any other class, but i have NEVER seen Hockenheim skipped and the ring i’ve seen skipped once only.

I would race in all the hoppers available on FM4, I tend not to stick with only one class. Hockenheim and the Ring would be skipped almost every time they came up in the rotation, and sometimes I would be in them for a good few hours. You only have to check my YT channel to see how much I like the ring, my videos where mostly on there or Fujimi when on FM4. In FM5 I am leaning towards Spa, Prague and Bathurst as my go to tracks.

Its far too unrealistic to expect the track makers at T10 to scan 5 tracks and build them simultaneously within a 9 month period, they would be spread very thin doing that. I dont know how big the track building team is at T10, but you can bet bottom dollar that the modelers and texture makers still go to the tracks with the people doing the scanning and photo taking. No matter the reference they are provided, nothing will ever beat what they can see with their own eyes in the real world, and can touch with their own hands. For making the tracks, a smaller team would be far more efficient. As with food, too many cooks spoil the broth; same thing works with 3d modeling and texture creation. I would personally say that T10 will have a track department somewhere between 30 and 70 people, probably split between 2/3 tracks at a time. I do know of at least 2 people on these very forums (normal users) that will know a more accurate number, not sure if they can tell us though.

Edit: Please keep in mind that is a speculative posting with regards to track making and forza, and is formed from my own personal opinion and experiences.

Not trying to be argumentative but i can’t believe in the hoppers you raced the ring and hock were skipped almost every time. I have over 7000 online races in FM4 and i can surely count on 1 hand the total amount of times those two tracks were skipped combined. Admittedly a lot of those races were user created but still, a heck of a lot in the hoppers too. Weird.

With regards to the making of FM5, i’m sure you know a lot more about it than i do. Or any game for that matter.

The mistake of T10 is the monthly dlc of cars. They promised 6 dlc in 6 months, so can we expect a track dlc in the middle of these cars dlc? I hope we don’t have to wait june before to see a track dlc…

Thats a good idea Op, one I’ve been thinking about for a while. I would rather see them as a free dlc rather than paid of course.

am i the only person happy with the amount of tracks we have
(from another thread)

14 tracks most with multiple variations in a launch game seems a fair amount to me. And they have promised at least one more, nurburgring coming sometime and from what i’ve seen for free.

p.s. to all you thats ganna say yes but when is nurburgring coming? do you really want them to rush it so you can complain how its unfinished or would you rather wait till its done proper.

@o2R Dsquared 07: Its all the luck of the draw unfortunately, which is why I used to always race the ring in private with friends. It was the same with the crash teams on FM4 (before the crash team response), I hardly ever came across any, yet others would have crashers in almost every single race they did in public online.