First off, let me preface this with a quick summary of my experience with the game so far.
I bought a Logitech G920 with the view to playing both Xbox and PC racers, It is currently strapped to a Next Level stand.
I have started the career mode and am having a blast!! Certainly the most fun I’ve had with a Forza game since F4, maybe ever. Racing with a wheel really is a totally different experience and it is frequently putting a grin on my face!
After a couple of days I started to improve my times a bit and got a few top 1000 times on the leaderboards. However, this was with the FWD Clio (C Class) which, as I found out, is really easy to drive with a wheel. The next car I picked for the career was the Lotus in the Open Wheel Legends and immediately realised that I was massively out of my league. The first race I tiptoed around Brands Hatch to finish dead last. The subsequent races I turned down the drivatar to ‘average’ to give myself a chance.
I don’t recall the 60s GP cars being that hard to drive with the controller in F6. Is this what all the fast cars are like to drive in this game with a wheel? I used to race a lot of P Class in F3-6 and would like to in this game, but that Lotus really has put me off!! (I am pretty much still using all assists, with the exception of steering and braking assist))
Also, before I consider getting Gold again and racing online, are there any dedicated Wheel-Only lobbies?
First thing to look at would be your settings. I’m not sure if you’ve spent any time fine tuning them… if not, here’s a video which may be of some help…
Give those a go and see how you get on.
You can also go into free play and grab a rental car of your choice(if you don’t already own any of your favourites) and see how it drives. Bare in mind you won’t be able to tune it.
That is the video I used to fine tune my wheel And it feels fantastic!
I also hadn’t considered Free Play, cheers for that!
Also, if T10 are reading, please could you consider allowing the LSB and RSB buttons to be configured, specifically for looking left and right.
This is also my first experience with a wheel, with any game. I went in with the expectation of being total gash, which I lived up to for the first few hours. My feet were totally uncoordinated, and I was bashing from wall to wall.
However, it started to click and I now have a handful of top 1000 times (as high as 500) which was about my level on the previous Forzas.
You could try starting with the low powered FWD cars as they’re very forgiving to drive with the wheel.
You could also try setting up the wheel as shown in the video Deathgrips posted and see if that helps.
I would persevere as it really is a buzz when you get a rhythm going.
I bought a G920 a few weeks ago - have never used a wheel to drive on Xbox before, always used the controller. I’m currently massively slower with the wheel than the controller, so still using the controller more often than not. I enjoy having a go from time to time with the wheel but honestly not enjoyed the experience as much as I’d hoped.
I find the lack of feedback from the accelerator and braking to be my biggest issue with it compared with a controller - that and cars I can easily handle on the controller become snorting beasts ready to snap me in to a wall at a moments notice doesn’t help - the lack of feedback may go hand in hand with my wall magnetism lol.
I will persevere with the wheel though, in the hopes that I do get better - it’s just a steep learning curve over the controller, when I’ve used that for so long.
Good luck with yours, if you’re enjoying using it - that’s what really matters at the end of the day.
The leaderboards are pretty relative at this point.
Top 1000 in a career race is probably pretty good - however I run a lot of freeplay races for the weekly Hot lap challenges that HLR run over in the tuners lounge. I think I was top 30 on this week’s track last night when I set my latest time, that was about 2 seconds slower than the number 1 time and only top 10% overall as only a couple of hundred people have set times on that board.
I keep popping back to some of the horizon games and have enjoyed using the wheel more on there purely because I could care less about lap times on those games. With FM7 or any motorsport title I try (operative word there try) to be a bit more competitive.
I have still got some career races to finish in FM7, so may use the wheel there and see how I get on.
At any road, keep on keeping on. Have you found it to be an issue with the lack of rumble/ feedback from the pedals? I rely on that possibly a bit too much on the controller. The stiff brake pedal is something that takes some getting used to - possibly could do with a little more stiffness in the accelerator to help me from finding those walls quite so often
I know what you mean about the LBs being relative. The only thing I really have to go on is how far off the quickest time I am. In Forza 4 I was generally between 2-4 seconds from the top times, and I am about 5-6 seconds in F7. However, I played F4 for 2 years with professionally tuned cars and no assists (except TCS) whereas I’ve played F7 for 1 week with cars that have haven’t been tuned and with virtually all the assists on. It’s amazing the subtlety and nuance you can get with a wheel compared to a pad.
As for the pedals, my feet had trouble adjusting and I am still not using the clutch, and still just use my right foot. I have adjusted the brake deadzones as per the video posted earlier in this thread which has negated the (over) stiffness of the brake pedal. I’ve got to the stage now where I don’t consciously think about the pedals, it’s automatic.
I would say though that the wheel stand I have has helped massively with this. Before, I had the wheel clamped to my desk and the pedals on the carpet. But both kept moving, ever so slightly, but enough to break my concentration. If you haven’t got a wheel stand, and can afford one, I would recommend one.
Turn your DOR down from 540 to 330 for open wheel,LMP cars,Indy cars,i find the lower DOR helps a lot with these cars.plus there is a learning curve with the wheel,keep practicing with the lower level cars and move up when you feel ready,i will never go back to a controller,the wheel is just too much fun!!!
I find having a soft foam ball/stop behind the brake pedal helps with the mid-range pedal setups (especially Thrustmaster). Anything to simulate the feel of pressure around 70% will make a world of difference.
The open wheel legends cars are very difficult to drive with a wheel in forza, they suffer very badly from lift off oversteer. A good tune should help a fair bit but you definitely need to be very careful with how you use your right foot.
I personally prefer we to use 900DOR with the one I used (lotus 49 I think, I’m not sure if all of them have this issue) because it has a huge amount of steering angle, much more than it should have, if I lowered the DOR the steering felt too sensitive for my liking.
And it feels fantastic!