Ok I played a lot of the demo yesterday, set all my settings that I like to use in advanced controller settings Inc setting my vibration too 100% and then went about enjoying the demo.
After I played a little F5 and the first thing I noticed was the trigger vibrations are much stronger in F5, throttle vibration let’s you know when your car is about to break traction, but in horizon 2 it can hardly be felt same for brakes infact all vibration in horizon seems very weak compared to F5, anyone else noticed this?
Im sure the vibration feedback would have to be tweaked to take into account FH2s move to the open world. In FM5 all the driving was track based so the usual minimum feedback would be based on the tyres on tarmac, with FH2 taking place in fields, off cliffs and over ramps it needs a bigger variety of feedback so the usual minimum would have to be reduced so that the higher force feedback points could be simulated.
This really jumped out at me even after I increased the vibration setting in controls. I started to wonder if my controller’s trigger motors had failed. But right after the video telling you that Online is now available, the rumble really kicked in and everything felt normal again. I wonder if they have some vibration reduced for the solo portions of the demo for some reason. I think I remember similar comments when the first Forza Horizon demo was released as well. I haven’t tested to see if restarting the demo repeats it.
Forza 5 has the best rumble feature I’ve ever seen in a videogame, and this demo has the worst I’ve ever seen. The Need For Speed games on the GameCube had better rumble.
There’s no feedback from the car at all, and it makes it really hard to drive. Forza 5 is easier to play, even though it’s a racing sim, because you know what the car’s going to do.
I really hope the full game doesn’t have this problem. I mean, I had to turn the rumble scale up to 100 to find out that it supported rumble triggers.
If you go into the game settings and click on the controls tile, then press X, you get to advanced controller menu. There you can adjust deadzones for the controller and right at the bottom is force feedback which at default is only set to 50%. Crank it all the way up to 100 and enjoy the soothing massaging sensation of hitting a wall at 200MPH! lol
I have noticed Horizon 2’s rumble is much different from Forza 5’s. It doesn’t vibrate when you’re close to losing traction, and only activates when you lost traction. I set my rumble to 75% and it felt really nice though, you just have to get used to it.
Most of the time when you’re driving on the road you wouldn’t have any trigger rumble until you lose traction from accelerating (which is not a lot in AWD cars) or braking. I eventually got use to that and began to understand that without TCS and ABS, you have to pull the trigger as far as you want without making it vibrate.
You may not get subtle vibration, warning you that you’re on the edge of traction, but according to my experience with that in Forza 5 I didn’t have time to differentiate between a warning buzz and a loss of traction rumble, and I usually assumed it to be the former which made me spin my tires on multiple occasions. In Horizon 2, however, if the trigger is vibrating you definitely know you lost traction, so backing off becomes much more of a natural reflex.
Once you understand that, you begin to learn the limits for each car on how much you can squeeze the trigger without it vibrating (I usually pull it by 70% if I think I’ll lose traction from flooring it), and you eventually get used to it. Imo it felt much different from F5, but it also felt really good eventually.
I turned the vibration up to 100% and still there’s no feel to the car. I wish the triggers rumbled during hard braking and accelerating as they do on FM5. Playing the demo the car feels like it’s hovering just above the ground, it’s quite disappointing.
Reviewing the full game now, I can confirm this game has some very intuitive use for the controller. Shifting gears in an “angry” car makes the right trigger rumble while the left trigger rumbles when braking hard or when the abs is activated. Trains and planes travelling near you also have a great effect both on cam and on the pad, while the only place that the controller doesn’t rumble it’s on tarmac. Every other dirt road or field has a different effect.
Since I haven’t played much of Forza 5, I can’t compare, but I’d say that along with the best controller out there, as far as rumbling is concerned, this is the best use of a vibrating controller I have seen. You can feel everything. If not, check your batteries.