Everything’s in the title. I played many of racing games, Forza is the first one I’ve encountered where, once the camera is set to third person (chase cam), and the angle is moved to the front of the car, facing the view backwards, most cars are not fully visible.
Instead the view is centered on the cockpit, cutting off the nose the car, in close as well as far view. Esthetically speaking this is a very distracting choice. Why not center the camera around the car properly in a game about cars? At speed, certain car models are almost halfway cut off. Why not allow us to see THE FULL CAR MODEL when we turn the camera around? They don’t cut off the rear of the car in chase came, why do they cut off the front?
This camera placement is better on newer DLC cars, like the BMW M8, which leads me to believe, something in the meta files got messed up with the older cars, imported from previous games.
Here’s an example with the Ford GT, almost half of the car is offscreen. SMH
Why does a game, putting high emphasis on high poly car modeling, suffer from such poor camera placement? First Person or cockpit view is already quite underwhelming, since the steering wheel can’t be turned beyond 90°, and we can’t inspect the front of the car either when turning camera around. It’s distracting during races, impacts the sense of speed, but more than that, these cars are pretty, and I wanna gawk and gasp at those sexy little noses. Don’t underestime camera placement and angles, especially in racing games. Why is this handled so poorly?
Never really noticed. I just used the look back feature to look back. If I want to “gawk and gasp” at the front of the car, there are better ways to go about it. That said, there are two chase cameras - does the farther one work the same way?
Unfortunately the far camera is also not centered properly and does showcase most cars fully. There are some exceptions however, I bought the M8 Competition, and that has better camera placement. It costs real $$$ though, so not everyone has access to it.
In games like GTA, there are even features such as Cinematic camera, which can be enabled while driving. In Forza, there is photo mode and vista, but it’s better to pan the camera around the vehicle while you get to drive it, it’s more fun and doesn’t require to pause the action. I especially miss the feature while cruising with friends, it would make for nice screenshots. Again, photo mode exists, but I’d rather keep the action going and get my cinematic kicks while driving the car, which is way more thrilling. That’s just me though, and is subjective to my opinion.
Main problem remains the camera placement however, which is, objectively, flawed. Ideally, in a racing game, the camera should be achored around the central point of the car, and showcase the vehicle in full frame from all angles. It’s a given in most racing games. That is not something well executed in this video-game.
