Why do stock tuning setups handle so poorly?

Forza Motorsport Forza Motorsport (2023) Discussion
,
162

For me most of stock cars feels realistic (for sim-cad game). Ofc if u slap race tyres to old car that have stock handling parts, it definitely would not handle well, but if u get same level of parts for handling and tyres and differential, theres rarely any need to fine tune the car.

So for eg, the easiest way to make race tyre tune is to install:
-race tyres ofc
-max tyre width
-race/sport brakes
-race suspension
-race ARB
-race weight reduction
-race roll cage
-race differential

Is that meta? Hell no. Does it work? Yeah.

163

Id say if youre just fooling around or playing singleplayer, default tunes are usually fine. But for things like rivals or multiplayer the right tune can be more important than the car itself as it can literally take seconds off your lap times.

But as they say different strokes for different folks. Theres many ways to play this game, there really isnt a right or wrong way.

164

I didnt think it was too bad, i think it was basic for sure and what they have now in spec divisions is an evolution of that system. Its possible if they kept it, it all could have evolved this way.

What i didnt like was the amount of cars with no division and cars that i believe should have been able to compete in multiple divisions. Like corvettes and vipers are considered american muscle, but that doesnt mean theyre muscle cars.

But regardless, im sure the group your in can do bop some justice. It does take a lot of work to do though to get it right. A lot of testing and tweaking to truly balance things.

165

Well I play only multiplayer, and always use all race handling parts, although I do fine tune my cars using calc I made for myself, I’m far off meta tunes, since I like to use weight transfer a lot, so my arbs, and springs are on softer side. And somehow I don’t lose vs meta tunes xd well maybe it’s not rivals material, but for online races it’s good enough to win most of races (well it’s car dependent)

166

I used to think that way but real life stuff doesn’t work as it should in Forza Motorsport. Or maybe my expectations don’t match the physics engine.

Max front downforce, min rear downforce. Maxxed ARBs. Maxxed acceleration gear ratios (…), it’s more brute force than subtlety. So then when you pick a road going car with “fixed” set up, flaws come up.

167

Whatever your comfortable with

1 Like
168

I did some testing with this car to see whats up as well. I used road atlanta because i think thats the best test track as it has all the variables, 5 laps each with 100% fuel.

Based on feel, the default setup with default tires actually felt the best to me. Then i added arbs, faster by .5 seconds, better initial turn in, but introduced more understeer.

Then i added race tires no arb, about a second faster than default tire setup without arbs, so .5 faster than default tire w/arbs. Added even more understeer.

Next was race tires with arbs, .5 seconds faster than without. Had same difference in traits as default tires with arbs.

Last i flipped the arb setting numbers. So now it was stiffer in the rear than in the front. It went .350 faster than the default arb setting. It was more to my liking, but overall the balance was off and the car felt like it was fighting itself.

This makes some sense as most of the other default settings are geared toward understeer and by switching the arbs to be more oversteer, the cars parts arent playing nicely.

So i made one more change which was setting toe to 0 for both front and rear. The car felt more balanced, but suprisingly the lap time didnt improve, it was basically the same.

As far as how all this correlates to real life, i have no idea. Ive never driven the car irl to know if these tendencies, which id say are pretty neutral but overall more prone to understeer, are accurate.

But my opinion kind of lines up with a motor trend video on youtube where they lapped this car on laguna seca. They said it was stable, balanced but had “significant understeer”. Based off this video and my experience in game, the car is represented pretty accurately.

In this particular situation id say the car represents reality pretty well and while stiffening may make it feel or perform better or worse, if you want a more authentic to reality experience, maybe dont install the arbs or just set them to the middle of the slider as to not change the balance.

169

Took a LOT of tweaking, but I think I finally got the 2008 E92 m3 to feel how mine does. Set spring rates to that of Ohlins Road & Track coilovers ( 515f/542.5r (is 1085 IRL, but IRL is divorced setup. Game is true coilover )). Damping is considerably different from game default.

4.7f/5r - bump
6.4f/4.8r - rebound

ARBS are sport( No clue what to do with adjustable ones yet, but will dig in to them in the near future )

ride height
3.9f/5.4r

Alignment is a lil weird since I can’t hit real M3 camber numbers without losing traction for whatever reason

-1f/-1r - camber
.1f/-.1r - toe

My M3 is -2.5f/-1.8r for example.

Caster is 7

tire pressure ( tire width is stock. wanted to see what I could get done with stock widths. )
33f/29r

This thing absolutely sticks to the road now. Not gonna dig up the default numbers, but I’m sure y’all can find them in game.

edit: I then tried similar settings on the 2010 M3 GTS. This should have worked, but it did not. Not even close. This should give you an idea of why the handling is so weird.

1 Like
170

Just discovered on this M3 GTS that there’s a severe lack of front downforce in default setting. I had to max the front just to keep the car from catching air at the infamous hill turn on the Nordschleife.

171

Its set to the standard middle position like most cars in the game. Ive always liked using bmws, but honestly never felt forza did them any justice. The gts, although seemingly representative of the real cars qualities, imo isnt that satisfying to drive.

In its stock form it feels much heavier than youd think it would be. It has close to 500hp, but doesnt feel that fast. I guess its best attribute is that it is stable and its hard to lose control. But that stability is born out of heavy understeer which is not my preference.

172

The M3 GTS is weird indeed. Removing the rear wing provides more top speed (makes sense) but also more lateral g (makes no sense).
Thus, the best A700 build I have found is max front aero, removed rear wing.

2 Likes
173

It makes sense the lateral g’s went up because the car just has so much inherent unsersteer, the car just doesnt want to rotate. If you were to add more power though, the rear wing would be more useful.

174

Imagine T-10 adding this car (pic below), now imagine how it would handle based on what some of the historic racing cars that are currently in game handle like…

image
image749×499 59.7 KB

1 Like
175

What about this one:

2014-03-04_Geneva_Motor_Show_1190
2014-03-04_Geneva_Motor_Show_11904288×2848 2.51 MB

Imagine that in a field of GT3s coming in hot into Daytona T1.

1 Like
176

Given it’s usual performance, it would be coming in hot but still four seconds off the pace. And the gearbox would break on lap 3.

1 Like
177

Interesting, I didn’t realize removing rear wing increases grip in this car, gotta try it.

Tho there was similar situation with Aston Martin gt12 in FH4, when removing rear wing increases downforce, similar with one of vipers.

178

Yep, up until slightly above the stock value of the wing. But by then the top speed has already dropped by >15 km/h and the car becomes understeery.
That’s why the removal costs PI (around 6).

Full rear/stock front tire width sports tires, sports weight reduction, race gearbox works pretty well at A700.

179

Anyway back to topic, I tuned some cars over last week, doing bare minimum, that is only installing race tyres, race brakes, race suspension, race ARB, race weight reduction, race roll cage, race diff, race transmission, wider tyres (same co cost for front and rear), and finally added some power to fit specific class.

From fine tuning all I did was adjusting gearing a bit, changing brake balance to reduce braking distance (u can see it in tuning menu), and slap on 100/0 diff (fwd and red cars).

For all cars I did this, except gordini (I had to use -10 offset on rear suspension geometry ), were handling rly good, and completive in multiplayer lobby.

U just need to have basic understanding of “balance” in parts choice, and maybe some knowledge about meta engine swaps.

In Forza overall if u follow Basics, and just use same level (street/sport/race) for all handling related parts (tyres, brakes, suspension, ARB, reinforcement), car should handle good enough, the exception are brakes, weight reduction, transmission and diff, lighter car is always better, in case of brakes u can use sport or race since both allow for fine tunning (tho in horizon u always use stock brakes), race diff is just the best option, and race transmission is meta in fh2023.

180

The only reason I mentioned the Cheetah was it was known to be a bit twitchy (based on the wheelbase and seating position). Forza has a tendency to over emphasize the quirks some cars have, especially the classics. I’m guessing T-10 would make this a complete twitch monster and the tires would be aired down to like 20 psi for that “classic” mushy feel. In reality, these cars were very competitive in the right hands when raced against 289 FIA Cobras.

1 Like
181

997 GT2 RS – bone stock -

Waaaaay off stock/default.

Ended up with

Tire pressure 30f/37.5r
Alignment = default ( actually doesn’t look too far off )

ARB = default ( still not quite sure what to do with these )

Springs = 515f/801r ( considerably different from default and also Ohlins R&T numbers. Was like 540/590 o_O )
Ride height no change.

Here’s where it gets interesting. I don’t remember what the defaults were, but they’re wildly different from what I have now which get me 10s on every section of the Ring.

Bump/Compression
3.7f/5.2r

Rebound
6.7f/6r

I’m always seeing more rear rebound in the defaults which doesn’t make sense. Especially for corner exit where these tunes seem to always fail.

This is with their anti-geometry defaults in place too. I’m gonna turn them off and see what shakes out. Will report back.