300 metres away in slow tight twisty corners or at the end of a high speed straight? Because if it’s in the twisty stuff you are likely to pull that out to 4-500 metres while if it’s at the end of a straight they are likely to make up a lot of that in braking.
1 Like
It means nothing on its own. My opponent is 300m away, on another section of the lap he’s 600m away. He must be getting away. Wrong, if I have a time interval I would have been informed I had closed the gap in real terms from 4 secs to 3.5 secs.
Guessing and estimating changes in distance at a certain points on the track on a lap by lap basis is not good enough.
I would prefer to know the real time changes in the gap, as well as information on which sections I am gaining/losing time.
1 Like
You are given precise, constantly updated info, if you cant figure out how to make that useful to yourself I dont know what to tell you, it works fine for me.
4 Likes
You’re being given constant USELESS info…I don’t know what to tell you but it’s useless to me. The dots on the map are more useful than the distance meter.
1 Like
The dots that show your distance apart and is constantly updated? If distance is useless to you it’s because you aren’t trying to make any use of it. If you cant figure out how knowing the precise position of your opponent on a constant basis can be of use to you, that’s on you. Plenty of people make it work just fine.
I’ll side with Manteo that distance is more useful for the 3-5 lap races that Forza runs and time would be easier to deal with in the longer professional races. But either way anybody should be able to figure out what’s going on.
1 Like
So having time splits, as an option, should be in the game then?
multiplayer spectate mode has time splits. And a map that shows where everyone is on the track. And a bunch of other info we can’t see when we’re racing. I don’t mind using distance, I just thought I would point out that a lot of things many people would like on their hud are in the game, just not available when you are playing.
1 Like
+1 for time instead of distance. It just makes sense.
I think it’s because thinking with a stopwatch stopping in your head , can be dangerous in the long run , do not you think ?
I wonder if the people siding for time differential are thinking of professional endurance racing. In that situation you have similar talent level and enough laps to interpret the changes in whether someone’s gaining or losing a second on the next position. Most of the racing in Forza is much more sprint racing. I don’t know what value “300m” or “5.002s” or more has when you’re dealing with just five laps; if the difference in skill level is such that you’ll be able to close that difference by the end of the race, you don’t really need to know the split whether it be distance or time. If you can’t close that gap enough to change positions, well then “It don’t matter if you win by an inch or a mile…” And if you are looking at the gap indicator, you can always choose the same reference point per lap: “on turn 8 I was 150 feet ahead last lap, now I’m 90 feet ahead” tells you the same info as time.
The value of knowing the gap in a sprint race is when an overtake is imminent. In that scenario, if I have to choose one or the other, give me the distance measure.
1 Like
You are missing the whole point, and then use a strawman to assume what everyone’s point is and that it is wrong.
It has nothing to do with professional endurance racing. It has to do with it being the norm for literally all racing, which why so many game in the past 20+ years have used time gaps. Also race distance doesn’t mean anything. Need for Speed games had races that lasted the same amount of time as Forza Motorsport 7s, and the NFS games had time splits. NFS games are considered “arcade” compared to Forza, so it is kind of joke that FM7( also including FM5 and FM6) doesn’t have time gaps. Time is more accurate in measuring gaps because it doesn’t change with the speed of cars. It is determined by a set distance.
Car 1 crosses point A, time starts. Car 2 crosses point A, time stops and time is shown to both drivers. Car 1 crosses point B, time starts. Car 2 crosses point B, time stops. Time gaps are updated and show how much time is gained or lost to each driver. Project Cars has a system where it updates every 2-3 seconds. Sure it may not be as often as a distance meter, but it will provide more accurate data of how the cars are doing around them. Instead of trying to remember 450 feet, all you have to remember is 1.4 seconds. Next lap if it is 1.2 seconds, you know you lost 0.2 seconds. In distance that could be 400 feet, but after 2 minutes of racing and having the distance jump from 100-600 feet, you would really have to remember a lot, not to mention the exact point where you were to make it even close as accurate as tim,e since time doesn’t change so rapidly.
Sprint racing and having only a distance meter is not a valid argument for a game that has such a LARGE community that plays it like “professional endurance racing”. This whole argument is a copout for not implementing a feature that is literally available in Spectate mode online. At the very least give the players sector car to car splits like FM1-FM4. We already know that it is possible via Spectate, so there is no valid argument to say that we can’t have it while racing. I mean now with the “eSports” league, ForzaRC, taking off, you would think this information would be quite useful to drivers in a race that is usually 15+ minutes long.
You may prefer distance, but time is the universal measurement for comparing cars on a track. That is the point. It is an overall easier way of comparing performance of the drivers.
4 Likes
This answer perfectly shows that Forza today is in fact made for casual gamers. I nearly never drive a 5 lap race in public lobbys because even in league races you get pushed around like in a flatout game.
If I can not close a gap to change positions it in fact is relevant for me if the gap was 2 oder 20 seconds. Because then I know how much I have to improve my driving or tuning to close the gap for the next race. Choosing the same reference point at a lap is stupid because then I only can see the gap one time per lap. With a time gap I can see the gap change constantly. And even in a sprint race this could be an important Information when e.g. the leader made a big mistake and is now on the run to catch me again.
The value of knowing the gap in a sprint race is when an overtake is imminent? I can not get that. When I overtake by myself I can see the car itself with my own eyes. And when I get overtaken I see the car in my mirrors, the markers at the bottom, the marker on the map or the gap meter going down to 0 seconds.
I know how to figure out the relevant information. But I do not know why I should take one or two reference points at the map to ‚read‘ the gap when there could be a much better solution by showing a gap in seconds rather than in meter/feet.
Time is in both sprint and endurance racing the better option. With a gap in seconds you do not have less information than with a gap in distance. But with a gap showen in meters or feet you always have a lack of information.
This is not a big problem. The track can easily be divided into dozens of sectors so Forza can update the information in an nearly constant way. I do not need 100 values a second. It is enough when the value updates one time per second. Look at the HUD when spectating a race in Forza. There the gap meter updates nearly constantly. The same way it does in Project Cars and in real life in Formula 1.
All in all it would be enough if one could choose between both options. I then would never come back to meter while the casual gamer could stay with his beloved meter or feet option.
I really don’t mind which is used. I don’t have a problem knowing how I’m doing in relation to other cars with the current system regardless of race length. I guess that makes me “casual”.
1 Like
I have wondered in the past if the real reason why Forza doesn’t do separation by time has something to do with the Forza engine, Forzatech.
Separation by time has been said to be working in spectate mode but perhaps something goes wrong when you are on the grid with either AI and/or online drivers.
That may tax the programming of the game’s engine to a point in which it is prohibitive to use time.
From reading past posts regarding the using of time in a racing game I’ve learned that it is more taxing then the use of distance.
Not that it would be a problem on more up to date gaming engines though. It’s just more taxing…
If a improved/updated engine is ever used on future Forza games I wonder if separation by time would be more common?
I don’t think it’s anything to do with the game engine. Time is used elsewhere within the game and in any event the system for displaying both is very similar.
My guess is that T10 are subtly (too subtly) attempting to encourage players to be more aware of the proximity of other cars particularly in MP and they have opted for a constant display of interval rather than the traditional sector split. In reality, if you can’t see the car ahead on the track and the guy behind isn’t visible in your rear view who cares. Time or distance will equally provide interval info. If you can see them then happy days, you can see if you’re closing/pulling away.
An eye opener. I now see it that with distance measured in feet this explains, at least for me, why ramming is so pronounced in Multiplayer.
With a consistent measurement of distance between opponents in feet this helps aids rammers. It’s hard for a rammer to determine proximity of someone to ram if they only see time. This is because time is more suited for distance of separation. While distance is most suited for proximity. I did not fully understand that until now. Which fully explains why ramming from rammers is so easy for them. I always wondered why/how rammers were so good at ramming. Now I know.
Thx
How are there possibly eight pages of discussion on this?
2 Likes
What I do to make the distance work for me is use points on the track to have a quick look compared to previous lap to see if he’s gaining or not
LOL, that’s not how any of this works, people were ramming long before distance in feet tracker was put in. It you are a lap down the distance marker is useless for you as a rammer since it will show everyone as being 11,000 ft away.
1 Like
I brought up the question in the #ForzaFriday stream to stir things up. All you time guys will be happy to know that Mechberg is #TeamTime 
1 Like