Take ride height for instance. The max height point should be stock and every adjustment under that should be a negative number. Like max should be 0 and you’d adjust to say -15mm or something. Why not label the damper units as clicks just like the entire actual industry does? I don’t get why you have to convolute this process with your own labels when you can just simulate what’s already out there. Say you model your dampers on Ohlins TTX right. Just set the units to what they use. What they use is what just about every other race suspension company uses. Same goes for ARBs. There really shouldn’t be THIS much adjustability to ARBs. I have a pretty decent set on my M3 and they have soft, default and hard. That’s about it. You make this much more complicated than it needs to be with these labels, terms and concepts that just aren’t used IRL.
I don’t know actually about IRL as I am not a tuner but I don’t think any sim has similar to what you are suggesting. Height are not maxed in any sim by default and ARBs have numbers in all sims. The values and behavior in FM may be bit off but it’s similar to what other sims provide (Other than Brake Balance which is not same has Brake Bias).
As a layperson, Ride Height indicating the Height of the Ride doesn’t seem weird or unconventional to me.
Then they’re doing it in a confusing manner too.
It is because a right height minimum of 4.0 to 6.0 means just about nothing except for providing an slightly less ambiguous point of reference than just have some percentage slider from lowest setting to highest setting.
The only reason to have higher than stock ride height settings would be for setting up a car for rallies. There aren’t any off-road tracks in Forza (and no mention of adding them as far as I’m aware), so there’s no need for the ability to increase ride height above the highest settings.
Also, I need to confirm, but I don’t believe there is any height change represented when installing suspensions other than race… by this I mean (even though it’s locked), you can go to the springs page in the tuning menu and see that the ride height is essentially at 50%. Install the sport suspension and there is no difference shown.
Beyond that, if they displayed the amount of drop in an actual unit of measure, it would mean something.
I may have been taking it for granted based on past installments, but I believe the ride height is, in fact, in a unit of measure. Inches for me, since I’m using Imperial. And I occasionally raise the ride height above stock settings for various reasons. Rarely to max in Motorsport.
Also, I have often wished that non-adjustable/locked parts would display what they are actually set to.
You can increase aero downforce by raising ride height. Tuners have done it tons in other Forza’s.
I am glad that your opinion nescitates the need to change a setting that has been around for the whole franchise.
Because the people who design and develop this game have no real understanding about real life cars, and car culture (from any country not just the US) or racing and racing etiquette. I wonder sometimes, with some of the precepts in these forza games, if the developers even have drivers licenses. But I guess it’s ok because I doubt that most of the people who play have them either. Those of us with real automotive experience just have to make do with what this game has to offer.
Setting by clicks is just a fine-tuning (it opens a bypass around dampers valve) of predefined damping curve setting. Full suspension tuning starts with taking the correct spring stiffness, and then adjust rebound and compression damping for consistent effect. Damping forces are adjusted by modifying shim stacks on valves and oil viscosity (but that’s actually not recommended as it affects all damping restrictions occuring inside the shock). In real life damping force characteristic is represented by a graph showing shock speed to damping force relation, but that is quite non-intuitive.
As the suspension travels up and down the camber changes with it. A higher ride height (spring height in this game vs a body lift) gives the option to have more camber as the suspension compresses. In FH5 rally suspension was used a lot for this reason, even on road/street cars.