Forza Motorsport General Discussion Thread

[deththrasher]

That makes it even more bizarre that FH5's car team spotted the issue and fixed it whereas T10's team didn't.

Yea, and you'd think PG would communicate to T10 if they spotted it

 

[RolexGTP]

That makes it even more bizarre that FH5's car team spotted the issue and fixed it whereas T10's team didn't.

We shouldn't be surprised at this point that PG has more accurate car models in FH5 then what T10 has in in FM. Listen to the car sounds as a prime example, dont know why thats the case but all we can do is wait and see if T10 corrects their wrongs as time goes on.

 

[Dopplegagger]

Hello everyone. It's been a minute since I posted anything on GTP.
I was wondering if I could get some advice on HDR. Is it possible to darken the screen a bit with the HDR settings? My screens aren't the best HDR monitors on the market, but they are a lot better than the TN panel I replaced. I am using some AsRock PG27FF1A monitors, and the game seemed to have gotten brighter since update 4.0. Is it possible to turn the brightness down a notch with the HDR settings? I played around with the sliders but got absolutely no results or response out of anything I tried.

I also have some concerns about the HDR settings screen. The black Forza logo is always visible. I can see it pretty clearly even with the slider all the way to the left. Is there anything I can do to get the Forza logo completely indistinguishable from its background? And would this help with deepening the shadows in game?

The large Forza Motorsport text disappears at 355 for me. Is it OK to go above this setting? Would I be causing my monitors any harm? This seems like it can cause the monitor to display brighter images. But when I have the setting all the way to the left, the image is no brighter or darker than when I have it set to 355.

I know my monitors aren't the best for this, but it's what I got to work with for now. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

[deththrasher]

Hmm can you not lower the black levels on your monitor? Btw exceeding your peak brightness will do nothing to harm it. It just cannot display the higher nits

 

[skazz]

From my experience, setting the normal brightness as low as possible seems to give the most colour accuracy and avoids washed out effect of bright painted cars in game. On both monitors I play on, I have normal brightness set to 0 in FM23, because I can't even find a setting where the black logo disappears (unlike most HDR games where things are fine).

The HDR brightness setting seems to be related to white levels (it's usually named differently in other HDR games). From my experience setting it to the exact point where the white logo disappears will give optimal but somewhat dark results. I opted to set mine roughly 1500 higher than necessary, which results in clouds lit by sunlight to be a bit too bright but just gives the game a bit more "pop". If you go too far on this setting then bright spots in the scenery get washed out, so you need to judge it carefully. Thankfully you can easily change it during a race.


So to reiterate, setting both sliders as low as possible (either just enough to make the logo disappear or down to zero if you can't do that) will give the most accurate picture, but playing with the settings can make things a bit more colourful and pop a little more if you prefer that.

 

[Hasse 86]

I saw this on Twitter the other day. As sad as it is to see developers working under poor conditions, I'm starting to wonder if this isn't the norm rather than an exception in the industry. Working conditions seems awful many times.

Also, I'm not sure if having short term contractors explains all the problems and bugs in Forza Motorsport. Isn't that something most studios use nowadays?

What's your take @PJTierney ?

 

[PJTierney]

Microsoft has been heavily reliant on contracts for many years, it makes applying to jobs at any of their studios a big risk right now because there’s no long-term security for many roles.

 

[sirjim73]

I saw this on Twitter the other day. As sad as it is to see developers working under poor conditions, I'm starting to wonder if this isn't the norm rather than an exception in the industry. Working conditions seems awful many times.

Also, I'm not sure if having short term contractors explains all the problems and bugs in Forza Motorsport. Isn't that something most studios use nowadays?

View attachment 1325330View attachment 1325331What's your take @PJTierney ?

There are positives and negatives about short term contracts and projects.

However, even as an accountant I see it in my work. Multiple IT projects over the last 3 years where new software was introduced internally and then those involved are moved immediately on to the next project and support for the last one dries up and few people are left who worked on the last project. Teams threads where questions are conpletely ignored by those previously responsible, even though they are still with the firm and you have to work out the answer between you. All those projects were regarded as "complete", but still, minor issues do occur inevitably.

You're reliant on new personnel rapidly learning what was done by the last personnel to be able to assist you, except when they're instructed not to do anything related to that project.

In some cases, it can also discourage effort/involvement and can be demotivating. You're reliant on the individuals taking pride in their work, otherwise its very easy for someone near the end of a project to feel like "why bother, I won't be here in 3 months".

This applies to any contracted role though, not just IT.

On the flip side though, I have a friend in IT who spent nearly 20 years where he didn't want any commitment and was offered permanent positions at the end of several contracts and refused them all. He did move to a permanent position but only when the time was right.

A lot of people in IT prefer (or at the very least preferred) the short term contract situation as they earn/earned good amounts on contracts (higher than permanent roles) and didn't want longer commitment. In the UK, that pretty much limits you to 2 years for tax reasons (IR35). But of course, no one solution fits all scenarios well or suits all those working in any particular industry.

 

[zaxs]

Lime Rock show:

 

[toastet]

Lime Rock show:

View attachment 1325356

All 4WD

 

[syphe]

I saw this on Twitter the other day. As sad as it is to see developers working under poor conditions, I'm starting to wonder if this isn't the norm rather than an exception in the industry. Working conditions seems awful many times.

Also, I'm not sure if having short term contractors explains all the problems and bugs in Forza Motorsport. Isn't that something most studios use nowadays?

View attachment 1325330View attachment 1325331What's your take @PJTierney ?

I can't tell you the exact reason behind this, but it's very common in the US/Canada, I know MS got in trouble many years ago for hiring contractors which were basically filling FTE roles, now they have to hire them for a period then they have a stand down, otherwise they must be treated as FTE's.

I see this a lot, I'm in Europe, and pretty much everyone I work with is an FTE, but much of the time when I connect with someone in the US, they are a contractor.

I assume the reason is financial, it does suck for the folks who are hired in this way, as often they would much prefer to be an FTE, are not being hired for specialised roles that a contractor may demand very good rates for, so are often taken advantage of. Especially egregious in game development, where the lure of working in the industry may mask any shortcomings that the hiring arrangement incurs.

 

[whannel]

If they're still sending requests that's good, right? Surely the few hundred annual currencies for healthcare gets covered by a few dlc sales/gamepass subs.

 

[breeminator]

As sad as it is to see developers working under poor conditions, I'm starting to wonder if this isn't the norm rather than an exception in the industry. Working conditions seems awful many times.

This has been the case for decades in industries that people see it as desirable to work in. In terms of specific industries I've been familiar with, I've seen software developers in the finance, real life motorsports, and computer games industries all be underpaid or overworked or both, going back 30 years. One reason why people used to prefer to be contractors in financial software development was to be able to stick rigidly to working contracted hours vs being expected to work massive weekly hours as a full time employee. Basically, if a job provides any sort of non-financial benefits to employees, such as it being an industry that they're proud to tell people they work in, that is subtracted from what the job provides in other respects, e.g. lower salary, longer hours etc until it makes the job no more appealing overall, balancing supply and demand. If you want to be better paid, and have better working conditions, work in an industry that few people find appealing.

 

[FordGTGuy]

This is what happens when you have a profession that has been flooded with talent. It's also a profession that is easily outsourced for cheap labor. Combine that with the ever growing cost to develop games and you get insane crunch and poor job security.

This is partly why indie game development has been exploding. On top of this, you have people telling kids they are a failure if you don't go to college and the push to put everyone into STEM... This problem isn't going away anytime soon.

This is why you can have a huge need for high paying blue collar tradesman while also having large unemployment.

If it wasn't a cherry on top, COVID was a surge to the gaming market and now it's in a recession as people returned to work. This is why nearly every tech company is laying off 8-15% of their employees.

Blizzard/Acti layoffs were mostly overlap with the merger l but there was 100% layoffs due to inflation and market shrink in that too.

Would be interesting to know if he worked on art assets, as that is definitely normal for contract work.

 

[Jezza819]

I got caught up with the Italian challenges this weekend. The 124 Abarth challenge was pretty fun. It was like a MX-5 Cup series.

I really like the Giulia. It makes a great noise. But is it normal that you can't see the numbers on it's speedometer and tachometer? On the Nurburgring GP night race when the track lighting was behind me you could see the numbers on the gauges but that was the only time. But I'll definitely use that car again.

The Valkyrie Pro I'm not that impressed with. Yes it's fast but like the other Valkyrie it takes too much effort to turn it especially in low speed corners. I ran it at Yas Marina and in those two left handers underneath the hotel I was past a 180 degree turn on the steering wheel. I thought those cars were supposed to be all about massive amounts of grip. Plus the AI Valkyries fastest laps were 2.5 seconds faster than I was on 5 difficulty. So I'll be leaving this one alone.

 

[breeminator]

The Valkyrie Pro I'm not that impressed with. Yes it's fast but like the other Valkyrie it takes too much effort to turn it especially in low speed corners. I ran it at Yas Marina and in those two left handers underneath the hotel I was past a 180 degree turn on the steering wheel. I thought those cars were supposed to be all about massive amounts of grip.

Driving with a controller it has staggeringly good front end grip. You can hit full throttle coming out of corners really early and it just doesn't understeer at all as you accelerate out. Can you not adjust your wheel range? When I used a wheel with GTS I quite often set the steering range differently for different cars.

 

[-Fred-]

I accidentally built myself something stupidly hilarious while "grinding" to unlock the upgrades. I was leveling up a bone stock Datsun 510 in order to replicate the one I have in FH5 (SR20 swap, about 350hp and A-Class) and I was doing Rivals events to get the levels up, I started to add parts to it and ended up with an E-class full handling build on racing slicks with no power whatsoever. It can effectively more or less do Lime Rock and Maple Valley short flat out with barely any brakes. Around the tighter, shorter tracks it's an absolute riot to the point where I don't even want to do the SR swap anymore.

Of course, the problem with such a car is that in order to go fast you need to nail every corner and maintain your momentum as much as possible, which is kinda impossible to do when racing online with other humans, so it was absolutely terrible in the open E-Class lobbies.

 

[Dopplegagger]

From my experience, setting the normal brightness as low as possible seems to give the most colour accuracy and avoids washed out effect of bright painted cars in game. On both monitors I play on, I have normal brightness set to 0 in FM23, because I can't even find a setting where the black logo disappears (unlike most HDR games where things are fine).

The HDR brightness setting seems to be related to white levels (it's usually named differently in other HDR games). From my experience setting it to the exact point where the white logo disappears will give optimal but somewhat dark results. I opted to set mine roughly 1500 higher than necessary, which results in clouds lit by sunlight to be a bit too bright but just gives the game a bit more "pop". If you go too far on this setting then bright spots in the scenery get washed out, so you need to judge it carefully. Thankfully you can easily change it during a race.


So to reiterate, setting both sliders as low as possible (either just enough to make the logo disappear or down to zero if you can't do that) will give the most accurate picture, but playing with the settings can make things a bit more colourful and pop a little more if you prefer that.

I didnt know I could change it during a race. I'll give it a go. Thanks a million!

 

[PJTierney]

E-Class is good fun, people should try it out before it goes away this week.

Multiple good cars for it too, MX-5 90 and Corolla 74 are the two standouts.

 

[SloGrumpyDad]

E-Class is good fun, people should try it out before it goes away this week.

Multiple good cars for it too, MX-5 90 and Corolla 74 are the two standouts.

Yep, I have a MG GT that I have been cleaning up with too. The ‘83 Golf is also good along with the RX-3.

 

[DG_Silva]

E-Class is good fun, people should try it out before it goes away this week.

Multiple good cars for it too, MX-5 90 and Corolla 74 are the two standouts.

I've got an RWD Mini Cooper which does extremely well, getting a podium almost every time.

 

[Morbid65]

The "Community Notice" in-game today says to make a 9 lap race at Laguna Seca with the McLaren GT3 in free play or a private lobby, and suggests you will need to use medium tires but then pit on lap 4 for new ones. "With this strategy, you'll only need to pit once." The tire wear multiplier isn't available for free play/private lobbies, so a set of mediums will last like 25 laps.

I hope it's just AI making these things.

 

[sirjim73]

E-Class is good fun, people should try it out before it goes away this week.

Multiple good cars for it too, MX-5 90 and Corolla 74 are the two standouts.

My MP experience on Sunday:

race 1 - VW Golf race with a tight race between me and "Sl0wass" which was good fun (although me being "Evenslowerass" i lost that one.
race 2 - E Class in the classic Alfa. After being shunted off the track for the second time by the same player (first time at a corner, second a sideswipe on main straight), I felt like I was playing The Trial in Horizon and rage quit and went back to SP.

If I'm going to be shunted off in both MP and SP I might as well stick to a mode where i won't come last in every race, to be honest. That's just demoralising and infuriating frankly, for me.

I'll try MP again at a later date, when there are replays and you can use them to report rammers. I do want to get that 300 laps achievement, but it's extremely painful getting there at the moment.

 

[PJTierney]

The "Community Notice" in-game today says to make a 9 lap race at Laguna Seca with the McLaren GT3 in free play or a private lobby, and suggests you will need to use medium tires but then pit on lap 4 for new ones. "With this strategy, you'll only need to pit once." The tire wear multiplier isn't available for free play/private lobbies, so a set of mediums will last like 25 laps.

I hope it's just AI making these things.

Maybe it could be submitted as evidence to Turn 10 that their tyre wear feature is broken.

 

[breeminator]

The "Community Notice" in-game today says to make a 9 lap race at Laguna Seca with the McLaren GT3 in free play or a private lobby, and suggests you will need to use medium tires but then pit on lap 4 for new ones. "With this strategy, you'll only need to pit once." The tire wear multiplier isn't available for free play/private lobbies, so a set of mediums will last like 25 laps.

I hope it's just AI making these things.

No, AI would do better than that, at least it does if you go back to it and point out a problem with its answer.

For example, I recently asked ChatGPT

"How much XP does a player receive for playing a game in Counter-Strike 2's Premier mode?"

Its reply included these two bits:

"Counter-Strike 2's Premier mode is a competitive game mode that requires players to have a Prime account and be at least level 10"

"However, the XP earned may also be affected by other factors, such as the weekly XP bonus, the reduced XP penalty, and the new player boost"

So I pointed out:

"Note, though, that a player who is level 10 or higher, which is needed to play Premier, is too high a level to receive the new player boost."

It then made the connection and said:

"You are right, a player who is level 10 or higher cannot receive the new player boost, as it is only available for players who are level 6 or lower. I apologize for the oversight, I should have mentioned that in my previous answer. Thank you for pointing that out."

So please don't insult ChatGPT by comparing it to human support staff, as I'm not sure I've ever had such a sensible response from a human.

 

[Nacho Libre]

The "Community Notice" in-game today says to make a 9 lap race at Laguna Seca with the McLaren GT3 in free play or a private lobby, and suggests you will need to use medium tires but then pit on lap 4 for new ones. "With this strategy, you'll only need to pit once." The tire wear multiplier isn't available for free play/private lobbies, so a set of mediums will last like 25 laps.

I hope it's just AI making these things.

Well, I did in fact created and raced an event following those instructions... Am I obeying our new overlords now?

 

[r_outsider]

The "Community Notice" in-game today says to make a 9 lap race at Laguna Seca with the McLaren GT3 in free play or a private lobby, and suggests you will need to use medium tires but then pit on lap 4 for new ones. "With this strategy, you'll only need to pit once." The tire wear multiplier isn't available for free play/private lobbies, so a set of mediums will last like 25 laps.

I hope it's just AI making these things.

Had to give the laughing reaction emoji because there isn't a forehead slap one...

 

[RPM Bibblefish]

Not sure if i'm just a bit late to the party but has anyone noticed how much tyre pressures impact lap times in this game?

In previous Forzas the sweetspot for most cars was 32psi (anywhere between 30 and 33psi was usually good enough).

Doesn't seem to be the case in FM23 though. I'm still trying to fathom what parts determine the need to alter the pressures e.g. bigger rims, wider tyres etc but it's definitely a thing in this game.

Example: E class, the honda S800 and porsche 550 are both a good 1s+ faster per lap with the pressures around 22psi

In B class the exocet, again is a good 1s+ faster with the pressures around 24psi

I'm sure there are loads of others aswell. It's not the case for all cars though as lots are just faster with higher pressures.

Anyone worked out what determines lower tyre pressures to be faster?

 

[PJTierney]

My only guess is that most tyres are overinflated on stock values and as such have a smaller contact patch. In theory, lowering tyre pressure = free grip (to a certain degree).

Sadly, tyre pressure isn’t available in UDP so hard for anyone to do proper analysis outside of screen recording their game with in-game telemetry open.

 

[RPM Bibblefish]

Yeah, i don't know why but certain cars definitely benefit from lower tyre pressures. Just not sure what factors determine the reason but the difference in lap times is quite an eye opener.