Nice surprise, but the way this update rolled out was weird. Updates usually come around 10am for me, I checked at 10:30 and there was no update, and my download queue didn't say it had installed anything. I checked again at 3pm, no update listed as available, nothing in the "recently updated" section of the queue. Fired up the game at 4pm and it worked like normal, drove the NASCARs and TA Beretta a bit before my league race, but still nothing in the recently installed section. Checked again around 11pm and finally it showed it had recently installed something for Forza.
Especially weird since I've had to do the pause/resume trick to get the download to start for every patch since April...
The NASCAR stock cars drive surprisingly good, like I kinda don't believe they actually handle that well. I'm not saying I think they should handle bad or anything, but it was surprising how comfortable they were at some sketchy places like the Climbing Esses at VIR (comfy flat) and well, all of the Nordschleife.
Some interesting changes in this update.
Tuned car-to-car collision response for more physically accurate energy dissipation. This reduces the impact of small collisions and allows for more stability and control.
Didn't really notice any difference here, but it appears bump drafting still does not work which is pretty disappointing. You can occasionally get a bump when speeds and/or lag is just right, but not with any regularity... Which is weird, as it worked with slower cars like the Ginetta Junior back when we got it, then they broke it (for the June update I think?), then they fixed it (for July and August update), then they broke it again (September update), all unmentioned in patch notes so we have no idea if it was intentional or not.
Updated the multi-car aero model to reduce downforce impact on leading cars, widen the aero wake near the car, smooth transitions near wake edges and reduce drafting induced aero balance changes. (Update 13)
I know this was mentioned as an Update 13 change, but after doing a league race tonight in Ginetta Juniors at Hakone (draft sensitive car at a drafty track), it appears they have tweaked it some in this update as well and reduced the strength of the draft a little bit. Kinda mixed on this change, it was a little strong before but it was kinda fun like that. I wish they would just make it an option when setting up a lobby, like "Draft level: Weak/Normal/Strong" or something.
Returning to track: when a car goes off track, they will be ghosted to prevent collisions caused by unsafe re-entry until they have returned to track and reached a minimum speed threshold.
This is probably an overall positive when it comes to dealing with the brigands in public lobbies, but now players will never learn how to properly rejoin and will just drive out in the middle of the track because "oh well I'm ghosted." People are generally stupid and don't learn anyways I guess though so yeah I suppose it's positive. Will have to see how they un-ghost though before we know for sure I guess.
Autosaved tunes no longer apply to a player's tune save limit.
This is big. It's kinda dumb a game with 500+ cars launched with less than 500 spots for tunes when you can't avoid/control autosaves... but at least it's better now. There are a lot of people who had long been up against the 450 cap who will have some new freedom.
Fixed an issue on Mugello and other tracks where hitting curbs could cause sporadic, uncontrollable spins. This would occasionally occur when one or more tires rapidly accelerated or decelerated while unloaded during cornering.
Big win, if true. It was a bug that was actually present at a bunch of tracks, although it wasn't very common in some cars and quite common in others so we might not know if it's truly fixed until we spend more time with it.
By all accounts a bug, but one of the funniest ones I've seen, you can now step outside the showroom/garage and take pictures!
Wait, are those the cars of the update???
Harmless, so I imagine they will fix it quickly, sadly. For photographers, I'd suggest taking advantage of it while you can as you can now take pictures from angles you couldn't before, so you can better utilize the triple car bay: