Current Forza shortcomings and new ideas

Smus wrote:While that is impressive, isnt the diffetence graphically between the 302 and 427 simply a sticker? I know that other parts play into it like engine sound and the like, but theoretically the same engine used in the 1993 svt mustang, right? Or at least close enough?

My inner blue oval blood forces me to correct this, sorry.....

I think for game rendering, yeah the body is very similar. Suspension and the weight between the 2 is not the same as Squid/Avanti stated. But even engine wise, if it behaved like the 93 Cobra motor, it would be very inaccurate. The EFI 5.0 in the 93 has anemic wedge style heads and barely makes 250 HP (235 underated). It relies on its long runner intake and choked up exhaust to make 300 ft/lbs. of torque available at the bottom. Most stock 5.0's run out of steam at 5000 rpm and are pointless after that. Its that light weight body and torque that make fox cars fun stock.

A Boss 302 is not even the same engine. Boss 302's have the only factory 4 bolt mains for SBF's. Boss 302's have HUGE canted Cleveland heads w/ 2.23/1.72 valves (2.19 intakes for 70'). Plus a solid roller cam. Rated at 290, but really produced over 300, could rev out to 7K with no problems. Anyways, probably more than you guys care about, my point is, it should not behave like a regular 302 as it is far from a standard 302 motor.

Probably a typo, but the 427 FE and Boss 429 have nearly nothing in common. Most non-Ford people are shocked when they see a Boss 429 motor in person for the first time...

Wasn't the boss 429 fords answer to the hemi motor from mopar? I may be wrong but I thought it was a bigggggggg motor and it had some similar features as the hemi. But not very many would made. There is a company out there that makes a kit to convert a 460 to a 429 boss motor

Hey! I just thought of one. Allow the host of an online lobby to adjust the time elapsed between all finishing and going back to the lobby screen.

TuxTshirt wrote:Hey! I just thought of one. Allow the host of an online lobby to adjust the time elapsed between all finishing and going back to the lobby screen.

Bingo bingo bingo! Yes! And maybe, just maybe, a temporary .txt type file that saves to the host's XBox so (s)he doesn't have to write down finishing times! It could be one temporary file that overwrites after every race. For those who race heats, the .txt file just gets longer and inserts --------- (breaks) between each heat.

sbclowrider wrote:Wasn't the boss 429 fords answer to the hemi motor from mopar? I may be wrong but I thought it was a bigggggggg motor and it had some similar features as the hemi. But not very many would made. There is a company out there that makes a kit to convert a 460 to a 429 boss motor

It was so Ford had something to use for stock car racing. But basically yes. Sometimes its refered to as a Semi-Hemi, and yeah its a big fuck'n motor. The heads make the Boss motor mostly. 429/460 BBF's are 385 series motors, so yeah you could make a 460 a Boss with the right stuff.

Boss 9'


Another badass motor that Ford did, not too many people know about....

427 "Cammer"
http://www.supermotors.net/articles/lfm-issue01-a2-1.php

StalkerStang wrote:… Its that light weight body and torque that make fox cars fun stock. …

One friend of mine also would add that Ford absolutely nailed the gearing for the car. Gearing is a torque multiplier and FoMoCo did their homework for the car. Each successive gear makes the car feel as if it's pulling harder than the car really should.

StalkerStang wrote:My inner blue oval blood forces me to correct this, sorry … Anyways, probably more than you guys care about

No apology necessary, Stalker. Thank you for your contribution. The fact we're a bunch o' everlovin' gearheads in here, and that we each enjoy a different brand or type of car is awesome. We have Mopar fans, we have G.M. fans, and we have FoMoCo fans in here too. This particular dumb fool (me) likes defunct auto manufacturers like American Motors, Duesenberg, Studebaker, Packard, and Tucker. We even have a clown who works for Chrysler but prefers G.M. products. We're pretty open minded to other cars being awesome in their own way too. I'd say this group has some amazing collective knowledge. Share what you know when the time arises.

StalkerStang wrote:… Most non-Ford people are shocked when they see a Boss 429 motor in person for the first time...

I remember the first time I saw my first Boss 429 Mustang. A friend of mine had ordered parts from Mustangs Plus in Stockton, CA. Rather than pay for shipping he decided to pick them up. Mustangs Plus was having a car show over the following weekend so we combined two reasons into one trip. At the show was a Boss 429 Mustang. Dead serious, Kar Kraft must have used buttered-up shoehorns to fit that behemoth of an engine into the horse's engine bay. Turn 10 should seriously "Autovista" the Boss 429 in the next Forza game, just so people gain an appreciation of what went into getting that engine in there.

Definition of a muscle car: Raiding the corporate parts bin and installing an engine from a full size car into a midsize or compact car. The Boss 429 engine may not have been from a larger FoMoCo stablemate though the rest of the definition fits as it definitely crams a large engine into a smaller chassis.

--New direction--
Correct me if I'm wrong, I first noticed the "body panel" trick on the 1995 Mustang Cobra R. Turn 10 is getting there, slowly but surely. In the game we can change the appearance of the '95 Mustang Cobra R to a '95 Mustang GT. In the Porsche pack I've noticed the '73 and '82 911's also have an assortment of body panels from other trim packages. Now if we could (de-badge / re-badge) and swap out the engine we'd really be cooking with fire.

I love that you can make the 95 R look like a base V6 if you wanted to.

I wish I could turn a 93 Cobra into an LX on Forza as well.

I've always liked the idea of modeling the base car, and then adding other details to make it whatever is needed. With the 95 R, they really could base model any 94-04 Mustang, as the main body and chassis is the same, Ford did a complete makeover in 99, but the main body is carried over from the 98.

This could satisfy the Honda nut-swingers as well. We all know there are umpteen different versions of the Civic, with American/JDM/Tuner versions, but all with the same chassis/body.

-Fix the speedo or add an option for a sim speedo that reflects wheel speed instead of vehicle speed.

Pegging off of Stalker's idea: different badges would appease lots of people too. The gen. 1 Golf and Rabbit are the same car. Jetta/Bora? Same deal. What was called Mustang in the United States was known as the Ford T5 in Germany.

LX, GT, Cobra … Berlinetta, Z-28, IROC-Z … GSR, Type R, SE … and on and on and on. Customization is awesome.

-Allowing the user to choose how many laps they want to race at an event, perhaps? These two and three lap deals are too short. I want to race seven, nineteen, or forty-seven laps some times. With a stronger A.I. and better tire/fuel wear more laps would be cool as pit strategy would become a factor.

Anyone have feelings on including open wheel formula cars?

I'm not thinking open wheel would really have a place in the genre they've etched themselves into. It's supposed to be about upgrading cars that one could go out and buy, then racing them. Or at least that's how they started out. Now they're about money and getting it any way they can, so you may very well see open wheel happening. Can you imagine the bitching about realism when you tag wheels and nothing happens though?

I still want to see lobby tuning. And difficulty settings that are easier to access. At the start of the race is fine but when my wife wants to race she gets pissed off in a hurry because I run manual trans.

Smus wrote:Anyone have feelings on including open wheel formula cars?

I would be for open wheel chassis, sure. There are Star Mazda and Formula Ford type cars even that would fit into the grassroots style of racing (albeit raced by rich doctors and lawyers). Open wheel cars could fit into a class of their own, making sure they're only raced against other open wheel cars. It would be fun to have multi-class racing where open wheel cars are on the track with other types of cars and each class has final rankings.

The problem with open wheel cars is Turn 10 would have to visually model the suspension being worked and that eats a system's memory. In every car we've been given thus far, we cannot see the shocks and springs working while we are racing or watching a replay, thus saving memory for other things. A new XBox may solve this issue, of course it may not, too. It all depends upon what Turn 10 wants to put in the game, how much total memory the new system has, and what features eat n-amount of memory.

Real time or near real time, time passage and weather changes (I'm thinking similar to GTA 4). Doesn't have to be rain just air temps and track temps along with the time of day. Doesn't have to be super realistic either, just enough so that it effects hp of the car and grip on the track.

The more I think about it, I definitely believe that we will be blown away with the capabilities of the nextbox and blueray if we get that. If so than all the cool features that have been limited by disc space will be in FM5 and then Sonys GT will be left in the dust cause they will no longer have anything to hold over our heads. All these ideas sound great! Hope that most of them come true but we definitely need more options as far as car builds such as the choice of say a FREAKIN SMALL BLOCK MOPAR 340! Sorry that outburst was rude... sssighhhhh well to be able to chose options like that from the start and a complete physics overhaul again to show what the next box can do would be sweet. I guess next fall is the nextbox launch now so mabye we will see it then?

Avanti 63r1025 wrote:…Ultimately I'd like to see Forza Motorsport ship with relatively few chassis and allow us to accurately build up varying trim levels for each car modeled. I'd also like to see Turn 10 eliminate duplicate chassis (5 Audi race touring cars? Seriously?) Include only one on the disc, make each variant a different paint scheme, and give us drop-down menu options in the car name. That's got to take less disc space than five separate vehicles. …

Sorta05 wrote:I would be really surprised if the game isn't already coded that way Avanti. I doubt they have the entire car code over again for the similar cars. Turn 10 does it that way for numbers. Same as gt5... oh we have 1k cars... never-mind 100 of them are different versions of the R34.

I was just shuffling through the "buy cars" option Sorta (that never gets old) and I noticed something. Those five repetitive Audi DTM (Touring) Cars have a different number amended to each car's name. I'm not 100% certain of this though because computer coding is not my cup of tea, my bet is on every one of those Audi DTM cars being separate entities coded on the game disc.

Avanti,

I took a couple of programming classes in college (which in by no way makes me an authority of any kind) but coders usually use something called a module. So tires for example would be a module (probably one for each type and size) and that code is referenced anytime those tires are used on a car. It's probably very similar for the rest of the car... that is if they are using the code efficiently. Again, I'm no expert and could be completely wrong. Please correct me if you or anyone else knows better...

Ah ha. Thank you for that information.
I wonder how they'd tag five different numbers to the same chassis? I'm not saying it's not possible, I'm curious. If it's possible they did that, they could put the feature to use in regard to our other idea to model multiple trims in one chassis.

This is the basic idea how it works... You could have new numbers for a car even if the only difference is the livery. For example:

module E =engine coding
module C =chassis coding
module S=suspension coding
module L =livery coding

So modules are referenced with the letter E1, C1, etc (this is just an example I'm not sure what kind of actual naming they use to make this stuff)

So here's what the cars would look like:

Audi #33 (I'm just making up cars I don't have them memorized from the game)=
modules: E1, C1, S1, L1

Audi #48=
modules: E1, C1, S1, L2

So even though Audi #48 has it's own number it still uses the exact same code in every aspect of the car with the exception of the livery. Again... I have no idea of the inner working of the turn 10 code. And I'm not a software engineer and it's been damn near 8 years since the last programming class I took. I might be able to find some of my old projects if you want to see what the real deal looks like... or you could just google programming modules.

So they could do something like this?
…
Module E8= L89
Module E9= LT1
Module E10= LS1
…
Module E43= RB26
…
Module E95= 2JZ
etc.

So they could code each engine once and if they'd complete the necessary research, any and all cars that had a specific engine could just adopt the certain module?

Here's an idea (example) also: LT1 was in F-body, Impala, Y-body (Corvette) and a few other cars. It was more uncorked in the Y-body and a bit congested for the other platforms. Could they program the engine's power numbers for the Corvette, and code separate finagle factors (attached to individual cars) to slightly restrict the power of cars with lesser performing versions of that engine?

Maybe... I really don't know enough about programming or how turn 10 does theirs. If it were me I would make a module for each version of the lt1... not saying that's the way they did it. It would be neat to talk to the developers to see how they do the coding. I'm sure all the coding is proprietary though. I do get the feeling that things are simplified a lot. Wouldn't it be neat to see an active AWD system like the EVO's or the active suspension systems like the Vette's in one of these games?

This is going back a ways, and this was in Gran Turismo, though those games used hexadecimal values (at least I know so for 2 and 3). Certain parts had a specific hexadecimal sequence in a specific location of the code. Those who got into hybrid building would use a Game Shark (for PSX) or a computer program and a SharkPort (for PS2) to find certain hexadecimal values for parts.

To build hybrid cars we'd take a part code from one car and give that line of code to another car; nothing was off limits. I liked to assemble realistic creations though it was possible to be completely batshit crazy. I discovered a way to build Bill Cosby's dual supercharged Cobra even though a twin supercharged setup wasn't available in the game. It's been awhile though IIRC, I started with a twin turbo system, then inputted supercharger hexadecimal values into both twin turbo slots. The result was phenomenal! I built it to about 930 horsepower, the boost came on in an instant, and Jesus was it an insane sled but it was so much fun to whoop on the A.I.

Oh to blend those capabilities with Forza … ? I know it's possible though you have to have a modified XB360 and you're only permitted to play with yourself (pun intended).

It seemed with GT that the effect would be different depending on the car you used also. I inputed the same code through the gameshark but it had different effects on different cars.

On a miata, I was able to put the Saleen SR engine in it and it made like 600+ HP and had the sound of the SR. But the same coding on the old Mini Cooper would give it 1300+ HP and it sounded super high-pitched.

Yep, I saw those anomalies too. The gameshark would literally only transfer the engine code. It would leave the intake, exhaust, ecu, various other parts, of the car alone. Your Mini Cooper had various Mini Cooper parts bolted to the Saleen SR engine, same with your Miata. Sounds were (and still are) something else with Gran Turismo. I could orchestrate a better automotive symphony than Gran Turismo with a Dremel tool, a hair drier, and a deceased hard disc drive at my hand.

There was a line of code that acted as a "horsepower finagle factor" too. You could literally boost or choke the car's power to an exact figure by multiplying ( > = < ) 1. The figure was accurate to three (IIRC) decimal figures. 320 hp stock × 1.047 = 335.04 hp after the finagle factor. 320 hp stock × 0.857 = 274.24 hp after the finagle factor.

Edit follows:

Avanti 63r1025 wrote:… Forza Motorsport 4 has the 1996 Grand Sport but that's the only one they have, and even through upgrades we can't tune it to Sledgehammer capabilities. Hell, it can't even mimic option B2K, the factory ordered Callaway twin turbo cars less capable than the Sledgehammer, and about on par with ZR-1. …

Nevermind me, I'll just sit here for a moment and eat humble pie. The C4 Grand Sport can mimic B2K via the twin turbo swap.

What if our (builds/tunes) could play more of a role in our garage? Builds would be "ghost" versions of the parent car and wouldn't take garage spots though could be seen and chosen as we currently choose cars. Since we can create multiple groups in our garage, how about if different builds (for the same car) could be grouped into different groups? I have a rough vision that the graphical user interface would look like a reversed family tree (one branched into many, versus many branched into one).

Ex: Stalker, you're working on a GTS series and the '05 Mustang GT overlaps with Tux's Grand Am series. I'd love to own only one physical '05 Mustang GT, though place the differing builds in different groups.

I'd be fine with the car showing up multiple times for each tune you have of it... or at least giving you the option to list the tune as a car in the garage. Let me clarify... it should only show up once for each configuration of the car in the garage, not for each "tune". But then have a drop down menu when you select the car so that you can apply the tune you want to use on it.

Either way obviously this is an area we almost all see a need for improvement in...