Forza Motorsport 4

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Cowwan: Feb 23, 2011

Apparently XBL Gold is free this weekend or something. How do I retrieve old gift cars that are no longer in the message center?

# ? Jun 1, 2012 22:18

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# ? May 31, 2024 09:48

track day bro!: Feb 17, 2005; #essereFerrari; Grimey Drawer

xzzy posted:

That's not true at all, as two cars with an identical PI rating will handle completely differently. Power, aero, weight, balance and torque curves all have a huge effect.

Yes they have a blender that they throw numbers into to generate averages, but I think that's used on performance upgrades more than the base cars.

Also i'm p sure they do a bit more suspsension stuff than just live axle, mcpherson strut cars definitely drive differently to say a double wishbone suspended car.

# ? Jun 2, 2012 00:11

Ether Frenzy: Dec 22, 2006; Nap Ghost

Yeah, what Dan said was more along the lines of "If the manufacturer can give us a specific set of data points/measurements/whatever, we can plug them into our engine and the resulting vidja game car will drive the way the car drives in real life. Because our engine is awesome."

# ? Jun 2, 2012 00:16

General Probe: Dec 28, 2004; Has this been done before?; Soiled Meat

xzzy posted:

That's not true at all, as two cars with an identical PI rating will handle completely differently. Power, aero, weight, balance and torque curves all have a huge effect.

Yes they have a blender that they throw numbers into to generate averages, but I think that's used on performance upgrades more than the base cars.

What he meant I'm assuming is that in one of the T10 videos about the making of the game Dan addresses the issue of "How do you model the MP412 which gets it's great handling from all it's fancy electronics?" Which he explained is easy, they get real life handling data and simply plug that into the game engine. There is no need for the game to simulate the on board electronics of vehicles if the end result, that is how the vehicle dives, is the same either way if that makes any sense.

Edit: Beat, Ether Frenzy has a much better explanation.

# ? Jun 2, 2012 00:18

Cojawfee: May 31, 2006; I think the US is dumb for not using Celsius

Cowwan posted:

Apparently XBL Gold is free this weekend or something. How do I retrieve old gift cars that are no longer in the message center?

You don't.

# ? Jun 2, 2012 00:22

Deeters: Aug 21, 2007

So rcman and I got bored the other night and decided to mess around with the AI. I already knew they were awful at driving LMP cars on oval tracks, but we also found out that they get stuck if you push them to the inside of turns.

Once we saw that one could get stuck, we decided to get the whole field down there. So we did a little herding.

And after chasing down two that got away, we had this.

Then we decided to go for a parade lap
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TILIhZQ0UN4

We weren't expecting them to be able to climb that far back up the turn. I'm not sure what causes this, but I assume the coding tells them to take the shortest route back to the racing line.

# ? Jun 2, 2012 01:15

GutBomb: Jun 15, 2005; Dude?

TannhauserGate posted:

This is a good thing for anyone to know and sometimes I feel like throwing down a wall of text in case any newbies are reading. Do some research on real-world driving technique. Focus on racing line, brakes, and gas. In the real world there's a whole process of rev matching that needs to happen to drive a race car smoothly. Forza doesn't care about stress damage to anything so that goes out the window. Bottom line: Downshifting upsets the car, and that's bad.

Standard entry is to bleed all your speed and gears in a straight line. Once you're down to entry speed, nose in, aim for the apex, accelerate out. You shouldn't be coming off the power at all once you're accelerating out. If you messed up and need to drop a gear, do not shift in the middle of the turn if you can possibly help it. Time your downshift so that the little dump of power happens at the moment you return to acceleration. You might still upset the car and have trouble coming up to speed, but you won't fly off the track.

You can bleed some gears and speed during the turn-in (trail braking), if you've gotten good enough to know when and where the car can handle it (and it's easier in FWD). But practicing bleeding it all off before the turn teaches you the valuable racing skill of low entry speeds. This is both the most valuable and hardest to master skill in the book. You'll seem like a complete grandmother coming to a standstill before the turn-in, but you're back on the power half a mile earlier.

Sidenote regarding horsepower: With low-power cars you actually want to save a lot of braking and shifting for the turns because you're trying to conserve forward momentum above all. The more power you have, the less momentum tends to matter, because it's all a question of applying throttle as early as possible. Only once you've mastered getting on the throttle early can you match it back up to conserving momentum, and that's when you're four-wheel-drifting trying to set a qualifying time.

Thanks a lot for this info. I'm shaving seconds off my lap times by doing this stuff. I'm still slower than everyone else but I think that will get better with practice. At least I know what I was doing wrong.

# ? Jun 2, 2012 01:15

Quad: Dec 31, 2007; I've seen pogs you people wouldn't believe

I'm sad. After trying for a solid, clean time on every circuit, F Class, with my VW Rabbit, and really learning her, and learning the tracks, (at least at <110 mph), I experimented, and found that the 81 Sirocco is altogether better in every way.

Do I put the tarp over my lovely Rabbit? Or do I give up at this point and just start driving a Spark?
This is gonna happen in every class, isn't it?

# ? Jun 2, 2012 02:52

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

Idiot race posted:

Also i'm p sure they do a bit more suspsension stuff than just live axle, mcpherson strut cars definitely drive differently to say a double wishbone suspended car.

This might be a bit geeky as a direct copy/paste from my console, but here's what's in the SQLite database the game runs on (gamedb.slt on the disk).

Most common suspension types are listed:

code:

sqlite> SELECT * FROM list_suspensiontype;
3|Leaf
4|Torsion
5|Strut
6|Wishbone
7|Multilink
8|Trailing

Unfortunately for the accuracy factor:

code:

sqlite> SELECT * FROM list_suspensionphysicstype;
0|INDEPENDANT
1|SOLID

Looks like they make the game aware of what the in-game cars use, but they only simulate solid axles and a general "independent" option.

The table list_springdamperphysics lists all the suspension options for various vehicles and only has a SuspensionPhysicsTypeID field, which only contains 0 and 1. It would appear that as far as the game's concerned it looks like the type of independent suspension is irrelevant.

# ? Jun 2, 2012 03:02

I said come in!: Jun 22, 2004

For those wondering where the June car pack announcement is, it'll be up later tonight. Turn-10 is making excuses for why this Weeks in Review is delayed (it's always delayed).

# ? Jun 2, 2012 03:05

Fortuitous Bumble: Jan 5, 2007

wolrah posted:

This might be a bit geeky as a direct copy/paste from my console, but here's what's in the SQLite database the game runs on (gamedb.slt on the disk).

Most common suspension types are listed:
code:
sqlite> SELECT * FROM list_suspensiontype;
3|Leaf
4|Torsion
5|Strut
6|Wishbone
7|Multilink
8|Trailing
Unfortunately for the accuracy factor:
code:
sqlite> SELECT * FROM list_suspensionphysicstype;
0|INDEPENDANT
1|SOLID
Looks like they make the game aware of what the in-game cars use, but they only simulate solid axles and a general "independent" option.

The table list_springdamperphysics lists all the suspension options for various vehicles and only has a SuspensionPhysicsTypeID field, which only contains 0 and 1. It would appear that as far as the game's concerned it looks like the type of independent suspension is irrelevant.

Yeah that's what I was referring to. There are some sets of generic expansion/compression camber ratios for each car that presumably correspond to the suspension geometry but that seems to be the extent of modeling differing suspensions. On the other hand there's tons of tire performance data and I figure that's most important for getting the driving to feel right. (and I'd bet most players run racing suspension almost all of the time, making the historical suspension setup sort of irrelevant)

Fortuitous Bumble fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Jun 2, 2012

# ? Jun 2, 2012 03:48

General Probe: Dec 28, 2004; Has this been done before?; Soiled Meat

Quad posted:

I'm sad. After trying for a solid, clean time on every circuit, F Class, with my VW Rabbit, and really learning her, and learning the tracks, (at least at <110 mph), I experimented, and found that the 81 Sirocco is altogether better in every way.
Do I put the tarp over my lovely Rabbit? Or do I give up at this point and just start driving a Spark?
This is gonna happen in every class, isn't it?

No, don't shelve it, race it with goons! Seriously when casual lobbies are being run it's pretty rare to see 2 people racing the same car. Sure winning is nice and we all drive with a competitive spirit but driving the cars we want to drive is almost as important. I don't think I've ever seen someone pick a car simply because it was "the best in Y class"

# ? Jun 2, 2012 04:04

Bentai: Jul 8, 2004; NERF THIS!

Yep. Drive whatever you like.

# ? Jun 2, 2012 04:06

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

Fortuitous Bumble posted:

Yeah that's what I was referring to. There are some sets of generic expansion/compression camber ratios for each car that presumably correspond to the suspension geometry but that seems to be the extent of modeling differing suspensions. On the other hand there's tons of tire performance data and I figure that's most important for getting the driving to feel right.

Exactly. I was responding more to Idiot race. As you say, they have a generic model and just involve enough data to model the different suspensions sufficiently.

For the suspension geeks, here's the columns in the list_springdamperphysics table which are set up for each car and its various suspension options:

code:

sqlite> .schema list_springdamperphysics
CREATE TABLE [List_SpringDamperPhysics]  (
[SpringDamperPhysicsID] INTEGER PRIMARY KEY 
,[Ordinal] INT
,[SuspensionPhysicsTypeID] INT
,[DefRideHeight] REAL
,[MinRideHeight] REAL
,[MaxRideHeight] REAL
,[MaxCompressHeight] REAL
,[DefSpringRate] REAL
,[MinSpringRate] REAL
,[MaxSpringRate] REAL
,[DefDampenBumpRate] REAL
,[MinDampenBumpRate] REAL
,[MaxDampenBumpRate] REAL
,[DampenBumpClamp] REAL
,[DefDampenReboundRate] REAL
,[MinDampenReboundRate] REAL
,[MaxDampenReboundRate] REAL
,[DampenReboundClamp] REAL
,[BumpstopStiffness] REAL
,[BumpstopDamping] REAL
,[ChassisPivotX] REAL
,[ChassisPivotY] REAL
,[TirePivotX] REAL
,[CamberChangeRatioCompression] REAL
,[CamberChangeRatioExpansion] REAL
,[StaticToe] REAL
,[StaticCamber] REAL
,[Caster] REAL
,[SteerRotAxisTireOffsetX] REAL
,[YMaxSpringVel] REAL
,[MaxStretchDeltaFromRideHeight] REAL
);

SpringDamperPhysicsID is a unique ID for each data entry, Ordinal is the car ID and matches the "Id" column in the "data_car" table, and SuspensionPhysicsTypeID is 0 or 1 matching the list_suspensionphysicstype entries as mentioned previously.

The rest of the values should make sense for the most part based on their names, but some like ChassisPivot(X/Y) I don't know exactly what they refer to. There are separate entries for front and rear suspension for each upgrade level.

Most entries seem to match the values used during in-game tuning. Others like those for ride height seem to be in a other units (I'm guessing meters in this case).

I'm guessing the camber change values are probably the most important ones in making the different suspensions feel "correct".

Quad posted:

To be fair this why I have a few Elans, but since my tuning is nowhere NEAR "leaderboard tuning" and I haven't been playing for a year, I'm not concerned with "best in class", I just like driving them now.

Same. If I'm at the point in rivals competition where using a leaderboard car is required (usually drag races), I'll use one, but other than the Jetta drag car from a few months back I've tuned them all myself. It's just more fun to do well using a random car from your garage with a homebrew tune rather than using the same car as everyone else with a paid tune.

wolrah fucked around with this message at 04:13 on Jun 2, 2012

# ? Jun 2, 2012 04:08

Quad: Dec 31, 2007; I've seen pogs you people wouldn't believe

General Probe posted:

I don't think I've ever seen someone pick a car simply because it was "the best in Y class"

To be fair this why I have a few Elans, but since my tuning is nowhere NEAR "leaderboard tuning" and I haven't been playing for a year, I'm not concerned with "best in class", I just like driving them now.

# ? Jun 2, 2012 04:09

I said come in!: Jun 22, 2004

Here is next weeks car pack!

2011 Chevrolet #4 Corvette Racing ZR1
1959 BMW 507
1940 Ford De Luxe Coupe
2011 Aston Martin Cygnet
1958 MG MGA Twin-Cam
1997 Maserati Ghibli Cup
2012 Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG Black Series
1987 RUF CTR Yellowbird
1992 Toyota Celica GT-Four RC ST185
1963 Volkswagen Beetle

# ? Jun 2, 2012 04:21

General Probe: Dec 28, 2004; Has this been done before?; Soiled Meat

So loving awesome! That Ford will be the oldest car in the game by quite a mile too, a lot to get excited about.

# ? Jun 2, 2012 04:26

Fortuitous Bumble: Jan 5, 2007

I said come in! posted:

Here is next weeks car pack!

2011 Chevrolet #4 Corvette Racing ZR1
1959 BMW 507
1940 Ford De Luxe Coupe
2011 Aston Martin Cygnet
1958 MG MGA Twin-Cam
1997 Maserati Ghibli Cup
2012 Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG Black Series
1987 RUF CTR Yellowbird
1992 Toyota Celica GT-Four RC ST185
1963 Volkswagen Beetle

I didn't want to buy any more virtual cars but it has a Beetle and the CTR

wolrah posted:

SpringDamperPhysicsID is a unique ID for each data entry, Ordinal is the car ID and matches the "Id" column in the "data_car" table, and SuspensionPhysicsTypeID is 0 or 1 matching the list_suspensionphysicstype entries as mentioned previously.

The rest of the values should make sense for the most part based on their names, but some like ChassisPivot(X/Y) I don't know exactly what they refer to. There are separate entries for front and rear suspension for each upgrade level.

Most entries seem to match the values used during in-game tuning. Others like those for ride height seem to be in a other units (I'm guessing meters in this case).

I'm guessing the camber change values are probably the most important ones in making the different suspensions feel "correct".

The heights are all in meters. Almost everything is metric, probably because English units are such a pain for physics

. I know all the pivot values for the tires just correspond to the default tire width, so I'd guess the chassis pivot value is some relation between the suspension and the car model which would probably also determine the suspension behavior, but there isn't enough info for me to really make sense of it. Like there are accurate heights for the car CG's under a separate table, but obviously that would change when you mess with the suspension, so there's all sorts of things going on behind the scenes that I couldn't really figure out since there isn't much useful telemetry data in the game. (I looked at all this because I had some really slow days at work and my coworker lent me his textbook on car engineering)

Fortuitous Bumble fucked around with this message at 04:39 on Jun 2, 2012

# ? Jun 2, 2012 04:27

I said come in!: Jun 22, 2004

Fortuitous Bumble posted:

I didn't want to buy any more virtual cars but it has a Beetle and the CTR

Every car in this pack is amazing. Seriously in love, next Tuesday can't come soon enough.

# ? Jun 2, 2012 04:29

T1g4h: Aug 6, 2008; I AM THE SCALES OF JUSTICE, CONDUCTOR OF THE CHOIR OF DEATH!

I said come in! posted:

Here is next weeks car pack!

2011 Chevrolet #4 Corvette Racing ZR1
1959 BMW 507
1940 Ford De Luxe Coupe
2011 Aston Martin Cygnet
1958 MG MGA Twin-Cam
1997 Maserati Ghibli Cup
2012 Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG Black Series
1987 RUF CTR Yellowbird
1992 Toyota Celica GT-Four RC ST185
1963 Volkswagen Beetle

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JggzNfbkPWQ
Trailer is up. So stoked for the classic Beetle and '40 Ford :neckbeard:

# ? Jun 2, 2012 04:29

Cojawfee: May 31, 2006; I think the US is dumb for not using Celsius

Can't wait for the Beetle, Ford, BMW and MG. Though they spent way too much on that dumb corvette in the video. Can't wait for the pubbie outrage of "WHY ARE THERE SO MANY OLD CARS IN THIS PACK WHERE ARE MORE CORVETTES?"

# ? Jun 2, 2012 04:31

Q_res: Oct 29, 2005; We're fucking built for this shit!

Maybe we'll get aero options to turn the Beetle into a Karmann Ghia.

# ? Jun 2, 2012 04:31

Bentai: Jul 8, 2004; NERF THIS!

Oh my god, hot rod drag races.

There needs to be a free DLC track of the Los Angeles River.

# ? Jun 2, 2012 04:45

IOwnCalculus: Apr 2, 2003

So excited to see what the aero options do for that Ford.

# ? Jun 2, 2012 04:54

xzzy: Mar 5, 2009

gently caress yeah a beetle. Have all my moneys Turn 10!

Not sure why they picked that year though. There's certainly nothing wrong with it, but it wasn't a very landmark year for the car either.

Maybe because herbie was a '63?

# ? Jun 2, 2012 06:16

Southpaw: Mar 9, 2006

Pfft, I want to see Baja options for the beetle :colbert:

# ? Jun 2, 2012 06:17

Mac Tonight: Mar 12, 2006; aw yeah tahts it man

Deeters posted:

So rcman and I got bored the other night and decided to mess around with the AI. I already knew they were awful at driving LMP cars on oval tracks, but we also found out that they get stuck if you push them to the inside of turns.

Once we saw that one could get stuck, we decided to get the whole field down there. So we did a little herding.

And after chasing down two that got away, we had this.

Then we decided to go for a parade lap
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TILIhZQ0UN4

We weren't expecting them to be able to climb that far back up the turn. I'm not sure what causes this, but I assume the coding tells them to take the shortest route back to the racing line.

This is fantastic. I wonder why they cant get out of there

# ? Jun 2, 2012 06:29

DEEP STATE PLOT: Aug 13, 2008; Yes...Ha ha ha...YES!

DEEP STATE PLOT fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Jun 3, 2012

# ? Jun 2, 2012 09:30

Falken: Jan 26, 2004; Do you feel like a hero yet?

Personally I see no point in the ZR1 as there's already a couple race cars there. Where's the rumored Sauber C9.

Couldn't give a purple piss about the Beetle.

# ? Jun 2, 2012 09:53

VERTiG0: Jul 11, 2001; go move over bro

C'mon Turn 10, can we get a new Mustang Boss 302 Laguna Seca Edition please? Or just a regular Boss 302? I don't really care.

# ? Jun 2, 2012 11:09

Scirocco Griffon: Feb 3, 2012

Falken posted:

Where's the rumored Sauber C9.

It was only rumored because Badned changed his profile picture to one, and the Forza forums, being as gullible as they are, immediately assumed it was a guaranteed inclusion for this month because of that.

Then again they were also dead certain there would be a Richard Petty NASCAR-spec Superbird in this month's pack too, so that shouldn't be a surprise.

# ? Jun 2, 2012 12:56

CovfefeCatCafe: Apr 11, 2006; A fresh attitude
brewed daily!

VERTiG0 posted:

C'mon Turn 10, can we get a new Mustang Boss 302 Laguna Seca Edition please? Or just a regular Boss 302? I don't really care.

I'd say normal 302 with aero options to make it the Laguna Seca Edition or a regular 5.0. Also, glass roof.

In regards to the '40 Ford, I hope the release a '38 (or so) Chevy Master Deluxe and a '40 Dodge so we can have bootlegging races. But if they're going to go old like this, I would sure hope that Turn10 would put in a Packard or two. Or maybe even a Studebaker.

Though, with the '57 Chevy, you would think the '57 Ford would come around as the '57 Ford did outsell the '57 Chevy.

# ? Jun 2, 2012 13:36

I said come in!: Jun 22, 2004

Falken posted:

Personally I see no point in the ZR1 as there's already a couple race cars there. Where's the rumored Sauber C9.

Couldn't give a purple piss about the Beetle.

Have to disagree about the ZR1, i've been wanting this car because I really like the real life racing team. They are very good. Excited to have all of these cars in the game.

# ? Jun 2, 2012 14:16

ANAmal.net: Mar 2, 2002; 100% digital native web developer

You're all overlooking the best car in the pack, the Aston Martin Cygnet.

xzzy posted:

gently caress yeah a beetle. Have all my moneys Turn 10!

Not sure why they picked that year though. There's certainly nothing wrong with it, but it wasn't a very landmark year for the car either.

Maybe because herbie was a '63?

It might have come down to what cars they could get their hands on - Turn 10 scans all the cars from real-life examples in some crazy-rear end detail, and finding a 50-year old car in good enough shape for that process to work is probably enough of a pain in the rear end, with the resources they have to throw at it, without fretting over the exact year.

# ? Jun 2, 2012 14:36

xzzy: Mar 5, 2009

ANAmal.net posted:

It might have come down to what cars they could get their hands on - Turn 10 scans all the cars from real-life examples in some crazy-rear end detail, and finding a 50-year old car in good enough shape for that process to work is probably enough of a pain in the rear end, with the resources they have to throw at it, without fretting over the exact year.

Yeah I get that.. but with a single post to thesamba Turn 10 could literally have gotten a lead on pristine copy of any model year they wanted. They could have made a car pack with every single year represented if they wanted to.

Something like 27 million beetles were built prior to 1980, it is by far the most readily available classic car.

Don't take this as a complaint though, I'm just happy it's in. I just find the selection they made to be curious. :v:

# ? Jun 2, 2012 15:50

jadebullet: Mar 25, 2011; MY LIFE FOR YOU!

Oh God an old beetle. Please let us to TDI swaps on them since I am sure you won't let us put a Corvair engine in them. (despite the fact that VW produced an adapter for putting the Corvair engine in.)

# ? Jun 2, 2012 15:50

I said come in!: Jun 22, 2004

New Forza Horizon screenshots are out! Guess what is among them? :siren:

A DIRT TRAIL! :siren:

# ? Jun 2, 2012 16:19

Cojawfee: May 31, 2006; I think the US is dumb for not using Celsius

ANAmal.net posted:

You're all overlooking the best car in the pack, the Aston Martin Cygnet.

It might have come down to what cars they could get their hands on - Turn 10 scans all the cars from real-life examples in some crazy-rear end detail, and finding a 50-year old car in good enough shape for that process to work is probably enough of a pain in the rear end, with the resources they have to throw at it, without fretting over the exact year.

It's not a pain in the rear end at all. All they have to do is post on a forum asking people if they want their pristine car scanned and put into a video game and there will be people chomping at the bit for the chance to have THEIR car in a video game. Maybe if they are too lazy to leave their local area, but all they have to do is put their equipment on a plane and they can get literally any car they want as long as there is someone who has an original or restored (there is always someone).

# ? Jun 2, 2012 16:22

IOwnCalculus: Apr 2, 2003

Have they ever posted somewhere like that? I get the feeling they need to play things closer to the chest, either for their own pr reasons, or for legal ones.

# ? Jun 2, 2012 16:27

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# ? May 31, 2024 09:48

I said come in!: Jun 22, 2004

IOwnCalculus posted:

Have they ever posted somewhere like that? I get the feeling they need to play things closer to the chest, either for their own pr reasons, or for legal ones.

I know Turn-10 employees were posting on a Alfa Romeo fan website, asking people for cars in, and around the Seattle/Tacoma, WA area. This was a year or so before Forza 4 launched.

# ? Jun 2, 2012 16:28

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