Tuning:
With the release of Forza Motorsport 6 comes an all new tuning game for tuners. We would like to share with our readers what we find different from Forza Motorsport 5 and some tuning observations.
Right at the start, you can feel the different amount of grip compared to that of Forza Motorsport 5. Due to the new tire physics the amount of grip is tremendous and pushing the car to its limit is more forgiving. However when your about to lock the brakes you do have the same sense of feeling from Forza Motorsport 5. The suspension behavior is a lot more comparable to Forza Motorsport 4 than that of Forza Motorsport 5. This, in the end, enables us to come back our old tricks of the trade in terms of tuning.
Which means that the following old tricks are working better than in Forza Motorsport 5.
- max rebound/min rebound
- Anti-roll Bars at 1/25, 1/40 or the same reversed.
Again they have come back to lower camber settings, compared to the ridiculous amount of camber needed in the precedent game. With numbers looking like Forza Motorsport 4 they are more than likely to work. Sadly, the telemetry is not a reliable tool for tuning yet again. You still need to rely on feel and the tires noise to know when you have reached the optimal setting. Tire temperature wise you will need to get all compounds to around 32.5C for good grip, this seems to be the general consensus between tuners.
All in all this game is way more interesting to race and tune with. The new tire physics, tuning in the rain and a comeback to more grippy cars make tuners more motivated to continue improving and working on driving skills.
Designing:
Many racing games have paint editors, livery designers and other such opportunities to customize ones car. With that in mind there are only a select few games whose paint editors have spawned such a following and community as Forza's livery editor has. These games are primarily on the PC platform and the accessibility of them is low. Forza Motorsport however seems to be the unique example of such a phenomena occurring on consoles and alas here we are with another installment. Six installations after the paint editor was first introduced people still continue to slave away, lining up shape after shape, the old school way. No frills, no UV mapping and no internet downloading of images. For many it is a primary, if not the only reason why they come back to Forza. So for those of us who call ourselves painters, here is a review of the Forza Motorsport 6 livery editor, back and better than ever.
Upon initial release, whilst attempting to import designs from Forza Motorsport 5, many have encountered problems. This problem manifests itself in that any designs containing a select few vinyl letters provided in game cannot be imported. Layer groups with these shapes can be imported but unless the shapes are removed they cause problems when saving a livery and can make the rest of the shapes applied on the car seem very fuzzy and out of focus. A recent DLC content update came with many bug/glitch fixes, one of which was the FM5 design import issue. All Forza Motorsport 5 Liveries and Layer groups can now be imported without any issues.
Another frustration with the paint booth is that a few of the cars still have mapping glitches and painting on them can be quite odd. For instance the Dodge Challenger Hellcat has a glitch in which you cannot paint the passenger’s side door, however anything painted on the drivers side door will automatically mirror itself to the passenger’s side door. This was however fixed
in the recent FM6 content update.
The Toyota AE86 still has unpaintable plastic trim making it good almost exclusively for Initial D replicas. The Mitsubishi EVO 6 still has mirroring issues with one of the front non forza aero bumpers. On the bright side some fixes were made however, the pixelating on the edges of body panels as seen in FM5 has since been fixed and the BMW M1 no longer suffers from a glitch in which any vinyls placed on the front of the car were mirrored.
Another piece of great news for painters lies within the new and improved payout system. You will earn credits for each download (500 credits), like (1000 credits) and use (100 credits) of your shared paints. In addition to the paint payouts being adjusted in favor of painters, we now also receive payouts based on layer group downloads, likes and uses. So all of those logos we’ve amassed might finally be worth something!
The newest installment in the Forza series brought with it some great new content which has not limited itself to just the cars and tracks. The new Prismacolor option in the specialty colors will allow for some funky new painting bases and it is certainly a joy to paint with the ability to import layers and scores of new cars to customize and beautify. That being said it is Forza and there are some problems which return. The inability to keep chrome dishes when adjusting wheel color is still annoying, certain cars have paint glitches that will no doubt frustrate many a painter but it will not stop us! So what are you waiting for? Grab those brushes!
Lobbies/Hoppers/Race Leagues:
Much of the hoppers are the same as they were in previous Forza Motorsports iterations. They have hoppers based on classes, a Drag lobby, class lobbies, unlimited drift, and tag. The new edition to the series is a ranked league lobby. This seems to be a great system as it encourages people to play. This system gives the player points based on how many are in the lobby and how they finish, the thought behind it is to keep people coming back to race similarly skilled players. A welcomed addition to the hoppers is the ability to see what/whose tunes the other drivers are using and to directly download the tune from the lobby.