Motorsports

Forza 3 / Fanatec Porsche Wheel (Xbox)
Alan Hartman & Thomas Jackermeier

One of the biggest game displays at E3 was Microsoft’s Forza Motorsports 3. Arrayed across one entire side of Microsoft’s show area were three large car simulator cockpits sporting force feedback racing wheels each utilizing three large-screen LCD Televisions arrayed for a panoramic view out of the virtual windshield. Flanking the cockpits were tabletops offering Forza 3 under standard wireless gamepad control. Swarming in and around the crowd were members from Turn 10 Studios, the game’s developers, all eager to engage the audience and answer questions about the game. It was an impressive demonstration that garnered a lot of attention from the audience — including the SimHQ team.

While waiting in line to test our hand at the new console racer, we watched as other members of the media fumbled their way around the track, typically making heavy use of the ARMCO barriers to help guide them through tricky corners. We watched several people attempt to drive their way around a lap of a twisting mountain circuit while never lifting their heavy right foot from the accelerator pedal. To our great satisfaction, this driving technique was utterly inadequate to navigate a car around the track. Had those arcade race fans only paid attention to the dynamic racing line colors (the braking and acceleration colors morph depending on your actual entry and exit speeds), they’d have probably had a better time at the wheel. Magnum saw one guy drive up the outer wall, rolling his car on its side and coming to rest on the driver’s side door. While it was gratifying to see that Forza 3 demanded judicious use of throttle and brake, we were disheartened when we saw a frail young lady spin her car through 360 degrees and come out of the spin just as fast as she’d entered it. Not a good omen for finding a realistic physics engine, and certainly made us quite skeptical that this latest in the Forza family could be anything more but another console arcade product.

But first looks can be deceiving. When it was finally our turn to saddle up a road rocket and try out Forza 3, Magnum had the first go. He drove it like most of the crowd did — whatever aids were on for the day were left on. Then Chunx hopped in and we placed our typical requests with the developer attending to our sim cockpit: “Could you turn ALL the driving aids off and put Forza 3 into its most realistic physics mode?” That put a gleam in our dev’s eye, as he too was a fan of hard-core physics modeling.

With a very short list of street cars to choose from, Chunx selected a Mitsubishi Lancer Evo X MR, a car he’s actually driven (and in a sporting manner). The MR edition is equipped with ABS, as well as paddle shifters and a twin clutch arrangement that allows for clutchless upshifts and downshifts — a very racy combination. The dev then set up the virtual Forza 3 Evo X MR in the same configuration, with Chunx using the provided wheel’s paddle shifters accordingly.

Chunx’ top 5 initial impressions of Forza 3 (in “Hard” mode with driving aids “Off”) are as follows:

1. It’s an absolutely GORGEOUS visual game. Astounding and breathtaking are the words that come to mind when you see the game in action. And best of all, the game now comes with an in-cockpit point of view. The vertical view of the dashboard stops about half way down the instrument cluster, but it’s still a very realistic vantage point from which to race.

2. The sounds are very, very good, especially the all-important tire sounds which convey grip status and compensate for the lack of seat-of-the-pants feel.

3. The physics felt quite good. As Chunx drove a 4 lap stint, Magnum noted some replay scenes in which the tire sidewalls clearly deflected under cornering loads. Those visual deflections are also part of the physics engine’s tire model, and are reflected in the handling of the car when cornering. That’s simply a superb touch for any sim, especially one made for the console. Power-on oversteer and under steer conditions were predictable and appropriate for the driving conditions, which is yet another good indicator of an accurate physics engine.

4. Unlike Race Pro (see our review), straight-line tracking and wheel centering were spot-on, making for very precise car placement during approach to braking and at turn-in. But then again, Forza 3 wasn’t being demonstrated with Microsoft’s Xbox360 force feedback wheel (more on that later).

5. Say racers, do you often find yourself spinning out in the middle of a race and stuck against the wall? No problem for Forza 3, which has lifted from Codemaster’s “Grid” racing game a feature called “Race Rewind”. Not a replay system at all, Race Rewind actually allows a player to go back in time to just before a wreck and replay the race from a happier time and place, hopefully averting disaster the second time around. This feature could also be used in practice to help learn a particular corner more quickly and efficiently than waiting an entire lap to take another run at it. With Race Rewind, a driver could simply rewind the practice lap to just before the braking point for a particular corner, and repeat it over and over until they found the best braking, turn-in, clipping or track out point. That will make for a fantastic learning tool — even if it was really meant to keep more casual racers in the hunt for a trophy.

After taking Forza 3 on a sim-level test drive, we had a chance to talk to Alan Hartman, Studio Manager for Turn 10. Alan immediately recognized the SimHQ logo and as a long time sim racing fan was aware of our site and staff team.

Forza 3 is a product designed to make money through massive sales, and thus must be made appealing to the mainstream console audience. But that doesn’t mean that the game can’t be scalable towards a higher level of realism and physics fidelity demanded by discerning simulation fans. In fact, like most PC racing sims, players can race together while each applies a different level of difficulty and realism, although with more aids turned on the power level is decreased to ensure lap times are higher, and credit scores in championship / campaign modes are lowered with each driving aid turned on. The goal is to encourage casual gamers to challenge their abilities and step up to higher levels of realism — really, to the land of the simulation hobbyist. And that is once again good news for race sim fans.

Likewise, Turn 10 is leveraging the community support generated by Forza 2’s custom paint shop and car tuning by taking it to the next level — internet sharing of talent. Players will be able to upload and share car configurations, paint schemes and tuned setups via Xbox Live. That might allow Turn 10 to branch out into an element of race sims that have given them longevity far beyond those of console games — aftermarket game mods. It’s a brave new world for racing sims, and the vector for console racers now seems to be aimed squarely at the simulation crowd.

Pleasantly surprised by what we saw and experienced at E3, SimHQ is really looking forward to getting our hands on a copy of Forza 3 in a review later this year. The game is expected to make its retail debut in October, 2009.

What’s that? We didn’t mention the force feedback wheel used in the Forza 3 demo? Well, race fans, check out this photo and test your racing wheel recognition skills:

No, you‘re not seeing things — that really is a German-made Fanatec Porsche force feedback wheel made especially for the Xbox 360. Endor gaming’s CEO Thomas Jackermeier told SimHQ that the Xbox 360 Fanatec wheel should be on the market this Fall, and will come in three “trim” levels, with lower-end units capable of using G25 or MS FF pedals and the top-of-the-line model including an all-metal, three pedal arrangement priced at around $500.

The Fanatec Xbox 360 wheel itself had a very solid, high quality feel, with excellent pedal travel and resistance, and a realistically heavy feel to the force feedback. The on-center feel was precise and aided in placing the car exactly where you needed it to be on the track for smooth cornering. The prices are certainly not for those lacking commitment to the brave new world of console racing sims, but we can tell you that the quality of the driving experience was really far better than we expected from this latest installment in the Forza series. And like Forza 3, we’re really looking forward to reviewing a Fanatec Xbox 360 wheel in the near future.

RACE On

When you’re covering simulation titles at E3, not all of your opportunities come wrapped up in a bow. Such was the case with an upcoming racing title whose developer and publisher both elected to not attend this year’s E3 (no doubt due to budget limitations).

But like many simulation products, their title did manage to make it to the show, as part of another vendor’s exhibit. The D-box demonstration included SimBin’s upcoming racing title “RACE On”, an evolved version of the RACE series. While trying out the D-box motion base system, we got some hands-on time with a beta version of RACE On. As is standard for the SimHQ team, we convinced the D-box demonstration team to reconfigure RACE On to a very hard-core configuration (they actually let us set the options ourselves!). All driving aids were turned off except for Auto Clutch. With sequential shifting enabled, Joe and Chunx selected the Radical SR3 and the Laguna Seca track to conduct their assessment of SimBin’s latest effort.

The results were quite satisfying. Using the G25 wheel, RACE On felt very solid and polished. The physics felt quite good, and the D-box even responded with a chattering vibration when Chunx locked the front tires entering the final turn at the tough Laguna Seca track. Between the translated chatter signal generated by the D-box and the black skid marks at the corner’s turn-in point, it was clear that RACE On’s physics engine was generating a tire lock signal, indicating that SimBin is refining its long-lasting RACE series. And graphically the game looked pretty good, giving great sensation of speed and energy. After turning a dozen laps apiece, both Joe and Chunx came away feeling that at best this beta version of RACE On didn’t offer any fantastic new features or noteworthy improvements, but rather an incremental refinement of past features and car sets. But it was still a whole lot of fun to drive, and was a great way to demonstrate the D-box motion base system. As RACE On develops into a retail product, we’ll keep a look out for expanded feature sets, and probably give it a review once it is released.

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