FM7 BMW M8 GTE Highlight of Forza 7 December Update

[Paul Jeffrey]

The Forza Motorsport 7 holiday season update arrives December 4th, and with it adds new content, improved force feedback and quite a bit more...

Turn 10 Studios and Forza Motorsport 7 have made a habit of late with recent monthly updates, and as we wave goodbye to 2018 the developers are not about to break that tradition now.. the new December update is scheduled to land on Xbox One and PC December 4th - adding plenty of fixes and improvements to the game as well as the very impressive BMW M8 GTE as the latest 'Spotlight' free car addition.

One of the most noticeable updates due to land tomorrow will be a brand new UI overhaul for the game, adding a fresh new look to Forza Motorsport 7 and improving the functionality and usability of what could sometimes be a bit of a cumbersome design...

Alongside the new update and BMW M8 GTE, Turn 10 also plan on making available some new events within the software, adding the 'Engaged Engines' league, new hopper races and of course a range of updated #forzathon races.. Plenty to keep players happy of the Christmas season.

FM7 Update Notes

Updated Force Feedback
The December update introduces some important changes to force feedback in Forza 7. The new force feedback is a full physically based system utilizing Forza Motorsport 7’s suspension kinematics and tire modeling to send tire loads to the steering wheel. It produces a more intuitive feel with more accurate align torque and a solid feeling of connection to the road.

Importantly for wheel users, this new wheel update completely replaces the old system, which means players’ tuning values from before December will be reset. Wheel users will need to tune from scratch to take advantage of this new and improved system. For a full rundown of the new force feedback system, check out the updated FM7 Wheel Guide on the Forza Support site.

A Fresh Coat of Paint
When you start up Forza Motorsport 7 after Tuesday’s update, straight away you’re going to notice some visual changes. In addition to a new splash screen, we’ve made some significant improvements to the main menu. The old slightly angled menu is replaced with a new flat layout. The car and driver have moved to the right-hand side of the screen. In addition, we’ve replaced the black and white image backgrounds for the menu tiles with beautiful new color images. Sharp-eyed players will also notice that we’ve changed the tile highlight color from red to blue, and we’ve changed the opacity of tiles that do not have artwork, to make those tiles feel more active. The team has also improved transition times for certain menu items; for example, it now takes less time to get to the Forza Driver’s Cup menu when selecting that tile from the main menu.

New Opponent Labels
The menus aren’t the only items getting a visual overhaul in December. This update also introduces a new opponent label system into the game. These labels are the information panels that you see in multiplayer lobbies, showing a player’s Gamertag, Forza driver level, and badge above the car. The new opponent label system brings a uniform, flattened look to these labels. Labels will also be dynamic, shifting between three “states” depending on an opponent’s proximity to the player.

The closest “full” state presents a player’s Gamertag, their position in the race, and some event-relevant information such as distance ahead (or behind, when looking backwards), total drift score, or “It” status when playing Tag games. At medium distance, opponent labels will be shown in condensed state, with just a player’s GT and position shown. A furthest distance, labels will appear in “far” state, showing just the player’s position in the race.

We’ve also made some design adjustments to in-race HUD information items with the December update. For example, the lap time HUD elements have been made more uniform and the lap counter has moved to the upper right corner of the screen.

The new menus and new opponent labels are part of an ongoing effort to offer players a great looking and informative Forza Motorsport 7 experience. Look for more updates to these aspects of the game in the coming months.

Other Updates
The December update is bringing more good stuff with it as well. Rivals players will now automatically get a new ghost car to challenge after they’ve beaten a Rival. In addition, Specialty Dealer will now display the original collector score alongside the updated collector score, as well as both original price and “sale” price, along with the discount percentage.

Forza Motorsport 7 is available for Xbox One and Windows 10 PC now.

Check out the Forza Motorsport 7 sub forum here at RaceDepartment for all the latest from the smash hit Forza racing game franchise.

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[Vojko Music]

Does it update automatically on PC?

I have checked it manually now and it's updating

 

[hodge like]

How to check manually mate?

 

[Vojko Music]

How to check manually mate?

Go to MS store app and on the top right corner (those three dots) you can see the list of downloads and updates. Check manually for the updates and that's it

 

[Durge Driven]

Can you buy the game on cdkeys, kinguin or g2a?

Its been on instant gaming

Same old, you get no refunds, which is odd situation to put yourself in if you asking me
How do you know you will like it ?

What about all the smarties went out brought Dakar 50% off before release
They all laughing now hey ......$30 worth of uselessness

 

[MarkR]

First impressions of the new FFB, this is a good improvement. There is actual feel through the wheel on all parts of the track, not just corners and kerbs as before.

The default settings are pretty awful as usual, all weight and no feel. Reducing the FFB strength and centring force sorted that - exact numbers will be wheel dependent of course.

What I’m most impressed with is how throttle sensitivity has been improved. It’s now easy to feel what the car wheels are doing through the FFB. The sense of lift as the front of the car rises and slip on throttle is now much closer to other games.

So far so good from the couple of cars I’ve tried, certainly an improvement.

Oh and Turn 10 are saying more about the new racing rules on 13th Dec so clean racing might be possible soon.

 

[Deleted member 151827]

Agreed! I believe a vast improvement to the ffb system!

 

[TylerDurden4321]

FFB is different, that's about it. Not better, not worth. Artificial garbage road noise added, great. Thanks.

- centering force doesn't get stronger with speed in very high downforce cars (meaning, it must be very fake if downforce doesn't affect the FFB, when it actually should get multiple times stronger in a modern Indy or F1 car)
- still uses sliders for fake effects like vibrations and self-centering (on top of actual self-aligning moment)
- damping still uses hardware/driver-level algorithms instead of being all-software controlled
- with damping turned off, the force build up when going into a corner still feels wonky
- bumps still feel cushioned, like there is a really bad smoothing or anti-jerk filter going on
- all cars still have the same steering ratio and lock that is set globally in the options. If you want to change it, the units are not in degrees and the sensitivity has to be adjusted manually so the steering is not too sensitive at the center at lower degrees of rotation or not sensitive enough at higher degrees of rotation (especially in older cars)

Why did they even bother to change it?
Don't get me wrong, the FFB in FM7 was already a huge step in the right direction after the absolutely terrible FFB since 2013, but this here is just nothing, useless.

Just adding automatic adjustment of DOR and H-Pattern w/clutch vs flappy paddle depending on the car would actually have been more impressive and a lot less work even though they have to set the values for a lot of cars.

Not even the FOV options from FH4 have carried over. Super disappointed about this update.

 

[theravenousbeast]

FFB is different, that's about it. Not better, not worth. Artificial garbage road noise added, great. Thanks.

- centering force doesn't get stronger with speed in very high downforce cars (meaning, it must be very fake if downforce doesn't affect the FFB, when it actually should get multiple times stronger in a modern Indy or F1 car)
- still uses sliders for fake effects like vibrations and self-centering (on top of actual self-aligning moment)
- damping still uses hardware/driver-level algorithms instead of being all-software controlled
- with damping turned off, the force build up when going into a corner still feels wonky
- bumps still feel cushioned, like there is a really bad smoothing or anti-jerk filter going on
- all cars still have the same steering ratio and lock that is set globally in the options. If you want to change it, the units are not in degrees and the sensitivity has to be adjusted manually so the steering is not too sensitive at the center at lower degrees of rotation or not sensitive enough at higher degrees of rotation (especially in older cars)

Why did they even bother to change it?
Don't get me wrong, the FFB in FM7 was already a huge step in the right direction after the absolutely terrible FFB since 2013, but this here is just nothing, useless.

Just adding automatic adjustment of DOR and H-Pattern w/clutch vs flappy paddle depending on the car would actually have been more impressive and a lot less work even though they have to set the values for a lot of cars.

Not even the FOV options from FH4 have carried over. Super disappointed about this update.

You make some great points. In my opinion the FFB is more informative, especially of tire grip but not a very realistic one and overall not comparable to even the old guard like the ISI engine games and the Papyrus titles. I'd go as far as to say even the later Codemasters games (F1s and Dirt Rally onwards) feel better than even this new one.

I believe T10 are working on a physics update so let's see where that goes. The FFB can only be as good as the physics underneath are in my opinion.

 

[ozm8ey]

I came back to forza 7 after getting bored to death of forza horizon 4. Idk why i just don't get much joy out of fh4 but i loved fh3.

 

[TylerDurden4321]

You make some great points. In my opinion the FFB is more informative, especially of tire grip but not a very realistic one and overall not comparable to even the old guard like the ISI engine games and the Papyrus titles. I'd go as far as to say even the later Codemasters games (F1s and Dirt Rally onwards) feel better than even this new one.

I believe T10 are working on a physics update so let's see where that goes. The FFB can only be as good as the physics underneath are in my opinion.

The few guys I know from sim racing would probably all disagree with me, but I think their tire model is easily sophisticated enough to support much better FFB. A bigger problem seems to be their springs and damping and how bump stops and ARBs work. There is this wobble when hitting bump stops in softer cars and in modern hard cars, their aprings and damping are too soft and make hots and bumps feel soft and overly long. Also the FFB refresh rate seems really low, Mayb it's only 30 or 60 Hz at best.
Why the steering forces don't get stronger with downforce, I have no idea. It doesn't make any sense.

Since FM7 is a fully released game, they can change the physics only so much without risking to be sued. They'd also risk to outright break some cars with their huge car count with a big change.

 

[MarkR]

The few guys I know from sim racing would probably all disagree with me, but I think their tire model is easily sophisticated enough to support much better FFB. A bigger problem seems to be their springs and damping and how bump stops and ARBs work. There is this wobble when hitting bump stops in softer cars and in modern hard cars, their aprings and damping are too soft and make hots and bumps feel soft and overly long. Also the FFB refresh rate seems really low, Mayb it's only 30 or 60 Hz at best.

.

Not disagreeing with you that the FFB could be improved further but it’s worth remembering that Forza 7 has to work and crossplay on an original Xbox One as well as the S and X. SMS have had widely reported problems with the PCARS2 losing all FFB in both single player and online with more than 6 cars on track on the original Xbox. They’ve tried to fix it but say it simply isn’t possible within the hardware limits. FFB on the S is better and on the X it is as on PC. Forza’s (and surprisingly Forza Horizon’s too) latest FFB certainly holds up well against the likes of F1 2018, Dirt Rally etc.

As for the suspension, bump etc Forza is much more a modifying and tuning game than a sim (of which we are blessed with plenty of amazing titles so Forza doesn’t need to be that). A lot of the behaviour you mention can be modified and tuned out, for me it’s always been part of the enjoyment of the game - finding a build and tuning setup that works is part of the fun. I’ll bet many people here have made similar modifications to their own road and track cars and they capture that well. The absolute height of realism, no of course not but no other game has the wide range of cars either.

It’s worth trying a back to back test with a car/track you enjoy that’s available in various games, with as close as possible the same setups, on console, in my experience, it’s now closer than ever in terms of feel and feedback between the main racing games, all the games have upsides and all have many flaws too.

 

[TylerDurden4321]

Not disagreeing with you that the FFB could be improved further but it’s worth remembering that Forza 7 has to work and crossplay on an original Xbox One as well as the S and X. SMS have had widely reported problems with the PCARS2 losing all FFB in both single player and online with more than 6 cars on track on the original Xbox. They’ve tried to fix it but say it simply isn’t possible within the hardware limits. FFB on the S is better and on the X it is as on PC. Forza’s (and surprisingly Forza Horizon’s too) latest FFB certainly holds up well against the likes of F1 2018, Dirt Rally etc.

The X uses the same jaguar cores as the OG XBO just at a slightly higher clock (X = 2.3GHz, OG = S = 1.75GHz),both are still insanely slow compared to even normal (modern) office PCs. The PS4 jaguar cores are even slower (1.6GHz) and yet it can run AC with 16 cars all running the player brush-based tire model. Also PCARS2's tire model is extremely complex compared to Forza. I won't say it's very realistic, nor that it feels amazing, but it is extremely complex and very CPU intensive:

PCARS2 tire model animated gif [I get an error trying to embed this GIF, no idea why]

Compared to that, Forza's tire model is absolutely nothing in terms of necessary processing power. Console CPU power is definitely not what is holding FM7's FFB back. Maybe the player car's relatively low physics update rate demands the strong smoothing and low fidelity, but it doesn't explain why Turn 10 claims that you can now feel tire load when the FFB is independent of current downforce - which is contradictory, unless some fakery is going on.

And also, no, I can't tune the bump softness out with a car setup. You can make a GT3 car as hard as you want in the springs and shocks menus, it's still muddy-soft in the FFB. There is something very unrealistic in how FM and GTS simulate available suspension travel, damping rates and bump stop rates and that's why older cars wobble on longer corners and modern race cars feel super soft and have almost no problem with tall curbs.

 

[MarkR]

The X uses the same jaguar cores as the OG XBO just at a slightly higher clock (X = 2.3GHz, OG = S = 1.75GHz),both are still insanely slow compared to even normal (modern) office PCs. The PS4 jaguar cores are even slower (1.6GHz) and yet it can run AC with 16 cars all running the player brush-based tire model. Also PCARS2's tire model is extremely complex compared to Forza. I won't say it's very realistic, nor that it feels amazing, but it is extremely complex and very CPU intensive:

PCARS2 tire model animated gif [I get an error trying to embed this GIF, no idea why]

Compared to that, Forza's tire model is absolutely nothing in terms of necessary processing power. Console CPU power is definitely not what is holding FM7's FFB back. Maybe the player car's relatively low physics update rate demands the strong smoothing and low fidelity, but it doesn't explain why Turn 10 claims that you can now feel tire load when the FFB is independent of current downforce - which is contradictory, unless some fakery is going on.

And also, no, I can't tune the bump softness out with a car setup. You can make a GT3 car as hard as you want in the springs and shocks menus, it's still muddy-soft in the FFB. There is something very unrealistic in how FM and GTS simulate available suspension travel, damping rates and bump stop rates and that's why older cars wobble on longer corners and modern race cars feel super soft and have almost no problem with tall curbs.

You’re making the same point with the core speeds example. Turn 10 have a focus on 60fps in game on console and reduce all the overheads to maintain that, no way they’d introduce complex FFB that detracted from the wider game on even the oldest hardware. PCARS2 said the physics were too complex for the original X1 and we’ve seen that first hand when people join a race and lose feedback - the PCARS2 flaw on console is it’s difficult to get a good multiplayer race where everyone has any or all FFB. An all X lobby works well so that small cpu improvement must do a lot, or the gpu plays a bigger part in this. In Forza the FFB works but...no track limits so equally flawed.

We’ll have to agree to disagree regarding the Italian game on console, I’m not opening that can of worms, if you think it works on either console you have a different definition of working to me and those I race with. Remains superb on PC of course before I upset the special snowflakes.

Personally I can tune those aspects out of the Forza cars, yes some cars dive and lift on soft road suspension but with the track upgrades they respond as I’d expect certainly nothing I would describe as soft or hitting the bump stops in the telemetry. Laptimes in the same cars across all 3 games you mention with as near as the same setups are directly comparable and the laps are driven in the same style, with many of the exact same on track reactions, so they seem a lot closer than you suggest to me.

A lot of this is about personal perception of what is right, maybe you just prefer another game, that’s how this reads to me, good thing we currently have so much choice. For me these games all do a few things well and are truly awful at other aspects, the FFB though is much closer than before.

 

[TylerDurden4321]

You’re making the same point with the core speeds example. Turn 10 have a focus on 60fps in game on console and reduce all the overheads to maintain that, no way they’d introduce complex FFB that detracted from the wider game on even the oldest hardware. PCARS2 said the physics were too complex for the original X1 and we’ve seen that first hand when people join a race and lose feedback - the PCARS2 flaw on console is it’s difficult to get a good multiplayer race where everyone has any or all FFB. An all X lobby works well so that small cpu improvement must do a lot, or the gpu plays a bigger part in this. In Forza the FFB works but...no track limits so equally flawed.

We’ll have to agree to disagree regarding the Italian game on console, I’m not opening that can of worms, if you think it works on either console you have a different definition of working to me and those I race with. Remains superb on PC of course before I upset the special snowflakes.

Personally I can tune those aspects out of the Forza cars, yes some cars dive and lift on soft road suspension but with the track upgrades they respond as I’d expect certainly nothing I would describe as soft or hitting the bump stops in the telemetry. Laptimes in the same cars across all 3 games you mention with as near as the same setups are directly comparable and the laps are driven in the same style, with many of the exact same on track reactions, so they seem a lot closer than you suggest to me.

A lot of this is about personal perception of what is right, maybe you just prefer another game, that’s how this reads to me, good thing we currently have so much choice. For me these games all do a few things well and are truly awful at other aspects, the FFB though is much closer than before.

I see how must come off to you. But I do like Forza, I'm on Tier 11 in the Forza Rewards program. I like GT too, I have a Platinum Trophy in GT6 and golded every GTS SP challenge. I've had tons of fun with PCARS2 and of course I like AC and rF2 and AMS and also R3E and DR.

What you said about the GPU playing a bigger part makes sense; more GPU power freeing up CPU bandwidth ...this could very well be the case here. I would still think Forza has enough overhead. If the physics are done, calculating the FFB is a very low profile task and you only need it every few physics update cycles (I think FM runs at 360Hz physics since FM5 and they do 24 car grids now).

As to how close the games are, I did a comparison on another site once for the stopping distance:

More graphs from and annotations about the test can be found here.

On top of FM7 being pretty unrealistic grippy, this test was also done using ABS on in all games and if you ever tried braking in FM7 with and without ABS, you know that without ABS and some skill, the stopping distance would been quite a bit lower even.

I really wouldn't bunch these games together in terms of realism and being close. Much closer than PC and console sims were 10 years ago, sure, but overall you can still tell that FM7 and GTS are made for controller players primarily and don't model individual suspension geometry and simplify springs and dampers [example: I tried to calculate the travel from Forza with a linear equation system going off the tuning-menu downforce at 2 different values (going off the delta), and the suspension travel values shown in the live telemetry screen at different speeds, the result was complete nonsense.

None of this actually has to do with their new FFB being just as good/bad as the old system was. And what is there has a very low fidelity, like you put a gaussian or low pass filter over an MP3 file.
I don't even know what is actually improved now. They say the system now uses information from the game's suspension and tire model systems and that you can now feel stuff like tire load. I could feel that stuff long ago already. And the difference is not that now it's coming directly from those systems either, or you would be able to feel the downforce.

I had much higher hopes for the FFB update.

 

[theravenousbeast]

These work well enough for my DFGT and with all cars. Maybe bit too stiff with the racecars.

This is a decent guide about the new settings.

 

[TylerDurden4321]

These work well enough for my DFGT and with all cars. Maybe bit too stiff with the racecars.

This is a decent guide about the new settings.

At ~4:40 the guy says that he made the pneumatic trail graph follow as closely as he could what Turn 10 uses ...and it peaks at a slip angle of "0.6". Which doesn't make any sense since the unit of slip angle is degrees (far too low). It wouldn't make much sense as slip ratio (in percent, so it would be 60%) either, since that would be far too much.

If you ignore the units though, it is an informative video, thanks for sharing.

 

[Shiimis]

At ~4:40 the guy says that he made the pneumatic trail graph follow as closely as he could what Turn 10 uses ...and it peaks at a slip angle of "0.6". Which doesn't make any sense since the unit of slip angle is degrees (far too low). It wouldn't make much sense as slip ratio (in percent, so it would be 60%) either, since that would be far too much.

If you ignore the units though, it is an informative video, thanks for sharing.

The value of 0.6 is the normalized value that is reported by FM7 telemetry. It is neither the angle nor the % of slip ratio (which is also reported by telemetry, but afaik has nothing to do with lateral forces generated by tires). Rather the peak slip angle is set to be @ 1.0 and the comment by devs for this parameter says that "> 1.0 indicates loss of grip".

 

[TylerDurden4321]

The value of 0.6 is the normalized value that is reported by FM7 telemetry. It is neither the angle nor the % of slip ratio (which is also reported by telemetry, but afaik has nothing to do with lateral forces generated by tires). Rather the peak slip angle is set to be @ 1.0 and the comment by devs for this parameter says that "> 1.0 indicates loss of grip".

Aaaaah(!), I know what telemetry tab you mean. It says "friction", but that would indicate that over 1.0 (100%) would be more grip, when - as you described correctly - grip actually drops beyond 1.0 again.
For an ideal tire lateral "friction" grows basically linearly/proportional with slip angle. My guess is that you are right and it's normalized slip angle (and gets dynamically re-adjusted according to current tire load) and "friction" is actually mislabeling it.

 

[Shiimis]

Aaaaah(!), I know what telemetry tab you mean. It says "friction", but that would indicate that over 1.0 (100%) would be more grip, when - as you described correctly - grip actually drops beyond 1.0 again.
For an ideal tire lateral "friction" grows basically linearly/proportional with slip angle. My guess is that you are right and it's normalized slip angle (and gets dynamically re-adjusted according to current tire load) and "friction" is actually mislabeling it.

I was speaking about the data that is sent by the game through UDP. The devs have explained what each position in the data set means and how it is to be interpreted. The data might be represented differently in the telemetry view in the game itself and in fact the telemetry view had different bugs introduced after some patches, so I wouldn't rely on it too much.

The video you referenced in one of your posts shows graphs which are formatted according to how data is formatted in DATA OUT UDP packages, and using the so called Pacejka magic formula. Given the fact that we do not have any information about individual tire specs that are used in FM7, it is actually very important that we get a normalized value of slip angle, as we can always see and predict when the loss of grip will occur, without the need to know anything about the specific tires that are used.