Forza 3: Leaving A Delayed GT 5 In The Pits

[aspect8]

Toca actually has respectable A.I., if a little bland. In other words, the bots in the lead were fairly fast and all were pretty courteous.

Agreed! I remember Toca gentleman's racing league... After you sir!

Forza 1 is unique in having bots which learn how you treat them. FM1 A.I. is a wild experiment in A.I. coding in which the bots have the personalities of teenagers. If you drive nicely and rarely bump them, they will generally respect you, although they will ram you if they "feel" like it. If you bash your way through them, they become murderous tards, and surprisingly, they will even gang up on you! I witnessed some amazingly devious tactics from them because the first race, I didn't respect them too much and ground my way past a few of them, and they never forgot it. I had to start a new profile in order to have decent racing in later stages. [/LIST]

Oh man this is true. I must have ticked off one driver and he just went after me every single race. I started to wish that the game had a simulated peace-gift mode.

However, Forza's bots in both versions have bots that tend to give up and cruise if you get a 10 second lead on them for a length of time. Gran Turismo unfortunately has "rabbit" cars which occasionally pop up, in which a car will be driven to 100% of its capacity, or more, and are nearly impossible to catch.

I totally agree on both these points. Even in F3 the Ai will fight like a demon until you get 2 or 3 seconds ahead, and then it just gives up. I wish they'd bring back some of the Drivatar technology and make it a bit transparent. I think it would be cool if you could build a drivatar of yourself for other people to race against in their careers. Oh man, on second thoughts, that's an incredibly awesome idea!

 

[niky]

GT4 and GT5P... there is no "rubber band effect" in Professional mode. It's simply that GT assigns random slots to cars of different levels on the starting grid... so a really fast car can get bottled up behind slower ones... and then appear to "bolt away" from the pack once they're clear of the back markers.

I've observed the behavior of the AI both while racing and watching B-Spec and this is what inevitably happens. Sometimes, when I get a "fast" car close to the front on the grid in GT5P, one that I'll have no chance of beating if they clear the pack before me, I reload the race to try to get a more favorable grid.

Sometimes they're bottled up long enough for you to at least get behind them when they clear the pack... which makes for nice, exciting racing. Sometimes they're zooming away in first place while you're still trying to get around idiot number five... which makes for frustrating racing.

 

[chepe371]

Agreed! I remember Toca gentleman's racing league... After you sir!

I remember schooling my friends on how to race GT-Style, gentlemanly because if you pull that NFS mess in GT you both end up "on the beach".

However a little bump here and there never hurt.

My experience in AI is more recently revolving around GTR2 which has a really good AI, in a field of 20 cars, theyre all over the place not just race-line-hugging. They will avoid you or try if you are too slow or are crashed. The AI level is adjustable, so you can go from semi-wheeliterate to gripmasters if you choose.

When you get a head of the pack it gets a bit lonely, but your mistakes will cost you as they will catch up if you mess up.

GT's AI, irritated me because of their obnoxiousness , i had to adapt my racing style to be more aggressive and using them in the corners instead of slowing down, recently for GT5P i've had to switch back to black-tie manners because of online play(and even then you get dirtballs).

 

[Tenacious D]

I wish they'd bring back some of the Drivatar technology and make it a bit transparent. I think it would be cool if you could build a drivatar of yourself for other people to race against in their careers. Oh man, on second thoughts, that's an incredibly awesome idea!

I like this idea too, and lobbied for it for a while on the Forza boards. Creating a drivatar and training it was incredible fun for me and my brother - who is still avidly racing Forza 1 thanks to a birthday present of a used XBox. You can learn a few interesting techniques to make them deadly skillful, and I used them in a few races which I finally grew tired of trying to gold.

While we're probably stuck with hiring the existing bots if we want to buy a win, I wish they'd bring drivatar training back. It was the coolest innovation ever.

 

[Cobra_NZ]

Of course, here are some of the flaws I find in FM3 (deep breath): big difference between the menu and photomode car models and the actual in-game car models which are just slightly higher LOD than FM2, not all dials in the car interiors work, a lot of car models have errors in them, some track foliage is 2D and textured poorly, pit crew still not visible during pit stops, only 8 cars on track, missing gear shifting animations, no backfire sound or flame animation, no moving aero parts on cars like Bugatti Veyron, and many more.

Even if all the above were sorted, FM3 would still look pale in comparison to GT5 due to the superior car models, superior quality cockpits and superior lighting PD have mastered. Also the presentation in GT5 will be second to none.

To add to the list, now apparently we can't take pictures from inside the cockpit anymore. Don't know the exact reasons why but all those stunning modeled cockpits and those screenshots of cockpits, even that increddible video of the cockpit of the BMW in the Dreams FM3 trailer, for nothing! They started off well at E3 and then proceeded to mess it up. They should have stuck with less FPS for the cockpit view and kept the fidelity. They should have also made it very clear from day 1 that there will be 2 different car models, one in-game and one in the menus.