Forza Motorsport General Discussion Thread

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"I’m Nick Wiswell, Audio Director at Turn 10 Studios, and today I want to give you all some details on the audio changes you will hear in Forza Motorsport with the release of Update 13, Mustang Month, and our plans for future updates"...including our work for the Lancia Stratos :D - I can dream
 
I first met him when I was at Bizarre Creations working on the Project Gotham Racing games
Sad Anthony Anderson GIF


@McLaren Get in here.
 
The communication this team is giving lately deserves a lot of praise. Thank you Audio Director Nick for that feedback regarding car audio. I think at this point nothing else needs to be said about car sounds, we just have to let these guys cook and put our ears to the test each update going forward.
 
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It's still not ACC or anything but I think an update to DTS X improved the sound on my end where at least now my car's sound isn't drowned out and I can use the cockpit view.

'Spooky season' in the challenge hub may be a little broken, as I did the rival event and beat one rival +500 players but that didn't count. You can also complete it by doing some night races (which does work).
 

Nick Wiswell, Audio Director at Turn 10 Studios shares an update on the changes we’re making to audio for future and existing cars in Forza Motorsport.

Hi everyone,
I’m Nick Wiswell, Audio Director at Turn 10 Studios, and today I want to give you all some details on the audio changes you will hear in Forza Motorsport with the release of Update 13, Mustang Month, and our plans for future updates.
With this blog, I will personally address some of the feedback you have been sending us since we released the game last October. We hear you, and the plans that we are sharing today are in direct response to this – thank you for sharing your honest thoughts.

First, I’d like to give you some insights into the team we have assembled, and some important changes we have made to deliver the best audio experience possible when racing.

I’ve been at Turn 10 Studios since 2010, and I worked directly as Audio Director on Forza Motorsport 4 through Forza Motorsport 6. After that I moved into publishing focused roles working on Forza Horizon and Forza Street, and then into a more technical role before returning to Forza Motorsport full time in March 2023.

When I rejoined the team last year, most of the game’s audio content was already complete, so our efforts were focused on refining the assets we already had. After closely listening to your feedback, we have started incorporating new tools and processes into our audio workflow so we can deliver great sounding, authentic content moving forward. To ensure we have the best people we can leading these efforts, Turn 10 Studios rehired one of our former Sound Designers this past spring to help deliver these new plans.

To give you some context, this sound designer worked on Forza Motorsport (2005) through Forza Motorsport 3, as well as both Forza Motorsport 4 and Forza Motorsport 5 from a central Xbox audio team role. He then joined Polyphony Digital to work on GT Sport and Gran Turismo 7. I first met him when I was at Bizarre Creations working on the Project Gotham Racing games – Xbox’s premier racing game before the days of Forza – and I’m excited to work with him again. Between us, we have made a lot of great sounding racing games – and from some of the posts I’ve seen online, some of you would agree with this!

So, with a new audio leadership team, which includes another lead for our technology and development investments, we are set for the future.

To the state of audio in Forza Motorsport: I will admit that from an authenticity perspective, the game is not where we would like it to be. There are many factors that led to this, but we hope we can set things right going forward. Our goal is to fix these audio issues and ensure that all new cars added to the game are built authentically and uniquely. To achieve this, we have been overhauling our authoring techniques and pipelines so that we can update as many of the most egregious car audio issues as possible.

The initial work on this is now complete, and from Update 13 onwards, all cars added to Forza Motorsport will be built to this newer specification. In addition, a number of cars that have been flagged as inauthentic, both internally at the studio and by the community, will be updated over time.

The cars we are initially updating are with the release of Update 13 include the following:

  • 2022 Pagani Huayra R
  • 2014 Chevrolet #3 Corvette Racing Corvette C7.R
  • 2001 Acura Integra Type R
We have also made changes to the cockpit audio on the 2010 Lexus LFA, following its update in a previous release.

As we look forward to future updates, we will weigh factors such as community feedback, internal priority, upcoming featured cars in game and the availability of suitable recordings.

I’d also like to add that there is a lot of speculation about how the car audio is made and where it is sourced. It is all created from recordings of real cars, either captured on a track or on a dyno. Our library contains over 750 vehicle recordings, and more are being sourced and added every month. The changes we are making are built around how these recordings are being processed and edited, and the way we assemble the recordings back together at runtime to be controlled by the in-game physics engine.

I’m not going to give too much of our secret sauce away, but it’s based on the combined experience of our audio team and software engineers, and we are very happy with the changes we are making.

We hope you like them too, and as always, we look forward to feedback from the community. Also, I’ll be speaking with you all next month – November 7 at 3pm PT – on the official Forza Discord server to go into more detail on our audio development workflows as part of the next “In the Garage” AMA. I hope to see you there.

They just had to mention those three little words...
Something internally must've changed. T10 used to not be transparent about much of, well, anything. It's nice to see and i hope it continues.
Oh, something major had clearly happened internally, if you add posts like this to the blogpost with the "roadmap".
The whole tone of releases has changed, the first 2 blogposts were a completely different tone.
I am completely guessing with no evidence to back this up, but i don't honestly see how this complete change of tone, approach to publicity, and this refreshingly honest almost apologetic attitude and openness could have happened with the same high level people in control of the game, my instinct is that higher up(s) have been quietly sidelined somehow and control of the game direction is in different hands to before.

The only recent occasion where i can remember such a marked change in approach in this way is Forza Horizon 5 when the top level change occurred.
'Spooky season' in the challenge hub may be a little broken, as I did the rival event and beat one rival +500 players but that didn't count. You can also complete it by doing some night races (which does work).
I think you have to beat separate rivals one at a time and it might not register properly until you get to the total number. Hopefully you still get the reward when getting to the completion requirement.
I had a glitchy percentage completion for the Featured Tour last month and the percentage went up then went back down to 0%, but got the car when I completed it.
 
The only recent occasion where i can remember such a marked change in approach in this way is Forza Horizon 5 when the top level change occurred.
NFS Unbound built an entire year of live service around this kind of communication and experimentation. Turned that game around from a flop to a hit.


 
I liked the detail of the drag strip having such darker tarmac on Sunset Peninsula. Drag racing eventually being added definitely seems like a given at some point, especially after the effort put into drag racing in FM7.

Would be cool to see FM5s Pro Stock Camaro make its way over.
 
They just had to mention those three little words...

Oh, something major had clearly happened internally, if you add posts like this to the blogpost with the "roadmap".
The whole tone of releases has changed, the first 2 blogposts were a completely different tone.
I am completely guessing with no evidence to back this up, but i don't honestly see how this complete change of tone, approach to publicity, and this refreshingly honest almost apologetic attitude and openness could have happened with the same high level people in control of the game, my instinct is that higher up(s) have been quietly sidelined somehow and control of the game direction is in different hands to before.

The only recent occasion where i can remember such a marked change in approach in this way is Forza Horizon 5 when the top level change occurred.

I think you have to beat separate rivals one at a time and it might not register properly until you get to the total number. Hopefully you still get the reward when getting to the completion requirement.
I had a glitchy percentage completion for the Featured Tour last month and the percentage went up then went back down to 0%, but got the car when I completed it.
There has been a lot of talk and leaks from developers about how bad the industry has become lately.

Extremely closed echo-chambers, toxic positivity, and more. It hurts because they said they planned to have the community involved in the development of Forza Motorsport and it feels like we ended up with the exact opposite. You can even get a glimpse of the toxic positivity in his comments, they knew the issues with the audio existed but any criticism or negativity was likely snuffed out by leadership. It's hard to stay motivated when leadership makes it a priority to accept mediocrity and discourage taking more time to do something right. (As a result of saving money or contracting out work instead of keeping talented and inspired workers that actually care about the game.)

I work in a blue collar industry and I see this kind of stuff all the time; it's almost like managers make it a mission to destroy people's motivation to do good work.

This recent development really shows that they need people that actually care about the end-product leading the different parts of the studio.

I hope this new trend at the studio continues.
 
Drift Connoisseur in the Challenge Hub. If you're like me and have no chance of getting 20k in Rivals Event, you have to do 5 FREE RACES set up as Drift Events as the alternative, doing 5 RIVALS events doesn't count (I tried :lol:)

@AttackDickie The narrative in the Rivals screen is different to whst it says in Challenge Hub -The CH says that you have to beat 15 Rivals to get the suit.

If only they had someone employed to check these things...?!?!

PSA The Mid-Engine Tour finishes in 6 days, you DON'T HAVE THE USUAL 2 WEEK WINDOW to complete it.
 
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The Drift Rivals were causing a game crash so we've temporarily removed them. They'll be restored once that's fixed.
Drift Rivals have been restored now that the crashing issue was resolved. No download needed - you may see a "New Content Available" popup.

Also FYI for anyone who hasn't jumped in to collect the free RTR cars and Dark Horse (DLC) - all you need to do is run a race (like a Rivals lap) and those messages will pop up on screen and deliver the cars directly to your My Cars menu rather than downloading from the Message Center.
 
Drift Rivals have been restored now that the crashing issue was resolved. No download needed - you may see a "New Content Available" popup.

Also FYI for anyone who hasn't jumped in to collect the free RTR cars and Dark Horse (DLC) - all you need to do is run a race (like a Rivals lap) and those messages will pop up on screen and deliver the cars directly to your My Cars menu rather than downloading from the Message Center.
Tried these last night.
There's only one issue remaining... I'm absolutely rubbish at drifting :lol:
Particularly the Formula Drift car, couldn't control it for long.
 
PSA The Mid-Engine Tour finishes in 6 days, you DON'T HAVE THE USUAL 2 WEEK WINDOW to complete it.
It was never intended to be that way. At launch they had stayed you have 6 weeks from the day a feature tour opens to complete it. As update 12 was 5 weeks long, the mid engine tour will disappear Wednesday night.

Update 13 is 3 weeks long so the Mustang Tour will last for 3 weeks into update 14 with the 2013 Shelby GT500 and Saleen S302 unlocking the first day of the new tour
 
Retried the Performance + RT on my series X and it’s still quite broken, some réflexions of track decoration still get « stuck » on the car…

Back on Performance only which still look sharper anyway.
 
Tried these last night.
There's only one issue remaining... I'm absolutely rubbish at drifting :lol:
Particularly the Formula Drift car, couldn't control it for long.
FWIW, the default tunes (at least for the 3 RTR Mustangs) are quite squirrely, and it's really hard to keep a continuous drift going with them. There's already some solid community tunes available, so I'd experiment with some of those. There are already a couple 5-stared community tunes marked for beginners, but I have noticed that initiating a drift with said tunes can be a little awkward, and they tend to lock the car up under heavy braking.
 
Being that this is October, isn't it time for the 'free' Duracell car? Has anyone bought Duracell batteries lately to find out, or am I off by a month, or something?
 
I actually bothered with Forza Motorsport last night but I didn't have much time so I just sent the Dark Horse Mustang around Sunset Peninsula for 3 laps. It's a good combination and the track really does remind me of Forza 4. The infield layout, although flat, is a lot of fun with a decent variety of corners and ripple strips to abuse. I might stuff around for a bit longer tonight.
 
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