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Don't completely dismiss GT or Forza until you have experienced them with at the bare minimum a Proper Wheel and Pedal Set. We have partnered with Turn10 the last two years at Petit LeMans and run Forza4 on our 3 degree of freedom motion platform with the Fanatec CSR Elite wheel and pedals. It's is actually quite amazing.
When we first booted the system in 2011 there were three Turn10 physics developers standing around the rig when I took the LMPC car out on ROad Atlanta for the first time. Experiencing this car and circuit for the first time without the regular Xbox control was a relvelation! After 3 laps, I stopped the car and couldn't stop laughing (In a good way!). The engineers asked me what was up. I explained to them exactly what I was feeling the car do through our motion and with that explanation learned just how in depth the Forza physics model is. I could feel the car roll over on the minimal spring travel that an LMPC car offers and then, here comes the biggy, I could feel the sidewall take over and actually use that feeling to balance the car right on the edge of oversteer and understeer. It was astounding! Forza models Sidewall Deflection and Contact Patch Deformation. It might not be able to take into account 500 different tire models when doing this, but the fact that those two incredibly complex funtions are in there at all and that you can feel them when you combine the software with proper hardware is quite amazing.
Couple all that with the Forza FFB system and the Fanatec wheel and you have a winner in my book. No other PC or console title allows you to feel the wheel weight increase as you load the front end into a corner and then have that weight drop off dramatically as the front end transitions into understeer. There are som many canned effects when it comes to haptic feedback systems in simulation and gaming and no other commercial title that I have ever tried (I have honestly tried them all) gives the proper feeling when it comes to feedback from the wheel. SOme come close, but believe it or not, Forza4 does it best. Sure there are high end bespoke solutions that do a wonderful job with all of these things, but they start at 100k and go up to GOOD LORD YOU PAID WHAT FOR YOUR SIMULATION PROGRAM!
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