Menu information
The car selection menus show numbers for Power, Torque, Weight, Front Weight Distribution %, drivetrain layout, and country of origin (linked to manufacturer). The Race Setup menu for Car Restrictions also includes fields for Model Family, Region, Engine Configuration (V, Inline, Rotary etc), Cylinders, and Aspiration. Displacement figures are not available in these menus.
Forums: discussion thread for engine displacement
Can players toggle lights, tops, horn, or wipers during gameplay?
These commands are not available while driving. Wipers activate automatically for wet conditions. Some cars may have bodykit upgrade options that change the car from closed top to open top for racing. Forzavista and pausing solo play to enter Photo Mode allow lights to be toggled in that mode only. Damage cannot be reset in Photo Mode as in FH3.
Is fuel and tire wear accelerated or adjustable in FM7?
Tire and fuel wear can be toggled on or off in Assists but there is no adjustable rate of consumption.
How does FM7's damage model work?
As in FM6, Assists options allow Damage to be set to Off, Cosmetic only, Tire & Fuel only, or Simulation. Simulation damage is visible by broken out headlights, cracked windows, and scraped and dented bodywork, but not destroyed pieces, fire, or popped tires. The Cosmetic-only setting will prevent performance degradation, while Simulation setting tracks damage to panels, suspension, clutch, and engine by percentage, making car control difficult and ultimately immobilizing the car until end of a race. Damage can be monitored with Telemetry during racing. Pitting will fully restore the car to 100% performance, but there are no specific Pit lane repair/part options.
Does Forza show a car's weight as empty or full?
"We display standard manufacturer curb weights in the UI - i.e. wet with no driver. the backend sim uses more detailed numbers." - Dan Greenawalt (FM6)
PERFORMANCE INDEX
Cars are given a Performance Index number ranging from 100 to 999 that changes when upgrade parts are installed. PI ranges are grouped into 9 classes (E, D, C, B, A, S, R, P, X). Performance attributes for Speed, Handling, Acceleration, and Braking (Launch is not included in FM7) are shown in numbers from 3.0 (slowest/weakest) to 10.0 (fastest, strongest). These numbers too indicate potential performance and are not an exact comparison between cars.
Forums: discussion thread on class system and balancing and homologation
How is the PI number calculated for each car?
PI ranking, however, is different for each game. It is relative to each game’s car list and race routes. Each new Forza title gets another revision of this test track to be a good representational average of all tracks in the game. This, in addition to the changing and growing car list with each title, is why class boundaries and PI #s are not the same with each new version of the game, or between Motorsport and Horizon.
Forza Motorsport titles use an entirely different PI test track than Forza Horizon titles, because race tracks (like Silverstone, for example) are not representative of the types of race routes found in Forza Horizon’s open roads. Horizon’s roads tend to have longer straights, faster turns, and less hard braking and cornering in general. For this reason, the actual class letters and PI values for a given car are not the same between Horizon and Motorsport games. Additionally, Forza Motorsport has Formula 1, Indy, and modern prototype race cars at the top of its PI system, while Horizon 2’s top-end cars are “hypercars” like the McLaren P1 and LaFerrari. This means a PI of 998 in Forza Motorsport is a much higher level of performance than a PI of 998 in Forza Horizon. It also means less granularity is needed in Horizon’s car classes than we have in Motorsport. Again, it’s relative to each game’s cars and race routes.
Once we have PI test track lap time data for every car in the game, we analyze it to determine class boundaries. Most of these land exactly where we would expect, based on the fact that all the performance data for each car is based on extensive real world research, including data provided to us directly by car, tire, and aftermarket parts manufacturers as well as race teams.
We rarely hand tune PI, and if so it is to maintain fair game balance across career, multiplayer, and leaderboards, or to keep cars of similar type and performance in the real world in similar PI ranges or classes, and never to a degree that a car’s performance characteristics are significantly compromised compared to its real world counterpart.