18.11.15: I've Had Enough of All the Bickering on the Forum

If you've been following the forums recently then you'll probably remember the crumby behaviour of some forum members not long ago when the "something S.P.E.C.I.A.L." announced by the developers turned out to be a Fallout 4 paint for the Ford F100. After the initial announcement by the developers a number of forum members entered a spiral of wild speculation about what could be so special, and were sorely disappointed when the special something was finally revealed. A lot of bitterness was on display for all to see, and the several days of recriminations which followed will be remembered as one of our most dismal moments.

Well it's happening again. This time it's about the provision of Tokens which players may purchase with real money if they happen to wish to. It's not a big deal either really because if you can't actually ignore them then there is an option to hide them from view altogether. But some forum members are so incensed by the insinuation of "micro-transactions" that they're prepared to slug it out with anyone who wants to express an interest in them.

The irony is, of course, that this particular series of recriminations emerged around the same time as the Paris terrorist attack of 2015. The bitterness whipped up on the forums about something so trivial as micro-transactions stood in stark contrast to the predicament of those victims who were caught up in the attack. Consequently, my disappointment with the behaviour of some members of the forums has persuaded me to give them a rest for a while.

I'll be back, of course. I'm looking forward to the announcement of the imminent completion of Horizon 3 sometime next year, but until that day I'm going to work on toughening my hide. I'm going to need it because I doubt the mood on the forums will ever change.

06.11.15: I'm Finally Getting the Hang of a Controller

I've being playing Forza for nearly four years now and I've been playing driving games for a lot longer than this but, to be honest, I'm only just getting the hang of driving with a controller.

In the past I used to hit the throttle button and just go as fast as I could which meant that I had to continuously correct my steering around corners. It was very much a hit and miss thing. There was no precision to my throttle control so that I was either going full throttle, or I was fully standing on the brakes, and I used to throttle up and down a lot when going around corners.

But since my recent experience of driving with a wheel I've figured out a crucial bit of information. Having a set of foot pedals meant that I could much more carefully control the feathering of my throttle inputs which meant that I could turn the steering wheel more precisely.

The two inputs work together quite naturally, of course. The faster you go around a corner the wider is your turning circle, so to turn a smaller circle the solution is not so much to correct your steering, but to feather your throttle inputs. I only just realised this after driving with a wheel.

It's not as if there's not enough precision on an Xbox Controller throttle which functions identically to the throttle control on a set of pedals. The difference is one of thinking, and the solution to precisely controlling my left stick inputs had less to do with steering and more to do with carefully feathering the throttle.

This was an unexpected surprise to me which resulted in my ability to more carefully turn around corners and an ability to achieve "clean" laps more reliably.

01.11.15: I'm Enjoying Forza 6 More Than Horizon 2

I've always been a big fan of the Horizon series and I expect it's fair to say that I'm more of a Horizon driver than a Motorsport one, but I'm beginning to really enjoy Forza 6.

I expect a lot of this enjoyment has to do with my being a wheel driver now. Most Forza fans will find that a wheel is too cumbersome and expensive and I resisted getting one myself until recently because I enjoyed the convenience of a controller. You can pick up a controller anytime and just play.

But Force Feedback is now becoming fully implemented which is something previous editions of Forza were lacking. The FFB on Forza 5 and Horizon 2 were rudimentary at best and just failed to provide a driver with enough road data to make driving with a wheel enjoyable.

But Forza 6 does this quite adequately. There's still a lot of room for improvement, of course, but isn't this what drives developers to realise even greater dreams? Right now the FFB definitions within Forza 6 are state of the art and T10 deserve to be proud of their achievement. I can't wait to see what T10 and Playground Games have in store for us in future editions of Motorsport and Horizon. The future looks bright for controller drivers but even more so for wheel drivers!