Forza Motorsport 4 -- Week in Review 10/21

Yes, the Forza Motorsport world is growing. How do I know? I’m getting my butt handed to me online already. You see, with Forza 3 (and with Forza 2 before it), I was able to hold my own in online races during those first few weeks after launch. I didn’t always win but, more often than not, I felt like I could compete in nearly in race against nearly any opponent. These days? Not so much. Yesterday, I fired up the game for some quick C Class racing in the hoppers and got thoroughly thrashed by a group of folks who made me look like a rank amateur. I’m not the fastest guy to begin with, and I can’t stand losing, but it makes me happy that we’ve got so many good players out there tearing it up. New blood is a good thing, even it means you have to take your lumps.

So, how is your Forza 4 career shaping up? I’ve seen some crazy stats out there, including more than a few people having already reached preposterous driver levels in the game. Personally, I’m currently sitting at level 47, having most recently added the 2008 Radical SR8 RX to my garage for gaining my most recent level. I’m still spending an egregious amount of time in my Ford XB Falcon GT but have recently been on a buying spree, snapping up personal favorites like the 2010 Mazdaspeed 3, the 2003 Honda S2000, and the 1997 Lexus SC300. I’ve always pegged myself as an American car guy but, one look at my recent additions to my car collection belies a fascination for Japanese makes that has definitely opened my eyes.

Photo by Pebb 

How about you? What does your Forza 4 car collection say about you so far? What kind of events are you entering in World Tour mode and which events have you enjoyed most so far? Let’s talk about it in this thread in the forums. I’ll be popping in there from time to time all week and handing out goodies to some of my favorite responses. So get in there and let me know what you’re up to!

Now let’s take a look back at the week that was in the Forza Motosport world. 

Game With Turn 10 

Though Forza 4 has been out in North America and Europe since last week, Wednesday saw the release of the game around the rest of the world. To coincide with the launch, we held another Game With Turn 10 event, handing out a bevy of unicorn cars in the process.

The turnout to these events has been incredible and we love interacting with Forza fans all over the world. Over the years, we’ve tried a number of different methods for hooking up with Forza community members online during our Game With Turn 10 events. In the past, we’ve tried randomly showing up in the online hoppers, as well as setting up dedicated Gamertags and inviting folks to races on an individual basis. Since the release of Forza 4, we’ve switched the process over to our thriving Forza Motorsport Facebook page. If you’re unfamiliar with the process, here’s how it works.

• We list upcoming Game With Turn 10 events in a number of places, including here on the Week in Review, on our Community Calendar, on our Facebook and Twitter accounts, and via in-game messages that we send out usually a day prior to the event.
• Before an event begins, we invite players to join us in the Game With Devs page of our official Facebook page. From there, you’ll find a chat room you can enter with other Forza fans to discuss the event.
• During the event, Turn 10 staff who are taking part will post the Public Lobby race type and room name they have created.
• Search for the posted race by first going to “Race Online” in the Community Section of Forza 4. Then choose “Find Race”. Scroll to “User-Created Races” and search for the race name in the correct race type category. Hit A to join up!

We’ve switched between multiple methods of entry over the last few years but it’s an unfortunate reality that, with every Game With Turn 10 event, we simply aren’t going to be able to get to everyone who wants to participate. We want to race and play with as many of you as we can during these events, and we want as many people as possible to have a chance to win unicorn cars. That said, we always try to make sure that whatever method we use is as easy to use and equitable as possible. The good news is we hope to run these events on a regular basis for the foreseeable future so, as the old saying goes, if at first you don’t succeed… 

Photo by KrAzE4TwEnTy

 

Photomode Contest 

If you saw our Community page this week, you saw that our Contest Winners sections has been updated with our Gold, Silver, and Bronze medal winners from last week’s Photomode Competition. Congratulations to Pebb, KrAzE4TwEnTy, and Ghandi FlopFlip for their awesome contributions (which you can also see here embedded in this story as well).

 

As with our Game With Turn 10 events, we’ve moved Photomode Contests to Facebook as well. This has been an experiment of sorts but it’s an experiment that’s had incredible results so far. While our Forza 3 photo contests regularly had hundreds of entries, our first two Facebook photo contests have blown things out of the water in terms of participation.

 

That said, I realize that there’s a number of community folks out there that feel we have ignored our loyal FM.net forum regulars by moving our photo contests to Facebook. So, while we’ll still be doing our Facebook photo contests, we’ll be drumming up some special forum-only contests in the coming week to keep the FM.net faithful busy as well. Look for more information on these soon.

 

Community Calendar – We Want You!
So far the FM.net Community Calendar has been used to advertise the events that the Turn 10 community team has planned. As promised, we’re now opening up the calendar to the community itself. Head over to this thread in the forums, where you can submit your contests, competitions, and other community activation ideas for consideration on the Community Calendar. Here’s what we need from you:

 

• Title: The name of your event 
• Description: A brief (3-4 sentences, max) describing your contest. Longer entries will not be accepted.
• Start/End Date: The start and end date of your event.
• Prizes: What prizes are you offering to the winners? 

 

If you’ve got a cool event you want the rest of the Forza community to know about, let us know about it and we’ll pick our favorite events to include in the calendar.

 

BMW M5 Forza Cup 

The BMW M5 Forza Cup continues to roll on. This Rivals Mode event features the 2012 BMW M5 on the Nürburgring GP track and is open only to German residents. The finalists in this event will take place in a live finals race at BMW Welt in Munich, with the overall winner receiving a brand new 2012 BMW M5. For information on how to enter, please see our BWM M5 Forza Cup story.

 

Update on Forza Bans
As many of you have seen over the past few days, Turn 10 has been investigating claims from a select group of Forza 4 players who believe they have been unfairly banned. Additional inspection has revealed some accounts may have been banned in error. We are in the process of reinstating impacted accounts and apologize to those loyal fans that may have been inconvenienced. At Turn 10, security and the protection of our player base from cheaters has been and will continue to be of paramount importance. 

 

Car Club Garage Issue 

A number of Forza fans have pointed out a bug in their Car Club garages that causes new additions in the car club garage to appear as blank, black squares in the main garage lineup page. We are aware of this problem and are investigating a fix to this issue; we'll update you when we have more information. Despite this bug, it's important to know that, despite these cars showing up as blank in the club garage lineup page, the cars are still available in the club garage and you can view them and race them as you normally would. 
 

 

Pre-Order Incentive Gifts
Earlier this week, we sent out the gift cars for our Forza Motorsport 4 Pre-Order Incentive Program and, if it isn’t obvious now that the game is available in stores everywhere, we are no longer accepting pre-order incentive e-mails. Thanks to everyone who participated in this—we truly appreciate your loyalty. Enjoy the cars!

 

 

  Photo by Ghandi FlopFlip 

 Technical Analysis of Forza Motorsport 4 

Eurogamer recently ran a technical analysis of Forza Motorsport 4 on its Digital Foundry blog. The story is an in-depth analysis of the technology underpinnings of Forza 4 and includes perspectives on the game’s graphical improvements including lighting upgrades, Kinect support, car modeling, and much more. The entire article is a fine read but here’s a snippet of particular interest: 

"The performance profile is identical to Forza Motorsport 3. Remarkably, the engine does not drop a single frame during general gameplay and never loses v-sync, meaning that there is absolutely no tearing whatsoever. The only time 60FPS is ever compromised is when the player switches cameras: there's the small chance that you'll drop a frame - a singular frame, invisible to the human eye.  

For Turn 10 to have achieved this level of fidelity in its graphics, physics and AI and for it to consistently meet that 16.66ms rendering budget is a milestone of engineering on the Xbox 360 platform. For it to be achieved with a significant boost in the amount of cars being simulated is phenomenal."