I get that… we avoid the public lobbies for the most part and our organized weekly racing is privately hosted so keeps most of the riff raff out. The group has roots in “no assist racing” so that filters most though we aren’t as strict on that now but more being a smaller group.
FM5 is where the old group splintered with the X360 to XBONE transition with several moving to PC and iRacing as they didn’t want to move to the new console.
Gamepass Ultimate is great for me as I can play across PC and Console plus kids can play my owned or GP games as well since we had multiple devices. I’m pretty limited on buying new games, especially at full price. GP is a decent value for me still but I’m starting to see where I’m moving towards Steam more and more.
I don’t disagree that it’s in a better state now… but it’s taken WAY too long to get there, especially considering it’s developmental cycle. It’s still missing some QOL features that the harder core sim racers like my group could use (some actually in titles such as FM4)
My specific issue is that I can’t play using a controller anymore. It is still what I consider the best playing race sim on controller, but the nerve issues I have forced me to go to the wheel and it was NOT a good experience on the console. This latest title on console is the best yet, but it’s just so much better on PC.
The issue is that I can jump into Assetto Corsa and with the mods available, it both looks and handles MILES ahead on my rig PLUS I can use VR.
I started on a PS with GT and GT2 but when Forza came out, I moved to XBOX and it’s the title that has pretty much kept me there. It feels like this might end up being the end of the line for XBOX and FORZA for me finally… hell of a run if so.
*I made some advanced control setting changes tonight and think it’s definitely improved. I’ll keep working at it as long as our group stays with FM, but the majority is now on PC with wheel combos with the ability to run other titles that just give us a better experience. We shall see.
So… decided to take a big swing at my advanced input settings and grabbed the numbers from one of the guys running a DD setup (MOZA).… made a pretty big difference so my setup does not feel like complete garbage anymore. Ran with the guys on our regular Wednesday night session doing Spec Ladders with various class SPEC builds we’ve come up with. I’m still slow as molasses but it felt pretty good and I had occasional bits of decent racing. Might be some hope yet.
Will be interesting to what the future of Forza Motorsport holds based on yesterday’s Microsoft layoff announcements.
Turn 10 has been hit w/ a massive layoff, rumors are it’s not just engine support for PGG / Horizon.
That being said:
unless everyone knows the positions that were cut, then it’s jumping to conclusions.
the graphics engines and physics engine design team, does not need to be a full room of people once the engine is done, support can be done w/ 1 or 2 coders.
Cars and tracks, once the major lineup work is done, you don’t need to have multiple teams travelling to different locales at the same time to make a release lineup, again, you can cut everyone except one small team to laser scan and develop cars, and one team to travel and laser scan tracks.
80 man team is an aggressively large support team if they are just there to support PGG / Horizon Series.
So out of 70, prolly got 10 senior coders, about 20 for track development ( between coders, graphics artists, laser tech, etc), 15-20 for cars. and about 10 coders for network / ui code, and prolly 10 people for audio code. and shuffle a few around for AI code.
Nearly EVERY studio has been laying off people and pushing them to use AI Assisted coding.