Forza 6 Apex - a free-to-play Forza on PC

[GreatScawt]

http://www.polygon.com/2016/3/1/11134042/forza-motorsport-6-coming-to-pc-free-to-play

Releasing in spring; 63 cars, 6 locations
Pretty excited to get my hands on this.
Do you think this is Microsoft testing the water for bringing more of their triple A exclusives to PC? Possibly also giving their store some more visibility?

[Jason]

AFAIK, they're trying to effectively turn the Xbone into a glorified Windows PC, so it'd make sense for them to bring titles to PC as well, assuming specs are there.

[Rare White Ape]

I hack and spit at this development.

Free-to-play (which means it'll cost a lot).

And sold through the Windows Store.

I'd much prefer a regularly priced title available on Steam. It'll probably better off for them in the long run, after the Windows Store inevitably closes down.

[GreatScawt]

The Windows Store is built into Windows 10. Not exactly intrusive for a free-to-play game. And everyone cringes at FTP but it can be done properly. I have faith and I'm eager to try it, but yeah, it certainly won't be my go-to game. I'm mostly just curious as to how pretty it will look on my rig...

[Yw-slayer]

I'm fine with it, given all the games I've bought and never played. Well-up for "free to play" initially.

Plus, #PCmasterraceFTW

[Dudley]

The big issue is they're trying to attract PC sim racers.... but it won't have wheel support.

[Phil_SS]

Forza 6 supports wheels. Why wouldn't this?

[Jason]

Knowing MS, it'd only support specific 'approved' wheels.. specifically ones they can brand, and will only be supported for two years :lol:

[Dudley]

Forza 6 supports wheels. Why wouldn't this?

If you're doubting me, because they said it won't.

For the reason, they claim "time". I can't say I'm convinced.

[Phil_SS]

Turn 10 has stated it will support wheels. Just not at launch.

[Dudley]

MS said the Xbox 360 wheel would get force feedback on PC after launch too, I'll believe it when I see it.

[Rare White Ape]

This article (about Quantum Break) highlights one of my many reservation about the success of Forza's first foray into the PC racing world.

It's about Windows Store.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/04/06/quantum-break-drm/

I haven't looked at Windows Store yet, because I can't link my MS account to my PC, and it won't give me access.

:up::up::up::up::up:

[Dudley]

And this is the problem with DRM, only ever punishes those who gave you money. Every "comedy" piracy protection ever has ended up affecting innocents and then you've got to double difficulty of both finding someone who can help and convincing them you're not a filthy pirate.

[Yw-slayer]

All works fine for me. :up: :up:

[GreatScawt]

Aye, UWP is not looking hot right now. They've got some serious work to do for PC gamers - at least in terms of supporting 3rd party performance programs, FPS limitations, and driver issues. Hopefully they can iron some of that out by the time this arrives.

[Alan P]

I love the way that playing the PC version wrote over the Xbox Save he had where he'd already completed the game. It's like they asked some monkeys to come up with the code.

[Tom Servo]

Come to think of it, I'm surprised they're doing this after what a colossal failure Microsoft Flight was.

[Rare White Ape]

Man, MS Flight was a great game. I'm sad that I'll never be able to play it on my current laptop, which I bought last year, with it's pretty good graphics processing.

You see, that's one of my gripes about FM Apex. The track record of any Microsoft online shopfront in the past has been extremely poor. When they shut GFWL they took Flight away from us forever.

[Tom Servo]

Yep, Flight was really good and held a lot of promise. Didn't it only last six months before they pulled the plug on it?

[Freude am Fahren]

And didn't it only include like two locations, and one plane? What a let down.

Also, I think all game makers should just put in a self-destruct date in their software protection. No one really cares about pirated game that are 3 or 5 years old.

[Kchrpm]

Cue hackers tricking software protection into thinking its current date + 5 years.

[Freude am Fahren]

Of course, that's basically how they try to make free trials last forever. I'm sure a mandatory internet check for the date would be in order or something.

[Rare White Ape]

And didn't it only include like two locations, and one plane? What a let down.

One location and two planes in the free version. Big Island of Hawaii and a Boeing Stearman as well as the super-cool Icon A5 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICON_A5), which you could land pretty much anywhere.

You could buy the rest of Hawaii as DLC, and some new aircraft. Sucks to be you if you bought those.

[GreatScawt]

This is out today (beta). Gonna try to get it downloaded tonight and check it out.

[Rare White Ape]

Thanks for the heads-up.

Despite my earlier protestations, the Windows Store was not painless to get access to. I'll eat my hat there.

Now all I gotta do is wait until 18.8 billion bytes find their way onto my hard drive. I'll check back on the 'morrow. I hope the track and car selection is cromulent.

And playing FM6 on a PS4 pad is sure to be weird, right?

[GreatScawt]

:lol: I bet!

I did end up downloading it. It was not quick, like Steam, uPlay and Battle.net are. Got through the first race. Gorgeous. However, it crashed at the loading screen for the next race. My gut feeling is that the apps don't play well with PrecisionX, software that keeps my graphics card in check (but not a huge deal to turn off). It is demanding for sure. It defaulted to 1080p. I bumped it to 2K but didnt get a chance to see how it runs due to the crash. I'll have to fuck about more later

[animalica]

I`m just downloading the PC version (18,8 GB) - btw... hi ladies and lads.
The download will take for ever because of just 1 MB/s... :(

https://youtu.be/5Sktd04SB_0

[Rare White Ape]

I'm trying to run it now but I'm getting an incompatible graphics driver error code. FML.

So now I'm updating stuff instead of playing games hoooraaayyy!

[animalica]

Looks like it needs more updates:

http://forums.forzamotorsport.net/turn10_postst62252_Forza-Motorsport-6--Apex-Known-Issues.aspx

[Rare White Ape]

Yeah. I've read these pages a lot this morning while looking for help.

I found a way past the AP301 error I was getting, but the game crashes after the loading period once you go past the Xbox Live login screen.

So I'm updating the AMD driver again, since the website only gave me the next-to-latest driver, not the full-latest driver.

FML.

[Rare White Ape]

It's running. It auto-detected my graphics and set it to 720p at 30fps, which I'm OK with, but I might turn off a heap of graphics effects like glare and things to free up some frame rate.

I spent an hour playing it and trying things out. I have a lot of gripes. But before I get to them, can the console players here who have tried both tell me if this game is any different in feel and presentation to the Xbone game?

[animalica]

Here are a few comparison videos between the PC and the console versions:


https://youtu.be/DQ9P2GeE-aA

https://youtu.be/dR0xsr3Q4mE

https://youtu.be/6wyG8mhYiWg

https://youtu.be/RVqc1gK0McA

My download will last a few hours more but I already downloaded the latest driver for my GTX 970.
When I get up tomorrow it should be ready.

[GreatScawt]

RWA, I've only played the demo on X1, but I feel like that first race (same 2017 Ford GT race on both) is very similar in terms of handling and presentation. It also felt just as smooth. The heavy, heavy assists are always really annoying though, and both versions had that. I eventually ran a Nissan GTR Black Edition at Sebring in the rain with a field of 15 other cars, no traction control, no ABS. Standard handling. It was unwieldy, but very fun. I don't know what framerate I was running, but the game was running at 2K/ultra and felt really smooth.

I got a strange glitch earlier. I think it messed with my graphics driver. I paused the game and my computer went into a quick sleep mode. I woke the computer up and I noticed all the text was blurry. Then noticed that my whole screen was blurry, even the desktop. Restarted and fixed it. Not sure if the quick sleep was the issue.

[Rare White Ape]

OK, the main gripe I'm having, aside from the understandable glitches you get with a beta, is that the game feels very floaty and hard to control. At no time do I really feel that I'm connected to the road, so braking and steering feel is like a guessing game. I've got steering on normal, ABS on and all other assists off, driving from bonnet-cam.

One of the things I tried was the Ferrari F430 at Brands Hatch and I was all over the shop. Next I changed to the Lambo Huracan (almost the same as the Fazza, but 4WD) and it felt a lot better and I could complete some laps without running off the track, but nowhere near comfortably attacking corners and slides like I can after five minutes in almost any other racing sim. It's very frustrating. I did have fun driving the Civic WTCC car. It felt a lot more planted and stable, but the other two racing cars that I've tried in free play (Corvette C7.R and Peugeot 908) make me look like an arseclown.

I've got steering on normal, ABS on and all other assists off, driving from bonnet-cam. ABS bugs me, because they way it works feels very broken. It's like it's stalling the car instead of just reducing braking force, even when you only lightly brake harder than the tires allow. This is evident right away on cars with no driven front wheels, which is super weird. I might go back to no ABS and give that a go. I normally use it on a low setting if it's available in other games just for user-friendliness' sake because it's hard to be precise with a game pad.

The other gripe is with the steering feel, on both normal and sim modes. The C7.R is the worst I've driven in a long time, and it's a problem I'm finding with steering lock. This car feels like it's got no steering lock so I have to take hairpins very very slowly, but then if I get a wee bit of over steer my dab of oppo is suddenly a whole handful and it flings me off the track. So, where is all that steering when I want to turn into a corner, and why can't it be dampened down when it gets a bit sideways?

When I change to the interior view, as I turn it looks like the on-screen wheel is artificially restricted to about 30 degrees (no matter the speed I'm travelling) and slowly gets tighter and tighter the longer I hold it at full lock. Watch the 4th video (https://youtu.be/RVqc1gK0McA) that Animalica posted above at 1:40 when the player is turning left through Pouhon at Spa. The car understeers but at no time does the game let him turn harder than 30 degrees. The same is true for the bustop chicane later in the lap, a corner where you'd naturally want about 90-120 degrees of steering.

I know this is a big rant, but I'm having trouble seeing where this game lives up to its expectations.

Oh, and AI drivers are still shit, but that's not unexpected...

[Kchrpm]

Forza's steering lock is grip limited when using a controller on normal mode. It won't let you steer past the point that the tires can do it without (some amount of) scrubbing, and if you're trail braking aggressively it can be pretty pronounced.. I believe the same is true of Gran Turismo, but I'm not sure.

I never use sim mode with a controller, so I don't know what that does.

I couldn't compare how hard or easy it is to pick this up compared to others, it's the one I've played by far the most for the last decade or so, so I'm relatively used to it's idiosyncrasies.

[racerfink]

if you're gonna run without assists, you must tune the car. They give it a lively tune for those players who have every assist on, seeing as they are less likely to tune the car.

[stephenb]

Dammit, I forgot how long you could waste in these games looking for that perfect shot :lol: The Rio track sure is beautiful, I spent a while just cruising around in the Atom looking at the reflections on the bonnet. Some great vistas to be taken in at the high point of the circuit as you charge back down towards the sea front. Got a feeling I might be sinking some serious time into this once wheel support arrives.

1719
1720

[Rare White Ape]

I've gotta get used to the handling first before I start enjoying photo mode!

I got some time to do a few more laps yesterday but it's still not clicking. Everything still feels like the wheels are running on underinflated 12" profile tyres.

Just for fun and nostalgia I played GT6 for the first time in almost a year. Straight away it felt smooth and sharp to drive. I think GT games have always been big on providing a lot of feedback for the player. It feels very organic, I suppose. The old Forza games were not so good at that but they didn't exhibit the problem I'm having in my first few hours of FM6.

[GreatScawt]

Have you tried using simulation handling? That is by far my preference. From my understanding, the steering is more one-to-one with the joystick.

[Kchrpm]

Just for fun and nostalgia I played GT6 for the first time in almost a year. Straight away it felt smooth and sharp to drive. I think GT games have always been big on providing a lot of feedback for the player. It feels very organic, I suppose.

Conversely, my recent experiences with Gran Turismo have felt very awkward and anti-septic. I think it really is just a matter of comfort level with a game's mindset, so to speak. I was resulting to using the D-Pad on GT5 or 6 because the analog stick and it's reactions felt so weird.

On the steering lock, you can see in this video that every time I go into the tight turn at the end of the back straight, it feeds in more steering lock after I've gotten off the brakes on turn-in. I'm used to that, but I can understand why others wouldn't be.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nYaWP0Kito

[GreatScawt]

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/directx/2016/05/10/unlocked-frame-rate-and-more-now-enabled-for-uwp/?linkId=24319396

I think this *may* help with some of the issues I've been having with UWP games. Guess we'll find out.

[FaultyMario]

Just wanted to say, this thread feels like it's 2002.

[racerfink]

Apex will now support wheels.

http://forzamotorsport.net/en-us/news/fm6a_wheel_support

[Freude am Fahren]

Fanatec coming in late September, right in time for me to move on to Horizon 3 :)

[dodint]

I downloaded this as a way to dip my toe in the water as to if I want to bother with F7. The hint at cross platform lobbies has piqued my interest enough to the point of trying it. I was able to get the F6:A full DLC edition on sale, so it was $8 for this demo with Nurburgring and three car packs added.

My G27 worked with no real fuss other than it won't allow mapping to some of the buttons on the h-gate shifter portion of the controls, which is weird.
My Fanatec CSR Elite pedals are not recognized by Windows 10 which is a kick in the balls, it means I have to revert to the G27 wheels for both F6:A and iRacing. Not impressed.
The MS Store was broken. Was happy to take my money but it wouldn't provide the download. Had to hard reset the wireless adapter and then reboot my machine to get it to start the download.

The game itself runs really nice on my machine. It was high end for 2012 but I wasn't sure if it would still hold up. I installed the game to my SSD so maybe that was the difference.

This is my first exposure to Forza. I really don't want to buy an XBox just for one game so I really hope you can do cross platform lobbies when F7 comes out. If they do it's a sure buy for me.

XBox gamer ID is 'dodint' if you want to add me. Keith was the only one I tracked down off the top of my head.

[Tom Servo]

Huh, my Fanatec Clubsport V1 pedals work just fine with Windows 10. I haven't tried then with F6:A, though.

Tried to add you through the windows app but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to do that. Searching just tries to search my existing friends. EDIT: Okay, it just wasn't working for a while. Tried the same thing I tried before and it worked this time.

[dodint]

It's not a F6:A issue with the pedals, it's a Windows deal. It's showing up in the Device Manager as an unrecognized USB device. If I uninstall the device and then plug the cable back in it instantly switches back to unrecognized USB device, doesn't even look for drivers. I have the latest driver pack but they don't do anything because Windows can't comprehend at all what the USB device is, even if I manually try to add the driver.

For Forza the G27 pedals are fine (glad I kept them, almost threw them away) but for iRacing I'd really like to have my load cell back.

[Tom Servo]

Have you hit up Fanatec about that? Judging by this thread on Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/simracing/comments/4my68c/csr_elite_usb_issue_windows_10/), they should work just fine in Windows 10.

[dodint]

I get the same error on my laptop, which is also Win10. Starting to think it's the logic board. :(

I don't have a Fanatec wheel so I can't test the PS/2 output.

[Freude am Fahren]

Time for warranty support (if it's not too old)

[dodint]

I find it really strange that it worked fine on this exact hardware setup under Win7 and then when I plug it back in on Win10 machines it's dead. I mean, it's been living a pretty easy life of sitting there doing nothing in my study. I think I am no longer the owner of any Win7 boxes though so I can't really test it.

[dodint]

It'd probably the wheel talking but I'm liking F6:A more than Project Cars for PS4. And I'm a big fan of Project Cars.

It might be because F6:A is a demo that the 'career' arc is so short I got into the interesting cars quick. PC tried to trap me in a kart for the longest time. F6:A does some utterly arcade shit from time to time but I was hotlapping an Atom on the Yaz short course and was totally immersed.

I'd have to get PC for PC and try it with my wheel to really tell which one is the better game, but I don't think it matters. I think I'm all in for F7 at this point. It fills a nice niche of 'serious' hot lapping without the time commitment of iRacing. iRacing is still my number one but I think during the semester when I need to blow off steam for a few hours I'll reach for F7 instead of PC. I hope my system runs it well.

So, I guess my preference ranking for stuff I have now is:

iRacing
Forza for Win10
Project Cars for PS4
Need For Speed:Rivals for PS4
Gran Turismo 6

I wonder where Gran Turismo: Sport will slot in. I'm still getting my copy for $10 so I'm getting it either way. Above NFS I guess.

[Tom Servo]

I finally started messing with this. I just got a 4k monitor and my video card can power this getting 60fps at 4k.

Holy crap. It's glorious. There are certain things that suddenly become obviously bad (like a cylinder in the car's interior clearly just being an octagonal prism), but so much of it just looks absolutely stunning. Makes me wish the FH3 on Windows wasn't such a clusterfuck, seeing what could have been.

[Tom Servo]

And then we almost immediately find the "xbox based game" downside. Looks like it'll happily talk to my G27 shifter and wheel, but my clubsport pedals aren't recognized. Doesn't matter that they show up as controllers in Windows, there's this asinine list of supported peripherals. Feh.

[dodint]

So I am not missing anything in that regard, then.

[Kchrpm]

That's why they've come out already and said that Forza 7 will have an overly robust system, able to accept any and all PC controllers.

[Yw-slayer]

And they claim to have played it with RB/GH/DDR controllers.

[dodint]

So, yeah, of course:

http://gtxforums.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=2514&d=1502130843

:finger:

[21Kid]

:lol:

[dodint]

In going in and looking at the FPs, in addition to Brian just being an all around better individual than me, he also very likely uses a manual transmission and I only do if required. Given that I'm not sure I could overtake him even if we were of equal talent.

[Tom Servo]

Hahah, sorry about that! I don't think there's any way I can turn that off...

And yeah, I basically turned off just about every assist except I don't do manual w/ clutch and I use normal steering, not simulation. You get a huge boost just from turning off assists.

[dodint]

No worries. Just thought it was funny as a Windows alert. :lol:

[dodint]

Spent about an hour catching and eventuality passing you in the MINI at Rio Spotlight. What a great time. Might have been the most fun non-live race I have ever run.

Can't wait for FM7.

[Blerpa]

Is it any better now? When I tried it at least one year ago it was choppy, buggy and laggy... I suppose my A8-6500, 8GB, R9 270X 4GB OC should do ok, spec wise...

[dodint]

I haven't had any troubles with the new system. Old system would randomly drop hard for a few seconds every race, but I think that was a symptom of the CPU going bad which eventually bricked that box. I also noticed the menu/race load time is much shorter on my new system. I'm probably going to install FM7 on my SDD, I should have room.

[dodint]

I find it really strange that it worked fine on this exact hardware setup under Win7 and then when I plug it back in on Win10 machines it's dead. I mean, it's been living a pretty easy life of sitting there doing nothing in my study. I think I am no longer the owner of any Win7 boxes though so I can't really test it.

To follow up on this the pedals are not recognized by the new machine either, that's three. I went ahead and sent Fanatec US a note about how to acquire a new logic controller. Eager to hear what they say.

[dodint]

To follow up on this the pedals are not recognized by the new machine either, that's three. I went ahead and sent Fanatec US a note about how to acquire a new logic controller. Eager to hear what they say.

I'm talking to myself now but I'll go ahead and close the loop.

Fanatec responded immediately and is shipping me a new logic controller, the cost to me is $18 and $12 shipping from Germany. I'm quite happy with that.

[Tom Servo]

Sorry about the lack of response, I've been in Europe and not checking in. Still at Barcelona airport, but will be back late Thursday.

[dodint]

Hah, wasn't a complaint directed at you. :P

[Tom Servo]

The premium edition which I think has all the DLC is on sale for $4.24 for the next few days.

[dodint]

Good deal, less than I paid.

[GreatScawt]

Ohhhh... maybe a good reason to jump back in to this, since I'm not doing 7.

[Blerpa]

Is it any decent nowadays? I remember it buggy and cumbersome even on decent rigs.

[dodint]

I liked it a lot. The racing against AI felt very competitive with the right car/track combo. It really boosted my expectations for F7 which ended up being a steaming pile.

[Tom Servo]

It runs great when it runs, but it also crashes a fair bit. I've done three showcase events so far and it's crashed twice during that. Never during a race, once was right after collecting my rewards and the other was as the grid was being setup.

On the plus side, not a ton of people are playing and they do appear to be adding new showcase events regularly. That means that a mediocre effort nabbed me #1 in the US and #3 in the world on the leaderboards. Woot!

[dodint]

I don't recall it ever crashing, but there are so many variables there. I bought a gaming PC basically to play FM7 and iRacing so I was running a clean setup on brand new hardware.

[animalica]

Thanks for the hint! :up:

[GreatScawt]

FYI - If you guys are using EVGA Precision X, turn it off before booting. Makes my game CTD before the main menu.