GDC 2007: Forza Motorsport 2 – Getting the right “feel” in the game
At the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2007, in a lecture entitled “Force Feedback in Racing Simulation,” Mr. Dan Greenawalt, the lead designer of Forza Motorsport 2 gave a very comprehensive and informative talk about the feel, control, and physics of racing games. His experiences in developing the game with Microsoft Game Studios’ Turn 10 Studios provided him with a lot of insight because the Turn 10 team had to tackle certain issues regarding the physics engine and finding the right balance between ordinary driving and real race car driving.
Consider this problem: the Xbox 360 controller may never be the equivalent of the wireless Xbox 360 steering wheel, but the Xbox 360 steering wheel may also never be able to duplicate the sensation of how it really feels to drive a racing car. So, if you want to bring the sensation of driving a real car to the players, how do you do it?
With this in mind, Turn 10 reportedly worked for months just to get the right feel for the steering wheel. Mr. Greenawalt however mentioned that even with the controller they have “diligently tried to create the best sensations for each input device as possible.”
The difficulty of creating the right feel for Forza Motorsport 2 was a task that Turn 10 handled pretty well. They used Haptic Interfaces. Haptic taken (from the Greek word haphe) means “pertaining to the sense of touch.” In a nutshell, they set up a simulation of a car which had rumbling seats, four linked screens, and a steering wheel. Then they had players use the system, while Turn 10 took note of each test subject’s responses.
In addition to this, Turn 10 used tire friction, aligning torque force, and load sensitivity to further refine and define the feel of the game. The kicker however was the revelation that basic TV framerates are not an accurate representation of the car’s in-game speed. By decoupling the physics frame rate from the standard frame rate, more updates can be made to the physics engine thus making the sensation of driving feel more real.
In the end, if you find yourself actually moving your body as you take a turn in the game, then the guys at Turn 10 have done what they were trying to do.
At the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2007, in a lecture entitled “Force Feedback in Racing Simulation,” Mr. Dan Greenawalt, the lead designer of Forza Motorsport 2 gave a very comprehensive and informative talk about the feel, control, and physics of racing games. His experiences in developing the game with Microsoft Game Studios’ Turn 10 Studios provided him with a lot of insight because the Turn 10 team had to tackle certain issues regarding the physics engine and finding the right balance between ordinary driving and real race car driving.
Consider this problem: the Xbox 360 controller may never be the equivalent of the wireless Xbox 360 steering wheel, but the Xbox 360 steering wheel may also never be able to duplicate the sensation of how it really feels to drive a racing car. So, if you want to bring the sensation of driving a real car to the players, how do you do it?
With this in mind, Turn 10 reportedly worked for months just to get the right feel for the steering wheel. Mr. Greenawalt however mentioned that even with the controller they have “diligently tried to create the best sensations for each input device as possible.”
The difficulty of creating the right feel for Forza Motorsport 2 was a task that Turn 10 handled pretty well. They used Haptic Interfaces. Haptic taken (from the Greek word haphe) means “pertaining to the sense of touch.” In a nutshell, they set up a simulation of a car which had rumbling seats, four linked screens, and a steering wheel. Then they had players use the system, while Turn 10 took note of each test subject’s responses.
In addition to this, Turn 10 used tire friction, aligning torque force, and load sensitivity to further refine and define the feel of the game. The kicker however was the revelation that basic TV framerates are not an accurate representation of the car’s in-game speed. By decoupling the physics frame rate from the standard frame rate, more updates can be made to the physics engine thus making the sensation of driving feel more real.
In the end, if you find yourself actually moving your body as you take a turn in the game, then the guys at Turn 10 have done what they were trying to do.