I really like this update, it's a huge step in the right direction. From a weekend sportsman racer, I have several suggestions to make it more like real drag racing.
The christmas tree ambers on a sportsman tree should light 0.500 seconds apart. Right now it feels like they are about second. Most experienced drag racers I've talked to, and myself included, try to leave as soon as you see the last yellow and if you're consistent and the car is set up right, you will go 0.0xx green every time. It would also be nice to have the option to use a 0.400 Pro tree, which lights all ambers at once and then the green 0.400 seconds later.
Another thing I'd love to see is separate modes for heads-up and bracket racing. Heads-up is your standard first-to-the-finish race, but bracket racing is a little more involved. The quick overview of it is timed head starts based on a "dial-in" of how fast you think your car will go, but if you go faster than your dial-in you "break out" and lose. This is one of the most popular forms of hobbyist drag racing, as you don't need a fast car to compete, and thus any car can race against any other car (within a given ruleset of course.) If you want to implement this feature, do some research about it to make sure it's done right. I can provide some insight if necessary, and I'm sure many others can as well. One game that did bracket racing very well was "IHRA Drag Racing: Sportsman Edition," however the game itself crashes so often you can't get a full race in most of the time. It'd be great if we could have the gameplay of a game like that in Forza. A lot of my racing buddies and I would probably play this almost every night through the season for bragging rights between weekends.
Last but not least, I think the traction model of the drag tires should be revisited. They've been improved as time went on, but Forza Horizon 4 feels more accurate than this. For reference, I built my 4th gen Camaro in Forza as close to my real life drag car, and the 60 foot time is quite a bit off. In real life, I'm seeing about 1.52 on drag radials, and in the game I'm seeing 1.85 on drag tires. Drag strips are STICKY, and I feel like they could be more accurately reflected in the game.
That being said, I want to reiterate that this update, in my opinion, is evidence of progress. However, there is room for improvement, and I hope you'll take mine and others' feedback into consideration.
EDIT: I've also found through many runs of data that the elapsed time for any stat (RT, ET, 60', etc.) seems to be tied to my framerate (or 72Hz) which results in a minimum time resolution of about 0.014 seconds. Every single race I've done has had a margin of victory with a multiple of 0.014, or extremely close to it. In bracket racing, many races are determined by smaller margins than this. If you're going to do bracket racing any kind of justice, you will need to improve the timing precision somehow, at least to 3 decimals for it to be worth it.
Edited by user Friday, December 14, 2018 3:23:30 PM(UTC)
| Reason: New Information