Forza Driving School | Racing Lines and Technique

[Music] hey everyone I'm hokey Hoshi and welcome to Forza driving school in this video we're gonna discuss driving technique and some tips for road racing as well as off road rally so class take out your copies of Forza and open then to the settings chapter let's start this video by discussing difficulty settings the settings I recommend here are optimal in my opinion for players that are either newer to the series or looking to improve their driving skill but might not be ideal for players looking for either a more serious sim or strictly arcade experience we'll start with the break settings and your two options here are ABS on or ABS off ABS off will be slightly faster if utilized properly and is more true to a sim experience in most cases while abs on will allow for more forgiveness in your driving style I generally recommend leaving this on until you have a good handle on driving lines and other driving techniques and then turn ABS off when you feel like your driving is hit a plateau and you're looking to squeeze just a little more speed out of your laps I still often play with ABS on myself because the benefit in speed is often small enough to where I'd rather have the extra forgiveness most of the time moving on traction control and stability control should remain off in almost all cases this encourages better throttle control weight balance management and leads to greatly improved lap times if used properly now shifting is another setting sort of similar to braking and for auto users it might be tough to hear but at the least you should always be using manual clutch lists this leads to vastly improved car control and speed and although it can be a steep learning curve at first it eventually becomes second nature now manual with clutch is in my opinion a slightly different story although adding a clutch does improve your control over the car and can be used for things like clutch kicking while drifting I often play with clutch off because in many higher-end cars the collection of shift time is matched almost exactly to the time it would take for a perfect shift with the clutch this is a setting that in my opinion should be adjusted based on what type of driving you're doing and whether the car shifts quickly in clutchless mode al OPI car with near stock transmission mods will benefit greatly from clutch shifting while the benefit for a high-end s2 supercar is rarely worth the extra complexity now for the driving line and we'll talk more about this soon but for now I recommend leaving it on braking only in most cases and I'll be leaving it here for the course of this video for the sake of clarity though I do usually play with my driving line off simply because I prefer a cleaner UI and the driving line can sometimes trip you up a bit but again we'll get into that now let's really dive into this video by talking about traditional road racing driving technique the major issue that I see with beginners is that even though they might know that proper braking and racing lines are fastest around the corner it can be extremely difficult to break the habit of just always wanting to go fast which leads to overuse of the throttle and under use of the brake it needs to be emphasized to that driving fast sometimes looks slow I'm gonna throw up some side-by-side footage so you can see for yourself that the car using proper braking and smooth acceleration always comes out ahead of the car that breaks late and drifts around the corner notice that the car using a proper racing line not only hits the speed trap sooner it also hits it going almost 10 miles an hour faster now while that footage is up let's talk about how to break bad driving habits and replace them with good driving technique starting with corner entry braking the common issue here is that people will brake too late not enough or while already into the corner good braking always starts before the turn endpoint and most of your braking should be done by the time you turn into your corner for the sake of clarity there is an advanced method called trail braking that bends these rules but it's not something you should worry about yet when beginning your corner entry brake make sure the car is stable and brake hard this will shift most of your grip to the front two wheels when you've completed your braking and are beginning your turn in don't immediately release the brakes instead smoothly yet quickly ease off this ensures that weight is transferred smoothly from the front wheels to the outside and a eventually rear wheels if you release your brakes too quickly the car will unsettle and you'll lose peak grip now let's talk corner entry this is the period of time between your breaking and hitting the inside center of the corner also called the apex the bad habit I see here is people getting back on full throttle too soon after braking this often leads to drifting out of the corner which greatly reduces your corner exit speed when you start your turn in you should be transitioning from a smooth let off of the brakes into a smooth and light application of the throttle don't full throttle before hitting the apex finally let's talk about corner exit this is often less of an issue for beginners but the major bad habit I see here is not using all of the road once you've hit your apex you can ease off of the inside line get back on the throttle and shoot for the outside corner exit I'll often see people try too hard to stick to the inside while still giving full throttle this often leads to unwanted drifting so we've done some talking about proper braking cornering and apexis but it's time to figure out where all those points should be let's talk driving lines there are two commonly discussed driving lines in racing the geometric line and the ideal line the geometric line is the most shallow arc through a corner this line always hits the apex at the inside center of a corner and is according to basic math the easiest path through the corner however the ideal line accounts more for how a real car behaves and is faster especially in tighter corners the ideal line will turn in later and sometimes hit a later apex than the geometric line geometric lines are faster in corner entry while ideal lines are faster in corner exit which is almost always better in a racing situation but this can be a hard concept to fully grasp in Forza you'll often be going slower and seemingly losing speed compared to other drivers on your corner entry but again don't worry that speed is gained back on the corner exit and you'll find yourself ahead of the geometric line in the end the Forza racing line often uses a heavily geometric racing line simply because ideal lines are much more difficult to predict through simple math this means that following the Forza racing line is a good idea but not the best a great driver will learn how their car behaves and be able to predict and plot an ideal racing line through corners beating out the more simple geometric line that Forza provides now in Forza especially when not using a wheel it can be difficult to make some of the fine adjustments necessary for a perfect driving line racing can be hectic and you can see just from my footage here that I'm far from perfect on every corner so here are some of the points I find most important to focus on break early braking too early is almost always better than braking too late try to release your brakes and apply throttle quickly but smoothly adjusting dead zones in your controller settings can help with this use all of the road make sure that you enter in exit corners on the outside and try to come as close to the inside apex as possible you'll be amazed how much quicker you can corner if you start from the far outside of the road and finally don't drift you want to be using as much of your grip as possible through a corner but not exceeding it smooth driving will help greatly with this and as you corner remember that your grip should be smoothly transitioning from your front tires to the outside tires and then to the rear quick jerky steering or throttle input will offset your car's balance and reduce peak grip likely leading to unwanted wheel spin and a slower car driving smoothly takes a lot of practice but as with most things it does eventually become second nature and you'll improve greatly over time alright now we've done a lot of talking about road racing and covered proper racing lines let's talk about how to modify your driving for offroad and there's only two major points to keep in mind here one the transition between peat grip and loss of grip is no longer a hard line and instead is a large zone of grip that can be used advantage and to smooth driving is even more important here than in road racing managing weight transfer and where your grip is is crucial to fast rally driving in off-road settings full grip is achieved at too low of speeds to be effective in racing so we have to operate in a more flexible grip zone regular driving lines still apply but instead of doing all or at least most of your braking on the straight before the corner you can actually break slightly later and use controlled oversteer to both turn into your corner as well as scrub enough speed to still hit your apex this is effectively similar to trail braking which is a method I mentioned earlier for road racing making sure you have good knowledge of the next corner or corners can offer a huge advantage in rally driving because weight balance play such a large role and if you can smoothly transition your car's weight from corner to corner you'll be able to cut down a lot of braking time so now that we've lightly gone over how to modify your racing line for offroad let's quick fire a couple other driving techniques that can help give you an edge in racing starting with drafting most of you might already know about this but it's definitely worth mentioning driving directly behind the car ahead of you will reduce wind resistance meaning you can accelerate faster and reach higher top speeds force' does accurately represent this so make sure that when you're at speed you try to stay in line with the driver ahead of you until it's time to make the pass the next tip is trail braking and this can be very difficult to execute properly in Forza because it requires very smooth weight transfer and braking I recommend only trying this if you either have a wheel and pedal setup or if you're very confident with your controller skills instead of braking early hard and largely in a straight line then easing off and transitioning when you begin your turn in you can instead start your braking later and once you begin your turn in slowly let off the brakes but not completely releasing them until right before your apex if done properly you'll still slow down enough to hit the inside apex and smoothly accelerate out of the corner another tip more exclusive to Forza is feathering the throttle and steering input around corners it can be difficult with a controller or keyboard to smoothly and accurately adjust driving input in such small time frames but luckily for the physics gives us some leeway when it comes to this and if you find yourself struggling to manage light throttle or steering around corners you can feather the buttons to keep the car from drifting while remaining somewhat stable the next tip is a little more wide reaching practice on slow cars it is infinitely easier to manage proper driving lines and technique on slow cars where you have more time to react so put away those max tuned x-class Lamborghinis and hop in a modest c-class Subaru you'll find a lot less frustration practicing your driving here and speaking of practicing your driving my final tip is to dive into rivals racing and know that you can race a ghost of yourself when in the rivals menu press the switch rival button and tab over to the near me leaderboards and select yourself this will allow you to practice against a ghost of yourself and is probably the single biggest way to improve your driving skill it can also be helpful to set your rival against someone much higher in the leaderboards to watch how they take the corners well that just about wraps things up for today's lesson I really hope this helps you guys beat out the competition and I'll be back soon with two other videos that'll probably be in the tuning quickie series where I go into specific drifting techniques as well as a few drag racing techniques so keep your eyes out for those and I will see you in the next one thanks everyone for watching bye

Channel: HokiHoshi

Views: 804,378

Rating: 4.9468198 out of 5

Keywords: forza, horizon, fh4, driving, driving lines, racing, help, tips, guide, wallriding, motorsport, drifting, racing lines, faster

Id: LLd5fOzFE64

Length: 12min 42sec (762 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 15 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/halycon8]

So I usually don't post my videos on reddit, but I figured I'd share this one here to maybe open up some discussion about proper racing lines and driving in the Horizon series, as it often gets overlooked and overshadowed by the motorsport games.

Do you guys try to drive real racing lines when playing Horizon? or do you just prefer more Fast and Furious Style fun showboaty Driving?

[u/harve99]

My driving in forza is admittedly pretty bad at times so this will be useful

Thanks!