This is an older article but has some good stuff in it.
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/102/1021801p1.html
September 4, 2009 - Somewhere during the very early stages of development on Forza Motorsport 3, the developers at Turn 10 Studios all picked up Apple iPhones. In addition to suddenly becoming loathed by their significant others for burying their heads in their uber-connected hands, the team also picked up some seriously good ideas about design.
In putting together Forza 3, the team at Turn 10 looked at the marketing materials assembled by luxury car manufacturers like Porche and Audi, who use large swaths of clean white space to create a sense of openness and luxury. Picture a brochure for a car you could never afford, and you get the idea of how it feels to poke around in Forza 3.
I caught up with Forza 3 Senior Designer Bill Giese, iPhone in hand, at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle, who showed off a brand-new build of his studio's racing simulation game, including the first-ever look at the livery editor, a sneak peek at the career mode, and some long, lovely looks at the sweet garage. But first, let's get back to that sleek new design aesthetic.
Almost everything in Forza 3 can be reached with one or two clicks. No more fishing around in menu trees for that elusive drive train upgrade. That means less time navigating and more time out on the track, smashing up that Mercedes AMG Black you saved up for so diligently. And if you do get lost, one tap on the Xbox 360's back button will take you directly back to the game's home screen. Yep, just like the iPhone.
Apple's device does a lot of things, but it doesn't have 400 gorgeously rendered cars. Forza 3 does, and you're going to want them all. Why? Because you don't just have a dull garage in which to store them. In Forza 3, you have what Turn 10 calls a Home Space. But what they really mean is "happy place." The team spent countless hours rendering what they feel is the perfect spot to shoot car porn: a tight curve at the top of a winding mountain road.
Choose any car from your collection, take it to the Home Space, and the scene will fade in slowly past a clutch of spring flowers. Is it dawn? Is it dusk? Is it heaven? The light reflects perfectly off the paint job, showing off every nook and cranny of the car's construction. Are you especially fond of the brake calipers of your Lambo? Well, in the Home Space, you'll be able to gaze lovingly upon them as the camera pans independently around the car, while soft music plays in the background. Yes it's gratuitous, almost lascivious. But that's what you want from a Forza game, right?
Well, that may be a good start, but any good racing sim needs to hold its own the track, and that's where Forza 3 shoots from softcore to hardcore faster than a Bugatti Veyron goes from 0-60. Take a car out on the track, either in Free Play or Career Mode, and you're instantly in business. From my brief experience with Forza 3, I found the physics to be as real as you're going to see in any racing game to date. Turn the stability control off in a Ford GT and prepare for whiplash as you wind your way back and forth across the winding curves of the racetrack. But if you're not up for a crash course in pro-level driving, Forza 3 is happy enough to oblige. Turn all the assists on, and you can essentially drive your car with one hand, glorying in your awesomeness.
It's all part of Turn 10's (and frankly, gaming in general's) push toward accessibility. Let's face it – racing games are hard, and Forza 2 was legendary in its ability to force even hardcore gamers to throw up their freakishly gnarled hands in frustration. Hitting all the apexes on Laguna Seca and rocking first place? Great. Miss a braking line on the last turn of the final lap? Owned. That's the old Forza. The new Forza is all about forgiveness. Borrowing a page out of Codemasters' book, Turn 10 has implemented a rewind system in Forza 3, allowing you to backtrack as much as you want as far as you want in any race at any time with absolutely no penalties. Generous, eh?
But not so fast. If you're one of those hardcore leaderboard types who longs to see your name up in lights on Xbox Live, you're not going to have that luxury. There are two classes of players on the Forza 3 Leaderboards: certified and uncertified. Anyone can post a lap time or race time to the leaderboards, but if you've used rewind, damaged your car or even drafted behind another racer, you'll get an uncertified time. However, if you play clean and get a certified time, you'll sit in a special section at the top of the leaderboards, confident in your self-righteousness. It's a nice compromise between the hardcore and the more mainstream that should make both camps happy.
The build of Forza 3 I was shown was about 8-10 hours into the career mode progression, and the driver was at Level 32. The better you do as a driver in a host of different categories, the faster you'll progress, and the more you'll be able to do in the game. That means more cars in your garage and more cash in your pocket for upgrades. And whatever money you do make will quickly leave your hands, as all the cars in the game are totally unlocked from the get-go. That's quite a change from most racing games, which reward your progression by doling out new car classes like gold stars to a kindergartener.
But that's not the only huge design difference with Forza 3's career mode. You can earn points a variety of different ways as you drive, from drifting around corners like a Tokyo street racer to hitting precision apexes like the tightest F1 driver. And rather than race the same track twice to get those points, you can rack them up at any time, at any location. Just tap the d-pad to bring up your progress meter, and you'll see how you're doing toward any of your point goals as you drive. It's a wide-open system that should take some of the grind out of pounding out the points.
While we're talking improvements, I'm happy to report that Turn 10 has completely overhauled its livery creation system and auction house systems, and the changes are sure to make the artists out there happy. In Forza 2, the livery creators pushed those systems to their limits, using the layers, colors and components to design stunning works of art to decorate the cars in the game. It was often jaw-dropping work. But you ain't seen nothin' yet. There are countless decals in the new livery editor (seriously, I tried and failed) and there is a new grid system for creating designs in place of the cumbersome brick-by-brick system in Forza 2.
If you have the artistic chops and the patience, you can literally create per-pixel art using up to 4,100 layers. Yes, you read that right. Each car in Forza 3 can be customized with designs that comprise up to 4,100 layers. Get ready for some seriously detailed depictions of human anatomy, people.
Once you create your intricately detailed design, you can choose to sell it on your own personal online Storefront. Name your price, sit back and watch the credits roll in. You can even choose to fix the number of cars you sell with that design, making your artworks true limited editions. And if you don't feel like actually affixing your designs to the cars themselves, you can just sell them on their own or gift them to friends. Forza 3 has a social networking system built right in, so you can 'follow' hot drivers, trade cars/designs/setups with your friends and watch videos of races.
Forza 3 has a built-in video capture tool that allows you to clip out 30 seconds of high-resolution action from your races, upload them to your personal space on ForzaMotorsport.net and then download them to your computer for editing. There's also a fully functional photo mode, too, if you're more into still shots.
Although I didn't get a chance to see multiplayer at PAX, I was told that Turn 10 will be running dedicated servers for online matches and will offer full matchmaking functionality a la Halo 3. So while you'll still be able to sync up with friends for private matches, you can also hop into playlists for automated multiplayer action.
I only spent about 30 minutes with Forza 3 at PAX and barely scratched the surface of Turn 10's massive racing sim sequel. We'll be delving into a lot more detail in the weeks to come, so stay tuned to IGN for more on multiplayer, livery, career and many other features of Forza 3 in the weeks to come. And make sure to hit the Forza 3 video page for new direct-feed video of the game in action.
!!!Goodbye Turbonetics!!! What will the future hold? NA powa for now... Nismo/Motordyne/Hotchkis/JWT/Berk/Enkei/Toyo... More to come soon...
I have Verizon and the connection is great...
