Forza 6: all the thrills and spills of driving in the wet

“It is like driving down the M1 three metres behind a truck with your wipers switched off. But at 200mph,” explains Allan McNish on the experience of piloting a top-end prototype sportscar in the rain. And he speaks from experience. The former Formula One driver, three-times winner of the Le Mans 24 Hours and the 2013 FIA World Endurance champion with Audi, drove, during his extensive career, in every permutation of wet weather conditions imaginable.

Two of the cars in which he competed , the 2012 R18, in which he won the 12 Hours of Sebring and the R8 that was part of his American Le Mans Series title in 2006, both feature in the recently released Forza 6, as does, for the first time, racing in the wet and at night, now that developer Turn10 believes it can do the conditions real justice. But it has also gone further and simulated an even greater level of realism – that of standing water and the aquaplaning it can induce in cars.

Standing water, better known as puddles, causes aquaplaning when the tyre cannot clear the water quickly enough and a layer sits between rubber and track, at which point, if all four wheels are biting only H²0, to all intents and purposes the driver is along for the ride.

McNish knows it well, comparing it to “riding a horse, where if you are too tense it can react badly and you’re on the wrong end of it”. Indeed, as a motor-racing writer I have witnessed it on many occasions; it is a scary enough sight from the sidelines (as at the COTA round of the FIA WEC last year, where a sodden dusk saw the straight into turn 12 change into an ice rink) let alone from the cockpit. Which is an intriguing position for Turn10 to take, bidding for physical realism to such an extent that the player, for those crucial moments, actually has no control.

Nor was it an easy task on any of the wet-weather circuits simulated in the game, which include Le Mans, Brands Hatch and Spa. For example, to accurately place 500 puddles on the 12.93-mile Nürburgring Nordschliefe circuit, the forbidding test in the Eifel mountains that Jackie Stewart dubbed “the green hell”, the team used a laser scanning rig, walked the track repeatedly, took pictures of cracks, filmed HD video on a “ladybug” camera, consulted vast amounts of archival footage and talked to professional drivers with experience at the Ring.

“Our vision was to make the most accurate Nürburgring ever created,” said Dan Greenawalt, the creative director at Turn 10. “There was no way to approach it besides throwing everybody, the best brains we had and the most data and research we could at it.”

Nor was this a short-run, one-off approach. It is a long-term process that has seen Turn devolve its research team from the game production part of the process so they are free to pursue every end they believe will add to the realism in the long run. “There is constant improvement to stay ahead of science to be on the cutting edge of academics of simulation,” added Greenawalt. “And it takes a lot of time and research and a desire to push the boundaries and it takes a lot of money – having a big team that’s willing to do the research and throw a lot of time and energy at it.

But video games have always included an element of suspension of disbelief and racing in the wet is far from a new concept. In the past it has generally been achieved simply by scaling back the grip levels of the cars and adding a water-on-the-visor flourish. So why has Forza gone so far, so fast?

Trying to put the player as close as possible to McNish’s shoes is the simple answer. Greenawalt’s team consulted many professional drivers. “They commented on the fear and tension of driving in the rain and driving at night, and we wanted to understand that from a physics perspective,” he explained. They did so by ensuring they modelled all the grip levels at every part of the track in all conditions, rather than a straight scaling down. “We did the research on a per-surface level and we have the new full simulation aquaplaning system; it’s not just reduced friction, it is fully researched,” he said.

Which is the edge beyond the cosmetic they were looking for and crucially it works in-game. Playing on a reasonably high simulation level with a full race seat set up, running the rather beautifully engineered Thrustmaster TX next-gen wheel-pedal combo, this added element is a handful, mentally and physically. Offering a real sense of being on the edge of control, or as was the intention, briefly having none at all, before coming out the other side of one of those puddles and sighing with relief as the traction comes back. This simple idea, executed with precision, genuinely is another dimension, just as Greenawalt had intended. “We have 24 cars on track; they are packed,” he said. “When you have a car either side, and you see a puddle ahead and you realise that they are not for show, it creates that tension – you think, ‘Should I hit the guy on the left or should I hit the brakes and duck in behind him to avoid the puddle line?’ That’s the type of tension we wanted to recreate but we didn’t want to fake it so we did the physics so that it is created naturally.”

It is all about creating a sense of the moment, mentally, beyond just the visual. In the wet, as McNish notes: “You drive with a heightened sense all the time so mentally it is more energy-consuming because you are driving on your fingertips to some extent because you don’t have the same margin for error that you would in the dry.”

Which petrolheads will feel instinctively is right for a simulation, but gamers may also appreciate Turn10’s interpretation of the same. “A puddle could be taking up half the track and it totally changes how you drive it,” said Greenawalt. “So we wanted it to be physically based and completely accurate but we also wanted it to be a thrill ride.”

New York investigates DraftKings and FanDuel over fantasy sports cheating

New York’s attorney general has started investigating the fantasy sports companies DraftKings and FanDuel after reports that an employee may have used inside information to win $350,000 in a football contest.


Eric Schneiderman sent letters to the two big players in fantasy sports, saying that the allegations raised legal questions about the fairness, transparency and security of the companies, according to copies of the letters provided by his office.

The letters ask for the names of employees who compile data on athletes as well as daily fantasy players, whether access to the data is limited, and other information.

The letters also ask about policies prohibiting or restricting employees and others associated from playing daily fantasy sports, and ask for details about employees who may have used data to gain an advantage in playing daily fantasy sports. They request replies by 15 October.

The inquiry comes after an employee at DraftKings won $350,000 from a $25 entry in an American football contest on the rival FanDuel site.

The news led to a firestorm of criticism as employees are seen as gaining a potential edge by knowing how some of the best-performing participants behave before the information becomes public.

A spokeswoman for DraftKings said the company would co-operate with Schneiderman’s inquiry. FanDuel did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

On Monday the companies said in a joint statement that they had temporarily banned employees from playing daily fantasy sports until they come up with a more detailed policy on the issue.

The companies also have said there was no evidence the employee who won the $350,000 did anything wrong.