A little bit of background: ForzaTune Pro is the original tuning calculator app for suspension and gear tuning in Forza. People like how it calculates balanced tunes with just a few details about your car, and lets you customize the results easily. Read on to learn why adding support for Forza Horizon 5 was more difficult than expected.
Forza Horizon 5 Tuning is Different
As FH5 was about to launch my thinking was, it shouldn’t take too much work to update ForzaTune Pro. I had published 50+ updates in recent years to keep the app recent with all the new cars and games.
But when I finally got my hands on this latest Forza, there were some differences behind the scenes. Extra parts, new tuning defaults, new suspension settings, new controller and wheel options. This wasn’t going to be so easy.
Rolling Up The Sleeves
I handled many of the obvious differences the week Forza Horizon 5 launched. And by early December, there were four more updates released. Each one brought improvements, making sure the calculator addressed some interesting bugs or less obvious changes in FH5.
Feedback was positive, users were happy, and the new Forza had a tuning calculator in record time!
I could have left it at that: a free upgrade for Forza Horizon 5 with new cars.
Time to Do a Partial Tear Down
But as I was digging through the code, there were formulas and assumptions worth revisiting. Are more aggressive alignment values necessary anymore? Can we make differentials more tailored to the specific cars?
I saw opportunities not just for FH5, but earlier games like Forza Horizon 4 and Forza Motorsport 7, which are still quite popular.
So from Christmas to Valentine’s Day this mad scientist locked himself in the garage for more testing and tuning. All other work went on the back burner.
Would it be worth the hassle to revisit the tuning formulas this much?
Bringing the New Changes to the Calculator
It wasn’t just the street tunes either. There was an overhaul of rally and off-road tuning, fundamental changes to alignment and a pretty slick way to handle differential tuning.
This meant adding more car data points and formulas. Formulas you won’t find anywhere else. ForzaTune asks for as little information as possible on purpose–and I will always do that extra work to keep it that way!
The new FH5 tunes felt much better especially in dynamic situations like starting a turn or making a quick direction change. But there was one area that would tell me if these changes were truly better.
The Ultimate Test
In my early FH5 updates, the tunes left something to be desired with a full driving rig. The final showdown would be re-testing with a G920 wheel. If a tune handles well on a wheel, then you’ll love it even more on a controller.
And the new results were stable, easy-to-drive and fast, even with RWD.
It was great to know that the extra work paid off. Not just for Horizon 5 but the previous games as well.
Available Now
If you are an existing ForzaTune user, be sure to re-calculate some of your tunes from Forza Motorsport 7 to Forza Horizon 5 and feel the differences yourself.
And if you are not a ForzaTune user, learn more about ForzaTune Pro in the overview video below or buy it on the App Store or Google Play.
