2018-04-08 20:40:54

Sooo! i tried one race and it was nice.
I noticed a few things.
One that the steering  assistant ignores the AI mostly and you will smash to the back of them. I tried to find a way to go round them but it's a hard task since the best way to over take cars is at the turns, or at the straights where you can top their speed
Secondly, I  Noticed that different parts of the track have different environment sounds, and that you can increase the volume of that. which is pretty cool. you could remember turns of a single track if with that sorta stuff.
And finally, the place where you can view and buy cars is crowded and i couldn't figure to find out what are tears and such.

overall this is a fun game but It would be cool if there were more audible cues, specially for turns, and  text to speech that would tell you your lap times, your distance to previous car and your distance to the next car.

twitter: @hadirezae3
discord: Hadi

2018-04-09 02:22:46

yes, the article stated the game has sound cues, but I liked up and down those options and I seen no such thing. closest thing I came across was in track audio. I turned that to the max, turned down all other sounds, and still no cues

can i get a peace double harmony burger? no chaos

2018-04-09 23:39:44

@simba, I've  got a question
do you always get  driver earnings after a race?
I  did the  modern hothatches series and out of the three races, it  only  payed me once, after the second race.

twitter: @hadirezae3
discord: Hadi

2018-04-10 08:37:40

Hi.
Yeah I know what you mean, I also sometimes have the same problem of the game not paying me any money, when I read this right, you have to do at leased some steering to get the rewards in, at leased that's what I am doing and it works for me.
Greetings moritz.

Hail the unholy church of Satan, go share it's greatness.

2018-04-10 16:43:40

aa alrighty. so have to steer a bit in the game to get the rewards.
By the way simba, When a track is loaded,  how can i read  its info, e.g. how do i know how many laps the race is, and what is the weather, and time?

twitter: @hadirezae3
discord: Hadi

2018-04-10 21:09:02

Hi.
Well, I haven#t figured that out yet. On most tracks, you can tell when you have finished a lap, on the Dubai track for example, you race through a street tunnel with a right turn at the beginning, than a straight part, followed by a short right hand turn at the end. If you leave the tunnel again, after some seconds, you have crossed the finish marker and start off into the next lap. But, for each track, you have to see if you can find out where a lap starts and where it ends.
On most tracks you are going three laps, when you see the notation full track, stree course or grand pree, you are almost going three laps, with short circuits, the usual amound of laps is 5 or so, depends a bit on the track.
If you OCR the pause menu, you can see in which lap you and the other drivers are, i have to figure out if you can find out the track length and amount of laps from the dashboard.
Greetings Moritz.

Hail the unholy church of Satan, go share it's greatness.

2018-04-12 11:50:38

Does anyone have any thoughts on how the need for assists could be reduced, i.e. how games like this could be made more blind accessible in ways that don't rely on automating elements of the gameplay?

2018-04-12 20:27:30

Ian,
first of all, before anything, we really need a text to speech  system inside this game, to tell us our laptime whenever we complete our laps.
now, what is in my mind, is that alongside of assists, there should be audio queues  that would help us to  steer the car much more better, to  improve lap times. this game is all about lap times, so i think that would make more sense.
in this game, the super easy steering will still give you a small window to correct car steering;, therefore,  audio queues that would help you to not scrape the walls, and not to oversteer, and to  let go of the throttle before we hit a turn, could help us to improve our laptimes.
This is a right way to start. then from then, we could rely less on  auto steering and auto breaking, and more on audio queues.
the problem is, what sort of audio queues, and  I don't even know if the developers of this game would be up to put in any.

twitter: @hadirezae3
discord: Hadi

2018-04-12 21:25:49

I see that there is a demo version of forza motosport 7.
Can you tell me which restrictions this version have.
I dont wanna purchase this game, because I am not sure, that it will be works on my computer, because it requires a good hardware, so I want to try it now.
Do you know a keyboard controls.

2018-04-13 09:48:19

according to the article posted, the game does have audio cues, but when I did a very thorough look, I couldn't find an option to toggle them on or off

can i get a peace double harmony burger? no chaos

2018-04-16 18:01:18

I waanted to point this out before my net got cut off a week early....

The issue with audio cues are in no order

1. Different camera angles have  different sound levels, a cockpit view has a different sound perspective than a chase or hood view,for instance.

2. Also each car engine is different, compare the engine in a Ford Focus to a Dallara Indycar in terms of loudness and type, the Dallara is a lot ouder and harsher, for instance, multiply this byhaving other cars around you and you run into isssues.


3. You don't want audio cues to tell you to turn in if there's a car coming up your inside. Codemasters F1 games have a visual cue,  a little arrow on the bottom of the screen to tell you when cars are nearby, Euchtechnyx's NASCAR games had a top down radar and a spotter to help you figure if guys were coming up behind you, etc, but for audio cues I'm not sure how it'd be done

Lastly...you want the audio cues to be noticeable enough but not so loud they are drowning out everything else, e.g. the engines or tire squeal or ambient sounds or music. You don't f.ex. want a beep cue to turn in and take out an opponent because you didn't know they were there, because the beep drowned out their engine sounds.

There is however a real life solution. Look to the USA and oval racing....in that discipline drivers have one, at times two or three spotters. On ovals they are on top of the highest stand and tell the driver effectively okay, car coming on your outside. The games that include spotters cheat a bit by haing the spotter know exactly where the appproaching car is....to a point.

NR2003  has it so if the car is within X distance on your left/right, usually your rear wheels in the base cars (it varies with modded car models but they have the same physics hitbox), it'll trigger the spotter to tell you car outside, but it won't tell you if the line to your left is making a run. I had full sight and still got dropkicked halfway to Canada by the spotter not telling me  an opponent had stuck their nose at my rear wheels. I spun that guy out as payback under yellow.

So yes, you could have a spotter system, it could in theory work but the proble, and I know this from former NR2003 devs I know in the inudstry was they ran into issues of in their builds they had the spotter trigger for cars in the pits or on the track if you were on pit road, and in one case, for a rolling start all you heard was car behind, car behind, car behind, nothing about car outside....in fact I can't think of a released game with a spotter that tells you if you got a car approaching except iRacing, and that's built off of NR2003 code and they aren't likely to share any of their stuff.

So what other options?

Community spotter packs? They could work.

Have a friend with a good set of eyes spectate the session and have his view on your car, be on SKype or something and have a real live spotter in your ear? Also doable. I've done it before for PCARS races and rF1 races where the deafault spotter sucks. It also opens you up to making new friends

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2018-04-16 19:22:18 (edited by sightlessHorseman 2018-04-16 19:24:30)

Hi.
For the one who asked what the demo limitations of forza 7 are, you just have two pre defined races, one in a porsche 2018GTRS 2 in Dubai, and a race at the Nürburg Ring, I think in a Nissan or Honda, am not sure, some tiny japanese car which sucks engine wise xD, just shows again that German cars are superior.
Greetings Moritz.

Hail the unholy church of Satan, go share it's greatness.

2018-04-16 22:55:42

@JaceK
Thanks for your great post.
however; We really need to start from small things.
Like  small audio queues that would alert you of in incoming turn or corner. We need to contact turn 10 studios and let them know, If we write them a lengthy post and suggest a complex system, They will refuse to work out anything as it would be time consuming for them.
But if we start  from little suggestions maybe  we could get on a good start, like how they did  with the fighting games. first little audio queues. now in SFV menus are  self voiced.

twitter: @hadirezae3
discord: Hadi

2018-04-17 06:09:42

With this

http://www.cs.columbia.edu/CAVE/projects/rad/
do you have a good example that the big AAA racing games can do to improve the accesibility for the blind people.
That is a great paper with a great example how to do great things; and implement that on real racing games isn't imposible.

But well. For now, I have that we can do currentli with forza. I set the transmission setting in manual, so on the race, i have to try aboid the other competitors, manipulate the gear system, and of course, throthle the vehicle smile

Bye guys

2018-04-17 06:52:13

I had to double check if my NDA expired yet yet I could explain something about audio cues...

Every car in every modern racing game is licensed. Well....99.999% of cars, because people want actual cars to drive, Porshes, Ferraris and such. Now that's out of the way....let me point a few things out.

Real car engines, especially race car engines are loud, and they require noise dampening kits at some tracks and indeed some tracks only allow races  on certain days due to noise.

Audio cues are all well and good in theory BUT again, you need any to be heard over an engine, and given that race car engines and indeed performance car engines are loud...you need an audio cue, which can be heard over them, which would thus drown out other sounds.

You know how it is when you have a rock song on at 100% volume in your headphones, right? Imagin that for a race car engine then have a loud beeping sound for a turn coming up.

Also, I don't want to get anyone's hopes up but here's the bit that I had to double chek my NDA r....I still can't mention the car maker but I did pitch the same idea at SMS, it died due to licensing issues, ie.e. at least one car maker didn't want it in the title I was working on and as the game featured 99.99% car makers the studio wasn't willing to lose `5 or 6 licensed cars, so the car maker won out. I'm not saying that'll happen if T10 negotiates, but....the thing is it could happen and nobody would ever know due to NDAs, I still don't know which car maker it was that refused  and probably never will know in all fairness. You know what? I get why the car makers said no to it. When you're dealing with licensing stuff....you work within the limits of what they set down....which is what the studio I was with did.. Same reason cars  only get so damaged in games, and a bunch of other reasons.

Getting back to my my main point....I'd argue for any and all sound cues, they should only activate if Narrator is on. I can absolutely see the average joe buying the game, getting home, put the disc in or finish the download and getting pissed off tha the menus are self voicing, so if the narration and audio cues only happen when Narator's on, everyone wins, the rest of the players  get their game, the blind gamers get theirs, everybody's happy. I was talking with an ex SMS employee who pointed something out too.

Nearly everyone who is serious abou Forza runs with no assists online and he pointed out if you had Nrrator and the audio cues on, you  should be in effect locked out of multiplayer, this is mostly so you don't go online and get the shit kiked out of you by hardcore 14 year old Forza players. Hey. Those exist!

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2018-04-17 08:27:55 (edited by hadi.gsf 2018-04-17 08:33:12)

@JaceK
I don't understand the thing you're saying. Audio cues does not have anything to do with licensed cars. the same way  super easy auto steering, and autobreaking doesn't have to do anything with licensed cars. and as you know, that is an option  that you can choose, and  is not locked to a car manufacturer. It's simply a game feature that you can turn on or off and it works with all cars.
And as for sounds,  in the options menu  you do have an audio tab that you can  adjust the volume of the track, your oponent's car  volume, tyre volume.  all. The issue with the sound levels that you're mentioning is virtually none-existent. Forza  has not aimed for super realism sounds. They don't  force you to hear the track or the oponent's cars or your car engines. Audio  cues can be a game accessibility feature and nothing else.
Microsoft has said repeatedly that they want to improve the accessibility of their games. Turn 10 studios just need to know how, and they just need to start small without pissing off their publisher which is microsoft, and without freaking out their players, by  making audio cues completely optional.
Your arguement makes no sense at all. If licensing is an issue, How is microsoft then letting  a 1969 Chevrolet Camaro automatically navigate the track by using auto steering/autobreaking/auto skid control and all those neat features in the assist menu.

twitter: @hadirezae3
discord: Hadi

2018-04-17 09:41:29

Agree with the above, engine noise being too loud is easily solved through volume sliders.

See like killer instinct as a perfect example. They added in a separate HUD sounds volume sliders for blind gamers, so the subtle audio cues for things like power meters can be turned up and music etc turned down.

2018-04-17 09:45:26

@hadi.gsf wait a minute, SFV having voiced menus? Are you sure? Is it actually skullgirls that you're thinking of?

2018-04-17 09:47:40

Hi. As the topic is long, my question is where can I find and try that game?

2018-04-17 09:49:52

"66:

No, I was saying auto braking/steering is one thing, and the audio cues are a whole other issue.

The car maker in question didn't fight over the auto steering, they objected to the at the time, audio cues for the tracks and other cars.

Yes, there's volume sliders....BUT.....the engines are recorded at a certain distance and volume though and honestly a lot of people who buy games never touch the audio sliders, they just jump in and play. I'm not advocating for lowered default volumes, no. I'm just saying that sound design overall is a big part of any game.

Also, why can Microsoft do X? Bcause Microsoft has a metric fuckton more money to throw at licensing and is willing to negotiate with license holders. That's simply why. If the company I was with was with Microsoft and not Namco we'd have got less restrictions to work with for licensing. Or more cars. Or a million more features. Short version: Bigger names get better treatment. Same for car makers, if they know who you are....they're willing to listen to what you want.

Also I do know people complain about too many and too few sliders though, I'd argue again to simply have the narration/cues enabled/disabled by having the Narrator on to avoid having a billion sliders for several options in the audio menu to avoid it getting cluttered, because believe it or not.....people don't like their videogames talking to them. That's why I'm stating the self voicing menus and audio cues should only be on when the Narrator is on. A sighted person is not going to have the narrator on, but if they buy Forza and have the Narrator kick in and read the menus it'll just piss them off and get them to complain about the game.

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2018-04-17 09:54:03

Okay I had to go ask  around but I do want to point out for the fictional SMS stuff we did try the audio cues for the fictional tracks we made. The vast majority of the testers said in a race with AI cars it was annoying when you had your car engine, your opponents and the race engineer all going on, plus weather effects. I'll admit I ran in the helmet camera that muffled everything sound wise, but the issue was that we could never get the sounds to be noticeable enough, even turning down the other sounds didn't help at all...if anything, made it worse as you couldn't easily hear the other cars or your car and were listening for the beeps for corners.

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2018-04-17 09:59:40

@ianhamilton_
I ment the main menu of sfv, where the announcer  says the menu item when you go into them. It's not complete self voicing, but I'm pretty sure this was added because our community pushed  for sfv accessibility.
@JaceK I know what you mean but we've got to try  send send our suggestions and feedback. If  microsoft managed to   put an autopilot into their racing game, they can find a way to include some audio cues for us in game

twitter: @hadirezae3
discord: Hadi

2018-04-17 10:02:42 (edited by hadi.gsf 2018-04-17 10:03:13)

@JaceK
Regarding audio cues being mixed up with other sounds, which i think is your main concern.
I'd assume that we can't have anything in comfort. The same way racers  concentrate and have to rely on  reflexes among other things, We do have to also be able to  listen in and  pay atttention to audio cues as well as the spotter and the engine sounds at the same time.

twitter: @hadirezae3
discord: Hadi

2018-04-17 11:01:07

That's IF the car makers don't turn around and say no, we don't want you to as part of a licensing deal. It's unlikely but it could well happen. I'll point out that  at SMS one car was removed before the game was released and all traces of it were scrapped because....wait for it.....we didn't have the license for that exact interior color.

Yes you have to try but you don't need to ram it down everyone's throats you want FM to be accessible and wave it around like a penis is what I'm saying, and spamming T10 won't help any either, if you don't know how games are made a hell of a lot of features get removed or scaled back before release or removed if a publisher or developer doesn't want them in, usually somebody higher up the food chain from a simple coder, usually amanager or somebody with a suit and tie, makes that call. For example...again SMS, when Namco came aboard and I pitched my accessibility idea back in 2012/2013, Namco basically said something to the effect of don't work onthat any more or we'll pull our marketing and funding, which for a publisher is a huge, huge threat. In the end PCARS 1 got released, and I'm pretty sure the guys who tried to get tha dudio cues going are iether still there and working on other projects, or under an NDA and can't speak about it. Either way....

I'm just saying don't be blatant and don't get 50,000 people to all scream WE WANT NARRATION TO ALWAYS BE ON!!!!!! in block capital emails, because that'll just send a message to Turn 10 that you're all batshit crazy and not worth even considering. Instad a subtle, well put together pitch will get you a lot further than bashing them ovr hte head with the metaphorical sldegehammer for narration and such.

Plus you have to look at the other side of it, the average gamer who just buys the game and comes home doesnt't give two shits about narration, like I said, they just want to, being blunt, put the game on, and go race, they don't care about audio cues. Which is why, again, I've been arguing that should such accessibility tech be added in, it be only enabled if the XB1 Narrator is on. That way people who don't want the cues and narration on don't have it on because the Narrator isn't on. Those who do, turn Narrator on. Problem solved. Everybody's happy. It's also a lot easier to explain to your average gamer that the beeps and menu voices only happen if you turn the blind mode on. That's something they easily grasp, not to turn the talking Narrator on and not have the voices in the menus, that level of explaining.

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2018-04-17 11:09:50

Alsol....yes and no.

Racing isn't all about reflexes...especially once you're past the start. It's about getting into a groove and hitting your marks. Not lap times, but nailing corners and being consistent. If you're chasing lap times...then unless it's a qualy session then you're doing it wrong....so no. Reflexes don't pay as big a role as you assume.

There's a fantastic onboard video and I wish I could find it from CART that illustrates the point. Yes the audio's cranked down fro TV and the spotter's on a delay but.....here's the thing.

You have your own car, you have the crowd cheering, you have your engineer/spotter/etc in your ear so it's naturally louder, you have the gearbox whine, you have road noise, you have wind, you have rain if it's raining and that shit is loud on a car, you have other cars and in some cases other classes....and all of that's going on at the same time.

Now...I'd like to propose something else as a possible solution....

FFB. I know, I've said before FFB wheels aren't entirely realistic. But, I'd like to propose instead of an audio cue, I'd like to suggest a force feedback effect for cuing you in to turn, f.ex if you're using a wheel it'd rumble and (I've no idea if wheel makers would do this or gamepad makers), it'd be set to rumble more to the right if it's a right hander, or to the left if it's a left hander. If the physics were good enough you could use that for turning cues and not have to listen to audio cues mixed in with all the other sounds. I can say from experience NR2003 on an oval already does this, when you hit the transition to the turn and the banking starts you feel it, when you dip a wheel on the apron you feel it and that lets you know roughly where you are on that game's ovals. Road courses? Different story, but for the oval side.....it works fairly well for FFB and knowing where you are. Of course the issue is if you spin out and lose track of where you are....but that happens to the best of racers.

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