When Turn 10 offered Forza Motorsport 2, I bought an XBOX360 just to play this game. And I didn’t regret it. During more than two years I played approximately 3.000 games online, most of them in the public lobby system that Forza Motorsport had. I’m not a good racer, but I improved over time. I primarily try to have fun while racing clean.
During the first month of Forza Motorsport 2 online gaming, one of my new online friends I met in the public lobbies tuned one of my cars for me. Wow, what a difference that was compared to the not tuned car. It handled much better and was faster, too. Armed with the knowledge that tuned cars can have better handling and can be faster, I tried tuning some of my other cars myself. Hmm, was much more difficult than I had thought. Most of it was trial and error, and I got tired fast.
But I really wanted my cars to be and behave better. So I turned to the theory necessary to understand what was needed to be successful with that. It was complicated, and although I understood the interaction of the various settings better, the quality of the results was only slightly better than before.
And then, I found FEUERDOGs suspension calculator for Forza Motorsport 2. The settings it produced were much better than those of my own efforts. And to be honest, I wanted to race. You have to like tuning in order to like it – haha! It’s not my thing. But by trying to tune cars in Forza Motorsport 2 myself, I got a glimpse of what it means to become a successful tuner.
Then came Forza Motorsport 3, and I was eager to get it. I used the same tuning calculator for the new version of the game, and it still produced better tuning setups than I was able to come up with myself. FEUERDOG started working on a version for Forza Motorsport 3 and eventually he released it to the public.
I have no idea how many hours FEUERDOG spent to create the tuning calculators he did create. He might have spend more hours on it than I was spending on racing. Maybe he had as much fun doing the tuning calculator as I had during racing. But his work alone made it much more fun for me.
So today, I’m releasing ForzaDroid, the implementation of FEUERDOGs tuning calculator FM3-December Update-4 as an Android application on the Android market for free. There can be no other way, because I’m standing on the shoulders of giants here.
What does it offer? Well, here’s a list:
- based entirely on FEUERDOGs FM3-December Update-4 spreadsheet, you’ll get the same results
- added “Transmission” selection for RWD differential settings (see FEUERDOGs remark in the spreadsheet for details)
- available in English and German
- it’s available at the Android Market and free (as in beer)
- it’s simple and fast (hey, I’m not a designer, I’m a programmer)
- no gear spreader – yet
To download ForzaDroid, visit the Android Market and search for it (search term forzadroid, but forza might work as well), or just scan the following QR Code with your Android powered mobile phone. It will take you directly to the Android Market:
If you have never tuned a car in Forza Motorsport 3 before, you can head over to ForzaTune were you can find more information. They’re offering an iPhone application that does roughly the same thing – even more, it supports Forza Motorsport 2 – as ForzaDroid. It’s also based on FEUERDOGs work. But it has been around much longer.
If you like the Android application ForzaDroid, find a bug or have some suggestions, feel free to contact me. I won’t promise anything, but at least I’ll listen.
8 Comments
Thanks for the mention! Let me know how the app downloads go and if you have plans to keep updating …
Thx, my cars drive much better now.
Cool app.
Thx, my cars drive much better now.
For the Forza 3 tuning calculator (Forzadroid): The entry field labeled ‘Distribution’, what is that and where can I find that data? Also, I found that the calculator shows results that are outside the available range. What do I do about that? Aside from the confusion, nice app!
Into the field labeled ‘Distribution’, you enter the weight percentage that rests on the front axle, e.g. the car weights 2000 lbs: 1100 lbs weight is on the front axle, the rest (900 lbs) is on the rear axle. The distribution is then 55% (1100/2000). But you don’t have to calculate this value yourself. It’s given to you by the game (in the screen with the car information, toggle the view with the Y-button). Here’s a good video on how to find all the information needed by the tuning calculator: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1TSFbJvmLg
Showing results outside the available range shouldn’t happen as long as you enter the correct data for an actual car from the game. Can you please provide the data you entered that produced results outside the available range?
Thank you! I should have thought to look there for distribution info. I found that this was the reason the calculator was returning results outside of the range. Since the correction, I have tuned three cars using Forzadroid, each with stellar results. Much much better than the guesswork method I used before! Again, thanks for your help. 5-star app!
This a cool app that is useful as can be. I love it. Would love to c more apps like on the market.