Although most racing games don't make it seem to be the case, rain is a huge part of racing. It's provided one of several important variables that help to showcase the strengths of each driver by presenting conditions that change how it looks and feels to drive around a track.
Unlike the rest of the video game competition, Forza Motorsport 6 makes an incredible effort to simulate what it's like to really fight for first on a wet track. It's dangerous and challenging, but most of all thrilling. Below is how it accomplishes its task better than any other racing game on the market.
Reduced Visibility
As if fighting for limited traction doesn't provide enough difficulty, reduced visibility makes racing in the rain a major challenge. While normally you get to look out on the track through a perfectly clean windshield, rain drops and condensation blur the barrier between you and the road. You essentially have to do more with less.
Water on your windshield and the wipers make it more difficulty to see where you're going. Quick reaction times and astute observation are critical in wet race environments.
Forza Motorsport 6 recreates this hazard in several ways. For one, every rain drop is simulated individually. As one falls from the sky and hits the windshield, the curvature of the glass is taken into account when the physics engine decides where the water goes next. Not only that, but the trajectory of the car also plays into account. If you happen to be making a hard right turn, water on your windshield will move leftward. All these rain drops and a moving windshield wiper make everything harder than normal.
Forza Motorsport 6's cockpit view showcases the finely tuned raindrop physics that react to materials and movement in a realistic manner.
In addition to this, the game's materials have been built with various properties, including their porousness. Your hood will begin to accumulate a ton of water, and so will the body panels of opposing vehicles. All this water is reflecting what light is available, and obscuring your view. It's a dangerous habitat that requires practice to handle.
Puddles
When someone tells you to be careful when driving in the rain, it isn't just because traction is reduced. There are puddles that accumulate that can and will make tires break loose. When this happens it's called hydroplaning, and it has the potential to not only cause spinouts but even cause serious injury.
Puddles pose increased risk as a vehicle goes faster. At high speeds, one tire hitting a puddle can cause a complete spinout.
Some race car drivers excel in this environment, such as the great Aryton Senna. He'd come alive when it was raining and leave everyone in his wake. There's one particular event regarded as the greatest lap in Formula 1 history where Senna was able to use a wet track and puddles to his advantage to dominate on Donington Park, passing four of the best drivers in the world within a single opening lap.
As crazy as it might sound, Forza Motorsport 6 is the very first racing game to have fully simulated puddles, offering the first time ever that car enthusiasts can see what it's like to deal with them. It isn't just a presentational element, either. Depending on your speed, trajectory, and other factors, the puddle will affect your handling in mild to sometimes race-altering ways. You will learn to respect them, or at the very least avoid them.
When driving in the rain in Forza Motorsport 6 you'll have to make split second decisions about whether or not to speed through a puddle. These decisions directly affect the outcome of the race.
Puddles don't have to be your enemy, though. If you position your car well, you can force other drivers to hit them or slow down and get behind you. You can also use them to kick the back tail of your car out during a turn. These puddle physics, in addition to the behavior of vehicles on wet tarmac, make for an extraordinary experience that deviates from the static conditions of racing games past and present.
Water Kick-Up
One commonly overlooked difficulty of driving in the wet is water kick-up. As tires send their power downward into the water-laden road, they grab water and toss it behind the car. Anyone driving behind a car moving quickly over wet road has to deal with the ramifications of these physics, which result in a windshield full of water.
Decreased visibility is made worse by the water spray emerging from the rear tires of every vehicle on the track.
This effect is amplified when cars have greater power. Once you're in a LMP1 or Formula 1 car it becomes a serious problem that makes overtaking opponents a nightmare. For this reason, drafting in wet conditions is considered a very difficult task.
Overtaking an opponent who is sending water into your windshield isn't easy to do, but extremely thrilling when done successfully.
Forza Motorsport 6 has this experience covered. When you drive behind another car in the wet, you have to deal with what can only be equated to driving in thick fog. In response, you'll need to learn spacing, and how to quickly read the tail lights of vehicles ahead of you. You'll also need to master the flow of each track so you don't miss a turn when the water spray comes between you and your visibility. It's a lot to deal with, but when you learn how to cope with it there isn't much more satisfying in the world than propelling ahead of an opponent who has been kicking water in your face for an entire lap.
Greater Risk
No matter how great you are at handling a car, mistakes happen. Whether you're driving on Nurburgring Nordschleife or Circuit de Spa Francorchamps, there are sections of track where the margin for error is extremely low. All it takes is a moment of intense competition for you to be sent off the track. When this happens, you pay the price.
Race car drivers know to alter their driving behavior when racing in the rain. Even one minor mistake can send them flying off course.
The price is greater if you're racing in the wet, that's for certain. Grass, dirt, and even rumble strips don't like water. One moment you're in control, and the next you end up crashed into the barrier.
This realistic and common circumstance is simulated remarkably well in Forza Motorsport 6 thanks to the game's attention to detail. Every material has its own properties, and as part of that water present from rain will have an effect on how they feel to drive on. On a track like Road America you might normally find yourself cutting over the rumble strips and even hitting the grass for a moment on turns 5 and 6, but you'll think twice about doing that in the rain once you experience how slippery the line is in those circumstances.
You'll want to be very careful where you steer your tires in Forza Motorsport 6. Grass and rumble strips won't take kindly to you using them.
In the event that you take the risk of driving on these materials, or push hard around a corner, devastating punishment awaits. Instead of sliding off course for a few feet, the wet grass will send you careening toward spectators as if you were driving on a polished linoleum floor. It's no joke, and one that can put you in last place in quick order.
The risk and reward in the presence of these conditions challenges even the greatest drivers, but also allows those who practice the opportunity to show off their full range of skill. True to life, it's unlike anything the racing genre has seen before, and sets a new standard for what it means to say that a game supports rain effects.
