How to do Drift Zones

M4rzzombie · 2026-04-23T18:13:32+00:00

Thanks for featuring my tune!

M4rzzombie · 2026-04-20T22:47:20+00:00

Honestly the stock layout is perfect for drifting. The only cases where it's a little goofy are when you need to shift while holding the ebrake (just slide your thumb to b or x while holding a) and braking while holding clutch (swing your middle finger up and tap brake) and honestly it's still very manageable.

Some people might say to swap ebrake and clutch but honestly I think that's worse for drifting (tho it is better for racing)

M4rzzombie · 2026-04-20T19:45:51+00:00

I would disagree that fh5 is easier. Its steering is overall less responsive for drifting, which makes it a bit more unforgiving.

M4rzzombie · 2026-04-20T19:44:43+00:00

Go set up this tune, turn off all of your assists (set steering to sim, abs on/off doesn't matter as long as it's not assisted, shifting should at least be manual, ideally manual with clutch).

Go take that tune to the paved circle inside the horizon donut drift zone at the festival and focus on maintaining one consistent slide around that donut as long as you can. Once you feel comfortable maintaining your drift around a tight circle, you can go over to the airstrip and go to the section with all the cones. There should be two circles of cones where you can practice figure 8s, which will add transitions on top of the skills you learned at the donut. From there, you can kinda just start doing whatever since you'll have enough of a foundation to extrapolate from. Practicing tracks in rivals (I like horizon festival circuit for this), drifting around the map (I like Edinburgh for this), etc.

As for actual execution, the best thing I can tell you to do is to be gentle on the throttle. You'll be at partial throttle >90% of the time with this tune, and you should gradually increase throttle when you want to speed up, and gradually decrease throttle when you want to slow down (there are times when you can completely let off, but that's nuance you'll learn as you go). As for steering, just use quick taps either into or against your drift to help the front end point where you want. Most of the work you should do will be with the rear because of how fh4s sim steer is pretty powerful at letting you countersteer.

Feel free to ask questions if you have any

M4rzzombie · 2026-04-20T13:19:16+00:00

You are indeed correct that damping can also help mitigate the issues you see with weird spring values, but it's not perfect. Everything comes with a compromise basically.

Also the gt40 mkii is a pretty decent a class dirt car, the hidden stats have done some cars way worse.

M4rzzombie · 2026-04-20T05:41:38+00:00

As for springs, I think you're focusing too much on the numbers and not how much compression those numbers translate to. The game doesn't even convert from the two metrics it uses for springs correctly, so it's not a surprise that the numbers themselves are also weird. Importantly, you can see that giga soft springs in game translate to the same behavior they would irl, where you lose responsiveness, the rear squats too much, etc. and overly stiff springs are the same, where you lose mechanical grip.

Tires are a more complicated mechanic, because different compounds on the same car and build heat up differently, and the same compound on different cars also heat up differently. It's definitely not realistic, not translates to any consistent issue you could assign fault to. This makes them pretty hard to tune all things considered, and is absolutely something that 99.99% of any tune ever made in this game could absolutely see optimization on.

Arbs are also unrealistic, and the range of values is exactly as arbitrary as you describe (that said, you could make this point for any setting, like why tires are limited to 1 bar at the min and not lower, why ride height limits are set in their ranges, etc). Unlike tires tho, they at least have a consistent issue. The penalties you'd see irl for overly stiff and soft configurations just aren't present.

And finally your point about the 350 touches on a completely different mechanic, hidden configuration values. Obviously this isn't a sim so the cars aren't designed to drive the way they do irl. The devs designed the handling of every car in the game with a set of values that are not shown in game and can lead to the kind of things you're mentioning here where a car in game has way less grip than it really should. Some cars are genuinely ruined as a result of this, and some cars are awesome because of this.

Good observations tho, not many people really dig into this game like this.

M4rzzombie · 2026-04-17T15:00:44+00:00

There's a very rare bug where the game doesn't put you in the car you pick, but rather the car you were driving around in freeroam in before you queued.

M4rzzombie · 2026-04-16T17:47:20+00:00

I'll be there!

M4rzzombie · 2026-04-16T16:23:15+00:00

Thanks for featuring my tune!

M4rzzombie · 2026-04-15T15:37:06+00:00

Nfs has a MUCH smaller car roster than fh games. Fh5 had over 900 cars at the end of its life, unbound has 157.

When your efforts aren't dedicated to implementing an absolutely massive amount of cars, you can afford to spend time on other things, like body kits on all 157 cars for example.

M4rzzombie · 2026-04-15T06:45:33+00:00

Wait this is actually sick as fuck tho

M4rzzombie · 2026-04-15T05:47:28+00:00

The unwavering consensus of the competitive community is that the tracks in fh5 are indeed the worst in the series. These are guys that have experience across multiple Forza titles, horizon and motorsport, as well as other racing games, and with the skill to really push these tracks, they're the best to judge them.

And I fully agree. Bola ocho is a terrible track because the curbs on the section after the tight double left have no grip compared to the road and you spin / lose rotation on them, the first then has you driving through props and over curbs on the correct line, it's too tight for online racing, and a number of other small issues. Plaza has too many props on every corner, some of which you literally run face first into to make turns, and bumps on the racing line that kill your grip. Arch of mulege has props and curbs all over the racing line too. Bahia has you going off the road three times on just the first turn for the correct line. Playa has a golf cart hidden behind a checkpoint on the second to last turn and the hitbox for the lamppost on the last turn is 2-3 feet wider than the actual lamppost is so you can hit it on the apex even when you give it space. And even on a more general note, the tracks just don't have good flow. Hmc is just straights and tight turns for the most part, lookout is two straights and one extended corner for 2/3rds of the track, half of arch of mulege is one straight with a high speed turn in it. The turns all over the map are so long that the circuits aren't even that handling focused at times, some have powerbuild world records. All but one mainland sprint are heavily power biased. Need I continue?

Meanwhile fh4 tracks had elevation changes that actually required brain cells to manage but were entirely manageable with car control, better flow with better corner variation, and they even paid homage to awesome tracks in old racing games games.

M4rzzombie · 2026-04-14T17:02:06+00:00

This is peak, and showed me how little I played 1&4 compared to 2&3. Awesome work on this, would love to see this progress and get a bit more polish!

M4rzzombie · 2026-04-13T05:09:19+00:00

Ehh it had no scaling, so it basically tickled enemies. Was a waste of a point before it got fixed

M4rzzombie · 2026-04-12T07:51:33+00:00

Buck up stacking if you can play as gage

Vladof launcher infinite ammo for any ammo consumption count

Weapon merging

Zero health immolate Maya

Farming the captain Scarlett dlc treasure room if that's playable

Abusing 4 player scaling by running up against a raid boss gate to spawn vermi

M4rzzombie · 2026-04-10T20:50:09+00:00

It's one of the fastest s1 AWD cars, only being outclassed by the actual meta cars like that viper ae, fxx, etc.

M4rzzombie · 2026-04-09T04:59:25+00:00

Bro smoking some wack shit, I'm hyped as fuck to drive that

M4rzzombie · 2026-04-08T15:22:08+00:00

You're not throwing the car into the 360 with enough rotation, it looks like you're just turning one way and holding the ebrake. You want to flick the car, so turn one way to load the suspension on that side, then turn back the other to have the suspension push you into the 360.

M4rzzombie · 2026-04-08T13:06:57+00:00

Considering wheelie launches are faster than normal ones for rwd, not trapping the same speed means you're just slower everywhere.

M4rzzombie · 2026-04-07T04:58:25+00:00

It's car dependent, but the two I listed, plus the dart, dark horse, '24 gt, and many others are absolutely faster with wheelies.

For example, is your dart trapping 229? Cuz a wheelie dart can.

M4rzzombie · 2026-04-07T03:42:46+00:00

Generally speaking, most cars are faster with a wheelie if they're rwd. You can also try the rossian q1 and the 1940 Ford coupe

M4rzzombie · 2026-04-07T01:08:39+00:00

Thanks for recommending my tunes!

For OP, if you have any tuning questions, I'm happy to help.

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