The launch of Forza 4 is almost upon us and PistonHeads will be able to bring you all the latest developments as we have linked with the Forza team. This means we'll be keeping you updated regularly as we build up to the launch.
We'll also be publicising a rather splendid competition. More on this in a few weeks time, but for now we can assure you that it offers a prize you'll really want to win.
Today we offer you the chance to ask questions to 'Turn 10' Game Director (what a great title) Dan Greenawalt. Dan is the man who heads up the development team at Turn 10, the guys behind the fantastic Forza series. It's Dan's job to ensure they deliver the most compelling, engaging and realistic car game possible, no mean feat in this day and age; Outrun it is not.
Some say the PH team have a good job, but Dan might just pip us. He started out playing Street Fighter in tournaments over in Seattle-area arcades, before getting a job as a tester at Microsoft, quickly becoming Lead Tester and then the Lead Game Designer for Forza. Not bad, eh?
But how do they make the game feel so real? Dan says the pivotal point was when Popular Science ran a feature in April 2005 called 'Virtual vs. Reality, Can You Tell the Difference – at 150 mph?' Dan was able to play the role of crew chief with professional race car driver Gunnar Jeannette by tuning virtual versions of his real-world race cars and he claims it was this experience that proved instrumental in defining Forza Motorsport’s life-like physics system. And who are we to argue with that? Especially as it seems to work so well.
What does he drive himelf? Surely he has the very latest supercar, or a glamorous historic? Well no, Dan pops to the office in a highly modified MY 2000 Audi S4 - we weren't expecting that!
Anyway, as we await the launch of Forza 4, we invite your questions to Dan. You can ask what you like (but he probably won't give you his job) by posting them in the thread that follows this article. At 17.00 on Friday 23rd September we will collate the most interesting questions to e-mail to Dan and he will answer them over the next week or two.
The full questions and answers will be published in an article that will follow on PH in a few weeks time.
So let's see your questions: don't be shy, we want to know how this game works, so be as techincal in your questioning as you like...