Have far have we come?

I finally had a chance to put together a reasonable beginners racing sim. More than likely I'll never make the time commitment to ever race in a league. With that said, my current rig is an Open Wheeler seat and an old Fantec Forza steering wheel with Club Sport pedals. I've been playing Forza 4 on the Xbox 360. My intent is a pleasant evening's diversion.

I've driven many cars in the rain that were less likely to spin out than the Forza cars. Are the newer sims more realistic or are they as spin happy?

Recommendations for something enjoyable and a bit challenging but not ridiculous or is this as good as it gets?

Project Cars and Assetto Corsa are far more “sim” than Forza or GT.  That said I don’t think Forza or GT are generally considered spin happy.  I suspect your issue has more to do with adapting to the lack of feel in a sim.  You have to be very sensitive to the movement of the car via visuals and wheel feedback. It does take a bit of getting use to and will seem like everything is spin happy until you do.

Theres also a wide range of adjustments you can make on your Fanatec to dial in your feedback at the wheel. 

Heres my setup I had notes on for Forza 4. 

Sen-900

FF-70

SHO-100

DRI-005

ABS-off

LIN-000

DEA-000

SPR-(-3)

DPR-(-3)

ACL-off

I was more on the drifting end of the spectrum and kept the FFB kind of light and sensitive, If you want more FFb, crank the FF setting up to 100. 

Alignment of the cars in game makes a huge difference as well. with a proper alignment settings my drift cars would self steer very well with this setup. But this fanatec setup also worked great for racing too. 

Thanks.....I've not adjusted the wheel....I'm still learning.

Tuning the controls are a big first step.  It literally used to be my job with aircraft sims.  Frequently I had to go through all the steps to prove “controls weren’t the problem”, and then drill down to an issue with the dynamic simulation.

However, with driving sims like Forza, and et all, it’s more likely that your rig setup or the ‘car setup’ is to blame.  Well, that and the lack of inner-ear response that aircooled alluded to... which takes some getting used to.

Live For Speed might be something to look at, since it’s got AI steps to work up which I’ve found useful to debug my “sim setup” installation against.  Ymmv.

360 and forza 4 are both pretty old hat now and not even really up to snuff. By Forza 6 they had figured out water on the track and dynamic weather a Hell of a lot better. A pretty basic PC rig these days is world's above the 360, but the current crop of consoles like the One X and PS5 Pro are no slouches when it comes to rendering graphics and dealing with physics. 

I agree they're old sims. The wheel and pedals were in our basement when we had a house fire. They only suffered smoke damage. I want to be sure they work well before investing in a different console or a PC. I've identified issues with the buttons which hopefully I can cure.

What I'm finding frustrating is how easy the cars swap ends. I've driven both a Miata and a VW Fox and both with even mild throttle get terribly loose to the extent of swapping ends. Plus it seems the brake balance is terribly off in the Miata. I've rear wheel drive passenger vans in real life that are sufficiently less loose with better brakes. I find myself driving these like they're on ice which seems to almost work.

If you have the in game steering setting on “sim” and have not adjusted your wheel settings yet, I’m 99% sure that’s your problem.

Agreed. I played fh4 like crazy on a fanatec wheel, played briefly on r factor then straight to assetto corsa on pc. You get the wheel and car settings dialed in and the transition to a new and better game is pretty easy. 

I dont necessarily agree with the notion of forza 4 being so outdated that its a poor simulation, honestly yeah all the games feel a little different but between rfactor and AC they didnt feel THAT different from my experience on fm4 when using the same wheel (and spending several hours dialing it into each game be honest)

I added the settings recommended as well as adjusted my brakes. I had my brakes set where they'd never fully engage. Much better. I also learned I hate thr Miata in this game.