Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2021]

Hmmm, looking at past Forza Motorsport games they had a cadence of release every 2 years. It may be that with Forza Horizons coming into its own as a racing game, MS are allowng Turn 10 more time to develop the next Forza Motorport.

Before it was Forza Motorsport releases in the odd numbered years and then Forza Horizon games released in the even numbered years. Obviously, Covid had disrupted things and FH ended up releasing 3 years after the previous game instead of 2.

I wonder if they plan to move away from a Forza release ever year to a Forza release every 2 years? If that's the case then it's possible that the next FM might not beuntil 2023 with the next FH in 2025.

Especially now that they have so many internal studios, they don't need to have a Forza release every year in order to ensure that there's at least 1-2 MS exclusive titles during the Holiday season.

Of course that means a whopping 6 years since FM7. But that would give them a lot of time to both target the XBS consoles to fully exploit their capabilities as well as ensuring that it scales well both upwards and downwards across a wide variety of hardware.

And while I'm not sure there will be a another console in that time period it's possible that if there is, that will line up with a new console release (rolling generations or mid-gen depending on how you look at it).

Regards,
SB

 

turn10 is not involved at all in horizon series ?

 

I think it will be a 2023 release. They are going to take their time and get it right and make sure the engine is as good as it can be. My understanding is its xbox series / pc only. The original plan was for a 2022 but with covid I think MS pushed it back. I believe Forza Motorsport is the lower seller and not as much priority is put on it. Right now its all about them getting the engine right for the other games. The main line motorsport will be more proof of concept for the engine upgrades going forward

 

That will be 2 years without a motorsport game, remember it's been delisted, 6 years between last one.
3 years until the next horizon.

Even factoring in covid, I personally I don't see that being necessary or happening, but not something we'll know for sure until next E3.

 

Nope, other than perhaps consultation if Playground Games has any questions about the Forza Engine (ForzaTech). Wikipedia has it as a collaboration for FH1, but Playground basically did all the work, IIRC.

Although I guess since Turn 10 is the development team behind ForzaTech, then you could kind of think of that as yes. But then that would mean that Epic is involved in every single Unreal Engine game.

Regards,
SB

 

Turn10 has a hand in literally all the FH games. From engine to tech support etc. They both collaborate on these games. Go on LinkedIn and have a look at the staff from Turn10. you will see FH in some of their resume. Also get ready to see Turn10 staff in the credits for Halo:I and Fable.

 

Busy and talented people.

 

I don’t even need to watch the video. Let’s GOOOOOOO

Edit: saw some nice micro at 1:30ish.

 

Loved the age of empires 2 LAN days

 

Hmmm, interesting, it's using dynamic loading/unloading of textures anytime the camera moves. I wonder if Direct Storage will help with this? Sounds like an idea useage case for SFS. Although maybe not. With a top down isometric view, there shouldn't be many mip levels depending on how much angle there is to the camera.

Regards,
SB

 

One of my favorite series and one of the few games I've brought in the last 2 decades
If you've been following this game (like me) you will of read thousands of complaints from people about the 'mobile game' visuals

FWIW the following is made by a single person
// true its not shipped yet
Seriously you have to question what happened in the studio, yes I get its going for a more stylized look, but what they have achieved is an incompetent stylized look

 

Thats looks stunning. Its a real shame because from a gameplay/presentation pov AOE4 looks excellent, but seems massively let down on the technical side.

 

In some respects it looks like theyve gone backwards eg here AOE3 from 2005

heres forza from that same year

Compare that to how forza horizon 5 looks today. 2005 is a lifetime ago in graphics

EDIT: Actually I had a further look, with the above video even though AOE3 came out in 2005, this is a remaster on it released from last year

this is from 2005 (see time stamp bottom left) though I wonder what it would look like at 4k (which should be quite easy since it was made for PCs from many years ago)

 

They have downgraded the graphics to an insane degree.

 

Still, that water shader on AoE4 seems inexcusable for a AA title in 2021 IMO, as well as some pretty low poly-count models. Perhaps AoE4 allows for a much larger FoV than AoE3 did, in the hopes that the AoE2E esports crowd moves over to AoE4?

Whatever the success of AoE4 may end up being, it looks like Relic didn't get much of a budget to make the game, or at least its graphics portion.
In fact, it just seems that Phil Spencer isn't very fond of the Age series at all. Dismantling Ensemble - who were providing PC best-sellers every two years up to the point they were all fired - was one of the weirdest decisions Microsoft made in the 00's decade. It was like oh well everyone's getting rid of their RTS developers so we'll totally take advantage of the market vacuum here just fire our RTS team as well.


Enough bashing, though. I'm just glad Microsoft picked picked up the RTS genre again so I'm probably going to buy this game on PC to show my support.

 

You crazy bastards are aware AoE is a RTS, right? The graphics are the last thing the CPU and GPU should be expending cycles on. For an RTS the AI and mechanics are the priority. Any cycles left over you can toss at how shiny the pixels are. I strongly feel there is where a lot of RTS games lost their way.

Sure the AI is shit, but it looks pretty.

 

I was going to make fun of this but then I remembered Froblins.