Forza 5 [XO] *large pics inside*

[SlimJim]

Now thats news ! How the hell did that happen??!?!! Dev kits too powerful ? Seriously, thats like removing a major chunk of geometry !!! On one side we have Ryse and then this "next-gen" stuff.

The final version of Ryse has a lot of geometry removed as well.
Apparently this is normal for E3 to retail games. All ubisoft games have it, killzone2 had it, and Ryse and Forza have it as well.

In this case, the game was probably produced for not final hardware. As many rumours prior to release pointed out to a dual APU setup for the XB1, it's possible that the forza 5 E3 showing was targeting that. Think about it: excellent AA, volumetric fog, high quality motion blur, as you stated: a lot of extra geometry, better (realtime even) lighting, some textures as well. Shadows also.

What could be a better explanation? I really don't know.

 

[Nesh]

The final version of Ryse has a lot of geometry removed as well.
Apparently this is normal for E3 to retail games. All ubisoft games have it, killzone2 had it, and Ryse and Forza have it as well.

In this case, the game was probably produced for not final hardware. As many rumours prior to release pointed out to a dual APU setup for the XB1, it's possible that the forza 5 E3 showing was targeting that. Think about it: excellent AA, volumetric fog, high quality motion blur, as you stated: a lot of extra geometry, better (realtime even) lighting, some textures as well. Shadows also.

What could be a better explanation? I really don't know.

I havent seen any downgrades in either Ryse or Killzone. I think these two games were completely upgraded. I am curious to see though if images showing some of the downgrades are available.
Cant really say much from the images for Forza, but going by the comments, if these downgrades were indeed made, they are a lot more than anything that might have been downgraded in Ryse or Killzone

 

[SlimJim]

I havent seen any downgrades in either Ryse or Killzone. I think these two games were completely upgraded. I am curious to see though if images showing some of the downgrades are available.
Cant really say much from the images for Forza, but going by the comments, if these downgrades were indeed made, they are a lot more than anything that might have been downgraded in Ryse or Killzone

in other shots the bokeh DOF is either removed or severely toned down.

Again, just to illustrate that this is common practice and that Forza5 should be be critiqued for it. Either you go with it, or you are the only one who has an unimpressive E3 showing. It's a tough call for any developer

 

[Cyan]

I havent seen any downgrades in either Ryse or Killzone. I think these two games were completely upgraded. I am curious to see though if images showing some of the downgrades are available.
Cant really say much from the images for Forza, but going by the comments, if these downgrades were indeed made, they are a lot more than anything that might have been downgraded in Ryse or Killzone

There has been a new showing off demo because Microsoft took the console again to the Jimmy Fallon's show yesterday and Forza 5 is one of the featured titles.

The footage is very short but it shows a couple of things; they have an amazing TV there and the differences with the early footage are difficult to spot but when the game is shown off-screen the game looks about the same compared to the E3 footage -again, the image quality of the TV is astounding, imho-.

I agree with zed that less crowd but three-dimensional would be nice. They could probably add more with the cloud, I guess...

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I agree with zed that less crowd but three-dimensional would be nice. They could probably add more with the cloud, I guess...

Nope. That's a high BW rendering job. Unless you meant render the crowd in the cloud per frame and stream to the console and composite, which wouldn't work unless they introduced a huge lag to the game probably, there's no way to compute graphics on the cloud for realtime use in game.

 

[Cyan]

Nope. That's a high BW rendering job. Unless you meant render the crowd in the cloud per frame and stream to the console and composite, which wouldn't work unless they introduced a huge lag to the game probably, there's no way to compute graphics on the cloud for realtime use in game.

I thought that it would be like rendering NPCs in a RPG game, which is one of the most interesting things you could use the cloud for.

Adding 200 NPCs to a city in Skyrim for instance -say Whiterun-, each one with a different AI, fully populating the city in real time.

It doesn't sound possible by the look of things, except maybe the AI part?...

 

[Billy Idol]

I thought that it would be like rendering NPCs in a RPG game, which is one of the most interesting things you could use the cloud for.

Adding 200 NPCs to a city in Skyrim for instance -say Whiterun-, each one with a different AI, fully populating the city in real time.

It doesn't sound possible by the look of things, except maybe the AI part?...

Not rendering. But simulating their behavior and daily life and actions in the background to generate a living and consistent world with thousands of NPCs. But as I understood it, there was never talk about real time rendering of NPC?!?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Eurogamer review 7/10 : Good racer, fun to drive, but the career mode is annoying not least because of the dodgy AI that doesn't drive well.

 

[Cyan]

Not rendering. But simulating their behavior and daily life and actions in the background to generate a living and consistent world with thousands of NPCs. But as I understood it, there was never talk about real time rendering of NPC?!?

I took both things for granted, it was my mistake.

I thought that the cloud would render the extra NPCs and the cities would be more populated than ever, then it would give random behaviour to each NPC.

Shifty, it's people's fault because they drive erratically.

I hope that the typical drivatar in my game is an erratic ally rather than a dodgy opponent.... :smile2:

 

[Arwin]

Microsoft is making it very easy for me to wait, not only is the Xbox One not available yet, but the one game I am interested in seems worse than its 360 implementation. I'm sure they can fix some of the stuff, but the in-cockpit godrays I'm now seeing are silly, there is a tonne of weird aliasing in the Eurogamer footage (hopefully that's just a capture issue, otherwise it makes me wonder if we need some pixel counting), and most importantly, my favorite tracks aren't in there at launch (I'm sure we'll see them as payed DLC), and the single player progression that I already thought was terribly boring seems to have gotten worse rather than better, partly thanks to Drivatars.

To me it reads worse than 7/10, considering where the game is coming from. I'll check out some other reviews, but obviously I'm not too motivated to like the game now anyway. And then I still have very little news about whether my existing wheels will work with it (even my MS wheel).

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Eurogamer review 7/10 : Good racer, fun to drive, but the career mode is annoying not least because of the dodgy AI that doesn't drive well.

I get that they don't like playing against AI that are basically replica's of real people, but that isn't dodge AI. That's dodgy driving skills by real people.

What they want to race against appears to be either professional drivers only, or a predictable and mechanical AI that you can easily beat once you learn the AI's behavior.

But the AI certainly isn't dodgy. It's doing exactly what it was designed to do. I'd imagine that people that don't want to deal with the unpredictability of AI drivers modeled after unpredictable real drivers will probably form groups where they just race against AI from other people in their group.

Regards,
SB

 

[Arwin]

I think they're complaint is that you don't have a choice. You have to drive against AI now that doesn't behave like a normal race car driver does, with the result that you can't for instance drag-overtake on the straight because you might get 'brake-tested'. I thought the AI could be pretty bad as it was in Forza, especially tapping your rear in turns was quite bad at times, but they did eventually add some supernatural braking skills that allowed the AI to stop the car from crashing into even beyond what is physically possible at some point, so they do realise how that's important. But now you always drive with Avatars that don't have basic braking and overtaking skills at times, and that basically means we're back to worse than square one on the AI front. That's quite damning, if true - who knows it gets better over time as the pool of good driver data in the cloud expands though?

 

[Cyan]

Microsoft is making it very easy for me to wait, not only is the Xbox One not available yet, but the one game I am interested in seems worse than its 360 implementation. I'm sure they can fix some of the stuff, but the in-cockpit godrays I'm now seeing are silly, there is a tonne of weird aliasing in the Eurogamer footage (hopefully that's just a capture issue, otherwise it makes me wonder if we need some pixel counting), and most importantly, my favorite tracks aren't in there at launch (I'm sure we'll see them as payed DLC), and the single player progression that I already thought was terribly boring seems to have gotten worse rather than better, partly thanks to Drivatars.

To me it reads worse than 7/10, considering where the game is coming from. I'll check out some other reviews, but obviously I'm not too motivated to like the game now anyway. And then I still have very little news about whether my existing wheels will work with it (even my MS wheel).

Metacritic score is 82 -far from Forza 4- if you care about those things.

Now that I searched that out to share, Eurogamer Germany gave the game a 100. I am very surprised, especially knowing how Germans are so passionate about cars and their cars are usually some of the best.

I expected some more criticism from them.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-one/forza-motorsport-5/critic-reviews

As far as my own go? I still have to wait til I have the console -which might be delayed til Monday, not entirely sure yet- and the game.

 

[Arwin]

There’s no way to sell unused cars back to the AI or to other players, no bespoke onscreen speedometers, no test driving a car before purchase, no kid-friendly Kinect steering or Kinect support in Forzavista, no opportunity to load a circuit-specific tuning setup before a career race, no exiting from a race series without loading up the next track, no unicorn cars, no ‘reasonably priced car’, no auction house, no storefront, and no surprise, really.

That combined with the non-skippable Top Gear scenes, and the fact that there isn't really an Arcade mode for test-driving fast cars.

EDIT: The DF capture looks better than the video above, by the way.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

But the AI certainly isn't dodgy. It's doing exactly what it was designed to do.

You're right, but I meant from an experience POV. You have one option for AI opponents and that's 'bad human drivers' which isn't representative of racing in against real racing drivers. And as that's the only option, you can't get a good, realistic race. The drivatar concept has just populated the games with bad virtual drivers which is something of a backfire. I honestly expected the game to use quality drivers for the mainstay experience, the drivatars from real pros, and only friend drivatars when playing against your virtual friends, say, or Sunday Cup drivers being honestly erratic as you may expect from amateurs.

They should have gone with options. Options are always good. It can't be hard to add a 'opposition quality' slide that selects from available drivatars using a simple consistency rating or such. Hopefully that'll get patched in.

 

[RenegadeRocks]

You're right, but I meant from an experience POV. You have one option for AI opponents and that's 'bad human drivers' which isn't representative of racing in against real racing drivers. And as that's the only option, you can't get a good, realistic race. The drivatar concept has just populated the games with bad virtual drivers which is something of a backfire. I honestly expected the game to use quality drivers for the mainstay experience, the drivatars from real pros, and only friend drivatars when playing against your virtual friends, say, or Sunday Cup drivers being honestly erratic as you may expect from amateurs.

They should have gone with options. Options are always good. It can't be hard to add a 'opposition quality' slide that selects from available drivatars using a simple consistency rating or such. Hopefully that'll get patched in.

Wouldn't the Single player part have Race driver's Drivatars or the one's made by Devs? Do we always have to race against other player Drivatars? I am sure there must a standard AI.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

You're right, but I meant from an experience POV. You have one option for AI opponents and that's 'bad human drivers' which isn't representative of racing in against real racing drivers. And as that's the only option, you can't get a good, realistic race. The drivatar concept has just populated the games with bad virtual drivers which is something of a backfire. I honestly expected the game to use quality drivers for the mainstay experience, the drivatars from real pros, and only friend drivatars when playing against your virtual friends, say, or Sunday Cup drivers being honestly erratic as you may expect from amateurs.

They should have gone with options. Options are always good. It can't be hard to add a 'opposition quality' slide that selects from available drivatars using a simple consistency rating or such. Hopefully that'll get patched in.

I'm wondering if, as you progress, the "amateur" drivers start dropping out in favor of more experienced/professional drivers populating races.

That would seem to be a good way of simulating a career progression.

But being a launch title, it's also possible they just couldn't schedule enough sessions with enough professional drivers to make enough professional drivatars. Similar in a way to how some tracks were cut in order to make the console launch.

Regards,
SB

 

[Gubbi]

I'm wondering if, as you progress, the "amateur" drivers start dropping out in favor of more experienced/professional drivers populating races.

I'm suspecting the crappy AI has to do with difficulty settings. Selecting easy or normal you get sub-par avatar AIs that drive like shit.

In order to be competitive at higher levels the AIs can't make rookie errors like missing brake points, no hitting apexes, bad positioning and erratic driving down straights.

If difficulty is adjusted automatically, lousy opponents are a reflection of your own driving.

Cheers

 

[Shifty Geezer]

That's something I hope gets explained, as reviews often miss a lot of the details when it comes to difficulty levels. Although dodgy driving isn't really easy. You'd want robotic, slow driving for beginners.

 

[RudeCurve]

I get that they don't like playing against AI that are basically replica's of real people, but that isn't dodge AI. That's dodgy driving skills by real people.

What they want to race against appears to be either professional drivers only, or a predictable and mechanical AI that you can easily beat once you learn the AI's behavior.

But the AI certainly isn't dodgy. It's doing exactly what it was designed to do. I'd imagine that people that don't want to deal with the unpredictability of AI drivers modeled after unpredictable real drivers will probably form groups where they just race against AI from other people in their group.

Regards,
SB

+1...I'm glad the AI is designed the way it is...REAL.