Forza Horizon 5 [XO, XBSX|S, PC, XGP]

[Silent_Buddha]

It would surprise me.
As the next forza motorsport is current gen only, so the physics etc will be based around this gen.
Sounds like a lot of work to pear back the engine to get it to work well on XO also for a game coming at minimum 2 years from now.

And you assume that much of that isn't already being done in FH 5? We already see that the previous gen consoles are limited to 30 FPS (a concession to the lower CPU speed). There's a pretty good chance the physics calculations on the previous gen consoles are also scaled back in either frequency of updates or accuracy of calculations or both.

Whether the next Forza supports XBO or not will not be about whether a Current Gen optimized title can run on previous gen, but whether there is enough of a buying population on XBO to warrant the effort (quite likely to be similar to the effort required to make FH 5 run on previous gen consoles) to make it run acceptably.

People look at this and say cross gen and don't believe that it's optimized for Current Gen first, IMO, are wrong. FH 5 is absolutely created with the current gen first and foremost. Then it's scaled down to the previous gen. It's not a previous gen focused title that was scaled up to the current gen.

Once we see a proper face off in DF comparing current gen consoles to previous gen consoles, it'll be interesting to see what was left out and what was pared back in order to make it work. I'm going to guess the audio on prevous gen is also not on the same level as the current gen console version (another concension to the CPU discrepency). I imagine that a lot of CPU heavy effects will either be pared back or missing entirely. Of course, since many of those things are things that happen "under the hood", they may not be visible to players.

----

On a different note. Gdamn it MS, your Xbox Game Pass client on PC is still garbage. The client has a big old Play button enabled but won't let me play it until the 9th. The button should instead just say it's pre-loaded instead of leading me to think I can actually play it. Grrrr.

Hell, even the countdown that I saw last night led me to believe I'd be able to play it today. /kicks MS.

Regards,
SB

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Also, I can't even play it yet and there's already quite a few custom user made designs/liveries (paintjobs with decals and stuff) for cars. Wow.

Regards,
SB

 

[Malo]

If I really want to invest time in this game, I think I want to buy it on Steam so I at least have the freedom of streaming it to my Shield.

 

[snc]

And you assume that much of that isn't already being done in FH 5? We already see that the previous gen consoles are limited to 30 FPS (a concession to the lower CPU speed). There's a pretty good chance the physics calculations on the previous gen consoles are also scaled back in either frequency of updates or accuracy of calculations or both.

Whether the next Forza supports XBO or not will not be about whether a Current Gen optimized title can run on previous gen, but whether there is enough of a buying population on XBO to warrant the effort (quite likely to be similar to the effort required to make FH 5 run on previous gen consoles) to make it run acceptably.

People look at this and say cross gen and don't believe that it's optimized for Current Gen first, IMO, are wrong. FH 5 is absolutely created with the current gen first and foremost. Then it's scaled down to the previous gen. It's not a previous gen focused title that was scaled up to the current gen.

Once we see a proper face off in DF comparing current gen consoles to previous gen consoles, it'll be interesting to see what was left out and what was pared back in order to make it work. I'm going to guess the audio on prevous gen is also not on the same level as the current gen console version (another concension to the CPU discrepency). I imagine that a lot of CPU heavy effects will either be pared back or missing entirely. Of course, since many of those things are things that happen "under the hood", they may not be visible to players.

is fh5 crossplay between all xbox consoles ? as you can't have physic separation where there is crossplay

 

[SmooTh]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1456347082801901591

 

[Jay]

And you assume that much of that isn't already being done in FH 5? We already see that the previous gen consoles are limited to 30 FPS (a concession to the lower CPU speed). There's a pretty good chance the physics calculations on the previous gen consoles are also scaled back in either frequency of updates or accuracy of calculations or both.

this is still a cross gen engine.
It will take work to pare it back to run on XO even running at 30 fps on the new engine.
I also never said impossible to make compromises, I said it would take work to do and given that it would be at minimum 2 years from now would that amount of work be worth putting in.

If it was that simple why isn't forza motorsport cross gen also, which is on the new engine, and coming before any next horizon game?
So yes I would be surprised.

At some point people shouldn't be expecting or surprised when games aren't shoehorned on last gen consoles. The effort to do so just isn't worth it in the grand scheme of things.

 

[BRiT]

Also, I can't even play it yet and there's already quite a few custom user made designs/liveries (paintjobs with decals and stuff) for cars. Wow.

I think you can play today if you have the premium game or the premium addon (2 dlcs and carpass and vip and other goodies).

 

[Silent_Buddha]

OK, watching itmeJP and I have never heard him say a game looks so "good" and "insane" so many times. For a while he was saying it like every 30 seconds as he saw something new. At least for him, it's the best looking game he's ever seen.

What's amusing is that he thinks it looks so good that he thinks there's RT in the game (he's playing on PC with a 3090), even though there isn't other than in car viewer thing.

I think you can play today if you have the premium game or the premium addon (2 dlcs and carpass and vip and other goodies).

Not until midnight evidently from what I'm hearing. But the countdown that I saw in Game Pass ended hours and hours ago.

Regards,
SB

 

[BRiT]

Nice relaxing video showing the beauty of the game:

 

[BRiT]

Not until midnight evidently from what I'm hearing. But the countdown that I saw in Game Pass ended hours and hours ago.

Likely keyed off the NZ timezone. Many have taken a trip to New Zealand to play the game early.

 

[techuse]

define "close", because textures, foliage/details/rock density, resolution, are vastly improved. Lighting looks more complex too.
looks more like low VS ultra settings in a PC game.

Series X has better LOD/more objects, higher precision and some better detail mapping for certain textures, but the overall level of fidelity is similar.

 

[Karamazov]

but how can the fidelity be similar with all the enhancements cited ?
if you mean the "look" when driving at high speed, maybe. but still the difference is striking.

 

[orangpelupa]

btw im ginna livestream FH5 (youtube.com/moreuse) with steering wheel on ryzen 4500U in ~30 minutes from now. dunno gonna be a disaster or not lol. my laptop, pls be strong

 

[techuse]

but how can the fidelity be similar with all the enhancements cited ?
if you mean the "look" when driving at high speed, maybe. but still the difference is striking.

More things are being rendered but not necessarily rendered much better. The Series X is rendering more but not much of it is at a fidelity level too far above what the One is doing. Does that better explain what I'm trying to communicate?

An example of increasing the fidelity would be comparing Metro:EE to the base game. I expect we will get a substantial improvement in both fidelity and “detail” in FH6.

 

[orangpelupa]

Lol mistakenly streamed my phone screen instead. Btw turns out there's zero force feedback. Strange.

Gotta Google this. Hopefully someone has found a fix

 

[Silent_Buddha]

More things are being rendered but not necessarily rendered much better. The Series X is rendering more but not much of it is at a fidelity level too far above what the One is doing. Does that better explain what I'm trying to communicate?

An example of increasing the fidelity would be comparing Metro:EE to the base game. I expect we will get a substantial improvement in both fidelity and “detail” in FH6.

Eh? There weren't that many changes in the EE version for consoles. The extent to the changes were basically just fully RT'd lighting including AO and increasing the the framerate to 60 FPS. And while the RT'd lighting gives a more natural look to the lighting it also decreased image fidelity in scenes where characters are talking to each other as faces completely lack the artistic lighting that exists in the base version leading to a situation where the lighting is technically correct, but the effect results in a less appealing presentation in spots compared to the previous gen version of the game.

And while it's an improvement in Metro: EE, for many people it represents less of a visual improvement between the XBO versions and XBS versions than does the difference between the XBO and XBS versions for FH6. You'll never hear anyone publicly exclaiming that Metro: EE on XBS consoles is the best looking game they've ever seen. But I'm already seeing some streamers who usually do not proclaim these things suddenly proclaiming FH5 to be the best looking video game they've ever seen (and these are ones, itmeJP, for example that had previously thought that the Sony PS5 exclusives were the best looking console games they'd ever seen). So good in fact, that many of them erroneously believe that there is hardware RT in the open world portions of the game.

It's a stunning achievement, IMO, regardless of the fact that no RT was used outside of the vehicle showroom in FH5.

Regards,
SB

 

[orangpelupa]

ROFL the fix for the force feedback. Unplug, plug it again

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxdYhniew_vNDtLK6Pvl8SwDc29UvjIWHa

 

[iroboto]

Eh? There weren't that many changes in the EE version for consoles. The extent to the changes were basically just fully RT'd lighting including AO and increasing the the framerate to 60 FPS. And while the RT'd lighting gives a more natural look to the lighting it also decreased image fidelity in scenes where characters are talking to each other as faces completely lack the artistic lighting that exists in the base version leading to a situation where the lighting is technically correct, but the effect results in a less appealing presentation in spots compared to the previous gen version of the game.

And while it's an improvement in Metro: EE, for many people it represents less of a visual improvement between the XBO versions and XBS versions than does the difference between the XBO and XBS versions for FH6. You'll never hear anyone publicly exclaiming that Metro: EE on XBS consoles is the best looking game they've ever seen. But I'm already seeing some streamers who usually do not proclaim these things suddenly proclaiming FH5 to be the best looking video game they've ever seen (and these are ones, itmeJP, for example that had previously thought that the Sony PS5 exclusives were the best looking console games they'd ever seen). So good in fact, that many of them erroneously believe that there is hardware RT in the open world portions of the game.

Arguably that's a ton for a free upgrade. Just to be clear, going back and redoing all of your lighting and redoing your entire lighting engine is not cheap of a labour cost. There is a lot of Q&A required even after you finish making the changes there.

The difference between Metro EE and Forza Horizon comes down to production costs. Budget on FH5 is massive, they flew to Mexico and gathered all their PBR and photogrammetry data for just about everything in the game including audio. That doesn't' include hundreds of lighting artists who help with hand placing probes for their GI solution. And that certainly doesn't include all the superior production budget they've had on Forza Horizon since FH2. Their engine and tools are significantly more advanced in a variety of ways that RT alone cannot affect.

4A studios had to world build so much more from scratch in 2019, with a much smaller budget and team really just working off the smaller budgeted Metro titles. Their next title, which should be RT only, should be a remarkable improvement over their last offering now that they no longer have to spend as much budget on lighting and can push it towards world building and art.

 

[snc]

 

[Silent_Buddha]

One cool thing about FH5, is you can already see the the changes they've made to the ForzaTech engine for the next Fable game. Almost nobody is going to notice the incredibly detailed work they've done to make an incredibly realistic forest floor with all the forest clutter in a racing game. But in an RPG? That's going to be absolutely amazing.

I've heard a lot of people wonder why Playground Games put so much work into adding so much detail to areas of the world that the vast majority of players will likely never see. And only a few of them have connected the dots and came to the realization that much of that work is probably due to changes to the engine in order to support a game that is significantly slower paced than a racing game. Seeing how detailed the world is in FH5 is actually making me really excited for the next Fable game.

Regards,
SB