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

I'm not comparing Metro visuals to Forza, just using the differences between the rerelease to illustrate my view. How about FH 2.



The fidelity of the rendering is fundamentally different here as opposed to FH5.

 

Best starting experience in a Forza Horizon game ever. They really took the critiques of FH4 to heart and delivered a more directed focus.

Now I need to find all fast travel and experience boards before I get distracted by actual game activities.

 

Did you NZ hack?

 

No. That would have been yesterday. Some played it around 10am yesterday. I picked up the Premium Addon for $45 which includes the first 2 Expansions and the Car Pass and VIP. That or the premium edition let's you play on November 5th instead of the 9th.

 

indeed!
my suspicion is that FH5 is also a "training ground" for them for the new fable, and some stuff they've made for FH5 is actually compatible with the new fable. So they can plop a block of map from FH5 to the new fable. Thus reducing workload.

 

While interesting, it's not terribly relevant to this generation for a variety of reasons.

• The hardware gulf in terms of capability and resources was massive going from X360 to XBO, while the differences between XBO and XBS consoles are relatively modest.
• Starting shortly after the release of Forza Motorsport 6, ForzaTech has been greatly rearchitected with one of it's primary goals being scalability across a wide range of hardware.
  • So, while X360 and XBO not only had completely different ForzaTech engines, they also had different in game content that was far more constrained by the 512 MB of RAM versus the 8 GB of RAM in the XBO.
  • Due to work started in 2015/2016 to ensure that ForzaTech would scale across a large range of hardware, meant that all future versions of Forza games would be able to scale across a wide range of hardware while using the same engine.
  • Adapting assets meant for a 16 GB console to work on a 8 GB console is massively easier than trying to adapt assets created for a 8 GB console to work on a 512 MB console.
• The GPU used in XBO and XBS consoles are far more similar than those used in X360 and XBO.
• The storage subsystem is certainly much faster but that will mostly affect the quality of assets that are streamed in. As XBO will necessarily use lower quality assets anyway, that helps alleviate this burden and even for a title that potentially leverages the IO speed fullly, you can still make that work on systems with an HDD. Likewise for the CPU differences.

So, unlike the X360 to XBO transition, the transitions from XBO to XBS consoles is not only far less divergent but the base engine was architected back in 2015/2016 to facilitate this exact situation of optimizing for the latest hardware while being able to scale down to lesser hardware. Basically laying the groundwork for the transition from XBO to the next generation of hardare in addition to being able to support scaling from the XBO-X down to the XBO.

So, we ended up with the situation of X360 to XBO basically featuring 2 different games using 2 different versions of ForzaTech that had similar but differing assets. Basically a scalable engine wasn't a reality at the time for ForzaTech.

FH5 OTOH is basically one game on one engine due to the work that started over 5 years ago and which has continually been refined combined with the fact that XBO is so relatively similar to XBS consoles when compared to the differences between X360 and XBO.

FH6 will also be built on a scalable version of ForzaTech. Will FH6 look better? Certainly. Will it be impossible for it to run on XBO? Nope. Will MS put in the effort to ensure that FH6 would run well on XBO? Probably not as the buying population on XBO will likely to be too small by then to warrant the effort. However, don't be at all surprised if FH6 runs on XBO era PC hardare even if Playground Games don't officially support going that low when it releases. Both FH4 and FH5 run on lower spec hardware than Playground Games recommends/supports.

Regards,
SB

 

I wouldn't go so far as copying blocks of terrain between the two. But you can certainly already see that their asset creation and terrain creation workflow is goign to be similar to, if not the same as, what will be used for the next Fable game. So, some assets (like the 5 ground layers) will likely be shared but I expect the geography will be different enough that they can't just cut out chunks of FH5 geography to use.

Regards,
SB

 

Haven't really played much racing games since Project Gotham on the original Xbox but for the first time since those days a game is drawing me in just because of how realistic and pretty the visuals are.

I'm very curious how exactly they handle their GI, haven't heard much more than that it uses surfels.

 

finally played with a gamepad
turns out it does plays better with a gamepad. Contrary to "simulator" games like Dirt Rally, GT Sport.

the triggers of XS gamepad also have vibrator so i can feel when the car wheels starts to loose traction, etc.

btw my XSS on performance mode have HORRIBLE POP IN. So I'm forced to use quality mode at 30fps.

Fortunately my tv's motion interpolation works quite well. So it looks like 60fps but feels like a laggy 30fps game from bygone era. There's almost no visual artifacts (contrary to when i used it on yakuza like a dragon, it was full of visual artifacts)

 

I really just want this game but without noticeable lod model pop in and shadow pop in.
Seeing that constantly is 10x worse than playing in 30fps.

 

yeah the pop in in 60fps mode is ridiculous. stuff just pops in a few meters away.

if only they provides more graphic options for xbox consoles... I will gladly reduce the MSAA, disable the destruction fx, or something else to get 1080p with less pop in.

 

It makes me wonder if theres 2 different builds eg if you look at the digital foundry videos pop in is not so bad, in fact both versions look very close but if you look here in this video theres a big difference, on series X its pretty bad (when the guy is driving the vegetation pops very noticable and this is on youtube which hides problems, on a big TV with better quality its gonna be a lot more noticeable, I assume they had to sacrifice this to maintain 60fps)

 

Even on PC at highest settings the Pop in annoys me, need that RTX5090 asap

 

Maybe the popins are bugs?

So some people got popins and so ne other didn't.

As currently then game is kinds of buggy. Placeholders can be seen, controller issues, etc.

 

seeing rtx2070 perf xsx shouldn't have problem with 40fps mode with quality settings, wish this mode for 120hz tv will be more popular in future (or even uncapped mode for vrr tv)

 

Turns out fh5 recommends the steering wheel to be set to 900 degrees

https://support.forzamotorsport.net/hc/en-us/articles/4409761195923-FH5-Wheel-Setup-and-Tuning

Gotta try it. And test whether it does make the game feels good with wheel. I was using 1080 degrees

 

turns out the heavy popins in 60fps in XSS is location-dependent or there's a (dynamic?) limit to amounts of object with max lod on a screen?. I'm doing the drive to the mountain thingy and the pop ins are less severe

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxjvoaibeUhzme8OtnNe1za6cubGQXyjKV

and here with heavy pop ins, same race track/mission. different location.

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxWvMsPN93OJCvA2hVot8Hh_NVOeSgciGK

 

FH5 looks realitier

 

Google Street view have overly heavy hdr going on