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

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
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.
 
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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. :LOL:
 
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. :LOL:
Did you NZ hack?
 
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.
 
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
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.
 
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.

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
 
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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.

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.
 
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)
 
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.

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

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.
 
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