Forza Motorsport [XBSX|S, PC, XGP]

To be fair, the last 'Xbox Research and Design' survey I responded to for Turn10/Motorsport was in 2021, which was around the time they were starting to do some closed testing, and their first mention of spinning up development on FM8 was 2019, I believe. So 4-ish years at most. I'd speculate they had the framework of their new physics model running on some FM7-derived thing in order to have it be playable and testable, and the graphics and front-end UI/UX came later.

Maybe they just bit off more than they could chew with RT. They decided to make the presence of in-game RT be their marketing win over Gran Turismo, and somewhere along the way they had to seriously pump the brakes. It would explain why their materials look so inconsistent if everything was originally authored for a different rendering algorithm (or mixture thereof.) It reminds me of trying to import materials from one renderer to another -- even though they're all PBR materials and unbiased PT renderers, nothing looks right. You get all sorts of compounding effects that make contrast look wrong, as if there's a bunch of gamma/linear color space mismatches.
 
To be fair, the last 'Xbox Research and Design' survey I responded to for Turn10/Motorsport was in 2021, which was around the time they were starting to do some closed testing, and their first mention of spinning up development on FM8 was 2019, I believe. So 4-ish years at most. I'd speculate they had the framework of their new physics model running on some FM7-derived thing in order to have it be playable and testable, and the graphics and front-end UI/UX came later.

Maybe they just bit off more than they could chew with RT. They decided to make the presence of in-game RT be their marketing win over Gran Turismo, and somewhere along the way they had to seriously pump the brakes. It would explain why their materials look so inconsistent if everything was originally authored for a different rendering algorithm (or mixture thereof.) It reminds me of trying to import materials from one renderer to another -- even though they're all PBR materials and unbiased PT renderers, nothing looks right. You get all sorts of compounding effects that make contrast look wrong, as if there's a bunch of gamma/linear color space mismatches.

The downgrade from the trailer is Ubisoft levels of deception. The PC port is somehow even worse. They only conclusion here is an overall failure to execute.
 
The downgrade from the trailer is Ubisoft levels of deception. The PC port is somehow even worse. They only conclusion here is an overall failure to execute.

Yeah -- no argument there. I have no history with this franchise up until FM7 and definitely not a kool-aid drinker when it comes to FM as a franchise or Turn10 as a studio -- it's more a question of why/how it got to the way it is. Maybe Turn10 is simply a second-rate studio leaning on a lot of marketing bluster. Looking at their talk-the-talk and walk-the-walk maybe that's all there is to it.

Has anyone tested this with steering wheel?

Does it feel like forza horizon? Or like gran turismo?

My wheel is currently out of commission, but from what I've gathered from reports is that it's poor in default settings, better with a lot of tweaking. Frankly if any racing game doesn't have their wheel settings dialed-in straight out of the box then I think that's all that needs to be said about where your expectations should lie. No doubt there'll be some kind of wheel update a year from now that tries to sort it out, as was the case with FM7. I haven't touched Gran Turismo since like 1998, so I really can't compare there. With how the game seems to currently implement manual w/ clutch I'm not holding my breath.
 
The lag reminds me of telecine judder in panning scenes on movies when pulldown isn't working right.

This reminded me of FM7 having an issue (possibly never resolved) with 144hz refresh rates. I always got in the habit of knocking my monitor down to 120hz for FM7 in order to avoid weird judder (primarily noticeable when making long smooth turns because the skybox and horizon are panning in front of you). I'm not getting enough performance in FM8 to actually test if it's doing the same thing. Does FM7 or FM8 support VRR or run at anything other than vsynced 30/60/120 for XB1X/XSS/XSX, or are non-30/60 and uncapped rates purely a PC-thing?
 
The PC version at max settings doesn't have as much foliage as the Xbox Series X on quality mode

47.jpg
Maybe the PC version is an earlier build and the trees haven’t been planted yet.
 
The game deserves the 85 it received, but they should have polished it to 93 given the time and resources they put into it. Kinda like Halo Infinite and Starfield. All 85s that should have been 90+.
 
Wonder why the rush thou ? It’s not like MSFT didn’t have any games this year. There has been so many game realases this year they could easily just push it to Q1 next year and polish it.
 
Wonder why the rush thou ? It’s not like MSFT didn’t have any games this year. There has been so many game realases this year they could easily just push it to Q1 next year and polish it.
It was likely already delayed. The problem with pushing is that it starts to crush into other release windows.

The next forza horizon is coming too. Could arrive next year.
 
The game deserves the 85 it received, but they should have polished it to 93 given the time and resources they put into it. Kinda like Halo Infinite and Starfield. All 85s that should have been 90+.
MS could have given the game another 3 years, with the current climate in the video game review media they will never get above a 90.
 
MS could have given the game another 3 years, with the current climate in the video game review media they will never get above a 90.
Perhaps a bit too cynical.
But given how close Starfield is to FM. I think they could have waited until Christmas just to polish up a bit more. An extra month or so would have still worked within Xbox’s guideline of a big AAA title every once per quarter.

Considering there are no announcements for Q1 and Q2 yet, I am curious as to why they didn’t delay a bit more. Perhaps they are waiting for VGA for their next announcement, I dunno.
 
Perhaps a bit too cynical.
But given how close Starfield is to FM. I think they could have waited until Christmas just to polish up a bit more. An extra month or so would have still worked within Xbox’s guideline of a big AAA title every once per quarter.

Considering there are no announcements for Q1 and Q2 yet, I am curious as to why they didn’t delay a bit more. Perhaps they are waiting for VGA for their next announcement, I dunno.
i mean if this was 2022 any decision about delay had to be very hard for MSFT they had literally nothing. But this year, i dont know. But as you said we dont know roadmap maybe 2024 is full packed, plus its still a very much the game as a service.
 
Microsoft have found themselves in kind of a dire situation of their own making in terms of reputation, which has knock-on effects in terms of how their releases get perceived. People will be more 'honest' and critical of them than they probably otherwise would be. And that's just the good faith commenters, there's also no end of platform warriors eager to rip apart anything they do(though this is not as common in actual games media, just social media).

I agree that delaying FM just a bit longer wouldn't have made much difference. Fixing a small handful of issues wouldn't have stopped people finding other issues to emphasize, reasonably or not.
 
Perhaps a bit too cynical.
But given how close Starfield is to FM. I think they could have waited until Christmas just to polish up a bit more. An extra month or so would have still worked within Xbox’s guideline of a big AAA title every once per quarter.

Considering there are no announcements for Q1 and Q2 yet, I am curious as to why they didn’t delay a bit more. Perhaps they are waiting for VGA for their next announcement, I dunno.

i mean if this was 2022 any decision about delay had to be very hard for MSFT they had literally nothing. But this year, i dont know. But as you said we dont know roadmap maybe 2024 is full packed, plus its still a very much the game as a service.

The problem is the game was already delayed and MS is trying to get away from the image that they have no games. Pushing Forza into 2024 would have allowed the narrative that MS is having issues. Redfall and then the reviews for starfield plus dumping another forza delay over it ?

As for MS not getting reviewed fairly. I mean the media admits it. Metro in their review of Hi-Fi rush said they couldn't give it a higher score because of MS's lack of game releases. Dan over at IGN said that MS would pay for purchasing Bethesda and then gave Starfield a 7.5 far lower than the 9-10s that the other IGN's gave the game.

So yea I don't see MS getting fair reviews for a long time esp after the ABK purchase.
 
The problem is the game was already delayed and MS is trying to get away from the image that they have no games. Pushing Forza into 2024 would have allowed the narrative that MS is having issues. Redfall and then the reviews for starfield plus dumping another forza delay over it ?

As for MS not getting reviewed fairly. I mean the media admits it. Metro in their review of Hi-Fi rush said they couldn't give it a higher score because of MS's lack of game releases. Dan over at IGN said that MS would pay for purchasing Bethesda and then gave Starfield a 7.5 far lower than the 9-10s that the other IGN's gave the game.

So yea I don't see MS getting fair reviews for a long time esp after the ABK purchase.

Right but Sony is realaseing only one first party game this year, Spiderman 2 and nobody cares about that. What is more important than # of games msft can push per year is quality of the games (specially after redfail). Not every game will be a subject of miracle comeback like the cyberpunk.
I dont know, maybe buying big studios/publishers is good for msft because i have a feeling that they not fully understanding the market they are competing in and they need to acquire this knowledge "hey guys you are doing it wrong".

I am not sure about fair reviews, there was a talk about Sony having nailed the formula that produces 9s10s. I think the reviewers could be more susceptible to it.
At the same time first party games from Sony are always more polished and more cinematic, maybe not necessarily a better games but they sell a better overall experience IMO. Like an Iphone (this premium product feeling).
Perhaps msft needs to learn how to improve on this formula.
 
Not every game will be a subject of miracle comeback like the cyberpunk.
There is nothing 'miraculous' about Cyperpunk's so-called comeback. They started from a pretty poor starting state at release and simply spent a ton of time and effort fixing what they could. It's still arguably not that great a game and still not what it was originally heralded to be, either.

But more importantly - people *wanted* to give CDPR some benefit of the doubt. People *wanted* to turn around and praise CDPR again. They were beloved. Microsoft does not really have that kind of beloved reputation anymore and will get far less patience and gratitude for improvements that come later on. Heck, Forza Motorsport isn't in half as bad a state as CP2077 was at launch. Yet it's still being treated as if it was by many. MS gets no benefit of the doubt for anything anymore, rightly or wrongly. Much harder hole to dig out of.
 
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