I'm not too sure about that given the CPU overhead of a second geometry pass. Clustered (Deferred or Forward+) might be better for them.
Purely conjecture, but I wonder if the 720p in the MP beta was partially due to a G-buffer, and now that they have a dynamic solution, they're spilling over into VRAM with wild results. MSAA clearly isn't going to happen for them, unlike Forza Horizon 2, so CF+ may not be as beneficial to them, while CD would allow for easier handling of shadows (IIRC).
And they can still use Forward+ for certain other materials ala Ryse (Buck's dreamy hair and eyes?).
I've been under the assumption that Forward+ is naturally tiled, each tile (or cluster?) you run a compute shader to see which lights will affect that tile or something (cluster?) and run your forward rendering as usual per tile. The second geometry pass is for the depth culling that way light isn't bleeding everywhere, but IIRC there are ways around this (FH2 did something different to avoid this depth pass, however IIRC it came with compromises).
I don't think the G-buffer on a F+ will be that large even at 1080p. If F6 is F+, then it should be hit with similar penalties, though the number of lights and the geometry of the environment is significantly less.
Rationally, and this is imo, if we look at H4 for instance, 343i came together and produced a very graphically demanding xbox 360 game as their first title. One that likely will go down as best looking 360 game, in a new studio, with new people working together etc.
I assume that talent hasn't left 343i, so certain things from a process perspective must have been laid out. They've been working on H5 since H4, and in their internal group meetings they did specifically indicate that their goals were to bring graphics to '11' - one can only assume they will put an equivalent effort in H5 as they did with H4 - perhaps even more effort. As a team coming together this should be a stronger product than H4; equally this is a more ambitious product, H4 was corridor like, while H5 is large open space.
They should have more resources and support than any other first party team on MS (I assume), and possibly involved in some of the hardware choices made by the xbox team. Overall, removing the technical talk out of it, I think they should be benchmarking a much better product than their first attempt.
While it's possible that H6 might be the true looker for 343i this gen, I also don't believe they'll release H5 without being competitive graphically.
edit: here's an interesting thought - perhaps H5 MP was running 720p because they had not yet decided how they wanted to optimize their F+ renderer, so perhaps it is running the depth pass and doing geometry twice that way everything looks right for the MP demo and the E3 demo.
I'm unsure of how much that impact is, but geometry is handled by the vertex shaders? (i think lol, this isn't my forte) I don't know where the VS group sits, I assume the ROPs. edit: lol wrong. Not the ROPS.
The new art style nails it.
