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Digital Foundry: Forza Motorsport Hands-On: Xbox Series X/Series S First Impressions

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?



We've talked to Turn 10 about the technological revamp behind Forza Motorsport and now it's time to share some first impressions of the preview code, running on both Xbox Series X and Series S consoles. Further optimisations will be in the final code, but for now, here's how the game looks and runs on both machines along with the various performance profiles available in each version - plus a much closer look at how on-track ray tracing actually works.
 
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adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
TL-DR

- Video based on preview builds that people were give access to a few weeks back
- Dynamic lighting and 3D foliage compared to baked lighting and 2D billboard foliage in Forza 7
- Dynamic ToD causes more natural results but can look more 'washed out'.

- Track side detail is notably enhanced over previous games, but some weird inconsistencies seen like lower quality grass at the side of the road
- Some bugs also seen during preview where crowd can turn into triangles and tree LoD are messed up

- Headlights can cast shadows in night races (saw this concern come up in other threads)
- Motion blur quality and shutter speed is also enhanced over previous games

- Series X has 3 modes. Performance, Performance RT and Visuals

- Performance: 60 w/o RT, DRS but resolves at or near native 4K in all testing. Uses TAA instead of MSAA like older games
- Can cause typical TAA issues like ghosting and fences don't play nice. But produces a more temporally stable image in motion.

- Performance RT: RT Reflection and RTAO. 60 FPS w/ DRS.
- Dynamic reflections include self reflection and other car reflections
- DRS scales to 4K but typically hangs at 1440p in game play and can drop to 1080p in cut-scenes. Reconstructed to 4K.
- Locked to 60 FPS without any issues.

- Visuals: Native 4K at 30 FPS w/ additional RT. RTAO, RT reflections which also reflect non-car elements (track side things)
- Near-scenery reflected with RT, far scenery reflected via cube-maps. RT can appear 'too bright' and doesn't reflect rough material
- The quality of RT isn't as high during gameplay as the reveal trailer, but the same quality is seen in the real-time cinematic before the race.

- Series S:
- Performance and Visuals mode. Neither offer RT during game play (only in Garage)
- Performance: 1080p, Visuals: 1440p both using DRS
- TAA can make the lower resolution(s) look blurrier than previous games.
- DF did not get a lot of footage from Series S version before preview period ended.
 
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Can't wait to play this on PC and see what it looks like

Side note I am not a fan of all that haze on some maps, looks like we are racing next to a wildfire or something
 

Nonehxc

Member
I think I'm gonna go with second gear(Performance RT) for my usual gameplay...

But thanks to the marvels of the S95C and it's low latency Game Motion, I'm gonna crank it up to Visuals and enjoy like-60fps smoothness with all the drool at least twice a day 🤤
 
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Darsxx82

Member
The difference between Mapple Valey footage F7 vs FM is generational. Even more so if you add that in FM you have dynamic TOD and variable weather and you are implementing RT in both reflections and RTAO.



On the other hand, the use of TAA gives me mixed feelings. It will be a matter of seeing the final result but the ultra-sharpness of the Forza (also Horizon) was always a sign of identity.



PS. I hope that those errors or bugs in the replays (which at first seem improved) have been solved..... They are LOL.😂
 

acm2000

Member
as someone who usually plays cockpit of bonnet cam im guessing the perf rt mode will look the best, cant wait to jump in and out of races near instantly between missions in starfield

fucking love quick resume 🤤
 
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Overall this seems a bit disappointing. This is all they could do with the additional horsepower? Wanted to grab his on PC because good racing games are rare these days and will probably still do.
But with all that dev time this is the best they could do? Not sure what happened to management at Turn10. They used to be so consistent.
 
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Elysium44

Banned
My god it looks so much better than forza 7

To say it's six years later and next gen only it looks nothing special, GT7 on my PS4 looks better than this. Maybe the preview build is worse looking than the final one, I hope so.

Everything looks soft and washed out, and various bugs, glitched wheels, barriers not touching the ground. They are leaving it till the last minute to fix this stuff are they?

aRyHWMR.jpg


j1FT2m3.jpg
 

Mr Moose

Member
To say it's six years later and next gen only it looks nothing special, GT7 on my PS4 looks better than this. Maybe the preview build is worse looking than the final one, I hope so.

Everything looks soft and washed out, and various bugs, glitched wheels, barriers not touching the ground. They are leaving it till the last minute to fix this stuff are they?

aRyHWMR.jpg


j1FT2m3.jpg
The wheels should be easily fixed, but damn... They could've updated their textures.
aRyHWMR.gif
 

64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
To say it's six years later and next gen only it looks nothing special, GT7 on my PS4 looks better than this. Maybe the preview build is worse looking than the final one, I hope so.

Everything looks soft and washed out, and various bugs, glitched wheels, barriers not touching the ground. They are leaving it till the last minute to fix this stuff are they?

aRyHWMR.jpg
Maybe it's a bit greyer looking, but you also ignored the improved shadows and lighting on the people, & the superior looking foliage. And of course, it's preview footage. The game looks a hell of a lot more natural & realistic than FM7.

Color ain't everything, if you want the massive colorful game Horizon is right there.
 
Looks amazing. Given the preview footage we've already seen, I'm not surprised that digital foundry is speaking very highly of it and calling it a remarkable feat of engineering to deliver this level of graphics on a console. But I'm sure it won't take long for some fanboys to find a low LOD or graphic glitch and harp on the game ignoring all of the actual statements from Digital Foundry.
 

DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
To say it's six years later and next gen only it looks nothing special, GT7 on my PS4 looks better than this. Maybe the preview build is worse looking than the final one, I hope so.

Everything looks soft and washed out, and various bugs, glitched wheels, barriers not touching the ground. They are leaving it till the last minute to fix this stuff are they?

aRyHWMR.jpg


j1FT2m3.jpg

GT7 is awesome but that's polyphony so hats off to them.

This comparer to turn 10s last game is leagues ahead. And the ontrack rautracing is amazing.
 
There are still many things to polish between now and the launch, the replays with that audience, those trees and those planes need to improve a lot, having worse textures in the grass on the edge of the track than Forza 7 does not make sense, those pixelated tires neither, that TAA leaving a trail in the image, etc... the 1080p-1440p resolution in the RT performance mode is reasonable, but I expected a native 4K for the mode without RT but neither, the lower graphics compared to last year's demo is very evident but the full PC version remains to be seen.
 
Massive improvement vs FM7 in terms of lighting quality and shader quality, track/ environmental details. In my opinion it still does not touch GT7 in the lighting, car shader, model detail. On PC with everything turned up to the max is where it will really shine.
Yeah i agree, when it comes to car models, lighting,shaders etc, PD are steps ahead of the competition

 

S0ULZB0URNE

Member
To say it's six years later and next gen only it looks nothing special, GT7 on my PS4 looks better than this. Maybe the preview build is worse looking than the final one, I hope so.

Everything looks soft and washed out, and various bugs, glitched wheels, barriers not touching the ground. They are leaving it till the last minute to fix this stuff are they?

aRyHWMR.jpg


j1FT2m3.jpg
Came to say this.

At least the performance is good and for a racing game...
Performance>visuals
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
No RT in a first party series s version is not a good look. Especially when the latest leaks show the vast majority of xbox owners are s owners. Not going to put this one on the devs seeing as how the XSX version drops to 1440p with ray tracing.

Im pleased to see RT at 1440p 60 fps on consoles. Much better choice to lower res than remove ray tracing from gameplay altogether a la GT7. Of course compromises had to be made, but as long as the PC version retains the higher quality reflections and GI, im ok with 1440p 60 fps in a racing game with realtime GI.
 

Senua

Member
What are the chances of the PC version getting proper RT with rough materials and not just mirror RT? Like GT7s replay RT
 
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