The discourse around resolution and framerate continues to make headlines as developers optimise their games as they see fit. Fulton and the team at Playground are firmly of the belief the next-generation is about light rather than resolution, but he did confirm Forza Horizon 2 on Xbox One would display at 1080p and, like the original Forza Horizon, a locked 30 frames-per-second.
Dropped or torn frames have traditionally been a common bugbear with many console games that target approximately 30 frames-per-second. However, with the original Forza Horizon Playground found it was able to avert these issues entirely. The team adopted a zero-tolerance approach to frame drops (regardless of what level of rendering was required on screen the frame rate was never permitted to dip) and as such the game was rigidly locked at 30 frames-per-second. Most importantly, the locked frame rate (as opposed to a fluctuating one) resulted in a smooth and consistent racing experience. Playground has approached Horizon 2 similarly.
I think what we did on Horizon was demonstrate that, and this is really important, a locked frame rate thats absolutely solid and never drops is the most important thing for our game, explains Fulton. 30 [frames-per-second] actually enables us to realise that experience.
I think I remember thats always a hot-button topic, until a game comes out and people go, Oh, this actually really works. But 1080p was an absolute must for us; its the benchmark for next-gen.
So one of the big technical challenges that we had to face was making sure that we could stream in a world that is next-gen beautiful, but fast enough to keep up with the fastest car. Thats a huge tech challenge but its one that our guys just eat up.
