I don't understand the people that say comparing a open world vs closed circuit racer is not fair. If its not fair its not fair for Forza Horizon, because it need to render everything on screen where you can go. Closed circuit racers can cut corners like draw distance and assets in the distance, they can even fake everything behind the trees that it doesn't need to render. But even with all this Forza Horizon still looks better and does almost all the things better than any current gen racing game. Racing game is a racing game, no need to seperate them for graphics comparison. And for the people that say lets put the best looking pics in here and compare, i agree and disagree with that for one reason. There are games that look constantly good where there are games that look good in some conditions. It is good to give you a idea how the game looks in its best but what if the game looks like that only 5% of the time.
Here you go (all gameplay shots from PS4 pro)
That's more like it! Good honest shots from the game that people can compare without bias. I did my best to get similar shots from Forza 7 on my PC but some of the tracks in the shots aren't in both. It's a bit easier for me since I can just smash Printscreen and I'm all done. I'm run everything at max on a 40" monitor. All the following shots are direct from gameplay with the HUD turned off completely. I left the braking line and motion blur on for the first shot by mistake. I have no dog in this fight, I enjoy both franchises and think both have their strengths and weaknesses. I decided not to post and FH3 or FH4 shots as a comparison to GTS this time as people seem to be calling foul at the moment. I'll save those for another post.
I'd give Forza the win on textures, Dubai is a good example as is Prague. Environment texture clarity is very high especially track surfaces and highlighted areas. Car paint color is an issue that Forza has always had, it's very washed out in the sun compared to GT which always looks more like actual paint than in Forza. Forza has a tendency to get really dark on the side facing away from the sun in any scenario despite the fact things behind the car should be illuminating it from bounce lighting. Forza Horizon 3 and 4 don't have this issue. There was a video I watched once explaining the process both use, very similar but in different orders. In some light the Forza 7 paint does look better but it's pretty rare. These shots show another Forza issue, someone forgot to color the third brake light red in FM7. There are way more cars, but there is a price to pay for farming out modeling.
This shows more of the same really. Very high detail on the track and items in direct view. The far background looks off because there is a heat ripple effect going on this track which looks great in motion but messes up the shot a bit. This is probably a top-three track as far as visuals go in Forza 7. The car suffers a bit again, despite being parked next to a light grey wall with the sun beating on it, there is no bounce lighting up the rear of the car. This A45 is actually a metallic black color. The trees on the left in the first shot are all cardboard but the texture is lit in a way that it ends up being very hard to tell. On this stretch you're usually clipping along. In the second shot You can look down into the part of the city you raced though earlier, there are helicopters, planes landing, that oil tanker actually moves through the bay and it's good that your eyes are pulled over there because the hill to the left has an N64 ground texture on it.
Interior shots at night are very different between the two. The headlights in FM7 cast shadows off other cars as well as trackside objects. The interior textures are very good. Strangely, the AC dials don't light up in FM7, but the steering wheel buttons don't light up in GTS. The night lighting gets extremely dark in FM7 with no other cars around especially in tracks out in the middle of nowhere. I don't particularly care for the hand placement in either game, it's like a really nervous driver's ed student driving like a complete hard-on.
The last shot was annoying. In FM7 the driver can't freelook, just swing left and right about 45 degrees. I could have gone into Forzavista to get a shot, but that's not gameplay. I think the textures and materials are more detailed in FM7, and the awful bloom in GTS off shiny metals really is overdone otherwise the lighting is much better. Both look really good but once again in Forza, anything not lit up by the sun may as well be painted black
