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Digital Foundry: Inside The New Forza Motorsport: Turn 10's Radical Technology Revamp

BennyBlanco

aka IMurRIVAL69
Control is the only game that made raytraced reflections worthwhile due to its location. Metro Exodus, Dying Light 2, and Cyberpunk are the only ones to utilize RT Lighting properly. Everything by every else has been hogwash.

It’s being used as a marketing bullet point now. “Oooh look out we got ray tracing”, and it’s just really basic reflections.

Cyberpunk overdrive and Metro are the only games that really blew my mind and my cooch with raytracing.
 

Chukhopops

Member
The gaming side has gotten to the point that I don't even want to visit it anymore. We have a racing game with multiple options for RT in game and a performance option for none at all and there's still complaining about it even having RT. Something no one thought would be possible in real time on consoles.

Will Smith No GIF
RT is useless but somehow it’ll be bad that XSS doesn’t have it.

Pondering Anthony Anderson GIF by BET
 
The only thing that will work is if the new consoles are modular and allow cheaper upgrades.

I can already sense a Pro console post from HeisenbergFX4 HeisenbergFX4 incoming but investing in a new console for the same brand, same generation, just to get marginal improvements is a big ask for a lot of people. Pro and One X barely made a blip in the sales. Having modular components will make it a lot easier and affordable for people*.

* but then you're basically turning them into PCs.
James Franco Flirt GIF
 

Senua

Gold Member
Very inconsistent visually IMO. Sometimes when the lighting is just right it looks beautiful, very Forza Horizon 5 esque in the afternoon orange light. Other times it falls very flat and doesn't look like a generational leap over 7. I know it's all real time now though instead of baking so it's to be expected somewhat. The reason GT7 doesn't look 10x better than Sport is because of the same reason. For gameplay reasons dynamism is absolutely the way forward, but you do wonder how incredible both GT7 and FM could have looked if they carried on with the baked lighting!

Car shaders though I still think are way behind Gran Turismo 7 and even Sport, sorry T10!
 

Killer8

Member
"At 30fps, with high resolution, we have ray-tracing mirror reflections"

The 'high resolution' reflections shown in the b-roll when she says that...

sImVKWm.png


The lady also says they cap at 60fps on Series X and there is no cap on PC - despite news breaking weeks ago that PC multiplayer will be capped to make it fairer on console players.




Digital Foundry either don't know about this or made no attempt to clarify it. Which is it?


Visually speaking, the game is one of the most mediocre looking high-tech / next-gen games that i've seen, and is honestly one of the worst examples of asterisk marketing* yet.

It's 60fps*, except if you want to take full advantage of the RT - where it's 30fps - and doesn't go higher in PC online.
It's ray-traced* on track, yet the ray-tracing either looks like shit (reflections) or is barely noticeable (RTAO):

forzaqjiim.png


So much of the detail in this game is just lost behind the amount of mist they're layering onto the tracks.

RT is meant to make objects feel more grounded within the game world, yet the game has one of the worst feelings of that in recent memory. The cars look like they've been pasted in, with lighting that often looks totally divorced from the rest of the scene:

screenshot2023-09-1212vdp4.png


It goes to show that just having these RT features is no easy ticket to making a game look good.
 

ungalo

Member
It feels to me like they just wanted to make a game that runs at 60 with RT on Series X, more than to make the most beautiful game as possible at 60.

It's also good to have little details but it's better to make a great first impression visually.
 
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Roxkis_ii

Member
Forza horizon 5 performs really well on my laptop, so I'll likely give this a shot too. I just wish Xbox games had demos for people without gamepass.
 

Big Baller

Al Pachinko, Konami President
A lot of track cars and performance cars will have flat bottoms from the scuff plates for wind diffusion.

A Honda Civic Si, however, does not.

The Type-R does, I know that most (modern) sport cars are flat underneath but look at the detail in the screenshot lol.
 
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DeepEnigma

Gold Member
The Type-R does, I know that most modern sport cars are flat underneath but look at the detail in the screenshot lol.
True, true. I think time is wasted trying to model the underneath, however if you make cars easily flippable, then it will rear it's ugly head.
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
Control is the only game that made raytraced reflections worthwhile due to its location. Metro Exodus, Dying Light 2, and Cyberpunk are the only ones to utilize RT Lighting properly. Everything by everyone else has been hogwash.

I'd argue it's worthwhile in Spider-Man + Miles Morales. You swing past a lot of shiny buildings in those games, proper reflections that update correctly definitely makes that look a lot better than static cubemaps.
 
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Zuzu

Member
I think racing games will need to adopt path-tracing (i.e. ray-tracing for everything - GI, reflections, shadows) in order to take the next big leap in graphical fidelity. It looks like they’re hitting a bit of a limit with rasterisation technology.
 
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Turk1993

GAFs #1 source for car graphic comparisons
"At 30fps, with high resolution, we have ray-tracing mirror reflections"

The 'high resolution' reflections shown in the b-roll when she says that...

sImVKWm.png
The RT reflections in that shot is very high quality, its the fall back cube maps for object in the distance are lower quality.
Visually speaking, the game is one of the most mediocre looking high-tech / next-gen games that i've seen, and is honestly one of the worst examples of asterisk marketing* yet.
A game thats running at 60fps with advanced physics with dynamic tod/weather with highly detailed environments and 24 car grid with in game RT is mediocre?
jennifer-lawrence-sure-yeah-right-i66rqdwbkwrt88vk.gif


It's 60fps*, except if you want to take full advantage of the RT - where it's 30fps - and doesn't go higher in PC online.
It's ray-traced* on track, yet the ray-tracing either looks like shit (reflections) or is barely noticeable (RTAO):

forzaqjiim.png

So much of the detail in this game is just lost behind the amount of mist they're layering onto the tracks.
Its literally a weather setting, there are tons of video's without the mist where you can clearly see the detail on the tracks.
F5xSUuwXcAE00aL

RT is meant to make objects feel more grounded within the game world, yet the game has one of the worst feelings of that in recent memory. The cars look like they've been pasted in, with lighting that often looks totally divorced from the rest of the scene:

screenshot2023-09-1212vdp4.png


It goes to show that just having these RT features is no easy ticket to making a game look good.
Its a zoomed in photomode shot again from John which he loves do for some weird reasons.
 

Turk1993

GAFs #1 source for car graphic comparisons
And we haven't seen the latest pc version yet which they confirmed will look even better as they can crank the setting alot higher.
 

Stuart360

Member
The 2 major jumps for me in terms of graphics is the lighting, which looks much closer to the kind of lighting you get in the Gran Turismo games (and about time too to be honest), and the fact that all the trees and foliage seem to be fully 3D models.
Hopefully this is the end of ugly 2D trees in racing games.
 
The 2 major jumps for me in terms of graphics is the lighting, which looks much closer to the kind of lighting you get in the Gran Turismo games (and about time too to be honest), and the fact that all the trees and foliage seem to be fully 3D models.
Hopefully this is the end of ugly 2D trees in racing games.
They are all fully 3D, the tracks are a big improvement over anything we've seen in a track racer.
 
Great break down of the tech, the weather system seems pretty cool especially if scattered thunderstorms can pop up because of the humidity and temperature.
 
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RT is pretty worthless in a racing game. These developers need to understand that if they are not going to use it for RT Global Illumination then they shouldn't even bother using it at all.

I feel like T10 should've prioritized RTGI, as a proper lighting model adds a ton of visual value to making the image look realistic. But I get why they went with RT reflections, because reflections sell ray-tracing a lot more.
 

Nemesisuuu

Member
They are all fully 3D, the tracks are a big improvement over anything we've seen in a track racer.
Hopefully it's consistent on all tracks, GT7 comes to mind with that one Dragon Trail layout with horrendous, copy paste, rotating tree sprites like in first DOOM or something.

Quick search video of what I'm talking about:



From 0:50, just take a look at the left side, I was honestly shocked when I saw that on a PS5 game. You are turning into the first corner, trees are turning with you. Whole track is full of those sprite trees, can't be unseen.

All in all - regarding trees in new Forza - it's huge upgrade over those abysmal cut out cardboard trees in FM7, Maple Valley over there is oh boy so ugly.
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
Hopefully it's consistent on all tracks, GT7 comes to mind with that one Dragon Trail layout with horrendous, copy paste, rotating tree sprites like in first DOOM or something.

Quick search video of what I'm talking about:



From 0:50, just take a look at the left side, I was honestly shocked when I saw that on a PS5 game. You are turning into the first corner, trees are turning with you. Whole track is full of those sprite trees, can't be unseen.

All in all - regarding trees in new Forza - it's huge upgrade over those abysmal cut out cardboard trees in FM7, Maple Valley over there is oh boy so ugly.

Then you have Driveclub last gen that they patched on custom firmware to run at a locked 60fps with full 3D, where trees and such sway and move and amazing dynamic ToD/weather and cloud/lighting effects where the rain and snow/slush would build up and melt back to dry in real time. Too bad it's been delisted from licensing so we will never see an official patch. Game was ahead of its time :/

 

Nemesisuuu

Member
Then you have Driveclub last gen that they patched on custom firmware to run at a locked 60fps with full 3D, where trees and such sway and move and amazing dynamic ToD/weather and cloud/lighting effects where the rain and snow/slush would build up and melt back to dry in real time. Too bad it's been delisted from licensing so we will never see an official patch. Game was ahead of its time :/


Driveclub and Project Gotham Racing, Evolution and Bizarre. 💔☔
 

Killer8

Member
The RT reflections in that shot is very high quality, its the fall back cube maps for object in the distance are lower quality.

Oh, so another asterisk to add to the list then?

It's ray-traced*, but not the whole car and has to fall back on noticeably ugly cube maps.

A game thats running at 60fps with advanced physics with dynamic tod/weather with highly detailed environments and 24 car grid with in game RT is mediocre?
jennifer-lawrence-sure-yeah-right-i66rqdwbkwrt88vk.gif

Again, to hammer the point home - a list of visual features does not make a game's looks. You might as well go a step further and say the physics have 48x the detail and it wouldn't make an iota of difference because the final image put on screen is underwhelming.

Its literally a weather setting, there are tons of video's without the mist where you can clearly see the detail on the tracks.

You're aware that the image on the right is from Forza 7... right?

Its a zoomed in photomode shot again from John which he loves do for some weird reasons.

It was replay / pre-race footage which you'll see presented in the same way in-game.
 
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pasterpl

Member
The lady also says they cap at 60fps on Series X and there is no cap on PC - despite news breaking weeks ago that PC multiplayer will be capped to make it fairer on console players.

Digital Foundry either don't know about this or made no attempt to clarify it. Which is it?

it is not that complicated. Online multiplayer is limited to 60fps (assuming you are in the lobby with the console players - not sure if this applies to pc only online race). It is unlocked fps in single player on PC. At least that’s my understanding.
 

Turk1993

GAFs #1 source for car graphic comparisons
Oh, so another asterisk to add to the list then?

It's ray-traced*, but not the whole car and has to fall back on noticeably ugly cube maps.
Its on the whole car what are you on about. Literally every game with RT reflections has some sort of fallback reflections or lower quality lod outside maybe CP2077 on pc with path tracing. Its running on fucking low end RDNA 2.0 console hardware, fuck did you expect full res infinty distanced path traced reflections.

Again, to hammer the point home - a list of visual features does not make a game's looks. You might as well go a step further and say the physics have 48x the detail and it wouldn't make an iota of difference because the final image put on screen is underwhelming.
It looks great and a step up from every similar game released before it.

You're aware that the image on the right is from Forza 7... right?
yes and? The one on the left is FM2023.
It was replay / pre-race footage which you'll see presented in the same way in-game.
NO its not, its literally John panning the zoomed camera in photomode with hiddin ui.

At 11:50 & 13:15, you can clearly see everything in frame is frozen in time and the fov is zoomed in.
 
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Dural

Member
Anyone know if the Prague tracks are in the game?. I'll be kind of gutted if it isnt. Love that track.

Yeah, I was hoping they'd add all the fantasy tracks they've created over the years. They always looked so much better than the standard race tracks that you see in every racing game.
 

Zathalus

Member
Yeah, let's also compare GT4 with Forza Motorsport or FM2 with GT7 while you're at it.
You generally compare the latest version of each franchise with each other. Forza and GT comparisons have been coming out since Forza first came out. The two racing games are the flagship simcade franchises from rival gaming companies. It would be odd (and likely the first time) to not compare them.

Once again you are trying to stir up faux outrage over literally nothing.
 

Stuart360

Member
Yeah, I was hoping they'd add all the fantasy tracks they've created over the years. They always looked so much better than the standard race tracks that you see in every racing game.
Yeah even though i love racing games, Forza, and other PC racers, i have to say that real race tracks can be quite boring, and a lot of them look very similar to each other.
I dont mind them though as long as there is also a fair share of fantasy tracks, or city tracks like Prague etc.
 
Granted I have not watched a lot of the so far presented footage but I am not very impressed. I was planning to pick this up on PC because I don't own a PS5 for GT. Hopefully people in the racing graphics face-off thread will prove me wrong.
Also the car list seems very boring so far?
 

Elysium44

Banned
They are always going to be compared regardless. There's nothing to be scared about I'm sure GT7 can hold its own.

Agreed, it isn't an unfair comparison because GT 7 is the current leader in this genre, so it makes sense to compare them. It should be an 'easy win' for Forza, and the onus is all on them to prove it. GT 7 doesn't have to prove anything and it's a cross-gen game too. In spite of that, its graphics hold up very well indeed. Its single player is poor though (imo) so this is perhaps Forza's best chance to shine.
 

Bogroll

Likes moldy games
Agreed, it isn't an unfair comparison because GT 7 is the current leader in this genre, so it makes sense to compare them. It should be an 'easy win' for Forza, and the onus is all on them to prove it. GT 7 doesn't have to prove anything and it's a cross-gen game too. In spite of that, its graphics hold up very well indeed. Its single player is poor though (imo) so this is perhaps Forza's best chance to shine.
I don't think it should be a easy win . All this next gen this and next gen that about these console is a load of bollocks imo. We are not going to see massive leaps like 16 bit - 32 bit etc anymore. Racing games looked good last gen and it's just like we have had a new cpu/gpu in our consoles so everything just looks a bit better here and there. Sure there is always room for improvements but it will be gradual.
 

twilo99

Member
Expecting good RT performance from this acient AMD platform is just silly... the fact that they've got anything going at all is really surprising to me
 

Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
You generally compare the latest version of each franchise with each other. Forza and GT comparisons have been coming out since Forza first came out. The two racing games are the flagship simcade franchises from rival gaming companies. It would be odd (and likely the first time) to not compare them.

Once again you are trying to stir up faux outrage over literally nothing.
So, as of this point and until now, Digital Foundry should have been doing 1:1 comparisons between GT7 (2022) and FM7 (2017), as those are the latest entries in their respective franchises?

Doesn't that sound absurd - even though both games are from the same generation?

Here, we're talking about comparing two games from two different generations.
 

Zathalus

Member
So, as of this point and until now, Digital Foundry should have been doing 1:1 comparisons between GT7 (2022) and FM7 (2017), as those are the latest entries in their respective franchises?

Doesn't that sound absurd - even though both games are from the same generation?

Here, we're talking about comparing two games from two different generations.
They did compare Sport and FM7 and found GT Sport to be the better looking game. Since GT7 on PS4 is just slightly better then Sport what would be the point? Just to confirm it's still better looking?

Now that both franchises have current gen versions of the game out it would make sense to compare them again. I'm sure the next Forza and next GT will be compared as well. It's been going on for almost two decades already, getting upset over it now seems odd.
 
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