First impressions from 2 runs through the demo: (X1X on 65” 4K SUHD HDR screen)
+++ car handling is absolutely great! Cars are way less floaty than in FH3 and much more fun to drive
++ the couple of songs I heard on pulse and bass arena are great! Already shazamed a new favorite
+ very lush and green environment
+++ first class lighting and reflections on cars
+/- I’m not immediately as convinced on the world/foliage graphics as I was in the FH3 demo 2 years ago. While the colour of the cars themselves looks absolutely amazing, the colour palette of the world sometimes in some areas looks a little bit washed? I dunno, might depend on area/season.
— on performance setting (the 60 FPS one) the graphical fidelity of the world gets a significant hit though, looks actually a bit ugly. While the 60 FPS was rock solid, I don’t want to take THAT kind of hit in graphics.
—- I already noticed this in the PG streams but the character models and skin/clothing tones look really low quality. You don’t even see any shading or shadow effect on the characters, they all look as if they lit up with a bright light from every direction. I can’t remember in FH3 I was so bummed about this as I was now. Biggest bummer for me for sure in this demo, I completely hate how silly the characters look.
- Some stutter in the opening scenes until you are done with the long intro race. That was in both performance and graphics modes. Did not happen at all during a race though but I will try tomorrow to move the install file from my external HD to the SSD.
-- crashing into an object feels really meh. This reminds me a lot of how dull a crash in Gran Turismo is. But I guess that’s a side effect of not having the floaty FH3 cars so I’m sure I’ll get used to it. Still, each time I crash into something it feels a bit awkward though. For crashing physics I always enjoyed Need for Speed Payback (not the police slow mo crashes, but I mean for the player), one of the few things that game nailed.
Edit - what might possibly be the cause of me not being as enthusiastic about the graphics (albeit even on X1X) as I hoped I would be might be caused by the Battlefield V beta. I played that game the past week quite a lot and that Rotterdam map is probably the most beautiful game I have seen on my X1X until today, that was absolutely jaw dropping. So maybe I’m just a bit too used to it and took that as my new standard.
Tomorrow I will do some comparing between FH4 and FH3, I assume my mind will change a bit then.