Forza Motorsport General Discussion Thread

[SU_Tempest]

I'll be honest, some good old-fashioned grind isn't a bad thing at this point; it's a return to form. The grindier FH5 gets can be summed up as FOMO more than actual playtime. If you're here once a week and play the mandatory 2-4 events for the content you're not guaranteed to see again next week, you essentially can't miss the new content. Conceptually, it's simultaneously too easy and unfair because it's based on you coming back on time instead of coming back to put in the time. I knew that coming in, so I made the choice to play basically religiously every week since Series 0, but that's not within range of everyone and it's not the fairest system.

If the worst FM gets is "You have to buy DLC to get all the cars" and there is no more timed exclusive content, and the price we pay for that is having to level each car for a few hours to max them out, that, to me, would be a fair trade. But if FM adopts a similar model, it's back to the Shrine of Racing Every Friday for me.

Obligatory disclaimer that I'm speculating. We'll have to see how they drip-feed new content.

 

[ProjectWHaT]

I went through the livestream again and gathered some of the more interesting bits of information that you might have missed along with timestamps from the livestream

• Gameplay footage running on Series X at 4K 60 fps (9:06)
• New cars and tracks will be directly added into Builders Cup, it'll change as new content is continuously added (10:46)
• Car XP is earned by setting new personal best times through corners, gaining roughly 20 - 50 CXP depending on the award (13:45)
• AI Skill is a slider from 1 to 8 (15:44)
• After the demo race, they earned 9,842 Driver XP, 8,818 credits, and 16,081 Car XP (18:19)
• Intercooler and Aspiration Conversion unlocked at Car Level 20, Weight Reduction unlocked at Car Level 21 (18:22)
• Sport Exhaust costs 200 Car Points, Race Exhaust costs 400 Car Points (18:38)
• Sport Oil / Cooling costs 50 Car Points, Race Oil / Cooling costs 100 Car Points (18:51)
• They spent 1250 Car Points upgrading their car from B-546 to A-614 (19:41)
• Free play is available offline, but any progression requires a connection to their servers (22:45)
• Leveling up your car gives you Car Points and car upgrades (25:13)
• Cars have a max level of 50, taking roughly "couple hours, maybe three hours depending how well you drive" to reach the max level (25:41)
• You earn Car XP in multiplayer, free play, Rivals, career mode (26:41)
• Every car starts at level one, part categories (not specific parts) are unlocked at specific levels and all cars will have the same part categories unlocking at the same levels (28:45)
• In Featured Multiplayer, fuel and tire simulation will always be on, unlike Builders Cup where you can adjust it to your preference (39:38)
• Since the AI no longer cheats and uses the same physics as you, they no longer brake check you or push you off track (47:47)
• The Race Engineer in the game won't sound like the Race Engineer in the trailer, that was recorded specifically for the trailer (57:46)
• The Builders Cup career mode is made up of Tours where each Tour is made up of similarly themed Racing Series. On completion of a Tour, you win an exclusive car (59:26)
• When they update the game with new cars and content, they'll "dangle" cool cars at the end of Tours (1:00:00)
• You get a discount for the car manufacturer if you reach level 50 for a car of that manufacturer (1:44:47)
• If you buy a car that you already own, it will be at level 1, the progression will not carry over (1:44:53)
• Featured Multiplayer will have driver ratings, safety rating, scheduled races, and a race weekend structure (1:45:41)

Obligatory disclaimer that I'm speculating. We'll have to see how they drip-feed new content.

According to the livestream, drip-feed will work by adding new Tours to the Builders Cup. So, like you said, you will need to grind those races to complete it, but it seems like there will no longer be a FOMO aspect of it anymore

 

[FordGTGuy]

^OK, Wich Leadbetter...

Actually having it in a game so we can race against is a step forward.

"Built not bought" may be the new "built from the ground up".

I suspect the "grind" will get easier once you build up a surfeit of CP and you won't have to build each car from the ground up ground zero with no points to help. Hopefully the manufacturer bonus will also aid in this. If so, then I'm looking forward to taking new cars through their corresponding series from stock and using those series as tools to improve my vehicle. It's no Fishermans Fisherman's Wharf.

I think most people won't realize just how fast they'll get through some cars when racing online or just playing career.

You might buy and use a car for a career event and end up leveling it most of the way. 2-3 hours seems like a lot at first but that is going to go by pretty quickly when you actually race.

Not to mention, I'm personally into the idea of having a reason to use intermediate upgrades that I have otherwise completely ignored in any other Forza title. Going to be a lot of enjoyment out of, "Hey I just unlocked exhaust and a intake manifold", and then get to see the improvement it made to your car in the next race. Since AI will just match your PI now, you don't have to worry about maintaining a certain PI.

When you are in online lobbies you will know that a person has at least a certain amount of hours behind the wheel of a car to be at a certain PI. People won't be able to just buy a car, drop a bunch of credits on upgrades, and proceed to wreck into everyone else.

Overall the graphics don't look like a massive nextgen leap, I'd say GT7 and AC Competizione and AC with mods look about on the same level. The car models and poor interior shaders are starting to show their age, in some respects GT7 is pushing more impressive techniques like having dynamic in-car reflections where you see the interior and the driver dynamically reflected in glossy parts, sometimes contributing a color bounce when the seat are bright red for example. Also GT7 has reflections in windshield, side windows and back window reflecting the interior. All done with rasterized techniques, RT would make these things automatic, but this gameplay had no RT aside from 30 fps menu scenes.

Unfinished dev build of a game running natively on a Xbox Series X with four months of development to go.

Turn 10 is known to deliver a good looking product.

We all know from past titles that they focus on locking 60 fps and then work on the graphics.

I went through the livestream again and gathered some of the more interesting bits of information that you might have missed along with timestamps from the livestream

• Gameplay footage running on Series X at 4K 60 fps (9:06)
• New cars and tracks will be directly added into Builders Cup, it'll change as new content is continuously added (10:46)
• Car XP is earned by setting new personal best times through corners, gaining roughly 20 - 50 CXP depending on the award (13:45)
• AI Skill is a slider from 1 to 8 (15:44)
• After the demo race, they earned 9,842 Driver XP, 8,818 credits, and 16,081 Car XP (18:19)
• Intercooler and Aspiration Conversion unlocked at Car Level 20, Weight Reduction unlocked at Car Level 21 (18:22)
• Sport Exhaust costs 200 Car Points, Race Exhaust costs 400 Car Points (18:38)
• Sport Oil / Cooling costs 50 Car Points, Race Oil / Cooling costs 100 Car Points (18:51)
• They spent 1250 Car Points upgrading their car from B-546 to A-614 (19:41)
• Free play is available offline, but any progression requires a connection to their servers (22:45)
• Leveling up your car gives you Car Points and car upgrades (25:13)
• Cars have a max level of 50, taking roughly "couple hours, maybe three hours depending how well you drive" to reach the max level (25:41)
• You earn Car XP in multiplayer, free play, Rivals, career mode (26:41)
• Every car starts at level one, part categories (not specific parts) are unlocked at specific levels and all cars will have the same part categories unlocking at the same levels (28:45)
• In Featured Multiplayer, fuel and tire simulation will always be on, unlike Builders Cup where you can adjust it to your preference (39:38)
• Since the AI no longer cheats and uses the same physics as you, they no longer brake check you or push you off track (47:47)
• The Race Engineer in the game won't sound like the Race Engineer in the trailer, that was recorded specifically for the trailer (57:46)
• The Builders Cup career mode is made up of Tours where each Tour is made up of similarly themed Racing Series. On completion of a Tour, you win an exclusive car (59:26)
• When they update the game with new cars and content, they'll "dangle" cool cars at the end of Tours (1:00:00)
• You get a discount for the car manufacturer if you reach level 50 for a car of that manufacturer (1:44:47)
• If you buy a car that you already own, it will be at level 1, the progression will not carry over (1:44:53)
• Featured Multiplayer will have driver ratings, safety rating, scheduled races, and a race weekend structure (1:45:41)

According to the livestream, drip-feed will work by adding new Tours to the Builders Cup. So, like you said, you will need to grind those races to complete it, but it seems like there will no longer be a FOMO aspect of it anymore

Aspiration conversion and intercooler at level 20, means you will get some pretty good upgrades pretty early in the leveling process.

This could be a sport version of the intercooler and turbo at level 20.

 

[McLaren]

My only concerns as echoed by others: I don't mind building up a car to level, but that will probably get tedious in the end-game when you just want to buy, build, & dominate a random car for a couple hours without grinding it to level 50.

Also, if you grind a specific car to level 50 (Corvette C7 Z06 for example), any Corvette C7 Z06 bought after should be automatic level 50, imo. You've already put in the work for that specific model.


I'm not at all against this concept, I just think some issues will arise. I can't remember which FM introduced this concept of building XP with a manufacturer but it's a sign they're looking towards their past games for inspiration.

 

[SimTourist]

Unfinished dev build of a game running natively on a Xbox Series X with four months of development to go.

Turn 10 is known to deliver a good looking product.

We all know from past titles that they focus on locking 60 fps and then work on the graphics.

While true, it's rare that graphics change much in this last stretch of development, it's mostly optimization and polishing, Forza's E3 builds are usually what you'll see in the final game, the only exception is perhaps FM5 where the graphics got a massive downgrade because Xbox One turned out less powerful than they expected. I'm suspecting T10 overshot the specs again and in reality it's not feasible to run raytracing in 4k/60fps on the Series X, GT7 should've been a good indicator for this, by all accounts and benchmarks Series X and PS5 perform almost identically in most games, so if PD wasn't able to get RT reflections running in races it's unlikely T10 can, the performace cost is the same.

 

[FordGTGuy]

While true, it's rare that graphics change much in this last stretch of development, it's mostly optimization and polishing, Forza's E3 builds are usually what you'll see in the final game, the only exception is perhaps FM5 where the graphics got a massive downgrade because Xbox One turned out less powerful than they expected. I'm suspecting T10 overshot the specs again and in reality it's not feasible to run raytracing in 4k/60fps on the Series X, GT7 should've been a good indicator for this, by all accounts and benchmarks Series X and PS5 perform almost identically in most games, so if PD wasn't able to get RT reflections running in races it's unlikely T10 can, the performace cost is the same.

Optimization and polishing is exactly what makes games look better.

Yes, it can change quite a lot; we don't even know how old the build they showed is.

It could be a month old stable build.

Four months is a long time.

 

[ProjectWHaT]

What do you think optimization and polishing means?

What do you think optimization and polishing means? Any change to making the graphics look significantly better would be a significant new feature which would not just constitute "optimization" or "polishing"

 

[Northstar]

Still not completely sold on the game, but I haven't gotten the same feelings of dread I had for FM7 so that seems like a positive sign.

 

[-Fred-]

The bones are there for something good, guess it'll depend of how much meat they want to add to it.

 

[Jump_Ace]

Anyone else just want to know about peripheral support, FFB, VR support? Have I missed that bit of info?



Jerome

 

[McLaren]

Anyone else just want to know about peripheral support, FFB, VR support? Have I missed that bit of info?



Jerome

I think @PJTierney shared that sort of info will probably be out closer to release, based on his expertise in the industry.

 

[SimTourist]

Optimization and polishing is exactly what makes games look better.

Yes, it can change quite a lot; we don't even know how old the build they showed is.

It could be a month old stable build.

Four months is a long time.

Usually optimization involves cutting some things for bring the performance up. They had a demo a year ago that had RT ingame, but now it's absent. Sure the PC Max Settings will have it back, but they claimed that SX and SS will have it too and that the graphics they showed last year had feature parity with the Series X version.

 

[nukleabomb]

Usually optimization involves cutting some things for bring the performance up. They had a demo a year ago that had RT ingame, but now it's absent. Sure the PC Max Settings will have it back, but they claimed that SX and SS will have it too and that the graphics they showed last year had feature parity with the Series X version.

It is a dev build after all. They can turn on/off RT for smoother testing/showcasing. Especially since they showed time of day and weather changed in the middle of a race. That's my guess.

 

[ProjectWHaT]

Anyone else just want to know about peripheral support, FFB, VR support? Have I missed that bit of info?



Jerome

They said that this will be available closer to release along with all of these other topics (1:46:09 in livestream)

They already confirmed there's no VR yet

https://support.forzamotorsport.net/hc/en-us/articles/17466893801619#:~:text=Q%3A%20Will%20Forza%20Motorsport%20support%20VR%3F%C2%A0

 

[FordGTGuy]

What do you think optimization and polishing means? Any change to making the graphics look significantly better would be a significant new feature which would not just constitute "optimization" or "polishing"

Literally no one said "graphics look significantly better"; we are talking about an increase in resolution and turning on ray tracing.

Four months of development is a lot of optimization on the table; I know exactly what optimization and polishing means.

 

[SimTourist]

Another problem is that FM8 doesn't have a headline showcase track this time to show off the graphics, all the Forzas since FM3 had a showcase track to show off new graphical features and were made to impress. This time they showed a normal racetrack, and let's be honest these venues in real life aren't exactly beautiful, they are built for a practical purpose, usually in the middle of nowhere so there's not much you can do to make it look good. I remember Shift 1/2 trying to spice up real tracks with ridiculous trackside decorations but in that case the track stops looking realistic, so that's why you need a fictional track with artistic flair.

 

[Lubeify100]

I'll be honest, some good old-fashioned grind isn't a bad thing at this point; it's a return to form. The grindier FH5 gets can be summed up as FOMO more than actual playtime. If you're here once a week and play the mandatory 2-4 events for the content you're not guaranteed to see again next week, you essentially can't miss the new content. Conceptually, it's simultaneously too easy and unfair because it's based on you coming back on time instead of coming back to put in the time. I knew that coming in, so I made the choice to play basically religiously every week since Series 0, but that's not within range of everyone and it's not the fairest system.

If the worst FM gets is "You have to buy DLC to get all the cars" and there is no more timed exclusive content, and the price we pay for that is having to level each car for a few hours to max them out, that, to me, would be a fair trade. But if FM adopts a similar model, it's back to the Shrine of Racing Every Friday for me.

Obligatory disclaimer that I'm speculating. We'll have to see how they drip-feed new content.

FOMO has been a plague with more recent racing games so its nice to see Forza Motorsport doesn't do that from what's been shown so far

 

[nukleabomb]

Another problem is that FM8 doesn't have a headline showcase track this time to show off the graphics, all the Forzas since FM3 had a showcase track to show off new graphical features and were made to impress. This time they showed a normal racetrack, and let's be honest these venues in real life aren't exactly beautiful, they are built for a practical purpose, usually in the middle of nowhere so there's not much you can do to make it look good. I remember Shift 1/2 trying to spice up real tracks with ridiculous trackside decorations but in that case the track stops looking realistic, so that's why you need a fictional track with artistic flair.

Again, they have already shown off Maple Valley last year for this exact reason. They also have circuit Hakone which they have shown some of which off, back in Jan.

And the fact that a lot of people outright hated the past showcase tracks, that were based in non racetrack locations, probably made them switch to a fictional racetrack rather than a setpiece to race through.

 

[ProjectWHaT]

Literally no one said "graphics look significantly better"; we are talking about an increase in resolution and turning on ray tracing.

Four months of development is a lot of optimization on the table; I know exactly what optimization and polishing means.

There's some contradictions here.

The original post said:

Overall the graphics don't look like a massive nextgen leap, I'd say GT7 and AC Competizione and AC with mods look about on the same level. The car models and poor interior shaders are starting to show their age, in some respects GT7 is pushing more impressive techniques like having dynamic in-car reflections where you see the interior and the driver dynamically reflected in glossy parts, sometimes contributing a color bounce when the seat are bright red for example. Also GT7 has reflections in windshield, side windows and back window reflecting the interior. All done with rasterized techniques, RT would make these things automatic, but this gameplay had no RT aside from 30 fps menu scenes.

If you want to "push more impressive techniques", then that would not constitute optimization and polish. That would be adding new features to the existing rendering pipeline which they would not be able to do in less than or four months (as you would then need time to test and validate afterwards).

"Increasing the resolution", sure, could be optimizations, but "turning on ray tracing" is definitely in the realm of making "graphics look significantly better". Turning on ray tracing isn't a trivial. It takes a long time to implement and optimize it to make it playable. It took Horizon 5 a year (12 months) to add ray tracing in free roam on PC, which still isn't available on console, despite it having ray tracing already in the game for Forzavista at launch

 

[nukleabomb]

There's some contradictions here.

The original post said:

If you want to "push more impressive techniques", then that would not constitute optimization and polish. That would be adding new features to the existing rendering pipeline which they would not be able to do in less than or four months (as you would then need time to test and validate afterwards).

"Increasing the resolution", sure, could be optimizations, but "turning on ray tracing" is definitely in the realm of making "graphics look significantly better". Turning on ray tracing isn't a trivial. It takes a long time to implement and optimize it to make it playable. It took Horizon 5 a year (12 months) to add ray tracing in free roam on PC, which still isn't available on console, despite it having ray tracing already in the game for Forzavista at launch

This is a dev build meant to showcase the career mode as well as time of day and weather changes. They probably turned RT off just to keep it smooth. It is just a toggle after all.

FM will have RTGI on PC which is very advanced. The consoles' amd RT hardware won't be able to run it very well. I'd only expect it to look like FH5's basic reflection RT.

 

[ImaRobot]

Overall the graphics don't look like a massive nextgen leap, I'd say GT7 and AC Competizione and AC with mods look about on the same level.

Oh nice, so its pretty much on par with the market. Sounds good.

 

[ScottPuss20]

The car upgrading system looks like a pain. I don't understand why the developers would do something soo restrictive.

 

[willbsn13]

The car upgrading system looks like a pain. I don't understand why the developers would do something soo restrictive.

Because people have been asking for more meaningful progression in Forza for....how long now?

Whether this the best or "right" way to implement a better sense of progression, I don't know. But I can see why T10 has done it for sure.

 

[nukleabomb]

So, they said that online is required for the career.

"Players who have fully installed Forza Motorsport can design their own single-player racing in Free Play even if they aren't always connected online"

Does this mean that free play will have its own car garage independent of your career mode that can be upgraded without any car points (for the love of God, don't use terms that abbreviate to 'it')? Or is it just rental cars?

 

[SimTourist]

Oh nice, so its pretty much on par with the market. Sounds good.

I mean yes, but the expectations for a next-gen exclusive racer with a protracted dev cycle were higher. But then again Forza 8 has to run on Series S and low end PCs like the Steam Deck. Overall, I'm just dissapointed that there is no massive leap like before.

 

[jergto]

Thought that presentation was pretty underwhelming.
Same old Forza lighting giving it an (IMO) cheap look.
Leveling cars? Awful
If Time of Day and weather are fully dynamic, why not show a proper timelapse? The changes were all choppy.
Lack of bodyroll once again in a Forza game.

Game already looks better than GT7. Heres the kicker, we are getting cars from the present, CURRENT cars. GT7 gave us "new" cars from 2017. That's absolute garbage.

 

[Vitesh Patel]

I didn’t see any option to increase actual race length

I had to roll the video back and freeze frame it to see - was a real, blink and you miss it, moment.

When they were going to select the first event at Kyalami, there was a clock face icon with space for two or three additional clock faces to go.

I read that as one clock face would be the shortest option (which turned out to be 4 laps) and I imagine the longest version would be 12 or so with three clock faces.

The whole, using car points to upgrade your car is good an all, how does that work for race cars? In my mind, race cars shouldn't be modified, as they were created to maximize the ruleset they were originally built for...

 

[gtracedriver1]

I mean yes, but the expectations for a next-gen exclusive racer with a protracted dev cycle were higher. But then again Forza 8 has to run on Series S and low end PCs like the Steam Deck. Overall, I'm just dissapointed that there is no massive leap like before.

I never believe the all in game footage with in-engine trailers. But I did not expect to be so underwhelming. If RT is yet to enabled these gfx will be further degraded.

 

[Jezza819]

"Players who have fully installed Forza Motorsport can design their own single-player racing in Free Play even if they aren't always connected online"

Does this mean that free play will have its own car garage independent of your career mode that can be upgraded without any car points (for the love of God, don't use terms that abbreviate to 'it')? Or is it just rental cars?

Maybe Free Play is what I'm after. Hopefully there will be a deeper dive into that aspect of the game soon.

 

[whannel]

Oh nice, so its pretty much on par with the market. Sounds good.

Their previous marketing trailers have promised a 'generational leap in graphical/natural beauty' I think they worded it, along with having 'photorealistic' in their latest marketing blurb, that'll appear on their box in toy stores.

I think we can only compare it to other games in development at this stage, and since they went big with their shareholders money on advertising at LeMans with Microsoft being at an all time, high rather than re-hire the 10,000 staff they sacked they just keep the hype train going. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Motorsport Games shares are through the floor, and they launched the first look at their game, the official game of Le Mans, this weekend;



To me, in terms of what appears more lifelike I think elements of Le Mans Ultimate just feel more realistic to look at when driving through the trees in particular - it'll be good to see Forza's Le Mans rather than just 5 brand new Xbox consoles celebrating Porsche at Le Mans as part of their marketing.

This video also shows a car on track whose reflections make it feel like it belongs there compared to the ones in the latest Forza 'on-track' which have a look of NFS Unbound wacky styling to them for my eyes. I don't think it's new footage without the watermark so probably just rFactor2, which will be cool to have another sim on Xbox soon;



Ultimately Le Mans will launch 2 months after Forza, in December, for PC anyway so maybe they won't get it to look as good on console but I don't think they've boasted about photorealism or mentioned ray tracing. If I was their evil bogeyman boss right now I'd be showing the latest Forza gameplay to Alonso and anyone else they can get a few million more from to really polish it for release, explaining how they look every bit as good as a game that'll release before theirs to (well sponsored) (critical) acclaim.

For ray tracing on Xbox I think I can only compare it to GTA V which I never played any version of before it offered it and think it looks tremendous, if Forza pull it off too it'll be a winner. But if like 343 and Bethesda, Turn 10 have lost 25% of staff (?) and Playground are too busy with Fable and dealing with two entire studios who left as they clearly didn't like working for Microsoft and aren't available to polish this game up, I think it's critics on popular streaming platforms will be a lot less forgiving than me - I'd have been happy with FH5 on racetracks, it's just their marketing, mass sacking while profiteering and tax evasion I don't take to.