@Speedster911 The X1 and PS4 are pretty much comparable in terms of hardware and performance. The thing that is helping the PS4 along the most, is that GDDR5; which is a far better ram to use for running games. That is why PC graphics cards utilise it. The CPU in both consoles is exactly the same, with the PS4 having a slightly stronger GPU on the die.
The fact that the PS4 is hitting 1080p more often than the X1 on multiplats, is really just a moot point. In fact, it is even causing some frame rate issues on the PS4 side of things. Just take a look at COD Ghosts and Advanced warfare. Both have significant framedrops in single player, and have graphical details reduced in multiplayer for stable 60FPS.
The X1 running at a lower resolution is having far less significant frame drops, and so the single player is more playable on the console. I do believe the details in multiplayer are also reduced as well.
I own Ghosts on the X1 and the PC (I have friends who only use pc's for gaming, and first person shooter games are better on PC), and even though it runs a ton better on a strong PC. It will still drop frames every now and then (nothing as severe as the console versions though), but the details are not changed between single player and multiplayer like on the console versions.
Going back to the resolution of the consoles though, it doesn't matter to me if a game is at 720p or 1080p. Sure the picture is often clearer at 1080p, but I would rather have a stable and solid framerate. I would even take reduced graphics as well, because they just don't ultimately matter to me. That probably has to do with my playing Chase HQ on an Amstrad CPC when I was younger.
For some reason though, everyone has jumped onto this "everything has to be 1080P@60fps" band wagon. Both the X1 and the PS4 are getting slated when it doesn't hit that. And if that is all people care about, none of the consoles currently on the market are for them. They need to go to PC and have done with it. The consoles are what they are, and nothing will change that now. We have to bite the bullet and wait till the next generation comes around.
As for Forza Horizon 2, it cant really be compared to Forza Motorsport 5. Even in part. Yes they share the same underpinnings, and much of the same 3d models for the cars. But that is where the similarities end, as one is open world running at 30fps and the other is a closed circuit running at 60fps. They are different types of racers.
However, nothing would please me more to see the X1 handling higher resolutions and dense realistic particle effects. You would think all of that would be possible by now, without compromising framerates or running into bottlenecks.
There is no way T10 and playground games can make an openworld or circuit based game that has everything you want, and they wouldn't be able to do that solely on PC either. Even with how strong PC hardware is, it is not that powerful. Not in the price ranges most can afford anyway.
To run all the things you want to see, you would need a pc running on the x99 chipset, with an 8 core i7, DDR4 ram, and either quad geforce titan blacks, or quad GTX980's at the very least. Just take a look at the formula one simulators that F1 teams use, they are often using a minimum of 5 computers just to run the things. Even the most powerful pc would struggle. Not only that, but T10 would need to make the game truly multi-threaded. The majority of games on PC are still only using 2 cores, with only some using 4 or more cpu cores (such as battlefield). A game dev has to make a game for their biggest market, and in a lot of cases, that is on consoles. And on PC, they have to take into account the people who don't have high end gaming systems. Often catering to people still running on Core 2 duos and athlon X2's and dual core Phenoms, that still have a graphics card from the Geforce 400 range, and the AMD equivalent.
Also, bottleneck in the sense you used it here. It is the wrong word to use. The X1 has been designed specifically to run with the hardware it has, and there will likely not be a bottleneck. It is a term thrown around far too often.
What a bottleneck is, is when one particular hardware component hinders the performance of another hardware component. In most cases, this is a lowend or old CPU stopping a decent/newer/higher end GPU from running at its best. This wont happen on the PS4 and X1, because the CPU is specifically designed to work in conjunction with the GPU, It is built for its task in the consoles. Both of them are equally as weak as one another (the CPU and GPU that is). What we are facing on the PS4 and X1 is not a hardware bottleneck, just weak hardware overall.
Take it this way, I have project cars on my system. I can run it at 140fps+ at 1080P on my system with all details maxed out.... when I am on a track with no AI, and on clear weather settings at midday. The moment I stick on a full grid of AI, with time transition between day and night, and with weather turned on. I can see my FPS plummet to around 70fps, with dips into the 60's. And that is running on a single GTX780 (A £350 graphics card), and an FX-4300 overclocked from 3.8GHz to 4.6GHz; which is cooled by an AIO water cooler unit from Corsair. The graphics card alone cost more than my entire system did originally, which was £330 to build it back in 2013.
My graphics card is vastly more powerful than the GPU in the PS4 and X1. And even though my CPU is only a quad core, it is a desktop based CPU, not a portable based tablet CPU. It runs hotter, and it runs faster per core. Now take into account the i5 haswell, and haswell refresh. They bury my cpu in terms of performance. they even best the 8 core AMD FX-8s and FX-9's in terms of per core performance in a vast amount of instances. Its not even funny how far ahead Intel is in the CPU performance race at this particular moment in time.
So taking into account that project cars is by far the prettiest racing game ever made to date (it really is when seeing it in person on a decent PC), even it doesn't have the realistic particle effects that you want Forza to have. Though they are better.
So really, there is just no viable way to have your cake and to eat it too. Not at this moment in time anyway.
P.S sorry for the wall of text, just so much stuff to touch upon. Before posting, there was triple the content included that I have posted up. And in far greater detail.
