Microsoft and Turn 10 have unveiled a whole lot of details about the next Forza Motorsport game, coming to Xbox Series X|S and PC in Spring 2023. Here’s a gorgeous reveal trailer showcasing the game engine, and a gameplay demo that dives into everything that’s new and improved.
And here’s the narrated walkthrough of gameplay and engine innovations.
Following on from the 2020 announcement, Turn 10 promise a huge number of technical improvements for the game on the new generation of consoles. The rendering engine has been updated to handle dynamic time of day and weather, there’s photogrammetry to capture real textures and bring them into the game world, and real time ray tracing that will also run while you’re driving around – this, in contrast to Gran Turismo 7 and Forza Horizon 5 which only have ray tracing in photo modes.
Some of this ties in with the game simulation as well. The fidelity in the physics engine is 48x more detailed than in Forza Motorsport 7, referring to the frequency with which the simulation is run. The changing time of day and weather effects will affect ambient air temperatures, track surface temps and the amount of grip you have – as will the track rubbering in through use – and this will be available on all circuits, as opposed to the select circuits in Gran Turismo 7.
In addition to Maple Valley Raceway, which has been completely rebuilt for the new series, there’s also brand new renditions of Spa-Francorchamps and Laguna Seca, the South African circuit Kyalami, and a new original track Hakone Circuit, set in Japan.
Answering long-running community requests, you’ll now have tyre and fuel management, multiple tyre compounds to choose from, and there’s in-depth car building (If I heard them right). There’s also a deep damage model, which will track crashes down to individual scratches. It does largely look like cosmetic damage with scrapes and bumps, compared to real world racing where a large crash would see panels of bodywork come off (or explode if it’s made of carbon fibre), wheels, suspension and wing damage, and the like. It’s still a bit gamey in that regard.
The Forza series had previously alternated between sim-oriented Forza Motorsport games from Turn 10 and open world arcade Forza Horizon games by Playground Games each year, but the series took a year off in 2019. This allowed Turn 10 the time to gear up for the next generation. Forza Motorsport was the first game in the series to take advantage of 4K resolutions, launching just ahead of the Xbox One X with its eyes firmly set on that enhanced console.
In our Forza Motorsport 7 review, Dom wrote:
Forza Motorsport 7 continues the series’ march towards motoring perfection, and graphically there is simply nothing close to touching it. What’s even more remarkable is that it looks so good before we see the boost the Xbox One X will bring to both the visuals and the performance. There are some downsides to that fidelity, and on a standard Xbox One the load times suck a chunk of the fun from the experience, while the game’s internal economy also looks likely to cause problems further down the line. Having said that, this is still a masterpiece of racing software, and undoubtedly it’s set to become what its rivals in the genre will be judged against.
Time to set a new benchmark, eh?
