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Forza Horizon 5 hands-on: a next-gen spectacle for Xbox Series consoles - Eurogamer.net
Oct 23, 2021 4 mins, 2 secs
Oli Welsh has already shared his first impressions but for Digital Foundry, the preview was a chance to get up close and personal with the technology, to get some idea of how the new Xbox consoles are put through their paces and crucially, to see how the game may scale across systems.

Scalability is key to Forza Horizon 5 for several reasons.

First of all, it's a Horizon game supports more platforms than it ever has before.

In addition to PC (with scalability challenges of its own) and two quite different Xbox Series consoles, there's Xbox One as well, not to mention Xbox One X.

The preview code we had only worked on the new machines, so quite how Playground intends to run the game on Xbox One remains to be seen, but perhaps there are some clues when looking at Series code, principally because both quality and performance modes are included.

Intriguingly, whether you're running on Series X or its junior counterpart, both of them run at the same resolution: 3840x2160 or 1920x1080 respectively, albeit with potential hints of dynamic resolution scaling in play on the performance mode (truth is, it's quite hard to tell).

The DF team convene for a full 4K Forza Horizon 5 special, based on the recent one hour press preview code.

With the code we have available, Xbox Series X running in quality mode is clearly the top tier experience we were able to sample.

The question of how this phenomenal experience scales down the chain of Series consoles and graphics modes perhaps gives us some insight into how the game will adapt to less powerful kit.

That begins with performance mode on Series X, which doesn't compromise on resolution (bar potential dynamic resolution scaling) but is clearly a different experience.

First of all, it's got to be said that the 30fps implementation in quality mode is remarkable: motion blur shutter speed is judged perfectly, frame-rate never wavers, while the game still seems highly responsive.

However, perhaps the most noticeable compromise is that the nigh-on flawless shift in level of detail transitions in the quality mode is less robust in performance mode.

This would not be too surprising bearing in mind that Forza titles on PC have offered dynamic settings adjustment (to the point where we got Forza Horizon 3 running flat-out at 4K30 on a GTX 970 using the dynamic/high setting).

Both quality and performance modes are still included, with the same differences between them: effectively, with the 1080p60 mode, you're trading a pristine 1080p30 experience for a more 'game-like' image with strategic nips and tucks on detail levels, shading quality and again, most noticeably, in motion consistency owing to visible pop-in during the densest scenes.

In all modes across both Series consoles, frame-rates were perfect in all the content we had available to test.

As announced already by Playground Games, RT is only available in the Forza Vista area of the game and only with the game set to the quality mode to boot.

We'd like to see this in-game for the quality mode, but the existing reflections still look impressive enough to the point where many believed that they were produced via ray tracing.

The Forza Horizon 5 press preview delivered much while leaving the vast majority of the game locked away from view - leaving us hungry for more.

Nothing we've seen so far suggests that the Xbox Series versions will be anything other than excellent, while the quality and performance modes each shine in their own ways.

Typically, it's hard to recommend anything other than 60fps or better, but the sense is that Playground Games has finely honed the 30fps quality mode to the point where it's actually very different to choose between the two.

We're going to be fascinated to see which way players go with this one - when we put together the video, we actually needed to have a short discussion to decide which mode to use for b-roll gameplay shots (we opted for the quality mode).

But beyond that, did we learn much more about how Xbox One is going to get anywhere near the level delivered by the Series consoles?

"While Forza Horizon 5 was built to showcase the abilities of X|S consoles, in order to provide best-in-class experiences on a wide range of PCs as well as Xbox One, we've invested in a number of scalable technologies, such as dynamic resolution scaling (DRS), variable draw distances, and a robust levels of detail (LOD) system," he said.

We've got some idea now of how those systems work thanks to the graphics and performance mode differences seen in the Xbox Series code we had to play - and it'll be fascinating to see how much further these systems scale.

More about Forza Horizon 5.

Feature | Forza Horizon 5 is a playable tourist board ad - in a good way

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