Currently in Forza Motorsport there are two forms of ambient occlusion, one is “baked AO” and the other but much more expensive is Ray Traced Ambient Occlusion “RTAO”, however these Ambient Occlusion methods are not very effective and do not effectively darken the environment.
- Reviewing the game files and according to several PC players, there is a very effective hidden option called ground-truth ambient occlusion “GTAO”.
- This method was previously mentioned in a post called “Forza Motorsport PC Specs”, as well as the dynamic resolution that had been mentioned, these two functions did not appear in the video options on PC.
Going further into the forum topic, GTAO is greatly lacking in the game, it makes a bigger difference and shades many areas of the game that lack lighting better compared to even RTAO.
According to my tests it affects very little in performance, about 1-2% in performance, I had to do 5 benchmarks to notice the difference in performance, it would really be worth having this function by default and replacing the current baked AO.
Activating it on Xbox Series S / X in all graphic modes would not be a problem since it would affect GPU utilization very little and the dynamic resolution that these consoles have is very effective in those cases to avoid fps losses.
RT ON
GTAO ON
However, I came across a glitch that occurs when I use GTAO, after testing it several times, I noticed that the car when it was under a shadow became extremely dark on the track and in the garage, I had to manually deactivate GTAO and after a restart activate it again.
- As a suggestion to this I would recommend that the developers look for a solution to this strange glitch and the anomalies it could cause. It would be great if they added this great method that is greatly lacking in the game, if they solve the shading problem that GTAO can have at some point, it could be without problems on PC and Xbox Series X / S in all its graphic modes.
Extra: In addition to just using GTAO as a form of AO, it can be combined with RTAO and gives quite significant results combined both together, it achieves quite accurate and realistic car interiors and better shaded shadows and makes the track less “flat”. Using this GTAO and RTAO function combined on PC and on Xbox Series X Performance RT and Quality Mode would make a huge difference and would significantly improve the graphics.
In a few words, enabling GTAO on all platforms would be an effective and cheap way to improve the graphics and realism of this game.
I would really appreciate it if the developers read this, thanks 