I mean if there are no clouds, the skybox/clouds can’t be lowres.
In Forza Horizon 5 the skybox is so fantastic, it looks like there are real clouds in the sky. But in FM23 they just look horribly low res if you compare the 2 skyboxes/clouds.
Rate the quality of the skybox/clouds on a scale of 1-5
I mean if the skybox had a higher resolution it would probably look good, but it doesn’t have that. I mean if you look at the clouds themselves, if they were higher res it would look nice.
Too busy looking at the ais next maneuver than the clouds lol
You can even see compression artifacts on some clouds. It’s awfully bad - just like the grass textures…
“bUiLt fRoM tHe gRoUnD uP” but the ground and the sky looks bad. 
Anything but rain
I never look up!
Now you will, because now you have it in the back of your head.
I have actually never looked consciously at the clouds, I have noticed it is not photo realistic like in FM7 or FH5, but it’s also not so ugly that I would care. I usually look at track side props and surface textures, but I think the skybox should still be improved for Forzatographers.
The reason the look like that is because the clouds are actually 3D and are completely separate from the skybox. FH5 doesn’t have 3D clouds.
You’re right.
But they still look like garbage.
That would be my guess: that FM2023 is using some sort of voxel-based system for the clouds. Maybe it more easily allows for changes in lighting due to every track needing to support a full 24-hr day/night cycle now. Hand-painted clouds are usually going to look better when compared to something that’s procedurally generated, but hand-painted maps also don’t offer the same flexibility as something that can be generated using numerous variables, on the fly.
The FM7 clouds are photo sharp, and excellently animated. But they are still a static element. This works with the also older, static rendering used for FM7 tracks.
The FM clouds do appear to be a dynamic volumetric effect. In variable weather, and during the “Partly Cloudy” and “Looming Clouds” when the sun is at a low angle, I think the visual effect can sometimes show some awesome mood and color.
But yea, it’s low resolution.
Lol, I just like the Noon/Clear weather because it’s the best place for me to see how accurate my metalflake or colorshift car paint jobs are in realtime and where I need to improve them.
I’ve never looked at the clouds, should probably add that option in the poll.
I assume they’re low res for performance reasons then?
Bit disappointing there’s no option for higher quality on PC.
I wondered. I can understand saving performance on the console, but on PC surely higher resolution is possible?
But in every PC game I’ve played that has volumetric atmospherics, there was a performance impact. But that was a few years ago. I’d imagine better is possible these days.
Surely user-selectable career race length and qualifying in Free Play should also be possible, but here we are…
Well, I refer to PC performance in general.
On consoles, particularly…
Lots of talk about newer tech engines like Unreal 5, and over and over, seems that performance is way down on games using this. Lots of newer games appear to use frame generation or upsampling to hit performance targets.
Ray tracing in general, again. The big new thing, but with a performance hit, and often seems with minor or subtle results. And if the ray tracing requires frame generation or upsampling to keep performance up… Then here are the same blurry visuals, etc that comes with that tech.
Personally, I like the volumetrics, the new tech lighting, etc. Even with the blurry images, the results often (to me) feel like an advancement over older rendering of lighting and environments.
I’ve been Ok with frame generation and upsampling/blurring as side effects. These are kind of like the modern day version of running with some new tech in the early 2000s, like DX9 or whatever. And suffering back in those days was with lower FPS and/or lower resolution.
The thing is the Tensor Cores on the Nvidia gpu’s become more powerful with every new generation, also the Raytracing is getting computed much more efficient with each new generation.
So not only the regular raw performance is getting increased with every new generation, no the new fancy tech itself is getting more efficient with each new generation too.
In a few years Raytracing will be the norm, you won’t find any games anymore that not rely on it to make it look better. And the gpu’s will handle all of this very easily.
