Thanks for all the input. I got mine earlier and It’s great so far. Got the 1TB Seagate external SSD, plugged in the front USB port of the X(just like the picture on the Box it came in). It’s quite small and thin, a square that is maybe the size of a coaster that you would put under a beer glass(I definitely will not put anything on it though lol). 4K mode in FH4.
Just my quick impressions without timing anything, the initial loading from the title screen and the other loading screens like when you go from Fortune Island to Britain, they feel significantly shorter to me, like half the time easily. Switching cars while freeroaming is quick, maybe 2 seconds. Fast travel is quicker too, about 3-4 seconds it seems. When I bring up the car selection it is instant now, previously it would sometimes hang for a few seconds, presumably loading in the background. Cool cool
I noticed more improvements in FM7 than FH4, but thats likely because I never found FH4 slow on HDD. My SSD loads FM7 tracks much faster which is a great improvement.
In the absence of any other comparative times, I copied the game to the internal drive and re-ran the times.
My disk is approx 30% full and the game + addons were copied in one neat run minimising fragmentation.
Logged in to profile in main menu and clicking on tile to launch => Press A to start SSD 42s HDD 56s
Press A to start => Menu active SSD 35s HDD 101s
Exit menu (second press of ‘b’) with trigger held => car start to move SSD 10s HDD 12s
Press button with 3 lines, select a different car, from pressing ‘deliver car’ with trigger held => car starts moving SSD 8s HDD 10s
Fast travel from the last button press and hold trigger => car starts moving 22s
The one thing I really noticed was how slow the menus were and how long it took to open the garage.
Garage is usually instant so I take it for-granted, whereas this must have taken 10s + to open then scrolling was horrible with incorrect car images in places until the graphics caught up.
Main speed differences, game launch, fast travel + menus
I now have my SSD, so have done some comparative timings against my video recording from before the change.
The SSD is a Seagate BarraCuda 500GB, which I chose partly because of its high IOPS spec, as well as being cheap. It’s in an Icy Box USB 3.0 enclosure. The comparison is with the Xbox One X’s stock internal 1TB HDD:
FH4 launch to Press A message appearing:
HDD 61 secs
SSD 41 secs
Pressing A button to house appearing:
HDD 97 secs
SSD 24 secs
Exit menu with throttle depressed to car starting to move:
HDD 6 secs
SSD 6 secs
(there is a fixed duration animation involved in this)
Fast travel to same point on map with throttle depressed to car starting to move:
HDD 12 secs
SSD 9 secs
(there is a fixed duration animation involved in this)
Bring up the My Cars screen:
HDD 10 secs
SSD 1 sec
Maybe there was an element of the game being fragmented on the HDD due to updates having been applied after installation, vs it being freshly copied across to the SSD, though decto above had a similar terrible time to bring up My Cars after a fresh move back to the internal HDD.
I suspect the initial launch time to the Press A button message appearing might have an element of a fixed duration animation/video section. It would be really nice if we could have the option to turn all the animations off, as they become a huge chunk of the waiting time when you’re using an SSD.
I FULLY AGREE, they are one of the many detractors from my ability to maintain focused and even to race effectively in Team Adventure. The way it throws the camera into the start of the race, I feel contributes to the utter chaos that is often “braking zone 1”.
The way the game treats “Horizon life” as “always happening”, it’s frustrating that it demands I spend as much time watching my car park and pull away from parking as it takes to navigate into the menus to choose a different factory color. Even that takes too long, not including the “design save”. The only options I regularly use in garage menu are Upgrades, Tuning, Mastery, and Paints. Forzathon menu would probably be #5.
After playing the game for a few hours yesterday with it installed on the USB SSD on Xbox One X, my conclusion is that an SSD should really be seen as the minimum spec for playing FH4 on the Xbox.
If the game didn’t have all the animations / transitions, then just maybe the slowness of the HDD wouldn’t be so infuriating, but all the waiting was driving me nuts. Changing to an SSD has made the game feel like it’s running more as it “should” do. Yes, the animations / transitions still add an annoying delay, but when it’s no longer on top of the HDD delays, they become more acceptable.
One specific example where I noticed another huge difference was when exiting the Goliath S2 rivals event. With the HDD, this could take an eternity, like 1 minute +. With the SSD, the wait seemed more like a “normal” amount of time compared to the rest of the game.
I’d say for anyone who is expecting to play the game a lot, it’s well worth the cost to add a USB SSD. In GBP, the USB enclosure I got was £8, and I got a 500GB SSD for £70, but you can get a 120GB SSD for £20 if wanting to spend the absolute minimum just for FH4. £5 delivery, so would be about £33 for the cheapest setup to get FH4 running from an SSD, I’d say that’s not bad value relative to what the console and game cost. If anyone wants a specific “known good” enclosure, this is the one I got that produced the timings I posted above: