Forza Horizon 4 realistic rendering

Forza Horizon Legacy Horizon FH4 Discussion
1

Hello,

I propose this “Forza Horizon 4 realistic rendering” discussion topic because it is more global than just a DLC side effect. I just hope PG/T10 will not bury it by merging,moving or locking it. For some, it is an important topic that should not be drowned in some other thread.

Trolls-Haters warning :

  • This post is not about the physics realism/performances of cars …
  • This post is not about protesting against having Lego theme as an expansion.

At the beginning of FH4 there was that idea to have a photo realistic rendering open world in real time. Even the moving of the sleeves was part of studied things.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHI9exO260w

It started with Boneshaker, disregarding issues with car performance (again, not the subject), personally the rendering is not a size up of the toy but very close from a hand made car. As a consequence it is not breaking the immersion of the game.

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Now and possibly in some upcoming DLCs, car packs, possibly FH5, there are unrealistic/cartoon like cars everywhere in the game.

Having those cartoon/plastic rendering toys in the mainland is, to me, a game spirit change.

It is quite a detail for some because that’s not the fun of the game for them, or possibly it is fun to have so. I understand it but I don’t share the fun of it.

Realistic rendering was the advertise of the game and many people play it because of that realistic rendering. Some are just cruising on the map, enjoying the fantastic work of art done by extremely clever and dedicated people.

I suspect it is was done like this only for economic reasons, just because time was missing to do it right. I don’t know about any other car in any FH that would be usable only in specific zones.

Agree or disagree with the statement please share your arguments without denigrating other players.

2

This looks like a car wish list.

3

It is not at all.

I am sharing a feeling considering the game evolution. Not proposing a evolution, not speaking specifically about Lego or specifically about BS. I consider it as a discussion topic. Some may embrace this evolution and ask for more, others be against and may be may be, even PG/T10 could share his own.

4

The Lego cars look exact like the real Lego Speedchampions… so it is realistic imersion…
There are realsize, working and driving Lego cars existing in the real world, just do a picture search on google with “real Lego cars”, so it is not far from reality to have Lego cars on Mainland.

5

Just did what you suggested, I can see real size cars built in lego, some nice photoshop but real size lego cars, I don’t. a link may be ?

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Even if some guys had done such a thing, I admit, that, for me, it doesn’t fit anyway.

6

the “real life lego cars” used tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of blocks and, as close as possible, replicate the real curves and contours of the real thing. You can see this in the sort of staggering effect where there can be dozens of steps for a single piece like on the complex curve of a glass panel.

The lego speed champion cars in real life are 14cm long not big enough for a human to sit in and not comparable on scale to a real world car so they arent accurate lego representations of a real life car. They have huge chunky blocks and angles because thats what happens when you take 14cm and scale it up to 200+. Additionally they use straight edges where possible because trying to replicate complicated curves and specific stylings would massively increase the cost and challenges of production.

the actual lego toys do look pretty cool, I had to research them to find out just how big they were so I could understand and better make this post. But they do not scale up in a reasonable or realistic way so the OP is still valid.

If they used the lego senna that was shown as a part of the expansion reveal then it would be alot more realistic and would more closely meet the look and feel of “realistic rendering”.

7

If photo-realism were used for the Lego cars and characters, they’d risk being trod on. Just sayin’.

But seriously, photo realism is important. That’s the whole fantasy of driving exotic cars in a realistic environment.

8

I believe what is needed here is some lore, a logical explanation of how something this fantastical could possibly exist in the real world of forms horizon. Here’s my take on it, and the only way I deal with this without my mind constantly disappointing itself. Horizon UK has scored a brand deal collaborating with the LEGO company to open a new adult fan of LEGOs’ driving paradise in an undisclosed valley somewhere in the UK. Think of it like a theme park. All the mini figures and rides are all animatronics on display, all tourists arrive at brickchester airport and rent 1965 Mini Cooper S to tour the island (notice minis are the only traffic car model). All the new driveable LEGO cars are built like this —> https://the-drive-3.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fapi.thedrive.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F04%2Flego-porsche-911-turbo.jpg%3Fquality%3D85?w=1440&auto=compress%2Cformat&ixlib=js-1.2.1&s=ce1f0b2e20e5a356ab99ed89308e1e9e and have been somehow fitted with engines, fuel, exhaust, and electric systems. Or due to giant mini figures driving these cars they are actually remote controlled and have engine speaker systems on-board (pick any explanation you like). Hopefully this makes the expansions new features more bareable, not to mention the new brick challenge feature is welcome, could be easily expanded upon in updates and would be a nice end game addition to future horizon games.

9

Simulations of reality in computer games has tended to work upwards from the beginning, but Forza tends to do everything backwards. You get less features with each version of the game, and now a drop in realism. There’s something about the designers that prefers to do things backwards.

10

I had recently sold my restored muscle car just before the release of FH3, I had owned that car for over 20 years. I was missing it and regretting the sale so I was browsing youtube looking at some cars like mine when I saw a video for a 950HP Holden Monaro… I thought wow that sounds cool so I had a look, I made it a few minutes into the video showing the owner doing burnouts and hard launches before I realized it was a video game… That shows how realistic the whole thing is - to fool a genuine car guy isn’t easy but Forza pulled it off. Well done, that impressed me enough to buy into it.

I immediately looked up the game and that afternoon purchased the Xbox and game and sat there contently for every spare moment I had for the next 2 years playing it in a replica of my own car.

Personally I dislike video games and always have, right at the beginning I played pinball rather than pac-man. Thats just me though, many here love games for game play and they would not care if they were driving a car or shooting moths as long as it had a level of achievement and some sort of challenges. I guess to those players the realism is not as important as having some new things to do.

I know the Lego speed cars look to be perfect replicas of the real ones but if you were to put a real one on the road it would drive under the lowest car - they are tiny! To scale them up to real car size is what ruins the whole realistic thing for me, its like living in land of the giants in a messy kids room with oversized giant toys. Its really out of place here considering the rest of the game.

In a perfect world those tiny cars should not be able to be mixed with regular cars either on the mainland or in the Lego world, that way they are to scale to their surroundings and you can imagine you have shrunk to play with them. (that would be immersion and totally fine with me, hell i may have even had a go if that was the case)

Those 1:1 scale real life Lego models are actually awesome, they should have used those to introduce Lego to Forza - it would have been a lot easier to look at and taken nothing away from the game.

Apart from that the realistic aspect of this game is spot on. The only other thing out of scale and unrealistic as people keep mentioning to prove the game is all fantasy and should not be taken as realistic is the PR stunt jumps, but in real life dare devils like Evel Knievel and many others have done jumps of canyons etc for many decades in regular cars so I think it is reasonable to accept that as realistic thing to do in a car.

Hotwheels loop the loop tracks exist and tour the country in full size scale that matches whats in FH3 if you squint a little, so to do replicas of the cars custom built by enthusiasts - i accept that in here too as realistic.

For me any step away from realistic is going be be a sore point as it becomes more of a video game and less of an extension to what some might call a car addiction.

11

Thanks for your long and detailed feedback. I understand the feeling having personally in memory very few hours of driving a GT … some of the best hours of my life behind a wheel.

12

A wizard did it.

13

Ironically, the rendering is the most realistic aspect of the expansion thanks to the lighting model. They nailed it.

It’s more of a problem with the theme being very different from the base game. But it seems that the reason for the last two Forza Horizon games having two expansions each was that they could do this without sacrificing the running theme of the expansions previous entries had. One of the expansions is in line with the base game, and the other one is something completely outlandish.

The big issue is the intrusion of the outlandish expansions into the respective base game. It’s about suspension of disbelief and not leaving holes in the plot.

14

I can drive a multi-million dollar vehicle over a thousand foot cliff and not only survive, but keep on driving. I can drive head-long toward a crowd of people, and be sure that I’m going to hit an invisible wall before there is any danger of running into any of them. I can drive from Ambleside to Edinburgh in less than 10 minutes, when in real life it would take over 2 hours.

My disbelief is willingly suspended. So I’m fine with scaled-up toy cars.

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Whereas you only mentioned toys in the last sentence.

16

It seemed to me that there was a bush that was getting beaten around. I don’t see that I misread that, but apologies if I did.

17

Kind reminder of the topic :

- This post is not about the physics realism/performances of cars …

Please try to refrain focusing on physics & arcade orientation of the game, it is not the topic here.

The realistic rendering, is how things look. FH is proposing a close to photo realistic experience with much efforts done to copy the reality.

Thanks in advance.

18

Regarding the renders and the realism it would be nice if those cars with terrible graphic maps could be fixed.
This sort of thing is just poor quality - I have posted about it recently just before the Lego thing exploded but it was pushed off the page pretty quick as everyone’s attention shifted.

The whole back 1/4 of this car is distorted - the red stripe is a single red stripe the full length of the car if it helps understand what the problem is.

19

For me games are essentially interactive fantasy, much like Fast & Furious or James Bond on films for example.

My Forza fantasy is held together by realistically looking environment, realistically looking vehicles, believable performance, physics model, day and night cycle, etc. It all works in my opinion very well and I haven’t seen anyone else either complaining about fantasy elements like really wide roads everywhere. For me wide roads belong into this came because they work in context of my fantasy, which may be having a race in a classic muscle car in the middle of Edinburgh.

There are crazy stunts, races going through someone’s backyard, etc. and I’m willing to suspend my disbelief regarding them because immersion created by elements I mentioned earlier. Even some cars that come entirely from the realm of fiction, like Halo Warthog and Quartz Regalia. I actually didn’t knew for the long time that Regalia was from Final Fantasy but thought it was some sort of ridiculous concept car. Halo Warthog is a bit of similar story. It was designed so well to fit in Halo universe, which universe relies on semi-realistically looking technology. These sort of things makes things possible, like humour. Halo showcase is of my favourites and most memorable experiences. Warthog and Quartz Regalia are examples of good product placement. Hotwheels cars were and are a bit here and there regarding my experience, even I have seen photos of real life replicas.

LEGO cars for me don’t work in Forza universe like Warthog or Regalia or even Hotwheels cars. Say Hotwheels Mustang wasn’t a bad effort but LEGO cars don’t visually fit in at all.

Back in the day there used to be this more or less serious debate about James Bond films, if Sean Connery or Roger Moore was better bond. Under the surface it was a lot about what kind of films were made for these actors. Roger Moore’s Bond films had humour that appealed to me as kid and as got older I started to appreciate Connery’s era films more. That doesn’t mean that films from either actors era doesn’t include totally absurd villains with their schemes and utterly surreal situations.

Forza and LEGO situation isn’t however a debate similar to Connery vs. Moore. It’s more like if life sized models of LEGO cars would fit in the James Bond universe and most people would say no. While Hotwheels expansion in FH3 had one saving grace for me and that was use of colour palette that made it’s visually surreal experience, LEGO doesn’t have anything like that to me, it contributes nothing towards why I play Horizon series but instead weakens the very foundation of how much I’m willing to suspend my disbelief.

As for product placement for LEGO brand, maybe this didn’t worked for me like it was perhaps expected to work.

20

And the LEGO vehicles are perhaps even more photo realistically rendered than the actual cars.

But it isn’t actually about how realistically it’s rendered. It’s simply about how it offends your own personal sense of aesthetics.

It doesn’t matter how real it looks, or how feasible it is: by your own admission, you wouldn’t accept it anyway.

And what’s particularly funny to me, is the Hype Tour story in-game is a tongue-in-cheek jab at the various realism complainers.