Forza Photomode Details?

Forza Motorsport Legacy Motorsport
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I have been around since Mechassault 2: Lone Wolf was released. Back then, The only Forza was a demo on this disc. I played the demo more than I played the game on the disc.

Once I could Finally play Forza in its entirety, I was hooked… Simply because I loved racing against my friends online.

Shortly afterwards I was playing a Different Series, and I got hooked on Taking Photos. I would only play that game to take pictures, and go back to play Forza at night with my friends.

This was a long time ago… OVER ten years ago since the demo changed everything for me. Since then, I have been a painter, an auctioneer, a Racer, a Tuner, and a Photographer.

The only thing that has stuck, has been the Photography, (Forzatography), and it has now become my PRIMARY draw to the series. I have bought other games, specifically because they have “Photo” modes. I only have just recently found 1 game that has a photomode that is on PAR with Forza in this department.

This “OTHER” game, happens to be a racing game, on a competing console. This “Other” game does things that Forza does not currently do.

  • Aperture is designated in stops, not just numbers that make zero sense to photography.
  • Focal distance appears highlighted in slices, The same way a camera works.
  • Zooming creates parallax, and proper Bokeh (bokeh is even customizable).
  • Shutter speeds are shown in times, not as a numeric slider.

This is where it stops excellence. The photos are captured by the SHARE feature, resulting in HIGHLY compressed 1080p images, (less than 2 megapixels), the accuracy of the shadow layers and highlight layers appear to have been swapped on many cars, which seem to reveal detail, when it should be blown out. The Black Levels show no tinge of Blue/Brown/Purple, but tend to end up as 80% grey, rather than Black.

Forza Has always managed to get the Critical stuff right, but recently, I noticed that Photomode seems to be less important. FM4 had Big Shots… There is no doubt that this needs to return in some form, and I thought I had heard something along these lines.

I have done searches, and the only answer, is not information. I would like to be an educated consumer on this go around, since My love for Racing the cars has faded, and I prefer to take photos over winning the race.

This is not a Wish list, This original post will be updated with the Confirmed features, as soon as there is detail.

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I guess the Photo Mode will be exactly the same as it was in FM5 and Horizon 2. It’s been basically the same system since FM3. I don’t think Turn 10 considers it something to be changed. FM6 doesn’t seem to be a radically new game, so I think the basic features will remain the same as well.

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Check that: since the original. There have been some finite additions; but, for all intents and purposes, it is a 10 year old feature. That said, I think the simplicity of the 0-100 slider scale makes the feature approachable and achieves the same results that would be offered if you changed everything into camera parameters that not everyone understands.

I anticipate very subtle to no changes to photo mode.

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I like the idea of big shots returning but…

Maybe you ought to go and buy a camera? What you said in the original post made about as much sense to me as if it were written in Chinese. If you add all that then Forzatography will be far less accessible to people, as is many already struggle with getting good shots.

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All shots are already pretty damn big. You want larger?

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I do in fact have cameras…

Back in the Days of Forza 3, I took this picture in the game:

A few months after I took this picture, I was confirmed the winner of a contest that was being held by Turn10/Hyundai/Microsoft… And scored a Canon 50D, among other things, as top prize.

Since then it has been a long, EXPENSIVE, road which my hobby changed into a small business, albeit with no pay, for me.

I have kept up with the Forza games, and Every one that I play, I take pictures.

I am quite well known among the community as the HDR guy, as I have posted tons of HDR photos from games, real life, and held contests for HDR. I HAD a very thorough tutorial posted up on the site, and it was one of the most read topics on the boards.

If 2 megapixels is ENOUGH for you, great, Low expectations in life lead to fantastic surprises.

I have been doing this long enough to know that, you lose INFINITE amounts of detail when you opt to take a photo at 1920x1080, with HIGH compression.

Why does none of the Stuff in my first post make any sense? Because developers are afraid to implement it, not because purists will criticize Apertures, and focal lengths being inaccurate, but because they assume people will be afraid to use it, or will refuse to try to understand it.

People already use the Forza camera, that has all the lingo, This could be Forza’s ULTIMATE sleeper… and they just refuse to acknowledge something so small could make such a huge difference in the community, and the market.

Photographers that I talk to, have been waiting for a Video game where they can practice Photography, and actually use the photos for editing practice as well.

FM4 did a great job with it. FM5 improved on the quality, but dropped the ball on the final image.

To me it is sad, that We are nearing the end of year 2 of Xbox One, and there still is no game on the console that I can take great pictures with… and when I mean Great, I mean on par with the gradual increase in quality the series has made. By now Forza should be able to spit out a 10megapixel photo, directly to the hard drive, and then to my USB stick for Uploading.

Keeping the 1.3 megapixel photos that we currently get via Gallery is acceptable, as a community thing, or as social Media… But I want to make HIGH END stuff, for the community to enjoy… not mediocre.

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Still nothing?

That’s a shame that such a chunk of information is simply not being explained.

I have not heard much about anything aside from what they were forced to leak in order to enjoy E3… The game releases in just under 10 weeks… that is 5 Paychecks for the average gamer… 2 car payments, or 2 mortgage payments away…

We, RESPONSIBLE adults, that want to purchase your game, need to usually have details to confuse our significant others with, in order for them to see our justification in purchasing the game, with money that was likely going to be used for… food.

Any chance we can get at least a REVEAL EVENT CHART… kinda like an ADVENT CALENDAR… Because Forza is Christmas to me…

I might even stand in Line at Midnight to get mine.

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Wait for Gamescom, as that is the next big event where we may learn more about game features and whatnot.

Up until then I would expect that the only new information we will learn will have to do with car and potentially track content. New cars are revealed every Wednesday.

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I would like to see “Big Shot” option brought back too. Even if it was the same way as FM4. Big shot photos, each with a 24 hour time limit to download.

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Yeah, The car list is doing little to surprise me at the moment, and I know that they are holding out a lot of info for Gamescom, which is only a few weeks away.

This does not seem to be a huge reveal, unless they are going to go ALL out on the community UGC, and we end up with an auction house, storefront, 19 megapixel photos, and 10,000 layers per side.

That is a huge chunk, and taking one of those things away from the reveal, would just lessen it.

Fingers crossed that this is why we haven’t heard anything.

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Auction House is confirmed to not be in Forza Motorsport 6.

The others are unknown.

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They might still have something along those lines… Calling it an auction house, might actually degrade what it actually is, so they might have confirmed that there is no AUCTION HOUSE, per se, though we may see something along the lines of a Barrett Jackson thing going on, rather than constantly scrolling through looking for the GT-R with the bikini lady on it.

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It’s been nearly 2 months since I posed this question about the photo mode.

We have seen quite a few promo photos, which I assume are using the Photomode to create.

These photos appear to be VERY compressed, and VERY soft… combined with VERY SMALL.

Gamescom is done.

Why hold back on the END USER CONTENT information?

We want these details. You showed off what YOU can do… now help us to know what WE can show off.

IS it really that difficult to create a story with the exciting details surrounding the NON-RACING parts of Forza, that Makes the game so appealing?

I have 2 paychecks until FM6.

The Destiny Upgrade releases the SAME EXACT DAY.

Give me a reason to be playing this on launch, rather than Destiny. If you said racing in the rain at night on Nurburgring, I would be interested, for the solid 20 minutes it takes me to do so.
If you reveal Upgraded paint modes, and show off the Photo mode.

You get 24hours straight.

Help me out here. I want to buy Forza 6, simply out of habit. Help me confirm that this is justified.

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I too did a lot of photo-taking on that ‘other’ racing game about a decade ago. It was good times.

But right now the audience for Forza is trying to be wide-reaching, and have simple features to catch with the largest net.

The only way i can see them implementing your more in-depth camera mode, is to build it as a separate camera option you can switch to. More advanced than current ‘advanced’ controls if you will.

With all that said, I don’t see anything changing. It also seems like you kind of had your mind made up already as to whether to pick up this title. I was curious about some things as well until the last car reveal, and looking at the list of vehicles and variety i can DRIVE. I promptly put in my pre-order for Ultimate.

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I understand your feelings, Wonderpill. As a painter, I am very interested in what the paint booth will be like, as that’s where I’ll likely spend a majority of my time. (I am resigned to the idea that the paint booth will likely be very similar to that of FM5 and FH2.) There are many improvements and features that I’d like to see added to the paint booth, but I don’t think that photography and painting are major features that they focus on to win a customer base over to Forza. I think they put it in here in the state it is to keep us (painters & photographers) reasonably happy while focusing on other things that more people will enjoy and participate in.

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Id like to see them do a sponsorship deal with a camera maker then bring all the functions of their cameras to the game

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Dude… a LESS popular DSLR manufacturer, like say SIGMA, or LYTRO, could make out like a bandit, with the advertising for simply allowing their expertise of camera design get integrated into the mode.

Even if one of the Big Boys, PENTAX, CANON, LEICA, NIKON, could seriously stir the pot. Not only would it drive Gamers to understand Cameras more, it would bring Those Photography Nerds, (Like ME) into a place where they can enjoy taking practice photos, which they can then Post-Process on their computer.

I bought Drive Club on PS4, specifically because of it’s photo mode… Same with The Last of Us… I was not the least bit intrigued by the games themselves. The Photo modes these games had, were reviewed by my peers. And the entire reason I purchased these two games.

Understand that reaching outside the GAMER realm is super important. Photographers tend to be really quick to drop $3,000 on a lens. Why not drop $350 on an Xbox One and Forza 6… when it costs less than a Typical Flash Gun… or a decent spare tripod for your wifes trunk, in case you accidentally take her car somewhere, and want to take photos.

Yes this is a real Photographers thing.

I have had a Tripod in my trunk for nearly 10 years.

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Even if the feature is exactly the same, I just want more locations to take photos, that aren’t the tracks (or the tracks, but not during a race), as the only way you can get the LOD0 version of the car in FM5, is in the little garage place).

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I am with you on really putting more emphasis on the photography aspect, I will soon be getting a PS4 for Driveclub because I like taking photographs almost as much as racing.

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Actually… Anytime you put the car as the selected point in photo mode, you get the high quality textures and Hi-poly count. If you are taking a picture of something other than the car you press auto focus on, you will get a lower quality model. Its not extremely noticeable, until you get into macro range.

The lighting in the garage is much more dynamic, allowing for MUCH greater levels of reflections in the bump mapping, so technically you ARE going to get a cleaner shot in the garage, since the entire thing is fake, and just camera parallax tricks to make it appear 3d.