I drove the Ford Hawk II on Brands Hatch in cloudy conditions, one of the career races. There are multiple places where in chase cam, I could barely tell the car from the ground unless I took my eyes off the road ahead. In cockpit cam the wheel almost disappears into the dashboard. Supposedly this is daytime or late afternoon. The effective visibility is more like night.
I posted recently in the support forum about my HDR settings with a new Samsung tv. It took me forever, I had to almost ignore the calibration sliders’ instructions in-game, and I had to adjust lots of my TV’s settings (not really Turn 10’s fault). Lighting is great now, but I wish they made it much easier. FH4’s instructions worked perfectly for me the first time.
I have an SDR monitor. This is what I use to check monitors, TVs, phones, etc.
My monitor has a strong “IPS glow”. I can see between 3 and 5, depending on viewing angle.
http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/black.php
Every screen I’ve tried shows the checker pattern on 254.
http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/white.php
I personally feel there is a too-dim theme in almost all of the racing conditions in this game! Racing scenarios should be more lit with sunlight than being dim and overcast all the time. Also, is Sonoma Race always GREY and over cast??!!! Let there be more LIGHT in online career racing scenarios!
Offline too, the whole game is dim.
It’s been known for some time that these franchises struggle with their lighting system. Dan Greenawalt admitted that every track has its own lighting fine tuned instead of an overall system that would work everywhere. Digital Foundry (Youtube) talked about this when they compared GT Sport and Forza 7. The lighting system in GT is a lot more realistic-looking. We can only hope this is yet another area that the team will work on as part of its “Forza Fundamentals” because cars and tracks are already built with a very high level of detail.
What’s the excuse for going downhill from FM6 into FM7?
There’s a very simple excuse for lighting getting worse from Forza Motorsport 5, 6 & 7. It’s because of dynamic weather.
When you pre-bake lighting conditions, it’ll always look far better then when you have it dynamically. This is why Forza Motorsport 5 looks the best by far. It’s one lighting condition pre-baked. Why does GT Sport look so good? Everything is pre baked with ray tracing. Why did NFS 2015 look so beautiful? Same exact reason.
Pretty much this. Hopefully the extra dev time and performance of the next gen consoles will mitigate the issues of dynamic time and weather.
X3R Monkey - I do agree on GTS lighting engine, it is fantastic and very consistent.
NumberlessMath - yes exactly! I find it amusing when people have explanations for the lighting inconsistencies or somewhat defend it passively - there’s no excuse whatsoever as it looked fine in FM5 and 6.
The lighting isn’t necessarily worse. It’s just dark on most tracks, low-contrast to the point of poor visibility.
Forza has baked static shadows and dynamic car/object shadows.
GT Sport has full dynamic shadows, on static and moving objects.
I’d rather they go back to the pre-baked lighting conditions. I don’t care much for dynamic time of day or weather changes unless they do it properly like PCARS2 does.
I was watching a GTS vs FM7 comparison the other day - and man, does GTS look stunning at different times of day. It’s all very consistent.
I’d personally have the dynamic weather. Going from Sunny, to lighting and rain then back to completely sunny, yet the track still being wet and hard to drive is really fun.
Unfortunately to get dynamic weather, conditions, time of day and such, graphical fidelity had to be cut slightly. The big hit was stuff like trees and grass and foliage in general. Compare that to FM5 and it’s almost like you’re looking at the same game but FM5 being in Spring whereas FM7 looks like it’s in Winter.
What display do you have? HDR or SDR?
GT Sport is completely pre-baked with ray tracing. Everything is pre-destined. Hence why there’s no dynamic ttime of day or conditions. Every track has it’s own lighting condition in GT Sport which is tailored for its specific needs which is why you see lighting updates and such.
It’s SDR.
If HDR display is necessary to play, why isn’t it in the system requirements on Microsoft Store?
I’m not saying it’s necessary but the calibration from Turn 10 on SDR displays is terrible, If you have a HDR display, you can easily fix it, hence my questions as if you had a HDR display, I could’ve made the game probably look instantly better with a different calibration setting.
Necessary to play? I play with a full hd TN monitor and it’s enough.
It’s an LG, 25", 2560x1080 IPS.
Forza Motorsport 7 is meant to look correct on HDR displays only. The requirement should be listed in the Microsoft store, or an alternate version of each track prepared for SDR screens.
The HDR calibration is just as bad. Only difference is you can fix it.
Evan, would you be kind enough to post some shots of brake lights in different conditins? I.e. a variety of day and night track conditions, and possibly rain?
The brake lights just don’t have the right color or the correct level of glow/illumination. It was fine in their older xbox one forza games.
It’s pretty much down to bad color calibration internally in the game. Not an HDR vs SDR issue, according to my understanding.
I’ve got other HDR games that display colors flawlessly on my SDR TV: GOW4, SOTR, ghost recon, Shadow of Mordor, Witcher 3, etc.