Absolutely love to death the atmosphere and feel of night driving.
One very important and nagging issue: the headlight beam throw, width, and illumination do not feel convincing.
Particularly from cockpit and first person view, every car I drive feels like the headlights are broken and only half working. They need to really illuminate a good couple of metres of road ahead rather just 10m or so.
So the beams need to be much longer and wider, casting light on in the track surroundings too. This really, really needs improving. I want to really feel like I’m driving at night with bright headlight beams bouncing off the tarmac and track surroundings.
Reason I created this thread is because the issue has been reported multiple times with no positive results. Maybe this discussion will gain steam and this will finally be addressed.
On older cars (70s or so) the light feels about right, these cars have terrible lighting irl. But for modern cars it feels bad how little light they give. A modern Audi makes it feel like the next 100m ahead are daytime, so bright are those lights.
The game doesn’t reproduce this.
Things like this are often due to lack of processing power. I personally dont think its a series X issue but more of the series S. If this is indeed the case this will never be resolved as it would be an extreme disadvantage for people who play on the S when racing at night.
That doesn’t make sense. So they should have better headlight beams on PC but they don’t.
yes, for the older cars sure, but newer cars, absolutely they need improvement.
However, let’s take an old car - the F-40. The beams look like they are barely illuminating 10-15 feet in front of the car and the left to right spread isn’t very good either.
I see this in almost every car, I feel that the beams were so much more convincing in FM6.
Of course a pc could have better headlights, but like i said it would put players on the series s at a disadvantage. So its capped at the lowest common denominator. Its similiar to their thought process on the fps cap in multiplayer.
I wish we could toggle lights like in other racing games, at least have the DRLs on when on track. It can be jarring when your’re doing a morning race and the headlights suddenly cut off or it’s evening and the lights aren’t on.
I have tried to hammer this point home again and again but it seems T10 do not want to pay attention to the little and essential details in a CAR game, ironically.
It is beyond silly. Set the weather preset to thunderclouds and you will get overpowering headlights and brake lights on all cars (more so than pitch black night driving) - BUT… there’s no headlight beams on the road or the surroundings
Theres no way to know the answers to all of these things, some are obvious some arent. I think since this game is using a decade old engine, its buckling under its own weight with different layers of additions being piled on over the years.
The issue youre describing has been an issue since launch and they have chosen not to fix it. At this point this means they either cant or theyre not going to because they dont want to. Honestly it could be either going by other issues with the game.
The visuals have been all over the place since launch, theyve addressed some things but i just think theres only so much that can be done. This game is a reshaded forza 7, which itself was a touched up fm6 and so on.
This game was supposed to be cross gen, things changed midway through development, but the base is still an xbox one game. Whatever gremlins from the past are still there in addition to the new ones.
I said it to you before, what youre asking for is a new game. A true built from the ground up title, i dont know if that will ever happen for forza motorsport. Im personally waiting to see what happens with horizon 6, if playground games has issues like this game has then we know its an engine issue, if theyre fine, then its a turn 10 issue.
Its engine limited. The Series S would have no problems with a baked in light throw. The GTX 1070 I used to run had zero issues with headlamps at night in Assetto Corsa, and I was even able to see a difference with the headlamps on during the day, with reflictive signs brightened, and seeing the hotspots reflected on the cars in front of me. Again, this was on the GTX 1070, and even if heavily modded Assetto Corsa does not support ray tracing so, its an issue with Forza tech, not the Series S.
Anythings possible, but games arent always like for like when it comes to these things. Forza Motorsport is a console game, it was developed as such, when it was ported to pc you can see how unoptimized it is when it came to utilizing multiple cpu cores.
Theyve had to do a lot of tricks over the years to hit their performance targets, there have also been many concessions. Besides headlights, spinning wheels continue to use a 2d texture, these things save processing power to use on other things.
When they added radar a couple of months ago one of the guys was talking about how they only had a little bit of headroom to add to the hud before it would effect the fps. Things like this really shouldnt be an issue, but they are for this game. Theyre working within a strict processing budget and i believe thats because of the series s.
I dont know what ray tracing has to do with this as the series s doesnt have ray tracing during gameplay in motorsport.
Pc games arent confined to these restrictions. Even with lesser hardware youre still capable of pushing certain things while pulling back on others. For console games that push/pull ratio is determined by the developer.
So while its possible its an engine limitation, i personally think its more about concessions theyve had to make to keep certain things at an even playing field. I have both series consoles, ive played motorsport on both and the s does run smoothly, but it is definitely a major downgrade compared to the x, it has its limitations and its noticeable.
Just for reference the series s performance mode is 1080p@60fps, forza motorsport 5 on the launch xbox one is also 1080p@60fps and runs just as smooth while also looking pretty good comparatively. The series s is a limiting factor for this game.
I just want to actually be able to see with my headlights. I don’t think I’ve generally had a lot of trouble seeing but I know at least one race I might as well have been blind. It was a career race at Silverstone, though I forget which series and what I was driving. The race started around sundown and it was fine, but later it was dark and I couldn’t see to save my life. I checked the replay afterwards and there was no damage to my lights and it rendered them as on, but they were so weak that they were like two budget flashlights.
I also want to be able to toggle my headlights and wipers myself. If players don’t want to be tasked with that, they can have an option for automatic lights/wipers. I just don’t like them coming on later than I’d like or suddenly blinking off on their own. Let me control that.
