While getting more and more frustrated with update 6, I began looking at Forza differently. It was once a Titan of a franchise and with FM5, proven that it is capable of making great games. But this, FM 2023… This ain’t it chief.
I played through the 6-cylinder multiplayer races and while just plodding on, getting my safety rating hammered and having to tune and re-tune loads of cars, noticed many bugs that are still in since the games launch and wanted to see if others are experiencing them in the same way I do.
- ** Graphical Performance:**
It seems that with Update 6, something has gone wrong on the back end. I used to be able to run the game on a mix of Med/High settings, now I find myself turning everything to low and still not able to achieve a stable 60FPS on PC?
Frame rate will suddenly and inexplicably drop and begin stuttering during races or test drives. The worst ones for me are Silverstone, Yas Marina, Spa Francor-Champs, Maple Valley, and Mugello.
Most of these stutters do happen around the Start/Finish line, however on Silverstone, they happen all over the track.
I suspect this may have something to do with DLSS and/or dynamic render quality being far too aggressive?
- GUI & Menu Bugs.
Every so often, I will load into a race and while I have the outline of the speedometer, I have no speed or gear indicator. This is only fixed by completely exiting to main menu, or at times, even restarting the game completely.
When navigating menus, sometimes when rapidly moving between car parts in the performance menu under tuning, it will freeze on the highlighted selection (ie, front tyre width) and will not move up or down/respond to input unless exiting out of the performance menu altogether.
When using a wheel (Moza R5) - As the game does not recognise this base, I have had to modify the R9 button input profile for use with my R5. When in a race, the indicator for social keys in the lower left is not visible, meaning it is sometimes quite difficult to know exactly what option I am selecting to send (Good Race, Good Luck, Sorry etc.) It is visible when using controller, but not keyboard or wheel it would seem.
Units of measurement in menus are completely wrong (KG’s showing as lbs, MPH showing as KPH etc.) these do not change when changing between metric and imperial units in settings.
Car stats do not update after an engine/aspiration/drivetrain/displacement swap or modification - The cars original stats are always displayed, eg I swap an I4 2.0L N/A RWD car to a 3.8L-TT V6, and convert it to AWD, the cars stat window in garage will still show I4 2.0L RWD.
When looking through the available designs menu, some designs will have the headlights blacked out/missing with pixelated artefacts, rather than the headlights of the car in place.
- In-Game/Race issues.
Some multiplayer races will begin the 2:00 Race End timer as soon as the starting countdown has ended.
Some cars engine sounds are extremely quiet or faded out when driving in cockpit or bonnet/hood cam. - This mainly affects mid engined, or rear engined cars. Even though the engine isn’t right infront of the driver or camera when in hood cam, the engine sound should not be so quiet.
Car proximity markers do not always disappear when they should (car behind slows or you pull away). This leaves people driving in first person or hood cam guessing if there is actually a car there or not.
Some cars still have graphical bugs, such as invisible roofs when in first person view.
Some cars still have the wrong sound file on FM 2023, yet correct sound on FH5.
- General Performance
PC stability is still an issue. It is much better than it has been, however I still have regular crashes when trying to join Multiplayer races, or when choosing “Exit to Main Menu” to quit out of a race or test drive.
Most of, if not all of the above are bugs and issues that have been present in the game since launch, and have no excuse to be so prevalent 6 months into the games life. I want to love this game, it has so much potential but I feel like the team pulling the strings are more comfortable with jangling their keys in our faces with new cars and tracks, rather than admitting that there are a lot of issues that they still need to address (the recent admittal where they acknowledged only 3 main issues is a joke and an insult to this games true state to say the least).
If these issues were sorted out, I genuinely think a lot more people would be happier with the games core, how it runs, and would be less frustrated. Yes there are other issues with the game, but they all relate to mechanics, and I wanted to focus mainly on bugs here.