Trying to figure out how FH5 works

Forza Horizon Forza Horizon 5 FH5 Discussion
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I’ve had FH5 for a couple of weeks now, and played close to 18 hours, so I can kind of navigate the structure of the screens and everything in between races or driving, but I’m still lost on many things. All the menus have tiles about tournaments and other things I still can’t figure out.

Today I started just messing around the part of the menu that I get when I load the game, which is the Festivals screen. I still don’t understand very well how it works, but I started moving to the right, and I got inside something I don’t remember, and eventually I got to some kind of weird level that basically was the ground for as far as I could see in all directions, and after driving straight my car went into the sea, then the game put me back where I started. But I saw something in the map, and when I got to it, I entered the race.

This was a really weird race, because it was called something like “Chemical Facility”, and it didn’t seem to have the level of detail that I normally see in FH5, but it was a really cool environment in a weird dark facility with a lot of sharp U turns, done partially on a platform that was diagonal to the ground. Super cool stuff.

So I would like to find out what that was exactly. Was that something that a user created then uploaded? It just seemed so different than the rest of the game that it occurred to me that it might be a user creation.

If it was, where can I find documentation on how to access that feature? For example, is it done in Blender or Unreal Engine and then exported as an FBX to some FH5 server with very specific settings?

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The game can be a bit hard to figure out when you’re new, because the menus throw a lot of options and activities at you without always giving a lot of context for them. The menu you found yourself in is what’s called the Festival Playlist; it’s the live-service part of the game through which most of its new content has been added over the years. Every month starts a new series that consists of four week-long seasons. If you complete tasks on the playlist throughout the week, you’ll earn individual rewards, as well as earning points to unlock overall rewards for that season, and for the series as a whole. That’s what you see on the progress bar on the left-hand side of the menu. The Playlist series we’re on right now may be the last brand-new one, since next month there’s an option to vote for one of two past Playlists to be run again. As a new player there will probably be cars and other rewards that you don’t have yet, so even as a repeat it’s worth playing through. If you have any questions about how the individual Playlist tasks work, we’d be happy to help you out.

The event you’re describing there is what’s called an EventLab, which is a user-created race blueprint. There are usually one or two of them that the developers feature in the Playlist each week. Some of them are placed on the main Mexico map, while others are on the separate EventLab Island map that you were transported to. This was added to the game to give event makers a big flat space to make more complicated tracks and landscapes without having to work around the main map’s terrain. And no, everything you saw was created in-game through the blueprint builder, not exported from external model file. It has a lot of props and features, and creative builders can make some really amazing tracks with it.

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Hi @SebeeAlvee, welcome to Forza Horizon.

The event you were in was a user-created event which was featured in the seasonal Festival Playlist:

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If you click on the event from the Festival Playlist menu you’ll see a pop up prompt to Travel to EventLab Island. EventLab Island is a large square area in the ocean separate from the main Horizon Mexico map; similarly, the Rally Adventure and Hot Wheels DLC expansions are also separate map areas from the main world map.

On the main map, you’ll see various event start points. When you enter an event start point, you can either choose to play the event provided by Forza (“Horizon Presents…”), or choose a user created event (“Horizon EventLab” presented by the creator).

EventLab allows use of a variety of props that are not normally present on the main map. Here’s an overview:

Thanks for chiming in before I completed my post @PD_Top_Gun !

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Thank you both for your replies. I’ll have to spend some time reading up on this, since I would love to create new tracks and places like that factory.

So basically if I want to find more tracks like that I need to go to the Festival area and start browsing around, is that right?

And no external models, like if I were to create some kind of track in Blender or Unreal Engine, there’s no way to bring that into these custom tracks, but everything has to be built with the internal builder, correct? I thought maybe Unreal Engine might have something to do with it because a lot of items in it are called Blueprints.

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Horizon Blueprints was the earlier version, which allowed users to customize race settings in previous Forza Horizon games. EventLab has expanded on that with surfaces and other props to completely change the landscape. You can access other user EventLab creations in free roam by entering a race event location and choose Solo and then tab left for EventLab, or go to the Pause menu and tab over to Creative Hub. When you select the EventLab tile and Event Blueprints, you’ll see tabs for Editor’s Choice selections, trending, creations by players who are your Friends, etc. And selecting one of those events will take you directly from the Pause menu to the event.

Here are some examples from our Picks of the Week

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See also the EventLab Creations section of the Forums for posts with the EventLab tag.

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Thanks. Actually today I realized that the Creative Hub is where all these user creations reside, and some of them are pretty good.

The thing I’m not too crazy about is that once I finish each of these events, there doesn’t seem to be a way to just go back to the list of user tracks. I can’t remember the exact steps, but I have to go through some steps to go back to the Creative Hub and see the lists and categories, like the Greatest of all time, the Picks of the Week and so on. Is there no way to play one, finish, and land back on the list?

And just to be clear on something, is Eventlabs 2.0 a separate program, or is it inside the FH5 game? I thought it was the latter, but I tried to find it and the only thing I found at one point was how to download props, but nowhere to use them to start building something.

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EventLab is a feature within the game, no separate add-on required. What was dubbed “EventLab 2.0” was an update to that feature set.

For how to create your own, check out this tutorial from community member VuKKuu

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To answer some of the other questions floating around in the OP.

To access event lab maps you’ve already raced:

While out in the main world, pause the game and go to the Creative Hub Tab.
Once there, Access “Event Lab”
When Event Lab opens, Open “My Events”
In the My Events Screen you will see the “My History” tab.
This tab lists the event labs you have recently played.

As for the game at large: Out in the world, pause the game and open
Horizon Adventure - do the stuff here - this is what basically leads you
through the single player progression of the game and helps lead to unlocking all the things…
Look at and do whatever accolades you are able to. Playing through the game is the single best way to unlock cars, and get rewards CR, and everything you need, there is no FOMO, everything comes back around eventually.

The Playlist: When you’re in the Hall of Fame these are weekly quests you do for the named reward and Points towards the 80 and 160 Point Cars on the first screen, and the 20 and 40 point cars on the current weekly quest screens. (If things are grey, you cannot do them any more.)
The current Season is Winter. The Seasons flip every Thursday and run till the following Thursday.

So our seasons: Summer, Autumn, Winter, and Spring are 1 week long, and all 4 of these comprise the “Series” which runs for 4 weeks. You have 1 week to complete the active Season, and a month to earn points via the Seasonal’s for the Series rewards on the Series Tab.

My advice: Don’t waste CR on the AH, find easy to win cars in the missions / accolade system.
But still stick to a hand full of cars, it’s all you need. Stay in the C-B-A class range whenever possible for single player stuff. Play the game on Highly-Skilled - there is no glory in running Unbeatable if you have limited time, and just want to unlock stuff and collect the cars and cruise around.

Just do the races, play the game - you don’t need to play CR / XP event labs or any of that stuff… yeah, almost everything you do in this game feeds some form of currency or serves towards the ‘end game’ (there really isn’t one).

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With the user created event labs … you can also find them at any race event on the map. Click on them and there should be a variety of options to choose a race, and there are options to pick a user created track associated with that particular race icon on the map. Starting point the same as the regular race. Theres also an option to create your own track starting from that spot too. If you want to build one that starts somewhere other than event island, you can pick any race icon on the map and go in there and find a Create Your Own Blueprint option.

When I decided to try it out, i wanted a highway race. Theres a street race icon on the main highway that I chose. You can make point to points or circuits at any of them, I think.