Weather and environmental changes in FH4's shared world Seasons

[ManteoMax]

Dynamic weather and environmental changes in Forza Horizon 4

News - Forza

Seasons Change Everything – Forza Horizon 4 features dynamic seasons that change gameplay, unlocking new events and routes, impacting driving conditions, and transforming open-world exploration – all in native 4K and HDR. Players will be able to master driving in dry, wet, muddy, snowy and icy conditions in a shared world where everyone experiences changes in time of day, weather and seasons together.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2018/06/10/forza-horizon-4-every-season-is-racing-season-ign-first

“You will see all of our crops and our livestock adhering to their real life counterparts in game,” says Penrose. “So wheat fields will appear green and fresh in spring [and] return to their characteristic golden colour in summer. In autumn you’ll see all that harvested and baled up, ready to go, and in winter obviously the field will be fallow.”

Even the sheep get shorn (yes, there are animals and other wildlife like deer, rabbits, and chickens in the game and no, you can’t hit them, you monster).

“Beyond that, foliage was a huge, huge focus for us on this project,” says Penrose. “Obviously all our deciduous trees needed to change colour, as they do here, so each tree in autumn changes uniquely from tree to tree, and that is all dependent on the health of the tree, the soil, the moisture on the ground. So some trees will hold onto their greens for longer, some will become brown and golden, other will drop all of their leaves entirely. Over in spring, you’ve got blossoms starting to bud in our hedgerows and our blossom trees; in the woods you’ll start to see all those wildflowers you associate with spring, like bluebells and snowdrops.”

Wood adds that, by keeping track of the weather while capturing skies all year around, weather conditions throughout Forza Horizon’s seasons will be more authentic.

“We now have seasonal overrides for all our precipitation chances, chances of high winds,” says Wood. “Even the temperature and the rate at which roads dry in the different seasons is all built on that data that we’ve captured, throughout the seasons.”

“We’ve got all new driving surfaces,” says Strachan. “We’ve got dry mud, we’ve got wet mud, we’ve got compact snow, deep snow, ice – there are tons of different surfaces you can drive on and we wanted to make sure that the sound of each one of those sounds is as unique as we possibly can get it.”

“We have a cross country race that goes through a river, and the river’s quite dry in summer so it doesn’t have a huge effect on your car,” says Thaker-Fell. “As soon as you go to, say, spring that river’s quite full, it’s fast flowing, it starts to add a lot of drag, so having a high suspension set up really becomes essential.”

“And it’s not just seeing other people; we’re all sharing in this world together. So everything in the game world is synchronised for all players. Time of day is synchronised. Weather conditions are synchronised. Seasons are synchronised. So seasons last one week per season, and then the season changes. So you will play in spring, for example, for a week, and then we’ll countdown to the season transition and you’ll move into summer.

@ManteoMax

Q: “How do seasons change?”
A: “It will change at the same time for absolutely everyone, regardless of time zone. The game will start counting down; it will be really clear, saying that the season’s going to change in [10] minutes, 5 minutes, 1 minute. And then when it does, as long as you’re not doing anything - which is to say you’re not in the middle of an event, for example - we’ll take you out of that, we’ll show a season transition cinematic, and when the game fades back up (you know, 20 seconds later) you will be in the next season. … When you return to the game, the game will just say ‘season’s changed’ and play that transition cinematic and you’ll just start where you left off.”
https://youtu.be/aEdrvTKcDaA?t=816

[TVChannels98]

I am super excited for Forza Horizon 4, but there’s question that’s rolling over my head after reading the current information…

When you’re playing offline, doing single player campaign, exhibition races, etc., is it possible to change seasons manually?

[GER_MDriver96]

I hope that we can change it. Because when we start with spring, we must wait nearly a month to get winter? This is ridoculous and it makes the game less accessable…

[Cerrax]

As someone who only has time to play games maybe once or twice a week, I am interested in how this will work offline. I’d be super annoyed if I log into FH4 ready for some nice summer street racing and instead get stuck with snowy downhill races because it happens to be Winter Week.

[BabySeal363]

@Cerrax

As someone who only has time to play games maybe once or twice a week, I am interested in how this will work offline. I’d be super annoyed if I log into FH4 ready for some nice summer street racing and instead get stuck with snowy downhill races because it happens to be Winter Week.

It’s even worse when you need to get somewhere that is accessible only in Winter: bodies of water like rivers and lakes will be frozen only one week out of a whole month. So if Spring just started I have to wait for 3 entire weeks. I really hope I can “cheat” my way through the seasons with blueprints, custom events or whatever, but I can’t help but feel that the more I think about it, the more terrible the idea seems, especially given the monumental effort in coming up with this season cycle. I also wonder if people who aren’t fans of snow, ice and offroading will stop playing altogether in those particular weeks. As the saying goes, you get four seasons in one day in Britain, not in one week.

[emorphien]

Hopefully so, I liked being able to create my own or choose created races in FH3. If you have a similar way to choose the event, hopefully that includes the season. The whole dynamic thing would then just be when you’re driving and engaging in spur of the moment open world events.

[xDeaDxCriMinaLx]

As a forza fan for many years from the very first game of forza motorsport on the original Xbox I am astounded at what it’s become today. There is the aspect of the new seasons that have come into horizon 4 that has me curious why the week long season? From what I have gathered is that certain areas may be only accessible during a specific season. I love the idea of seasons and it will be an awesome way to play the game. My concern is that the seasons last too long. As someone who likes to go wherever I want on the horizon map without restriction I feel like in horizon 4 that will be the issue. I have read that islands surrounded by water won’t be accessible during 3 of the 4 seasons. Where there are issues with this is that we all know for a fact that those islands will have some sort of bonus board or barnfind like previous games. I would hope that isn’t the case with this season change system. If this is the case with this season change system then the time frame of the season change. Too me a week is too long. In my opinion all 4 seasons should be available everyday. With them changing 4 times a day it would make accessing islands or secret areas easier and save time. Changing the time frames in the days every week would in my mind let everyone able to play in different seasons more often. Even though I’m a little upset with how the seasons are at this moment I am still going to be adding the ultimate edition to my library of forza games. This is just a suggestion and is not an attack on the decisions that have been made at this point. I just hope that it could change later towards launch.

[gairsy101]

Looks like each season lasts one week

“The world is always changing. There’s lots of games where you go to this part of the map and it’s always summer, right? Then you go to the volcano area and it’s always lava. I mean, I worked on lots of Star Wars games, so I’m used to the snow planet, the lava planet, the jungle planet. The whole world transforms every week now. I mean, it’s gonna be amazing.”

Still would like to know if the transition to each season is gradual or an immediate switch.

Source: Forza Horizon 4’s seasons (and sheep) will change weekly — here’s how - Polygon

[CVG23]

so every week the map changes, it’s like getting 4 maps kinda, different things happening, plus the live events going on. Seems like they are really trying to make the map last longer. I wonder if you’ll have to discover the roads again for every season the first time? Like a new season brings a few new roads maybe? Would be a great thing to find new stuff as all the seasons go through their cycle.

[F3AR_SPEEDz]

The changing seasons is gradual (confirmed by an information video on youtube, out this night) and what I hope is that I can control the seasons/weather because if I cant, it’ll really turn me off…

[gairsy101]

@F3AR_SPEEDz

The changing seasons is gradual (confirmed by an information video on youtube, out this night) and what I hope is that I can control the seasons/weather because if I cant, it’ll really turn me off…

Awesome that’s very good news BTW can u provide the link of the video where that was confirmed?

Hopefully the weather, time of day and season can be set by the blueprint menu like in FH3

[F3AR_SPEEDz]

@gairsy101

@F3AR_SPEEDz

The changing seasons is gradual (confirmed by an information video on youtube, out this night) and what I hope is that I can control the seasons/weather because if I cant, it’ll really turn me off…

Awesome that’s very good news BTW can u provide the link of the video where that was confirmed?

Hopefully the weather, time of day and season can be set by the blueprint menu like in FH3

I thinks its AR12 gaming that post the video where he confirmed the gradual change and plz can someone tell me if its a online only game?

[SBusAsCensored]

@F3AR_SPEEDz

I thinks its AR12 gaming that post the video where he confirmed the gradual change and plz can someone tell me if its a online only game?

From Forza Horizon 4 | Xbox

Game details

Dynamic seasons change everything at the world’s greatest automotive festival. Go it alone or team up with others to explore beautiful and historic Britain in a shared open world. Collect, modify and drive over 450 cars. Race, stunt, create and explore – choose your own path to become a Horizon Superstar.

I read the “go it alone” as being solo like we saw in previous Horizon installments.

EDIT – Confirmation on the “go it alone” part. I just found this quote in the “First Impressions” discussion:

@ManteoMax

@Wh1t3Kn1te

this is what I don’t like

dynamic seasons
multi-player only (if there is a single player option that would improve things a bit)
really didn’t like FH3 and am hoping they fix the AI if there is a single player option.

“You can play offline if you wish, with Drivatars. FH4 is not online only” - Ralph Fulton^

[Lucas_JSR]

@ManteoMax

“You can play offline if you wish, with Drivatars. FH4 is not online only” - Ralph Fulton^

It’s good to know we can also play it offline, but I’m still curious to know how the “dynamic seasons” thing would work while offline. Since each season opens previously unreachable locations, it would be a bummer to be restricted to one season while playing offline. Hopefully they’ll add an option to change seasons manually if playing offline and, if we go online, the game would switch back to the season of the week.

Could someone ask them about this on Twitter, please?

[Xterm1n8or]

Yeah I would be astounded if the seasons aren’t able to be manually changed in offline mode.

I for one hate the snow in fh3 and there’s no way Playground would be stupid enough to think people don’t want to be able to choose the season themselves!

PG have hardly put a foot wrong in the horizon series, they’re not going to make such a rookie mistake!

[JudaZuk]

@Xterm1n8or

Yeah I would be astounded if the seasons aren’t able to be manually changed in offline mode.

I for one hate the snow in fh3 and there’s no way Playground would be stupid enough to think people don’t want to be able to choose the season themselves!

PG have hardly put a foot wrong in the horizon series, they’re not going to make such a rookie mistake!

And today’s stream confirmed what I feared ever since I saw the E3 presentation … Playground ARE this stupid.

It is basically only in blueprints you can select a season … rest of the time you are out of luck … If you prefer to drive hyper/supercars and seasons are attempting to be like real seasons in the UK… you can drive your cars 1, maybe 2 weeka out of 4 … …the other weeks, if you do not like the season , there is absolutely nothing you can do …except not play the game.

If you can bare play spring and autum, but prefer summer…there is still at least 1 week every 4 weeks you are ether forced to play winter where you like it or not… or simply not play at all…

It is a pretty high price to play for a game you only want play certain weeks because how idiotic the game has been created.

I just hope they wake up, realize this huge mistake and fix it …

[LordErec42]

Really hope we’ll be able to manually control the seasons, otherwise as has already been mentioned several times in this thread this could end up being a major annoyance in the game.

I do like the idea of changing seasons though, and look forwards to seeing it in action. Although having four seasons on one map does NOT make the map 4 times bigger as the devs were alluding to.

[SBusAsCensored]

@gamer1000k

Really hope we’ll be able to manually control the seasons, otherwise as has already been mentioned several times in this thread this could end up being a major annoyance in the game.

I do like the idea of changing seasons though, and look forwards to seeing it in action. Although having four seasons on one map does NOT make the map 4 times bigger as the devs were alluding to.

Physically 4 times bigger? No, I don’t think they meant that. But 3-4 different experiences, yes. Imagine crossing a flowing river in the spring, a bog in the summer, a dried bed as autumn rolls in or a bunch of snow drifts and ice in the winter – but all in the same geographical location. If they have the dynamics right for each, not only would this change your driving style, I could see it changing at least your tune and probably your vehicle. So in a sense, yes, you would be racing through 4 different environments throughout the month.

Then if the track builder is everything it’s claimed and expected to be… we’re in for a ride.

[TVChannels98]

Here’s some good news I’ve found,

You have the ability to change the seasons via Horizon Blueprint with your own events. However, when you go back to the open-world, you’ll return to the current season in the dynamic season system.

Here’s proof, around the 38 minnute mark:

Forza Horizon 4 LIVE! Q&A with Turn10! LIFT KITS? CARS? HOW BIG IS THE MAP?

[gairsy101]

@TVChannels98

Here’s some good news I’ve found,

You have the ability to change the seasons via Horizon Blueprint with your own events. However, when you go back to the open-world, you’ll return to the current season in the dynamic season system.

Here’s proof, around the 38 minnute mark:

Good to hear, but it sounds like you can’t change the season in free roam which is a bit dissapointing.