Whether you have HDR or SDR - the brake lights in the game look funny for most cars. They’re don’t emit the right level of brightness and bleed/glow, especially at night and low contrast racing conditions.
E.g., in overcast and low contrast conditions you have brake lights looking almost flat white or bright orange with a strange glow/halo around them.
Here’s one discussion I found on the topic:
Read one of the last few comments where a guy posted an image to show everyone an example of what I mean:
So many updates - why hasn’t the T10 team calibrated the game to run properly on all TVs? Brake lights look really ugly and need to look the right shade of red, with correct illumination and glow, depending on time of day and the car you’re driving (older brake lights vs more modern and brighter LED brake lights).
So no fix for the super-bright orange brake lights or overly dull ones with no bloom/ appropriate glow effect? “If it’s broken, leave it broken” it is!
Can’t understand how something like proper colour calibration and testing can be taken lightly - in a racing game that has different times of day.
Here are some shots to get yous guys thoughts on it:
I have never seen such odd colors on brake lights in any of the Forza games played. Maybe a few odd cases here and there in FH3 but it’s now more common in FH4 - but especially hard to ignore in FM7. when lights are not bright orange and washed out, they look just plain dull red with no depth or hues; what happened to the brake light glow/bloom effect from FM5 and 6?
My screen is SDR but Forza 7 and FH4 are the only two games I have problems with. Shadow of TR and GOW4 for instance display all colors as expected.
I have tried limited RGB, full RGB, YCC 422 on and off. Makes no difference. It’s not a TV calibration issue because all my games and movies look great with colors as life-like and accurate as you would expect.
I took a look at the 1997 Nissan GTR V-Spec and your point is valid about the brake light colors being incorrect when compared to a factory car. I’m seeing the same yellow-with-orange-halo brake lights, but they don’t glow annoyingly bright as shown in your screenshot. I also found the following Youtube video of the same car in FM3 as a reference, and there’s clearly an inconsistency with the taillights in FM7: 1997 Nissan GTR V-Spec in Forza Motorsport 3
Personally I’m not bothered by the incorrect taillight colors. People modify their cars in various ways IRL, so that’s one way to look at it. However, I’d be distracted if the taillights I saw in the game glowed as bright as what you’re seeing on your screen. Since I’m not seeing that happen, it would be difficult for T10 to justify a wide-sweeping change to brake light intensity based on one user’s experience.
Another curious thing is that your photo is based on FM7’s Camera Mode. Since you’re having issues with brake light intensities on a live system, you shouldn’t have been able to capture that “glowing effect” on file unless it were something that was hard-coded. In other words, I went into Camera Mode and could not reproduce that hazy, particulate glow that you’ve posted in your photo no matter what adjustments that I made to camera settings. Did you modify the original FM7 photo with a photo editor to show us a dramatic effect of what you’re seeing on screen or is that the actual file that was outputted by FM7? If you modified the original photo, then it would probably be more helpful to take a photo of your TV screen/monitor using an actual camera to show us the problem. If you didn’t modify the original photo, then it’s possible that your video drivers might have some post-processing effects running in the background, and if FM7’s Camera Mode simply takes a frame from the video buffer, then that could explain why the effect is being written to file. One last thing is that FM7 could have some video enhancement settings that you might be able to adjust if you’re playing the game on a PC. I’m running FM7 from a console and I don’t recall there being any settings that can simulate that glow effect. If you have access to some of those controls, then I’d look there to see if you can get rid of the excessive glow from the taillights. Aside from that, the only thing that I can confirm with you at this point is the colors of the brake lights.
Anyhow, it might be useful to list your hardware specifications and model of your monitor so that T10 has some real world data of how the game looks outside of their test systems when developing FM8. You might also be able to get some feedback from others with similar hardware who are having a completely different experience than you – and that could be a hint as to a hardware issue. (One thing that comes to mind is that I once had a defective video cable that affected the way things looked on one of my computers. However, I would find it extremely peculiar if a defective video cable would be so specific as to affect the intensity of brake light glow in a video game for a select number of cars. But you never know.)
I’m on a One-X, using a 1080p TV that isn’t HDR. The photos are completely untouched - took them under the default settings and posted them here.
The orange-yellow glowy brake lights are more noticeable on certain cars. But cars that do not exhibit this weird orange or yellow colored brake lights have a flat red color. As in, completely flat - no glow, no halo or bloom effect. Remember FM5 and 6? The cars had this really satisfying reddish glow to the tail lights and the colors never looked off.
BTW, the brake lights take this funny bright yellow/orange hue mostly in low contrast daytime conditions: fog, rain, overcast, cloudy, late afternoon/early evening/ early morning etc.
At night in pitch blackness, ALL cars have red tail lights. But there’s no real glow or bloom to them. Just flat red.
You think its the auto-exposure in the game’s lighting model not working as it should?
It is a bit of an issue for me as it bothers me while driving from chase cam or watching replays.
Apparently this topic is also being discussed in another thread, but to recap it appears as though the game is incorrectly outputting HDR content to SDR screens for some assets. That would make a lot of sense since we’re both using SDR screens and the other person claiming correct taillight colors is using a calibrated HDR screen. Also, I’m using a first generation Xbox One while you’re playing on an Xbox One X, which probably explains why you’ve got glowing taillights and I don’t. Interesting.
I was playing the game on a first-gen xbox one myself before getting the X. Same problem there - glowy and bright yellow or orange tail lights. they are almost never red. And at night, they do look red, but no glow or bloom effect at all, none.
FM7, FH4 and FH3 are literally the only HDR games in my collection which have this problem. Colors in all other games are fine. PCARS2 actually looks odd at times too (brake lights) but I think thats how the game engine is.
You might be right though - the game attempts to use HDR assets for SDR screens - that would explain the tail lights looking funny. I don’t understand why they haven’t taken the trouble of fixing this.
If T10 already logged the complaint, then I would guess that it’s now just a matter of prioritization. There appears to be two issues here, one is incorrect taillight color for some cars and the other has to do with display calibration. Personally, AFAIK, I don’t own any cars in my garage that have the yellow taillight problem. As a hypothetical example, if the issue involved skins that were incorrectly rendered for an unknown number of assets, then it might be considered a time-consuming undertaking with little return in value for the invested work. On the other hand, if there were a generalized issue with how the overall game is visually being presented, then that’s something T10 would probably (should probably) prioritize above the yellow taillights (assuming that the two problems are unrelated).
I probably wouldn’t have known about the yellow taillights until you mentioned it. I actually had to go into the car rental section just to see the problem for myself. Something definitely changed with the taillights for a select number of cars some time after FM3, and that I agree. However, I honestly don’t believe that the taillight issue will be resolved in FM7. That said, it will likely be a continued issue in FM8 if assets are directly reused for the new game (again, if hypothetically assuming that the problem is asset-specific). So it would probably be helpful to T10 to note which cars have problems as you find them and to present to them a final list of affected vehicles while they’re still in the process of developing FM8. There’s no guarantee that this will change anything, but if this is an important issue to you (which I believe it is), then it will more likely be addressed if some of the early research is done for them by the community instead of their staff. Else, it will probably remain a low priority issue going into FM8 and thereafter.
They have (or should) utilities to load the complete cars into test environments and test things like the lights. It shouldn’t take one person more than a day to check and correct every car.
Yup, they are indeed yellow. If I’m not misinterpreting what @EpicEvan777 was saying, the in-game colors look “correct” per his HDR TV:
I’m guessing that his screenshots are showing yellow taillights because it was meant to be viewed on his HDR TV. I think that’s what he was implying by the following comment:
I’m not really sure, but that’s my interpretation of it. Anyway, this thread should probably be merged with that other one to keep things tidy.
Yes you’re completely correct. Unless you’re viewing it on a professionally calibrated 4K HDR TV, the pictures I post won’t show anything because you’re viewing it in SDR.
For example, looking at the pictures on my phone which is SDR looks different to looking at them on my TV which is expected. So unfortunately, unless you guys get your hands on a professionally calibrated 4K HDR screen to view the pictures on there’s nothing I can do to actually show the true difference.
If people remember, this was a problem with Forza 7’s gameplay reveal as well. A lot of people complained the game looked washed out when it was just YouTubes HDR to SDR conversion. If anyone remembers that, it’s essentially the exact same thing that’s happening here.
My point is, you’ve underplayed the incredulity of it. Orange isn’t red. Yellow is definitely not red. Maybe Forza 8 will be greyscale. Colors are too mainstream for T10.
I saw the screen shots you have uploaded, they look terrible. My money is on your TV being faulty or not set up correctly to communicate with your console.
Turn 10 knows better than to release a game with such a gigantic glitch and even if they did make this mistake, they would have fixed it immediately with the first update.
Have you tried connecting your console to a different brand of TV to see if the issue follows or stays with your old TV?
Perhaps you did not read all the posts above - Forza 7 is the ONLY game with a weird looking color on the tail lights. All games look beautiful on my TV - they are HDR games: SOTR, GOW4, ghost recon wildlands, wolfenstein, etc.
I have noticed washed out brake lights in FH4 at night but never bright yellow or orange. Also, in PCARS, I seem to notice that brake lights look nearly white and never deep red like they should.
Again - for the record: ALL my games look fine except for the Forza games that are in HDR (F7 being the biggest culprit).
I have seen shots of people with this bright yellow brake light problem on HDR Tvs - it typically shows in overcast or low contrast track conditions - night driving looks okay. I even attached a link to a photo of a 458 someone posted with bright yellow brakes (I think its in the other thread).
Just so you know brake lights do not appear so bright or ugly on my TV when I am playing the game. I will take a few screenshots of brake lights and upload them so you guys can see. Also your screenshots are consistent with dynamic contrast / contrast enhancer being turned on or a higher value of gamma the recommended. Maybe other games look okay but for Forza its a no go . I wish I could be of more help.
is on your TV being faulty or not set up correctly to communicate with your console.