It has been confirmed that Forza Motorsport 8 will going full next-gen on its visuals, alongside other cool features which were announced at the monthly Forza livestream.
forza motorsport 8 announcement
IGN reports that the confirmation comes from creative director Chris Esaki. He says that Forza 8's ray tracing will be "enhanced" by the game's full day and night cycle. Esaki says that the game's visuals are "a true generational leap" if you combine ray tracing and the day-night cycle with the new tracks - most of them new to the Forza series as a whole and were "built from the ground up."
Here is the official trailer for Forza Motorsport 8 sporting just how amazing the game's graphics will look on the right hardware:
As you see in the trailer there, the game can actually pretty darn realistic from a lot of angles. But in Forza 8, ray tracing and the day-night cycle are just two parts of the entire thing as the game will also introduce what looks to be dynamic weather. The weather, as per Esaki, will actually determine how players drive because it affects aspects like grip, traction, and everything else.
It wasn't made clear, however, whether ray tracing will be present in the actual gameplay of Forza Motorsport 8. Many players will remember that in Forza Horizon 5, ray tracing was technically included - but only in photo mode, which didn't sit well with a lot of players.
But judging by the trailer shared above, it does look like that ray tracing will be available in gameplay as well as photo mode. According to WCCFTech, ray tracing will be implemented on-track - something that competing Gran Turismo 7 (you can read our review of it here) was only available to implement during replays.
Aside from that, the development team at Turn 10 also promises massive improvements to environmental detail, as well as an insane 48x improvement in physics simulation.
Forza Motorsport 8 (technically Turn 10 dropped the number 8 to signify a "reboot" for the franchise) is due to launch in 2023 for Xbox Series X/S and PC, writes IGN.
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Already A HUGE Leap From Forza Horizon 5
With Forza Motorsport introducing ray tracing into gameplay, the racing series is already making a massive leap compared to FH5 - where, as aforementioned, ray tracing is only available in photo mode.
When asked about why that is, creative director Mike Brown basically just said that even the power of next-gen consoles have limits (via TrustedReviews). In other words, ray tracing proved to be too demanding on the Series X (more so on the Series S) hardware to be able to run during gameplay, which targets 4K at 60 FPS on the bigger Series X.
The lack of in-gameplay RT was then eventually solved via a PC mod showcased by a supporter of Digital Foundry (via Eurogamer). The analysis goes into pretty technical things, but the gist is this: the performance hit of in-gameplay RT even on a powerful PC is still quite high even on an RTX 3080/RX 6800XT, with the AMD cards taking a heavier hit than NVIDIA ones.
Considering that the Xbox Series X and Series S both feature AMD chips, you can see why the developers never included it in-game for FH5. As such, it would be interesting just how Forza Motorsport 8 will implement in-gameplay RT without sacrificing too much performance.
Related Article: Is Ray Tracing Worth It? Here's The Truth About 'RTX On'
This article is posted on GameNGuide
Written by RJ Pierce
