in what was somewhat of a surprise
reveal
it turns out that playground games is
working on forza horizon
5 and it's due out this year this is one
of the most exciting announcements in
the recent
microsoft xbox e3 showcase this year
so exciting in fact that we actually
wanted to make a separate video
discussing it
and that's exactly what we're doing
today and to do that i'm joined by
the man himself richard ledbetter this
is absolutely awesome john
i think um what really impressed me
about it
is just the fact that it came out of
nowhere
and it looks absolutely phenomenal and
we don't have to wait so long until we
can actually play it it's coming out
this year yeah
so in terms of actually presenting a
game
marketing it it just looks phenomenal
and
the fact that we don't have to wait you
know a year 18 months to play it
awesome see i actually think that this
was before we get to the game i want to
say this is a textbook example on how to
do
a big announcement for a game because
you're right the time between
announcement
and release is relatively short but more
importantly they
showed a lot of gameplay footage so we
get a real taste of what it looks like
and it was a genuine surprise i mean you
know in the business we're in we often
hear
about many announcements before they
come to pass
and this one managed to slip under the
radar so they
and i actually kind of appreciate that
you really did not see this coming
especially
knowing that there's another forza
motorsport in development which
seems they've gone back to the drawing
board on that one and really tried to
make it something new and different
absolutely but here we have horizon 5
and it opens up showing it's in mexico
and that's another thing i i love about
the series is that they're always
picking
locales that differ perhaps than what
many other games will have tackled in
the past
and they always seem to find these
beautiful locations that and really
put a lot of time and effort into really
showcasing
sort of compressing everything that
makes a certain region so
visually interesting you know what i
mean yeah absolutely and it's not just
that but it's also the way
that they actually research the location
sample the materials and the
just the kind of ambience of of the of
the sort of chosen location there
and it just pays off spectacularly here
but i think
the thing that really sort of sets this
apart is just
the sheer density that they're going for
here you know in terms of
the materials in terms of the
environmental detail without
talking about going right down to the
single
uh needle on a cactus that's just
just a phenomenal really that's actually
so that's one of the first things we
should talk about then is the
environmental density
so um while this game is slated to come
to xbox one you do get a sense that
they've
massively increased the overall scene
density and
the quality of the meshes they use
photogrammetry to
pick up a lot of the materials which
look great of course
but you get this like real sense of
granularity in the rock surfaces and
just the general
terrain structure in addition to all the
supporting objects around it
that i this today i actually went back
to to look at forza horizon 4
which still looks great by the way but
the difference in terrain complexity is
extremely obvious
and i think that is one of the first
things that really stands out when
looking at this new game
absolutely yeah and last night we were
talking about uh
i think i mentioned initial
disappointment that it was talking about
in engine footage where you know you
didn't really know what you were looking
at interestingly that same footage is
labeled as in-game on the
youtube trailers uh but more than that
the actual gameplay that we saw that was
clearly you know the actual code running
has that same level of detail
and they actually had these specific
shots where uh when they move over to a
new player it lingers under detail you
get this sort of like yeah beautiful
vista shot and then the player kind of
swoops in and then the action kicks off
it was a beautiful way to demonstrate
that this is real this
is the game and it's you know i can't
really say anything
more than that just looks amazing
absolutely they also have the long
motion blur shutter speed that i love so
much
which was an option in the pc version of
forza horizon 4 when running at 60 fps
or higher
but wasn't on the xbox for some reason
they went with the shorter
motion blur shutter speed which is kind
of a weird artistic decision but
i'm hoping that by featuring it in this
trailer we'll actually see that
transition to all versions of the game
so that's another nice thing but really
i guess we should also talk about
um the ray tracing so i think there's
been some confusion on this
and we were initially confused as well
so early in the trailer
they start by showing the mercedes amg
project 1
forza edition car which looks beautiful
by the way
and you get a peek at the interior and
everything and the first thing they show
though
is you actually see that car reflecting
its body within its own body so like the
flaps on the back and different parts of
the car itself the
side mirror all of this stuff reflects
correctly in the body paints you're like
oh wow okay so they are using retraced
reflections
but they did note that it actually seems
to be only in forza vista for some
reason
rendered in unparalleled detail and with
ray tracing in forza vista
thanks to the power of the xbox series
consoles which
right uh we'll have to see what all of
this entails what this really
means in the end result but the thing is
though is
a lot of people are like hey you know
the the in-game reflections it looks
like ray tracing
and i can see where the confusion comes
from but
i believe it's just their dynamic cube
map reflection probe system
where essentially they're capturing the
environment and applying that
to the car body updating at each frame
and this is exactly the technique they
used in forza horizon 4
and they could of course potentially
increase the resolution of that
resulting texture i guess but it looks
really good either way like it's not
ray tracing would be nice to have on
that but i can understand why
we might not see it in game especially
considering how difficult
cars are to render within like a bb-8
structure
like we've been hearing a lot of
developers talk about this lately and
just the complexity you can't really
simplify a car too much without it
looking
uh not good in the reflection yeah and
famously of course assetto corsa was due
to have
uh car reflections and uh never really
happened
exactly yeah but you know in terms of
what we're seeing here
they did actually sort of they were
quite specific that uh
rt was in forza vista i think maybe the
conclu
uh i think maybe the confusion is that
you know the car actually seemed to be
situated in the game world
yes exactly okay and that's you could
see it in that last shot when the car
sort of rolls off
uh down the hill there so you know
either way though honestly
that's i i feel like with the quality of
the reflections as
is there's almost no need to you know
it's like a nice to have thing but it
doesn't really detract from the overall
presentation and
everything else just looks absolutely
phenomenal
and fans will also be pleased to note
that during
by the way there's dense jungle sections
not only do we get a glimpse of their
new uh volumetric lighting system
you can sort of see that sort of filling
the areas like when they do that
initial um static camera kind of looking
at the jungle
it really looks good like it looks like
you could plop a profit down on that and
give him
his nano suit and you're ready to go you
know what i mean
well we could uh possibly pitch that as
dlc exactly that would work but
more importantly um since a lot of
people have been talking about this
stuff lately i can say
you can see clearly these foliage dense
areas
the foliage does actually react to the
car sort of bending and snapping as you
drive through it
i think it's great to see it here and it
actually adds a lot because cars are
large objects and when you're driving
through the trees
you kind of want them to react and they
do so that looks great
yeah absolutely um also the global
illumination i'm
you may have picked up on this i'm not
sure how they do it yet actually
and i don't remember how they buy it in
forza horizon 4 and before but
you can see like in this scene here when
they show sort of like along the coast
uh the orange glow of the sand is is
sort of bouncing up
off the sand onto the rocky structure
which is in shadow
and it's a very effective looking uh use
of it there
um and you know because you're moving so
fast through the environment
they could be they could probably use a
pre-calculated solution that doesn't
have the super fine granularity that you
might want in like say a first person
game where you're walking around
uh where usually you can sort of see
some of the the holes in the lighting if
you will but here
you know it seems very effective in days
yeah and it gives this
it just gives it this vibrant look right
yeah absolutely and i think the other
thing is that
uh even when you're not you're sort of
moving about at fast speed
when you get those initial uh sort of
scenery shots before the car comes in
the gi holds up really well there as
well it just interacts beautifully with
the
uh the sort of photogrammetry assets so
it
just it just looks really consistent and
really realistic
and i think it's just they've really
refined their technique
i guess we could say and it looks better
than it ever looked
the more i look at stuff like this the
more i wonder what the xbox one version
is gonna look like and i kind of wanted
some answers here so i reached out to
microsoft
and when i say reach out i meant sent an
email
um and we we did actually get some
answers back
which are quite interesting so in the
direct we were talking about the
possibility that and they're going to
scale the existing
engine or they may do something similar
to what they did with
forza horizon 2 which was to basically
use the last gen
engine in that case it was running on
xbox 360.
but we did get some fur answers back
here so um
the reason we asked the question was
because uh mike brown the creative
director put out a tweet essentially
saying
that uh both the quality and performance
modes would be running at 4k
60 on xbox series x
which is pretty phenomenal so we did get
some added context here
and essentially what we got back was uh
this comment
while forza horizon 5 was built to
showcase the abilities
of the series consoles in order to
provide best-in-class experiences on a
wide range of pcs as well as xbox one
we've invested in a number of scalable
technologies
such as dynamic resolution scaling drs
variable draw distances and a robust
level of detail system law that all
makes sense
it does yeah it basically sounds like
they they are
they've just made their engine more
scalable as you'd expect i'm sure they
built upon the technology from prior
games
and this is kind of the result so and it
would make sense in terms of development
as well it's just easier to work from a
single version and sort of scale it up
and down
yeah but i guess the the other thing
though
beyond scaling for last gen uh we were
also interested in the resolution stuff
right
because uh previously it said oh yeah
it's gonna be 4k
30 on the series x and we're like oh so
that must mean this is pc footage
but then he came out later and was like
no actually the performance mode is
going to be 4k 60.
we're like wait what yeah so again we've
got common here from microsoft
forza horizon 5 runs at 4k 30fps on
series
x 1080p 30fps on series
s however for players that prefer to
optimize
for frame rate we'll have a performance
mode option that will run at 4k
60fps with select graphical features
scaled to maintain a steady frame rate
on xbox series x and 1080p 60 on series
s so yeah i mean essentially
they've got a whole bunch of systems
within the game that they can scale
according to the capabilities of the
system
and uh the target frame rate so it's
gonna be yeah
you know basically we should expect them
to be making trades to hit 68 frames per
second
just as they did with forza horizon 4's
60 frames per second mode
on uh on one x exactly but what's
interesting here though is that
they mentioned earlier dynamic
resolution scaling which has become very
common but that was not
i believe in the console version
of forza horizon 4 right it may have
been on pc i can't actually remember
well um historically what they've done
with this engine has actually been
something quite remarkable rather than
scaling resolution they've actually had
dynamically scalable
settings you know if they could actually
change stuff on the fly
because the idea was to maintain that
kind of pristine
look to the visuals and that for them
that meant resolution
but it looks like you know basically
they've expanded the system here
and there's even more scalability in
this one and the option to dynamically
scale resolution is one of those
variables now
and that's key i think because um you
know on the one
x for the frame rate mode they went all
the way down to 1080 which was quite a
quite a drop in terms of image clarity
and with dynamic resolution scaling that
should at least ensure that
you know they'll hit 4k where they can
and if they need to drop it
and the other details they will uh so it
i suspect that the performance mode is
going to be the preferred way to play
this
almost certainly and i guess we still we
actually don't know i mean
did they confirm whether the footage we
saw was pc or was
or was it actually xbox series x i mean
we don't have confirmation on that but i
would suspect it would be pc just to
show the game running at its absolute
best
um and it certainly made a statement but
i'm curious about this
4k 60 target for series x on the
performance mode
because i'm wondering if there's folks
out there who would prefer to have the
you know the max fidelity experience but
a lower resolution
yeah i don't know maybe there's room for
a third option we'll have to see
i guess we have to wait and see still
kind of early days even though the
game's out relatively soon there's a lot
of
work to do exactly a few months of
development yep um while we're here
though a couple other
details that kind of wanted to mention
while we're talking about the game
first of all i really like and this is
something that was also in the the
previous game but
i love what they call the starburst
highlights on the cars the sort of the
sun glare off the windshield and
the back glass and everything um a
simple detail
but it's just it's very very stylish and
they have like isotropic lens flares in
there as well and
this adds a lot to the presentation i
feel and in general you know i like the
variety of environments like the towns
they showed were
exceptionally detailed and they could
sort of
they did that thing where they sort of
sort of freeze up the camera and like
let it linger there for a moment
and you can see a distinct boost in
overall like geometric density and
texture detail compared to the prior
game
and then there's the desert area as soon
as i saw those large stretches
out to the horizon i was immediately
thinking of need for speed hot pursuit
of the 2009 game uh obviously this is in
a good way
yes in a very good way because that was
one of my favorite things about that
game is they really created this great
sense of scale on these desert tracks
and this sort of captures that uh for a
new generation and i like the look of
that
i mean literally the horizon yeah yes
exactly and speaking of horizon they
also showed that excellent scene with
the dust storm on the horizon which
combines the use of the volumetric
lighting you can sort of
see the light slicing through the
atmospheric effects
and just all like the dust particles in
the air sort of clogging the camera view
that's sort of an epic uh thing to
showcase i really like the look of that
um and then of course there's also the
events lab stuff which could actually be
really interesting because
you see some of the tracks behind there
and it kind of reminds me of track mania
or the um
did you ever play the the what is it the
hot wheels add-on for forza horizon 3.
no i didn't but i hear good things about
i did it was really cool
and it kind of has this idea of like
these tracks that are
clearly exaggerated and like over the
top uh
but it was really kind of wild to
explore that within a forza game i just
really like the idea though it's just
a bit uh a bit wacky a bit crazy but as
long as it's kind of its own thing
uh it's just gonna work isn't it it
looks really fun i have to say
i did get a chuckle though they so they
tried to set this up as a fake
multiplayer match or maybe not a fake
multiplayer match but that's kind of the
feeling you get
at these e3 conferences when you have
all the chatter and you see how orderly
people are behaved when they're playing
together everybody's like clearly
communicating what they want to do and
what they're doing and everybody's sort
of just following the rules and i'm just
like
that's that's not how it usually goes
but you know it's
that kind of that said there was a
there's a town
scene where there's just random cars
bombing about
and that's kind of a bit more like it
you know it's just
online chaos it does
but even then there are some uh aspects
in there where you know they've got like
they must have choreographed those
flying cars
you know arcing over you as you as you
kind of uh
drive through the scene there but yeah i
mean
it's kind of a double-edged sword really
the multiplayer isn't it you know
it's it is key to the forza horizon
experience but
crazy wacky unrealistic stuff does ensue
as a result
i will say that they don't in my past
experience with it is that
they don't flood the the world with
enough players to really cause that
issue and most people in the world are
just kind of driving and having fun
so it's actually it works pretty well it
does give you this sense of being in a
place with others
driving around and so it's it's a cool
thing
i'm definitely a fan of that but yeah
obviously
you know we're limited to this trailer
footage here which you've probably now
seen
multiple times over the course of this
video
but it's just one of those things where
i was really excited to see
you know microsoft really bring
something big and next-gen to the table
like this
that just looks like this and i love
what these guys do
um yeah this could be one of the most
interesting games of the year if the
last one is anything to go by so i mean
it's definitely moved to the top of my
list of games i really want to see and
really want to play now
and um i guess it's assuaging a lot of
fears because
you know when microsoft committed to the
cross gen
philosophy which now of course sony have
kind of partly bought into as well
there was the concern that the games
would be held back by the prior
generation
but you know we've seen some instances
on ps5 where that
kind of works out the crosston thing and
here
i just don't see this as anything other
than the next generation experience
yeah that's kind of my thinking as well
and the conversation around
what's next gen and what's crossgen it's
very
gray it's not a black and white thing
you can't be all or nothing
because there's certain game types that
can work really well and scale across
different consoles
like i think this one uh the
disappointment i have with something
like god of war is just like you know
fundamentally the original game had some
design limitations
uh that were created to ensure that it
would work on a mechanical drive
and we're not gonna see those i'd
imagine not see those go away
so it does kind of vary from game to
game
and in this case we know that they can
do this big open world driving game
even going back to the 360. it's just a
matter of scaling down the visuals
to work within the constraints of the
older machines
and it looks like they've at least
really leaned into the new hardware to
deliver something that looks
i mean this this will probably be the
best looking driving game on the market
when it hits so
yeah i think we need one i think it's
something we've talked about in the past
oh my gosh
yeah we actually had that question from
a patreon supporter which is like where
are the next gen driving games well
microsoft and playground stepped up and
here we go
i'm glad they stepped up with this one
first too because we need these arcade
racers
like this i mean it's not a traditional
arcade racer but this is more like
from the school of pgr uh i would say
it's that kind of game and it's it's so
good um
so yeah it's definitely something to be
excited for this fall and we will
actually sit down and look at it in much
more detail when the game eventually
arrives
so but until then i guess we'll
we'll finish up this video here so
thanks for joining me rich
absolutely and if you guys enjoyed this
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this is john and rich signing off