Forza Motorsport Launches With Three Performance Modes On Xbox Series X

Well, to be fair, Forza Horizons 5 had a 30 FPS mode. I won’t be using it but these options sound great as long as variable resolution isn’t 480p, lol. Looking forward to more details on that mode.

It makes sense, full 4k with RT would likely be unstable so capping to 30fps is for the 'Visual' purests. 30fps can still feel responsive and fluid (Forza Horizon for example) and may be 'less' distracting to some gamers than differing 'image Quality' due to changing resolutions and/or other cut-backs needed to hit a locked 60fps. The 'best' visual Quality is their Priority.

Some may prefer to have lower resolutions and RT, whilst others may think that a consistent 4k and 60fps is their prefered way to play and RT doesn't really matter to them.

I know its 'unusual' for Turn 10 who have always targeted 60fps and built their games to hit that target - but it does allow them to push the Graphics up on Consoles and PC owners can get a meaningful 'upgrade' potential too.

Will probably only ever use performance mode but it's good folks are given a choice instead of locking then into something that might be less than ideal for them personally (side eyes Starfield)

For this kind of game, 30 fps is not good enough, I dont see why they would bother offering it at all.
Other than screen shots and boasting, RT in gameplay gives you nothing - why would anyone sacrafice resolution for that? They obviously couldnt acieve this while maintaining 4k60, which is a shame.

The footage Ive seen from the previews is looking much better than earlier gameplay, so its clear this will be another quality release.
I have grave concerns that they have turned this into a live service game with grind, but I wont know how badly this will affect my enjoyment till we get it. Cant wait for release so I can try myself.
Must calibrate my xim nexus ready for motion steering 😀
For a proper racing sim 4k60 is essential imo (its the only option in GT), and im glad they have this.

I am personally in that camp that rarely, if ever, felt 60fps to be a necessity in any game (outside of MP in CoD, Battlefield etc). I feel like while not many people will use it for gameplay, it is nice to have the option. I will also play it either in Visuals or Performance RT mode. We want some sweet visuals out of the console don't we?

Choice is always good

@BrilliantBill I'm definitely no expert in this field but I was thinking the same. Isn't 60 fps especially beneficial in quick action games? Racing games deal with rather slow movements, so I wonder if you will even notice the difference between 30 and 60 fps.

@Princessmadllama Performance mode is literally what the box says then.

@BrilliantBill I would add racing games alongside your cod's as needing as much FPS as they can get for much the same reasons witb 60 FPS a minimum standard especially when it comes to multiplayer.

It's really noticeable when racing with a wheel set up when you make many small adjustments during the course of a race but even with a controller you will notice a difference if you pay attention.

Seen as you mentioned CoD & Battlefield think of it like the difference between mouse & keyboard compared to a controller. The higher the frame rate the more precise your inputs the faster you drive.

It's why Turn 10 locked the pc frame rate to 60 FPS for multiplayer too. As both pc & console folks race together it would be an unfair advantage to the pc folks if the had an unlocked frame rate that the console couldn't match.

(I can understand the frustration from pc folks but it keeps a level playing field for everyone. & the racing competitive.)

I have Forza Horizon 5 and tried playing the game at 30FPS and just couldn't do it. The difference between playing FH5 at 30FPS and 60FPS is to me night and day.

Performance mode it is most likely. Might give the RT option a go as well just to see how much it dips and if it's worth it.

Mo' Options; Mo' Bettah

@Princessmadllama What do you expect from a £480 console? Show me a PC out there for under £500 that can do full 4K @60fps with ray tracing.

I’ll be using Performance RT when I download this. I’ve used that same mode in games like GTA V , Spider-Man Remastered etc it’s the best of both worlds until we get a console powerful enough to get all the bells and whistles at 60fps.

@Titntin so 1st journalist just looking for anything to critisize xbox games, 2nd its always better to have choices, why asking to have less

Oh just great having an hdmi 2.1 vrr tv freesync and not using it

Where is the 40hz mode? The unlocked framerate?

Who cares about raytx? We know this gen has no power to run it properly. Lol not even 4k60 without rtx

Please just unlock the frameratesand let people options

Performance or performance raytracing for me. Just depends which of the two looks better to my eyes. Bring on October!

Xbox Series S | X! 120 FPS, 8K CAPABLE, 4K READY, RAY TRACING.....but not all at the same time and highly variable. Halo Infinite at least got the 120 FPS and 4K right (oh I feel someone will correct me hard here if I'm wrong) even though 343 got so much else wrong from a content delivery & community POV. Only a few thousand active users a week on there now

A Porsche 911 can go well above 150 mph(about 240 mph) and it also has a turning radius of 18 feet (5.5 meters about).

It can’t do both at the same time.

I know it’s a car and a different application, but does that deter you from driving said car and having some fun with it?

HokiHoshi has a 40 minutes of the Motorsport preview captured on the Series S up on YouTube.

I will be racing on an X so it doesn't really matter to me but the S looks decent enough and not too shabby from the footage I watched. Was 60 FPS but lower resolution obviously.

I won't say anymore you all can make up your own minds.

Is it only me who expected a performance mode that ran 120fps? My setup is made for 1440p and 120fps, I've gone through all these generations of consoles running low FPS on low quality wishing I had a PC that could at least get higher FPS and we finally get to a console gen that can run buttery smooth FPS and the best we get is 60? I can happily sacrifice quality to get the smoothest gameplay possible, 60 seems like a bit of a disappointment

I’m torn between performance and performance RT. Will try out both and then decide.

I like that they are giving people options. Hopefully, in 10-15 years gaming consoles will be quantum computers and we won't need any of these settings.

But, until then, the reality is that the real world is still too hard to fully simulate for any console and therefore we have to have trade-offs.

Interesting that there is no 120 fps option. There must be a ton of computing for the car simulation under the covers. The more realistic everything about how the cars drive is, the better to me.

Good to have these options
Some games come with none
Cough SF 😂

And Starfield made the "Creative Decision" (Spencer's own words) to lock it at 30 on series X.....Doesn't sound very creative to me.

@BBB yuuuuuuuup

@XoBiiDoS yes it’s only you because most console gamers, myself included, are not set up for 1440p @ 120fps gaming. You really need a PC if you want to be in that niche you describe.

@JaffeGaffe blame Tod not Phil. He’s the one who likes his games at 4k and feeling cinematic at 30fps for some reason. So Phil was right it was a creative decision, from Tod 😂

@Princessmadllama last gen we did indeed get some 4K games but some were using checkerboarding which honestly was great and seems better than the smudge fest FSR we have now.

Ray tracing has been a huge distraction this generation. For what it delivers, it’s totally NOT worth the hit in performance. I’d rather see more games just focus on 4k 60fps stability and find other lighting techniques. Most of the time it’s overdone anyway and everything looks ridiculously too shiny.

I’ve never been all that convinced by Ray-tracing but will give it a go, in all likelihood will end up just using the 4K60 mode. No interest in racing games at 30fps but fair enough including the option for those that want it.

@JaffeGaffe creative decision ,nah they just couldnt do a 60fps version,they cant even optimise the loading screens properly, or at the very least try to hide them.

@Feffster I dont really see the point of raytracing in a racing game ,when most of your time is spent focused on your car,in the centre of the screen.

@Fenbops Bit strange for Microsoft to market a console capable of 120fps but have such a limited set of games capable of playing it, even TVs these days can run 120hz so not exactly as niche as you say, 1440p 120fps is such a better experience than 30/60 at 4k but all I see is developers shouting about 4k capabilities like it's the must-have over a higher frame, don't see no harm in letting people choose?

But choosing between 30 and 60 just sounds like a poor effort to be honest.

@GiveMeMoney SSR implemented properly can look just as good as RT, although it has its limitations it’s nowhere near the hit that RT has. Same thing with UE5, we’ve been promised this game changing technology but all we’re getting are sub 1080p games that don’t look much better than what we’ve already seen.

@XoBiiDoS Xbox and PS5 also have 8k on the box. You should never believe the marketing from these companies. High end TVs support 120fps but the vast majority of console gamers don’t have a set capable of 120fps that’s a fact.

@Princessmadllama may I suggest a PC then? Around £2,000 should cover it. If you think the Series X, costing what it does, should be able to do native 4K/60 with RT, the only thing failing here is your knowledge on how taxing and resource heavy RT actually is.

@XoBiiDoS I was definitely expecting a 1440p/120fps mode.

I was also expecting a 40fps mode. Especially with how they just recently updated VRR for the Xbox.

It really feels like one hand isn't talking to the other.

@Princessmadllama Game optimization does seem to have taken a big hit in recent years, but rather than "lazy devs", we're likely looking at a mix of:

• higher budgets, longer development times... and overly tight deadlines to mitigate the previous two factors!
• bigger, more complex games, meaning it's not as feasible to spend time optimizing every little thing
• a shift towards the "real" versions of effects, like ray tracing and real-time shadows, as opposed to clever approximations

I could also point towards a growing acceptance of poor framerates, long loading times, and overly large installations, but these all go back 10-20 years, and if anything, we've recently started to bounce back on 2/3 of these issues!

PS: I have to call out those Zelda specs: Both N64 Zeldas ran at 20fps, not 30, and they weren't doing 12,000 polygons per frame. IIRC, Majora's Mask sometimes broke past 5,000 in Clock Town, but it tended to slow down when that happened.

@Princessmadllama You seem quite critical of the performance of a game I suspect (just a hunch) you have no realistic intention to purchase/play, and yet have an inflated sense of the performance of an older title you probably (just a hunch) enjoyed. This isn't uncommon on the internet, this website, and even in this comment section, but it does make your critique seem all the more ungrounded.

I also think your view on the state of the generation is odd, and comically fatalistic. Do you really consider it a "failure" if RT and 4K, at 60fps at this level of detail is unachievable? If that's your standard, what are you even playing?

Looking forward to this one coming out. A little surprised they didn't do a 120 option. I also am very put off by all the talking on the gameplay clip. Highly irritating voice that will very quickly make me uninstall the game if it can't be turned off!

@BrilliantBill The less you need to perform in a game, the less you need 60fps. Play shooters at high level, fighting games, and yes, racing games and you'll quickly learn to miss it when it isn't there. It's the new(ish) floor for most of performance gaming.

Outside of performance, framerate (motion) is also an important part of the visual quality of a game. What's your personal FPS floor? What if it were 20, or 10? I imagine your line is somewhere above 5fps, for others it's 60fps or higher. For me, it's waaaay more important to have 60fps than 4k, for example.

I rather Motorsport over horizon plus the empty streets bother me

None of this fps discourse matters if there are still no qualifiers in this SERIOUS sim racer.

No preview I've read has mentioned it so I take it that it doesn't? So every race is a fight from the back of the pack. Again. 8 games in. How hard is it to add it as an option? Races in the real world do not operate like this.

It's a hard pass this time, which is a shame because I do enjoy how they feel to play. It's just that they don't seem to understand what actual racing is

I look forward this!! I love go fast cars!!! It so exciting!!! It make me feel klitso!!!

@electrolite77 Ocarine was 20 fps on N64.

Performance RT seems the way to go, then, but I'm willing to give a try at this Quality mode, since I play Horizon on that mode, and given that my favorite race game from the previous game was a 30fps game (Driveclub).

@electrolite77 When you look at other articles suggesting the reason behind the lack of 120fps mode is due to keeping 'fairness' between people on series s and series x when in multiplayer it starts to beg the question, is the S starting to hold the X back from being the console it could be?

@Jive_Talking in multiplayer you essentially do a race weekend made up of a practice session, qualifying and the actual race.

In single player career campaign it's a little different in that you kind of bet on yourself with a risk reward system called Challenge the Grid.

You pick your starting position the further back you start the greater your rewards if you finish on the podium. So no you needn't start from the back if you don't want to but the rewards are greater if you do & finish well.

It's also worth remembering this isn't a sim racer. It's leaning more towards the sim side with improved tyre models etc than previous iterations but it's not a pure sim game like say iracing or even ACC.

If that is what you are expecting to play you will be disappointed.

@BBB

Hey man, thank you! You've been more informative than the professional previews I've read.

That's actually not a bad compromise at all. I'm now back to being relatively interested. And yeah, I know it's not strictly a sim, more sim arcade. I just think in any serious or semi serious racing game qualifiers is a must.

Once again, thank you, mate

It's not laziness, it's the fact that visuals are prioritized over performance.

You can get 120fps, but you have to reduce what the GPU needs to do.

Samurai Showdown has 120fps, it looks good, but the art-style and the fact that its 2D allows for reducing the GPU labor. Realistic visuals at 4K has a price unfortunately.

Granted.... https://betterprogramming.pub/here-are-the-three-virtues-of-good-programmers-e561e061ea19

@Jive_Talking glad to have helped & hope you do find it fun once you get your hands on it.

With regard to the previews a majority of the game is locked so no multiplayer or custom races etc.

As far as I know they have 3 cars and 3 tracks they can race on. Which is enough to see how it races to a limited degree but not enough to judge Motorsport as a whole.

Personally I am seeing favourable reactions from most folks with a few reservations based on their preferences.

All in all I find that encouraging and can't wait to get my hands on it myself.

@BAMozzy if it made sense Phil Spencer wouldn’t have been boasting 4K 60fps with RT to sell the game, surely?. Doubting his statement made sense, of course - it’s Phil Spencer
Always something with Xbox games isn’t there

@Bleachedsmiles And when did Phil Spencer state that ALL games would hit 4k/60/RT? With this, you are getting a 4k/60/RT mode on Series X. That '4k' may not be a 'consistent' 4k with DRS but its still outputting a '4k' resolution at 60fps with RT.

The XB1 was 'capable' of outputting upto 1080/60 too btw, but how many games actually ran at that level. The PS4 Pro was a '4k/60' console but often had to rely on temporal reconstruction to 'output' a 4k image. The XB1S can output at 4k too - although doesn't use any 'clever' upscaling techniques. If you have a 4k TV, it 'upscales' HD and lower res content to fill the screen too.

Just because the Hardware can do up to 8k, up to 120fps and even do RT as well, doesn't mean that 'games' will ALL hit those metrics. Just like 'last' gen when consoles were 1080/60, few games actually offered that - now these next gen consoles are Capable of running games 4k/120/RT for example, doesn't mean you'll get brand new AAA games hitting those metrics. Hence 'Performance' modes or Quality modes or RT modes to target at least 'one' of those if possible...

So yes it does Make sense because I am not taking things out of context and/or stupid enough to expect ALL games to run at that level on 'console' hardware...

Nobody has suggested that Phil Spencer said all games would hit 4K 60 with RT… so no idea what you’re going on about there

Keep the topic on point. We’re talking about this game - where he directly said it would be 4K 60fps with RT on series x. I suppose we can move the goalposts and say he was talking about a brief moment in a menu screen, if you like.