I shouldn’t get excited by the phrase “dirt buildup is more realistic” but here I am, positively elated at the thought of my Forza Motorsport car becoming a wild puppy over the course of a race.
In Xbox Live developer & Bethesda, the Forza Motorsport Turn 10 creator got into the nitty-gritty of the upcoming Xbox Series X racer. The team knocked out big numbers, like how you’ll have 500 cars to play with at launch, that there are over 800 upgrades you can put in your vehicles, and that there will be 20 environments to race through.
But what really caught my eye were the little things.
Forza Motorsport’s Sound Manager showed you how to install 800 upgrades for your vehicles, and it will create different sound profiles for your vehicle, reflecting the parts you’ve installed.
Another developer explained the amount of time the team spent to accurately recreate the dirt backlog. So as you race around the track, lap after lap, not only will your car pick up dirt, but the areas where dirt accumulates and how it appears on your car will be affected by how you drive it. Struggle to hold onto the tarmac and drive over the edge, and you’ll see more powdery dirt pick up around the wheels; Stick close to opposing cars and the grit picked up by their wheels will leave scratches on your paint.
Speaking of paintwork, ray tracing in Forza Motorsport looks like it would be a treat. With several photogrammetry models used to capture the different ways light interacts with different paint patterns, so your car will look more realistic as you race through different environments and lighting.
Yes, a lot of this stuff can feel like extra details placed on top of the game, and how Forza gameplay will go down to more than whether the ray-traced paint picks up dirt well, but I like that in a game where my character, my avatar , reflecting on the journey you took across the world. And it seems that, between the sound files, the dirt modeling, and all the upgrades I can make to my vehicles, Forza Motorport will do just that. It’s the kind of thing that could make it one of the best racing games, if not one of the best Xbox Series X games, or at least compete with Gran Turismo 7.
Unfortunately, Microsoft has not announced a release date for Forza Motorsport, only saying that it will be released in 2023.