Forza Motorsport has been used to showcase current-gen capabilities of Microsoft’s Xbox One family of consoles. Forza 7 on the upcoming Xbox One X is no different, Chris Bishop, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Turn 10 Studios, told Stevivor.
“The most obvious showcase [of Forza 7 on Xbox One X] is showing off 4K,” Bishop said. “Xbox One X is really built to be that true 4K gaming system, and that’s exactly what we’re trying to showcase, deliver with Motorsport 7.
“Everything’s native 4K, locked 60 frames-per-second with HDR. A good story that I like to say is when we took the Forza tech engine, which is our custom graphics and physics engine, from Forza Motorsport 6 and brought that over to Xbox One X, we increased the resolution to 4K, added HDR, kept it out 60 frames per second, and we still had 30% GPU left over. So that has been a real treat, in the sense that we’re able to dial up all these other bells and whistles, key effects, way longer draw distances, extra particle effects from the cars to the sand flying across the road. Just all these little things.”
The innovations aren’t limited to Xbox One, Bishop stressed.
“Besides making a fun game as a first-party studio, one of our biggest goals is showcasing hardware, showing both what Xbox One X can do, but also PC,” he said. “That’s really one of the most exciting things I think about as far as the Motorsports 7, is that it’s going to be available on kind of three platforms, Xbox One X and S, which is the same family, and you’re going to be able to be on PC.
“And you’re going to be able to play it all seamlessly together. So if you’re on PC, I’m on Xbox — either one. We can talk to each other on Xbox Live, there’s no difference at all. If I’m at home playing on my Xbox, and I go to work and my boss isn’t paying attention, I can pull it up on my PC, pick up exactly where I left off. There’s no difference.”
As per usual, Turn 10 also focused on physics and weather systems.
“From a pure innovation standpoint and what we focused on for 7? There’s dynamic weather, which is really exciting, and pretty apparent,” Bishop continued. “But I think the most surprising, and it’s a big relief that people are enjoying it, is that impressiveness. A good example of that is the shaking parts. It might seem like a small thing, but the more I play it, the more I really grow to appreciate it, when you’re in that cockpit view, seeing the windshield wipers or the mirrors. And boy, if you go in some of those older vehicles, just like in real life, when you hit that 200-plus kilometres an hour, it feels like it’s going to fall apart.
“It really makes it a much more visceral, thrilling, experience, that my opinion, racing video games haven’t been able to deliver nearly as much. Again, it seems like a small thing but it makes all the difference in world when you start playing them.
“When you’re in a car, everything isn’t perfectly evened out. There’s lots of moving parts, and so we brought that in. It makes a whole new, immersive experience.”
Stay tuned for more from Bishop on Forza Motorsport 7. The racing title heads to Windows PC, Xbox One and Xbox One S as early as 29 September. The Xbox One X then heads to stores on 7 November.
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