Forza Horizon 5 Xbox One Vs Xbox Series X

Forza Horizon 5 is also an impressive test case for Microsoft's cross-generational hardware strategy. I played the game for several hours on my Xbox One X, and it doesn't feel compromised compared to anything else on the console. It's still a better-looking game than 3 and 4, and it looks more or less the same as the Series X version's 60fps mode — just running at half the frame rate. The One X is generally a machine designed for 4K/30fps games, and that's what you get here with Forza Horizon 5. Would the Series X game have looked even better if it didn't have to run on Xbox One consoles?

Maybe, but it's hard to complain about the performance on either platform. In order to replicate the Xbox Series X quality graphics mode on PC, gamers should at least have an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Super. But in order to enjoy the PC's biggest advantage, higher frame rates, a more powerful gaming PC is required. With reduced settings equivalent to the Xbox Series X performance mode, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Super was not entirely able to hold a steady 60 fps at 4k resolution. PC gamers who would like to play Forza Horizon 5 on these settings should have at least anRTX 2080.

Additional technical details, including further explanations of the hardware requirements and recommended settings of Forza Horizon 5 on PC are included in the video embedded below. However, Forza Horizon 5 is on another level on Xbox Series X and it's one of the few games where I prefer the 30fps quality mode to its 60fps equivalent. The increase in fidelity and the more graceful LOD transitions combined with the upgraded visuals elevate it significantly beyond performance mode. True, it's not 60fps but the motion blur is the best I've seen in bridging the gap. Of course, it is possible to play this game at full frame-rate with Series X's mixture of high, ultra and extreme settings - and that's where the PC version comes into play.

We'll be reporting back on our testing and experiences there soon. Forza Horizon 5 doesn't change the basic structure, and there's still a huge amount of stuff dotting the Mexican map. But it does do a better job of easing you into its mountain of content.

You're able to choose which specific types of events to unlock as you progress, so, for example, I preferred to focus on closed-track road races early on before delving into cross-country rallies. I feel like if I stopped playing the game and came back to it weeks later, I'd have a much better sense of what I'd been doing and where would be best for me to spend the next couple of hours. In turn, that makes me feel better about simply driving around the landscape in search of whatever esoteric quest I might come across. Unlike with 4, I've never felt like I'm wasting my time in Forza Horizon 5, as I always have more of a sense of what I could be working toward.

Developer Playground Games has quite the track record when it comes to optimizing its games, and the latest Forza Horizon installment is no exception. As expected, there are graphical and performance differences between the platforms with the PC version running the game on maximum settings on an NVIDIA RTX 3080. Interestingly, however, is that the Xbox Series X matches the highest PC settings in the game's quality mode (4K@30FPS). The game still gets its graphical intent across, but the LOD scaling really shows this console's age. As you race through jungles, you'll notice that the tree foliage stays in its blobby low level of detail until you're almost right up against it, at which point you will have whizzed on by.

At times it feels like the game engine shouldn't bother trying to pull in those higher detail assets. The gameplay still holds up though, and a steady frame rate in this situation is going to be the most important aspect. Create your own expressions of fun with the powerful new EventLab gameplay toolset including custom races, challenges, stunts, and entirely new game modes. Customize your cars in more ways than ever before with new options such as the ability open and close convertible tops, paint brake calipers, and more.

Use the new Gift Drops feature to share your custom creations with the community. Switch from 30fps to the 60fps 'Performance' mode and you'll immediately feel the difference. Playground state that this is still running at a maximum 4K resolution, but that "additional graphics settings adjusted to maintain target framerate". In practical terms motion blur is reduced significantly giving it a much more gamey feel and pop-in is now noticeable, . However, it's also just that much more responsive feeling when you play the game and, after a short time at 60fps, a switch back to 30fps feels like daggers in your eyes. Sometimes it's surprising just how well the game manages to maintain this mood even while having a map that becomes icon soup, seemingly endless events and challenges spawning utterly everywhere.

These sorts of maps sometimes make me feel overwhelmed in other games - but not so here. The game's tone is too welcoming to allow it to stress you out. If you're an arcade racing game purist, Burnout Paradise has a lot to answer for.

Ever since, virtually all big-budget arcade racing games have been made in the shadow of Paradise, with most tracks consisting of lines drawn across vast, explorable maps. Some will prefer the expanded frame rate and see that as a necessary trade-off, but we have to say that the 30fps quality mode still plays very well indeed and you get the maximum visual effect, to boot. But sometimes a game can be so pretty that it helps you appreciate an experience that you would normally feel mild about. For example, I'm not the biggest racing game fan in the world.

When I do enjoy a racer, it's usually a more arcadey experience like Ridge Racer Type 4 or the more recent Cruis'n Blast. Being the fifth instalment in the series, Playground Games has taken huge steps to make the driving experience more immersive. Besides the standard campaign mode, players can take part in online multiplayer races and explore the open world with no restrictions. It would be foolish of me to say thatForza Horizon 5 is the best game in the series given my very limited knowledge of its history.

However, I can say with confidence this is the most fun I've had with a racing game that doesn't involve a plumber and a princess. There is just so much to do and so much to see that I can easily lose hours of my day exploring all it has to offer. And with continued support from the developers and community, I'll have no reason to stop playing anytime soon. Increase your with the new EventLab gameplay set of tools, including custom races, challenges, stunts, and new game modes. Despite the name and the hundreds of accurately modeled real-world cars, Forza Horizon has little in common with Turn 10 Studios' Forza Motorsport series, which is more of a serious racing simulator. While Horizon isn't exactly a Ridge Racer-style arcade game, it's certainly on the more accessible side of things.

The physics feel somewhat grounded in reality, and you'll notice big differences in how various cars handle, but the driving model is very forgiving, and it's easy for anyone to pick up and play. In one of several extensive videos featuring Forza Horizon 5, Digital Foundry concluded that the quality mode on Xbox Series X mostly matches the maxed out settings on PC. But at a native 4k resolution, the Xbox Series X only manages to output 30 fps with these settings. Therefore it looks like the PC settings in Forza Horizon 5 do not provide a lot of headroom when it comes to visual quality, also because raytracing is only active in photo mode and can't be activated for regular gameplay. Let's start with the Xbox Series X and the default graphics mode. In my tests I found that - generally speaking - there are three tiers of graphics fidelity on the consoles.

Xbox One is at the base of the pile, as you may expect, but still gets the job done. Xbox One X's graphics profile at dynamic 4K is broadly equivalent to the Series machines in their 60fps modes - but each version has its own plus and minus points. In some areas, Series X's performance mode seemed to deliver improved ground detail over Xbox One X. Elsewhere, Series S's textures didn't look as detailed as Xbox One X's (and resolution is lower at a dynamic 810p-1080p). Series X performance mode matches One X's 1600p-2160p DRS Plus profile - however, I do want to stress again that resolution changes are difficult to track by eye.

It's also nigh-on impossible to find any drops from the target 60fps in the Series console performance modes. From our own personal experience, we'd recommend playing Forza Horizon 5 in the Performance mode. With ray-tracing limited to just the ForzaVista mode, there's not a massive difference between how the two games look graphically when you begin driving around at high-speeds.

It's huge in scale and scope, glittering in its beauty, and still impressive in its ambition despite this being the studio's fifth outing. This is rare; by this point a developer is usually phoning it in or straining against a lack of ideas. Weather has received a significant boost across the board this time around, in fact.

It matches up to the rest of the experience, which feels like the hand of developer Playground Games cranking everything up to eleven - or twelve, given the previous entry already felt like it was breaking the volume dial. Pop-in can also be noticeable, at least when playing on performance mode (and if you're like me and need 60 fps, you'll be playing on performance mode). It's not an obnoxious issue, and it's well within the norm for open-world games, but it does become more noticeable with games like this getting so close to looking like the real thing.

Forza Horizon 5 Xbox One Xbox Series X You can choose between Performance and Quality graphics settings, both of which are 4K. The former is limited to 30 frames per second, and looks a tad prettier. The 60 fps Performance mode is superior for most racing games, though, including this one. Forza Horizon is obviously all about the cars, and there are tons of them, all rendered in stunning detail.

Most of the rendering budget has been utilized on cars, but thanks to the power of Xbox Series X, environments too are shining with in-depth details. Accurate car, environmental and material reflections are rendered on the car's body with great precision. Although these are baked in reflections and not real time, they still look great and a step up from last-gen rendering techniques. However, the game offers ray tracing in the Forza Vista mode where you can check out your collection of cars up close and personal, and that too in staggering detail.

This is where the game's visuals are truly dialed up to the max and viewing the cars in this mode is a sight to behold. It is stunning to look at, with 4K 60fps racing available, and has the biggest open-world map of the series so far. It can feel more an extension of Horizon 4 at times, but that's nothing to be sniffed at as that game was already at the pinnacle for arcade racers.

If the Xbox Series X was demanding a game to hang its hat on, this is surely it. While we're talking about picture settings, also make sure that you're playing FH5 in your TV's low-latency Game preset, (assuming it has one – most do). Microsoft and Playground Games have focused marketing on hyping up the power of the Xbox Series X|S, so not much has been said about how the game will be limited in order to run on older hardware. Microsoft also intends to offer a 60 FPS mode, which will downscale images to achieve a greater framerate on these devices. On Xbox Series consoles, the game will offer ray tracing at launch, but only in the "Forzavista" mode for watching automobiles. But there are possibilities for even more modes thanks to the new Eventlab.

The new toolset lets players create their own races, game modes, and gameplay experiences, with a whole suite of customisation options. Anthony joined the TweakTown team in 2010 and has since reviewed 100s of graphics cards. Anthony is a long time PC enthusiast with a passion of hate for games built around consoles. FPS gaming since the pre-Quake days, where you were insulted if you used a mouse to aim, he has been addicted to gaming and hardware ever since. Working in IT retail for 10 years gave him great experience with custom-built PCs.

Sometimes, I like a game just because it's fun to vibe with. This racing wonderland version of Mexico is charming, thrilling, and fun to explore. With locations that include volcanic mountains, vibrant towns, and glittering oceans, each square mile of this open playground offers amazing sights. I spent most of my review session playing in Graphics Mode on Xbox Series S, which locks the frame rate at 30fps and features a minimal amount of pop-in when compared to Performance Mode.

That mode runs at a nearly silky-smooth 60fps, but the pop-in is abundant, and depending on what you're doing, can be very distracting. I actually had to use the rewind feature in one of my races after the shadow of an evergreen tree suddenly appeared on the road as I was driving over it, completely throwing off my concentration. The latest game in the open world spin-off series, and the 13th Forza game over all, Forza Horizon 5 is a mostly known quantity. But nearly a decade after the Horizon series started, it feels like many are encountering it for the first time.

And they're loving it, in a way that's sucking up all the oxygen in the room in a way that racing games rarely do. Two of the most significant features the developers are touting are Expeditions and storms. In my 12+ hours of playing Forza Horizon 5, I never saw a storm appear dynamically in the world, only in specific races or missions.

Compared to how many seasons can change up a Forza Horizon map, these sandstorms and tropical storms have a negligible impact on the overall experience. Admittedly, I'm a newcomer to the Forza series, and it took a little bit for me to find my bearings. Learning how to perfect the game's turns without spinning off course gave me a good amount of trouble; I saw "7/12" on my screen so many times, I assumed the developers knew my birthday.

However, even when I was placing low after each race, the game was still rewarding me with experience, and that gave me the incentive to keep finding ways to improve. Occasionally, the game would ask me if I wanted to lower the difficulty, but I opted to stick with where I started. One little nicety is the rewind feature, which allows players to quickly undo a mistake with a push of the "Y" button. I tried not to lean on it myself, but it was nice to see how Playground Games found all these different ways to make Forza Horizon 5 accessible to those less familiar with the series.

Forza Horizon 5 has finally hit consoles and computers for all users , so racers ready for the latest racing experience can enjoy some truly impressive graphics and customization options. One of the things we love about Forza is how friendly its various Tours and racing matches are, from trying out different competitive modes to joining a team and making your way through a world tour together. Keep in mind thatHorizon 5 also includes Kudos and Gift Drops to share with the community, so teamplay is a core aspect for many gaming modes.

This audio ray tracing approach transforms the Forza Horizon audio experience almost as much as FH5's revamped visuals do, once again making the game world feel much more alive and 'close'. Particularly during races, where the intensity and tension of the action is massively amplified by the way you can hear your rivals' cars coming at you from all sides. The Xbox One X targets 4K and it looks absolutely fantastic doing so.

It's right up there with the Xbox Series X's general fidelity, seemingly blending the level of detail of Performance mode with the motion blur of Quality mode, or something close to that. Unfortunately, the One X doesn't have a performance mode of its own, which it did have for Forza Horizon 4. I really hope Playground can add that in down the line, because unless there's a CPU or HDD limitation, it should be able to match the Series S. This is a series that has always aimed for 30fps, but this is probably the best that it's ever felt, thanks in part to the excellent and natural feeling motion blur. The dense foliage on trees, for example, always looks like it's being rendered at high quality.