Forza Motorsport promises ray traced reflections, ‘fully procedural’ clouds, and loads of other technical doodads

The upcoming racing game boasts spectrophotometer-sourced car paints with simulated thickness.

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Whenever there’s a new sports game, especially a new racing game, there must also be the traditional listing of the Granular Technical Advancements™. For the next game in the Forza Motorsport series (Forza Horizon’s older, more serious sibling), that moment came during Wednesday’s Xbox and Bethesda “Developer Direct” showcase, and it was a doozy.

Here’s a summary of everything promised by Forza Motorsport’s developers in the video embedded above:

There’s one more audio-related detail that I’ve set aside, because I think it deserves special recognition. The award for the most jargon in one sentence goes to:

(Here’s anexplanation of convolution reverbfrom B&H. In short, the A/V retailer more or less says the same thing, that the idea is to “record and process the reverberantbehaviorunique to a real acoustic space.")

Some of these details were covered ina blog postlast year, and there’s more ina new postwhich calls Forza Motorsport a “generational leap in immersion.”

All these big technical claims about Forza Motorsport are of course intended to sell us on the idea that the current generation of Xboxes are majestically powerful, and that the game will fulfill an unrealized desire in us for more accurate reflections. Those ray traced reflections demonstrated near the end of the video do look pretty sweet though. Maybe I do want more accurate reflections. Maybe it’s all I’ve ever wanted. Hopefully we’ll get some PC-centric info sooner or later.

Forza Motorsport, which is just called Forza Motorsport despite being the eighth in the series, doesn’t have a concrete release date yet, but Microsoft says it’ll be out this year. On PC, it’ll be available on Game Pass and Steam.

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Tyler grew up in Silicon Valley during the ’80s and ’90s, playing games like Zork and Arkanoid on early PCs. He was later captivated by Myst, SimCity, Civilization, Command & Conquer, all the shooters they call “boomer shooters” now, and PS1 classic Bushido Blade (that’s right: he had Bleem!). Tyler joined PC Gamer in 2011, and today he’s focused on the site’s news coverage. His hobbies include amateur boxing and adding to his 1,200-plus hours in Rocket League.

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