I shouldn’t be so excited about the words “dirt accumulation is more realistic”, but here I am, positively delighted with the idea of my car in Forza Motorsport becoming a dirty puppy in the middle of the race.
On Xbox and Bethesda’s Developer Direct, Forza Motorsport developer Turn 10 has gone into the smallest details of the upcoming Xbox Series X racer. The team has thrown out big numbers such as that you’ll have 500 cars to play with at launch, that there are over 800 upgrades you can customize for your vehicles, and that there will be 20 environments to race.
But what really caught my attention were the smaller things.
Forza Motorsportthe sound director showed how by installing these 800 upgrades to your vehicles, you will create different sound profiles for your car, reflecting the parts fitted.
Another developer explained how much time the team spent to accurately recreate the accumulated dirt. So as you race around the track, lap after lap, your car not only picks up dirt, but the areas where dirt accumulates and how it looks on your car will affect how you drive. Fight to stick to the asphalt and drive over the shoulder and you’ll see more dust collecting around the wheels; stay closer to the opposing cars and the asphalt sand their wheels pick up will leave scratches on the paint.
Speaking of painting, ray tracing in Forza Motorsport sounds like a feast. Multiple photogrammetric models have been used to capture the different ways light interacts with different paint styles, making your car look more realistic as you race in different environments and lighting.
Yes, many of these things may sound like extra details layered on top of the game, and the way you play Forza comes down to more than just whether or not the ray-traced paint picks up dirt nicely, but I love that in a game where my character, my avatar reflects the journey he has made around the world. And it seems that between sound profiles, dirt modeling and all the upgrades I can make to my vehicles, in Forza Motorsport will do just that. It’s something 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 did not provide a release date Forza Motorsportsaying only that it will be released in 2023.