Xbox's 2023 line-up doesn't look quite as solid as Nintendo's or PlayStation's, but it's got a few tricks up its sleeve, and one of its biggest is Forza Motorsport. It's been six years since the last Forza Motorsport released, and Turn 10 Studios has wasted absolutely no time ensuring that this entry is truly the best that this series has to offer. In the latest Xbox and Bethesda Developer Direct showcase, Turn 10 claimed that this is the "most technically impressive racing game ever made," and based on what fans have seen so far, that claim doesn't seem so outlandish.
During Forza Motorsport's initial gameplay trailer last year, fans got their first look at the boundary-pushing technology Turn 10 was implementing in this new entry, with dynamic day/night cycles, track temperatures, and a slew of other impressive technical features on display. And during the latest Developer Direct, Turn 10 got even more technical with its breakdown, highlighting Forza Motorsport's complex sound design, its wealth of content, and one of its most impressive features: its ray tracing.
Forza Motorsport's Ray Tracing is Truly Next Level
With its origin dating all the way back to the 1980s, ray tracing, as a concept, has been around for a lot longer than some gamers may realize. Though it sounds complicated, ray tracing can be summarized as the way a computer detects and shines a light on a model. As technology has progressed, so has the fidelity of ray tracing, being able to cast more realistic light on a model, and have it appear dynamically, being capable of changing depending on what's in the light's way. The main setback with ray tracing is that it takes a great deal of computing power to process realistic light, which is why the gaming industry didn't adopt the technology until fairly recently.
Thankfully, with console and PC processors getting much more powerful in the last few years, ray tracing has started to become a staple of modern AAA games, with 2018's Battlefield V being the first game to really take advantage of ray tracing in a significant way. Despite being around for decades, ray tracing in its practical form is still very much in its infancy, and though it seems like the technology can't be pushed any further, Forza Motorsport proves that ray tracing can still continue to grow.
In Forza Motorsport's gameplay reveal trailer back in June 2022, the developers briefly discussed the game's impressive lighting effects, and how ray tracing was being used to ensure that this game had some of the most realistic and dynamic lighting ever seen in a video game. Fans were briefly shown a few images of this in action, with the setting sun beaming through a tree and casting a subtle shadow on the track in front of it. Fans were then shown how this ray tracing works with the game's day and night cycle, as that same light through the tree changes throughout a race, with the shadow it's casting shifting naturally.
In the most recent Developer Direct, Forza Motorsport's ray tracing technology is shown off in even more detail, with the developers discussing how the car's paint job affects the light that bounces off it. The devs make a specific point of stating that the cars' paints are sourced using a spectrophotometer, in order to "capture multiple data points of light behavior on a surface." This essentially means that different colors and different paint styles, like matte or gloss, will affect how light hits the car and how the player observes it. Paired with the uber-realistic reflection technology, Forza Motorsport's ray tracing may just be its greatest hidden feature, and it shows just how far ray tracing can still go.
Forza Motorsport releases in 2023 on PC and Xbox Series X/S.