Highlights
- Forza Motorsport's Update 9 introduced significant graphical upgrades without mention.
- Update 9 added a new track, career events, and reward cars, including a free DLC Porsche.
- Fans noticed improved color grading, distance rendering, weather effects, and car details in Update 9.
The developers of Forza Motorsport seemed to have slipped some pretty significant graphical upgrades into the game's last update without making mention of them, and fans of the racing series are starting to take notice. Update 9 of Forza Motorsport was announced on June 10, bringing a new track, career events, reward cars, and more, but the big improvements to visuals weren't even mentioned in the update notes.
Much of the fanfare around the game's most recent update centered around Forza Motorsport giving away free DLC in the form of a 2024 Porsche #5 Porsche Penske Motorsport 963 car and a matching Porsche Racing Suit, normally valued at $4.99. However, Update 9 also introduced a new track, Sebring International Raceway, with both full and short-course options, as well as two different limited-time tour events with a reward car for each and a handful of Spotlight Series cars and Rival Events.
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Even with all the extra content that came recently to Forza Motorsport, fans have been taking notice of the big boost in the visuals department, with improved color grading, distance rendering, weather effects, and more. Racing game-based YouTube channel MotoGamesTV released a nearly 20-minute-long video on June 23 showing a side-by-side comparison of more than 30 different cars and tracks included in the game. The new footage was all captured from Update 9 on Xbox Series X, while the old is a mixture of footage from Forza Motorsport Update 7 and before on a combination of Xbox and PC. The video shows much more vibrantly colorful skies with a higher degree of realism in clouds, along with sleekly cleaner rendering of track surfaces and background and environmental objects, like trees and stadium stands.
Forza Motorsport Has Been Quietly Boosting Its Visuals
The cars in Forza Motorsport also appear to have received additional detail, which is much more noticeable in the garage than when they're ripping around tracks, due to the game's fast-paced nature. Also, there is a short segment of Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps showing off changes from an in-car perspective, and even the dashboard seems to be displayed with crisper and more well-defined imagery, though it's easy to miss when compared to how well the trees and red-and-yellow barriers in the background pop.
Even before the visual upgrades, Forza Motorsport was one of 2023's highest-rated games and has been a massive success for developer Turn 10 Studios. Despite that success, the game's visual appeal still seems to have some detractors, but the impressive imagery recently shown in Update 9 may serve to satisfy the masses.
Forza Motorsport (2023)
The eighth mainline entry in Microsoft's franchise, Forza Motorsport is a racing sim with over 500 real-life vehicles and a robust upgrade system. Along with multiplayer events, Turn 10's racer also features a single-player career mode that highlights the game's car-building feature.
- Platform(s)
- PC , Xbox Series X , Xbox Series S
- Released
- October 10, 2023
- Developer(s)
- Turn 10 Studios
- Publisher(s)
- Xbox Game Studios
- Genre(s)
- Racing
