Forza Horizon 3

[GreatScawt]

Have you got FM6 Apex installed? How does it run for you?

I want to know how the performance compares between that and FH3, because I'm slightly interested in buying this game (and actually joining the team!) but the big hurdle is whether or not my PC will run it with any decent sort of frame rate, and it's impossible to tell unless they release the demo for PC.

I can play Apex at maybe 30 FPS at 720p with lots of stutter and lots of input lag. It's headache-inducing with heaps of cars, but not impossible. By comparison, Halo 5 Forge runs at over 50 at 1080p with all the settings cranked up, and almost no input lag.

So I just pulled it up again to quick bench it. This is with the recent GeForce drivers released last night that are geared towards FH3.
I'm running an i5-4690k / 16 GB DDR3 Ram / 980FTW.

Forza 6: Apex
Condition: Quick race with 16 Le Mans Prototypes on Rio and Abu Dhabi.
Settings: 2560x1440 / Ultra settings / Dynamic res turned off
Results:
100+ frames with a few cars around
75-90 in heavy traffic and bumping
I got it down to 40-50 doing a burnout against traffic and causing a bunch of accidents.
With dyanmic res turned on it stayed pretty much capped at 72 (half the monitor refresh).

Forza Horizon 3
Condition: General play and typical "Horizon"-esque fucking around
Settings: 2560x1440 / Ultra (I think I turned AF to 2x, all AA off, because res) / Frame smoothing I left on I think?
Results: Seemingly anywhere from 30-80+ FPS. Very jumpy, and the jumps are really really noticeable if I don't cap the framerate. There were a few times where the cars were jittery and "teleport-y" with higher or unlocked framerates.
Once I capped the frames at 36 it really seemed to handle it better. But there were *still* times where the game dipped to 30, and I knew it immediately. Very jarring. I may have to play with the frame smoothing / g-sync / v-sync options some more.
There's also been some strange artifacting/glitchy-lighting-flickering... but it's super rare and goes away quickly enough.

So, I think you may want to consider an upgrade, the X1 version, or wait for the benchmark professionals to get their hands on it. FH3 does seem to be quite a bit more demanding (even though I think they have the same system specs on the Windows Store).
I think the discrepancy between Apex and FH3 is due to multiple reasons, one of the biggest being that FH3 is a larger world, constantly loading drivatars / new cars in and out. As opposed to Apex doing single loads and done. I also think FH3 has a noticeably higher ceiling on fidelity. There's definitely a new lighting system in play... because wow. And probably other technologies behind that scenes.

-----

So who's setting up the GTXf Club??

[Rare White Ape]

Thanks for that Scotty, more in-depth than I was expecting

I might give it a miss on PC then, I expected FH3 to be more of a demanding title and that confirms it.

Rather than upgrade (my pooter is only 14 months old) it would be more economical to buy an XboneS, or even better, a used Xbone, and just play it that way.

But I'm not going to do that either

[GreatScawt]

Yeah, hah, I was interested in seeing the difference, and it didn't take too long.

Also... I totally forgot, but the PC demo is coming out at some point (post-release). You can just give that a shot to see if it will work for you. You never know!

[Rare White Ape]

Yeah I'm aware that there's a PC demo on the way. It's just really silly that it wasn't out roughly in line with the console demo. And even sillier that it's supposed to be the "Universal Windows bloody Platform" that they're trying to sell to the games industry… and consumers… and take over PC gaming with. Bad idea all round.

But still, there's one thing I loved doing so much in FM2 and 3 when I was playing that a lot, and that was customising cars and painting them up. You don't need ridiculous amounts of teraflopage to enjoy that part if it, and to this day no other game has been able to match it. Chances are I'd spend all my time doing that and just enough time doing events to earn cash to keep it up, so if the demo runs somewhat painlessly then you never know.

[GreatScawt]

OK - so maybe FH3 could potentially be a lot better optimized on PC...
This video from Giant Bomb pretty much mimics my experience and validates my some of my initial concerns. At the very beginning Jeff Gerstmann talks about performance and specs.

[Kchrpm]

GTXF Club being created right now, will send invites.

[SkylineObsession]

Can you be in more than one club?

Here's some pics i've taken, if they show up?

About to head off to the city. Never seen a GT in this colour, so thats why it's bright;


Cruising into Surfers for the first time. I abide by the speed limits at all times (except when i don't);


My sleeperish torque monster Merc. Over 1,000nm(?);

[SkylineObsession]

One of the two GT350's i have (one a pre-order bonus, and not sure how i got the other one);

That one is now a dark maroony colour, and my other one i changed from blue to white.

I attempted to drive over to New Zealand. Please don't ask me how it went. I don't want to talk about it.


Loving the cloud effects in the game. Those dark clouds in the distance eventually make their way to you and it starts raining. Clouds realistically block sunlight from hitting the ground, with moving patches of full sunlight etc that you can just sit there and watch (if bored enough). The clouds even seem to move independently from each other, i saw some moving faster than others. Best cloud effects i've seen in any game ever.


My main problem is sticking to the right (left) side of the road, as almost every other open world driving game out there you drive on the wrong (right) side. Had a few too many head on collisions so far.

Seriously awesome looking game though, huge amounts of detail and an a incredible draw distance.

My main complaint so far though is the extremely bad rubberbanding AI cars.
I'm now driving with the AI difficulty at it's second easiest setting (below average driver?) just so i can win races! I have cars 20 years older than mine, and 1-200hp less absolutely flying past me on the straights as if i've just slammed the brakes on. It's fuckingwell annoying and ruins the realism factor a lot for me. I'm not crashing around every corner either - i'm at 100%, even races i have no damage at all i still get wasted, so have to resort to Gran Turismoing to get past them (using them to help corner).

For S&G's i put a modern BMW race car (race cars don't belong in this game, PG...) in a BMW race i made, and 1970's BMW's were literally accelerating away from me on straights with a ferocity of a Formula 1 car. Should have recorded a clip. What an effingham joke...

[Boda Zen]

Has anybody seen their forza rewards cars in game?

[Boda Zen]

I just got them. Guess you have to have 1.4 million fans before you get them