With Sony previewing the upcoming installment to its Gran Turismo series, Microsoft has matched their speed, announcing the next Forza Motorsport at their latest Xbox Games Showcase. The trailer featured early-in-development footage of the game captured in-engine, showing off it enhanced graphics. There’s no official launch date revealed, but the game will be coming to PC and the Xbox Series X, presumably sometime after the release of the console.
The trailer starts out with a realistic garage scene, packed with all kinds of high-end racing vehicles like the Apollo Intenza Emozione and BAC mono. It then transitions to clips of actual races, highlighting the sound effects as the cars speed by. You can also see different graphic effects like the dirt clouds that shoot up as the cars speed over them. This new installment is said to run on 4K resolutions at 60 frames per second for smooth, top-notch visuals. During the presentation, it was also revealed that the game will have ray-tracing for realistic lighting, though its seemingly inconspicuous in the trailer.
Turn 10 studio software architect Chris Tector spoke with Engadget about the games visuals and the privileges of ray tracing, saying “With the wheels, we no longer have to compromise with those approximations… It’s a big, complicated, tight space in there, and now, we’re able to actually get a very realistic look to that wheel.” In the actual trailer, you can see the pristine presentation of the wheels, even within motion. Given that the footage isn’t pre-rendered, what’s shown in the trailer is probably a close representation of what the game will actually look like when it’s released. There’s a heavy emphasis on graphics this time around, and the advancements of next-gen should lend itself well to this initiative. It’s still the early development stage though, so anything can happen between now and what will most likely be a long-awaited launch.