Why night racing and weather effects may never come to Forza 5

Adding night racing and weather effects to Forza Motorsport 5 would require at least nine months of additional work to account for new physics and lighting effects, meaning these features may never come to Turn 10's Xbox One racer.

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Bringing classic tracks to a next-generation console hasn't proven easy for Turn 10 Studios. Creative director Dan Greenawalt says that building next-gen tracks and assets for Forza Motorsport 5 is time consuming, and that adding weather and nighttime effects would've added a tremendous burden to the team. In other words, don't expect to see these additions come to Forza 5 any time soon.

Greenawalt tells IGN that getting a track up and running takes at least nine months of development. The process would be significantly longer if the team also had to account for additional physics, shadows, and lighting effects.

"If we wanted to make one of those tracks work with the added particles or projected shadows, and of course adding the physics to do something like night and wet, it means re-engaging those tracks," Greenawalt added. "I'm not trying to give an excuse, I'm trying to give context as to why this is an order of magnitude higher than something like Drag and Tag, and other things we're looking at from the community."

Gran Turismo 6 includes both of these features, but it also benefits from being a current-gen game. It will be interesting to see how the demands of next-gen asset creation will affect the PS4 version of Gran Turismo.

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?

From The Chatty
  • reply
    December 13, 2013 4:15 PM

    Ozzie Mejia posted a new article, Why night racing and weather effects may never come to Forza 5.

    Adding night racing and weather effects to Forza Motorsport 5 would require at least nine months of additional work to account for new physics and lighting effects, meaning these features may never come to Turn 10's Xbox One racer.

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      December 13, 2013 4:36 PM

      Now you see why Nintendo was conservative with the specs for the Wii-U. Even Microsoft doesn't have the resources to fully utilize the power in the Xbox.

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        December 13, 2013 4:52 PM

        But 360/PS4s utilized more of their potential over time as the kinks were worked out. There's a huge difference in quality between a release era 360 game and a some of the latest ones.

        Let's not lower the bar so we look taller.

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        December 13, 2013 5:10 PM

        You mean they don't want to SPEND the money on the resources.

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        December 13, 2013 5:21 PM

        yet?

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      December 13, 2013 4:38 PM

      Were people expecting them to patch that stuff into Forza 5? It sounds to me like they're saying don't expect that stuff in a sequel, either.

      Night racing on its own is kind of dumb anyway, it's fine if you have an open world and full day / night cycle like Forza Horizon did. Variable weather might be more interesting than either rain or no rain, I'd never choose to race in the rain diliberately, but if it happened during a long race and you had to deal with it that would be fun. These games rarely have long enough races these days for that to matter.

      It would be great if these new next gen console-sim racers had dynamic lighting and shadows and weren't static time of days so you could race at different lighting conditions, though. Dawn through dusk, something basic like that can change the way the same old track feels after a dozen times. Baked in lighting should be a relic of the past. It's probably a large part of what helps them maintain 60fps however.

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      December 13, 2013 5:11 PM

      I love Forza 5 and it makes me happy I have a XB1 but -> "I'm not trying to give an excuse" and above ^^^ yes you are giving a excuse. It really blows my mind with the scale of such a team, resources, money, first party support, dedicated fx, particle, shadows, you name it this could not of been done. This is not a indie team making their first big game.

      There are many indie teams that put in massive amounts of details and extra effort with a fraction of such a team and resources the big guys have really there is no excuse.

      "would've added a tremendous burden to the team" admitting that extra effort and details is just not something the Forza team was willing to do and it was too challenging and too demanding, ? ok. Give me a break when both Need For Speed Rivals and Assassin's creed black flag open world games have weather effects(and many other games way older and not constrained to a track) you have to wonder. Sure to add physics on wet surfaces(when it rains) would of taken more work but when you have a base physic mechanic I sure hope you can extend that for different gameplay cases. Does Forza not have different physic for the different road surfaces already? surely they are different physic profiles and handling....

      I am sorry there is no excuse they would of been better off not to not comment or just say it was out of scope end of discussion. So weird.

      Maybe I am going to get shitting on for saying the above it is how I feel. Maybe indie games really is the future of video games some times I just don't know any more.

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        December 13, 2013 5:17 PM

        I see your point, and it's valid. It seems to me that the amount of time it would take to fit that stuff in just wasn't possible without a delay, and they wanted it for launch. It's not a huge deal, and they should have just left it be without a comment.

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          December 13, 2013 5:45 PM

          Commenting on it now is dumb. They should just add it to the to do list for the next Forza and focus on that.

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          December 13, 2013 6:26 PM

          My guess was that, since this was a launch game, with a fixed deadline, that had to conform to constantly changing specifications, written on unfinished SDKs, that it was much more difficult.

          It still leaves the question of why games like NFS Rivals and Ass Creed were able to do it, but I guess they were not as focused on graphical fidelity as was Forza? The latter of which was also a port designed for last gen graphical limitations.

          Or they just didn't prioritize it.

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        December 14, 2013 7:06 AM

        [deleted]

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      December 13, 2013 5:38 PM

      [deleted]

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      December 13, 2013 6:02 PM

      Shame. Shame.

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      December 13, 2013 6:04 PM

      Getting real sick of studios giving time tables like this like we're supposed to feel sorry for them. News flash, we're handing over 60 bucks for these games. You aren't doing us any favors here, this is a cash/goods relationship. Consumers don't care how long it takes you do to something, they just want a good end product.

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        December 13, 2013 6:05 PM

        you tell em buddy

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          December 13, 2013 6:19 PM

          I'd love to give you a more detailed and thought out reply, but its gonna take me at least 3 weeks to come up with it so you'll have to do with this one.

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            December 13, 2013 6:38 PM

            well it's a good thing I knew what I was purchasing when I read your first post and didn't feel entitled to anymore!

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        December 14, 2013 6:42 AM

        And they made an educated decision that adding those features would harm the overall experience and make the goods you are receiving for your $60 less satisfactory.

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      December 14, 2013 6:44 AM

      IMO this game looks like ass for a next gen title. I'm car shimmering and judder from Maggie's makes me sick.

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      December 14, 2013 6:50 AM

      So what I'm hearing is I should wait until the third iteration of Forza on Xbox1 before I buy in because that's when they'll actually have a complete product with all the tracks, cars, and weather effects. Okay, check . Putting that on my list for the future.

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      December 14, 2013 8:44 AM

      9 months to get a track running.... that sounds like they use extremely unneficient ways to create them.

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      December 15, 2013 10:47 AM

      So, let me get this straight...."we have all the technological goodies at our disposal, as well as money to make it work, yet it's impossible for us to implement something that was considered basic in racing games 15+ years ago."

      Reading the very last paragraph: GT > Forza.

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      December 16, 2013 9:19 AM

      Which really means = our team at Microsoft (aka Turn 10) is so small that we haven't the devs to make it work like other games, ehem "simulators". Which also goes to explain why our tracks selection is so .... under the weather.

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