Turn 10 Studios’ forthcoming sim racing game Forza Motorsport is the eighth entry in the long running series. It was officially announced during Microsoft’s Xbox Games Showcase on July 23, 2020, and is set to be released in the 2nd Quarter of 2023. The game is assumed to be a possible reboot of the Forza Motorsport series.
While not a whole lot is known about its features, the official Forza Motorsport support page has revealed some new information regarding the game’s technical makeup, specifically its target resolution and frame rate.
According to the support page, Forza Motorsport (2023) targets a native resolution of 4K at 60fps on the Xbox Series X, and a native resolution of 1080p at 60fps on the Xbox Series S. It’s no surprise that the game will run at 60fps, as previous entries have also targeted this frame rate.
The interesting bit to take note of here is the fact that the game is targeting a native 4K resolution on the Xbox Series X despite using hardware taxing features like ray tracing. Forza Motorsport uses real-time ray traced reflections while in-game, and also adds ray traced global illumination during replays. It’s quite the technical feat if the game runs at a standard 4K, and doesn’t have some form of dynamic resolution in effect.
It’s also worth mentioning that the PlayStation racing sim Gran Turismo 7 also runs at a native resolution of 4K at 60fps. However, it does not use modern features like ray tracing when in-game. Certain situations outside of gameplay in GT7, such as race opening scenes, replays, and examining vehicles from the menu, feature ray traced reflections. In addition, scenes using ray tracing run at 30 frames per second instead of 60 frames per second.
It’s indeed remarkable to hear that Forza Motorsport will target 4k at 60fps on the Xbox Series X with ray traced reflections in effect. It’s currently unknown if the race opening sequence and replay footage will target 30fps or 60fps, given how ray traced global illumination is added to these scenes to make them look even more physically correct and realistic.
