So I bought this in the current Xbox Live sale. I’m kind of blown away honestly.
On Xbox, it looks fantastic, and runs very smoothly. I know the Horizon series is 30fps while the main series is 60fps, but this one in particular plays really well.
I turned off the assists (except ABS brakes) as soon as I could, and turned up the difficulty. It feels much better than Horizon 2 in terms of realism. Especially the off-roading and collisions with objects and how all four tires contact the road, it just feels great.
My wife wanted to take over the TV so I went upstairs and tried the PC version. First the autodetect said it recommended low settings on my i5-750, ATI 7950HD, 8GB RAM. I was kind of bummed by that, but set the framerate target to 30fps and put it on medium.
When I started playing, the game picked up right where I left off on Xbox. But the graphics weren’t as good. There was a lot more pop-in, and it looked horrible compared to Xbox One. But hey, the frame rate counter was never dropping below 30 fps. So I said fuck it, and changed to a target of High settings and restarted the game.
On high settings, it’s a mixed bag. The game looks slightly better than Xbox One now. But it doesn’t run as smooth. The frame rate dips well below 30 fps sometimes. Always during the pre and post race cutscenes, and definitely during moments when there’s a lot of debris on the road from running over fences and signposts and such. But damn it, it looks so much nicer.
I turned down the rest of the game’s volume and kept the radio station’s volume at full. And boy, I was playing for over an hour and having such a grand old time listening to Pulse Radio and the Block Party radio. I know Forza games always try to make you listen to squealing tires and engine noises above the radio, but I prefer the reverse, and boy I am in heaven.
Overall, I’m just so impressed right now. I liked the first two Horizon games too, but after playing DiRT Rally, I had a really tough time trying to get into the off-road expansion for Horizon 2. It just couldn’t hold a candle to DiRT Rally. I had the same problem with The Crew. But this game can hold it’s own. The physics definitely feels much better for off-roading. I’m really loving it so far you guys! This game is so cool.
So anyone playing this on an Xbone with a wheel? What wheel are you using?
I Was looking in to them and there are quite a wide rage of wheels out there. Was looking for something that I could maybe attach to like a coffee table/TV tray for now, and if it gets a lot of play time in the house - take the plunge and get a whole playseat setup for it.
Just wanted to say THANKS for letting us know about the best buy sale the other day!
I’ve missed a similar open-world driving game over the last few years. Now that Horizon is on PC I’m finding it great fun to while away hours driving around, collecting bits, running / setting up races, etc. Very much missed this since the 360 days.
PC version performance is poor considering I’ve got a high-end rig with Geforce 1080, but I get a comfortable 60-100 FPS if I only set things to medium at 1080p. Not good considering the hardware, but good enough :-)
Oh yeah, also bought Blizzard Mountain today, but haven’t had a chance to try it yet since I’m too low leveled. Hopefully soonish!
Any of the car packs or other VIP do-dads worth getting? It would get expensive with every add-on and suspect the cars are pointless, but thought i’d ask.
I was waffling on this as I usually do and missed the sale. I liked Forza Horizon 1 and 2 more than I’m liking the Crew. Eventually I’ll get it and the leader boards will be full of good times to beat!
Has this been patched enough to support good framerate? Anyone playing this on 2500K getting 60fps ? I want to buy it if there will be christmas sale or something, but if it still runs like ass, not so much.
I picked up the digital edition for $30 from Best Buy, not sure if it’s still that price.
I’m really enjoying it so far. The UI is streamlined and the map is uncluttered compared to The Crew… so much easier to understand. The rewind feature is great. The graphics look pretty good on the XB1 (wish it were 60fps).
I love how you get to pick your name (your real name, if it’s listed) when you set up your driver profile. When Anna speaks to you, she addresses you by that name. I don’t know if that’s a new feature to the series (this is my first Forza game), it’s certainly a nice touch.
I’ll be on the lookout for a sale on the Expansion Pass.
Car clubs are locked behind festival expansions. You apparently need to do five of them (in any combination of places) to unlock.
The Clubs tab will become un-greyed once unlocked. From that tab you can do a search. I looked for QT3, Quarter to Three, Quarter, an a few other combinations and didn’t find anything.
Frame rate is serviceable. It reaches 60FPS on new i5 with Geforce 1080 at 1080p if you set detail to medium locked or high dynamic. Not great considering the hardware, but perfectly drivable and good-looking apart from pop-in.
I DO wish they’d fixed the crash bugs. I get a few crash-to-desktops every multi-hour session. Usually in the middle of an important race…
I have an i5 750, and a ATI 7950HD. As mentioned up thread, I choose to play on High even though my frame rate dips below 30 frequently as a result. Especially when there’s a lot of physics going on with lots of cars and fences being blown through. On the Xbox 1 I get the locked 30fps on what seems like graphics that are below High on the PC, but well above Medium on the PC. So yeah, on the Xbox I get smoother frame rate but it doesn’t look quite as good as it does on PC.
I did try it on medium on PC, but I didn’t like the look of the game. Too much pop-in on medium, and blurry textures that don’t become detailed until you’re right next to something.
I’m pretty happy with High on PC though. Yes, it dips into the 20s a lot, but this is a fairly laid back racing game for the most part, so I don’t mind if it gets choppy sometimes.
Alright, I DID finally find Wholly’s club. Had to search by Qt3 as a club tag instead of the full text in the club name. Go figure.
Unfortunately the club can’t be joined since Wholly needs to invite us individually :-)
You can make the game a LITTLE less painful to use by adding to the steam library with something like UWPHook. That has the advantage of enabling Steam streaming, which otherwise doesn’t seem to work for UWP apps when you manually add them
Meditation is a great way to put it. The one thing I still can’t get used to about Australia is driving on the other side of the road. I still crash into so much traffic because my instinct is to drive toward the wrong side of the road. Funny enough, this isn’t a big problem when I’m in a Right hand drive car. Then my brain instantly gets it. I’m on the other side of the car, I should be driving on the other side of the road. But most of the cars in the game are still left-hand drive. And that’s where my brain still rebels and has to be constantly reminded.
Man I hate to say it but I’m getting bored with FH3. Kind of wish I hadn’t played the previous Horizons, so I could appreciate the new stuff this game brings to the table. And there’s no denying it’s beautiful and plays great - I just can’t get around this whole ‘been there done that’ feeling. Going to set this one aside for a while - works for Bethesda games.
I don’t know what happened, but when I played the game on Wednesday night, suddenly the game is a slide show. It used to run so smoothly, but now I’m getting a frame rate in the teens and lower twenties at most. More important than the frame rate, it just isn’t running smoothly at all anymore in any part of the game. Not just the racing, but even the menus and the slick overlays showing your experience gains and fans gained and credit gains, those are all a slide show.
I wonder if there was a Windows 10 update that messed things up? Or an update to Forza Horizon 3 that messed things up? It still runs fine on Xbox One, but my Windows 10 version just isn’t playable anymore.
6 hours in, I am loving it, eventhough my last play session was interrupted by a crash (with no error message) - so far it was a first crash, so I hope it will not repeat.
I have the game set to 1080p with “High” preset and the dynamic stuff enabled, and so far it has been perfect 60fps experience, looking beautiful. Those skies man, can’t get enough. And as much as I love Crew, gotta admit Forza has more interesting car physics and modelling. Although unfortunately it does not support my wheel as well as Crew does. I have been playing mostly with controller.
Already bought Impreza and Tesla Model S, so I am happy on that front too :)
My biggest issue with the game remains the smallness of the world. If this game had Crew-like realization of Australia and I could drive from Melbourne through Adelaide to Perth, it would be 11/10 game. Right now, it is a 9 :)
