Forza Horizon 3

Having not played the others in the series, how realistic is it? I like games like Need for Speed and the Crew and don't really care for Gran Turismo. Where does this fall?

It falls somewhere between the two. You have a lot of control over the various driving assists, so you can tune it to your liking. With the right assists turned on, I'm sure you'll be pleased. If you are on the fence, go install Apex for free. While the numbered Forza game are slightly more sim, it will give you an idea for the range of driving styles offered depending on how you set it up.
 
Anyone here try it with a steering wheel yet? Some of the levels look a little too spastic to use one comfortably.
 
Anyone here try it with a steering wheel yet? Some of the levels look a little too spastic to use one comfortably.

I'm playing with a G27. Probably not as well as I would be with a controller, but I'm having fun.

Anyone running into technical issues? I'll get random flickering where the ground disappears. Seems to mostly happen along the beach. Also, maybe it's in my head, but I feel like I'm getting some sort of odd slow down. It's not really studdering, and my FPS doesn't drop, it's almost like for a second or two the game goes into slow-motion. I've also come across one infinite loading screen, and the same race has crashed in the same spot twice now. Might have to try doing that race on Xbox.

The game looks great, performance leaves a bit to be desired. Hopefully they get SLI going pretty quickly. In the mean time, thank god for Gysnc. Really helps when the FPS dips into the 45-50 territory.

EDIT: The more I play, the worse things seem to get. Nearly every single time i'm presented with a loading screen, it doesn't go away. Starting events, entering a garage, etc. I've probably restarted my game 10-15 times over the course of 2 hours. Really disappointing to be seeing stuff like this. I'll give it a whirl on Xbox tonight and see if that's actually playable.

Hopefully the folks at Playground are hard at work on a patch.
 
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I'm playing with a G27. Probably not as well as I would be with a controller, but I'm having fun.

Anyone running into technical issues? I'll get random flickering where the ground disappears. Seems to mostly happen along the beach. Also, maybe it's in my head, but I feel like I'm getting some sort of odd slow down. It's not really studdering, and my FPS doesn't drop, it's almost like for a second or two the game goes into slow-motion. I've also come across one infinite loading screen, and the same race has crashed in the same spot twice now. Might have to try doing that race on Xbox.

The game looks great, performance leaves a bit to be desired. Hopefully they get SLI going pretty quickly. In the mean time, thank god for Gysnc. Really helps when the FPS dips into the 45-50 territory.

EDIT: The more I play, the worse things seem to get. Nearly every single time i'm presented with a loading screen, it doesn't go away. Starting events, entering a garage, etc. I've probably restarted my game 10-15 times over the course of 2 hours. Really disappointing to be seeing stuff like this. I'll give it a whirl on Xbox tonight and see if that's actually playable.

Hopefully the folks at Playground are hard at work on a patch.
Turn Frame Smoothing off in the video options. Disable SLI or set the game to single card in the NVCP, while you're at it. If you don't do that explicitly the game could run slower and/or have other issues.

Other than that, I have not yet run into any issue with the game on my PC. It runs beautifully on dynamic Ultra at 2560x1440. The game will stutter a bit in the intro sections, but it smooths out once you get into the main part of the game.
 
I'm playing with a G27. Probably not as well as I would be with a controller, but I'm having fun.

Anyone running into technical issues? I'll get random flickering where the ground disappears. Seems to mostly happen along the beach. Also, maybe it's in my head, but I feel like I'm getting some sort of odd slow down. It's not really studdering, and my FPS doesn't drop, it's almost like for a second or two the game goes into slow-motion. I've also come across one infinite loading screen, and the same race has crashed in the same spot twice now. Might have to try doing that race on Xbox.

The game looks great, performance leaves a bit to be desired. Hopefully they get SLI going pretty quickly. In the mean time, thank god for Gysnc. Really helps when the FPS dips into the 45-50 territory.

EDIT: The more I play, the worse things seem to get. Nearly every single time i'm presented with a loading screen, it doesn't go away. Starting events, entering a garage, etc. I've probably restarted my game 10-15 times over the course of 2 hours. Really disappointing to be seeing stuff like this. I'll give it a whirl on Xbox tonight and see if that's actually playable.

Hopefully the folks at Playground are hard at work on a patch.

Gsync definitely seems to be working great here, at 1080p max settings I am mostly seeing the FPS counter around 45-50. Sometimes dipping below 40, sometime getting up to 60-70. Gsync made it all feel fine but I will be looking into changing a few settings in hope of averaging 60-80 fps instead of 40-50.

I was getting some super long loads as well, with no drive activity. Didn't play much more than an hour last night but I specifically ran into infinite loading after completing a race and selecting Replay. Eventually I got tired of the loading and tried mashing buttons on the keyboard, alt-tab made it load right away. Odd I know but I was able to repeat the behavior. Something funky going on but I think they can fix it easily.

All in all for the time I played things were fine outside of that one weird loading issue and slightly worse performance than I expected. This launch seems much smoother than the previous two Windows Store games I bought, Gears Ultimate and Quantum Break
 
Turn Frame Smoothing off in the video options. Disable SLI or set the game to single card in the NVCP, while you're at it. If you don't do that explicitly the game could run slower and/or have other issues.

Other than that, I have not yet run into any issue with the game on my PC. It runs beautifully on dynamic Ultra at 2560x1440. The game will stutter a bit in the intro sections, but it smooths out once you get into the main part of the game.
You're using 1x Titan X and able to go Ultra @ 1440? I'm a bit worried about my 980ti at that res and 60+.
 
You're using 1x Titan X and able to go Ultra @ 1440? I'm a bit worried about my 980ti at that res and 60+.
I didn't check FPS, but it was definitely over 100 all the time. A 980 Ti is around 60% slower, so you should still be able to get more than 60 FPS at 2560x1440.
 
Turn Frame Smoothing off in the video options. Disable SLI or set the game to single card in the NVCP, while you're at it. If you don't do that explicitly the game could run slower and/or have other issues.

Other than that, I have not yet run into any issue with the game on my PC. It runs beautifully on dynamic Ultra at 2560x1440. The game will stutter a bit in the intro sections, but it smooths out once you get into the main part of the game.

I did already try turning frame smoothing off. That was... interesting. I got incredibly bad studdering/hitching. It made the game completely unplayable. So, I suspect whatever is causing my hitching with smoothing off is also whats causing my weird slowmo with smoothing on. Just gotta find out what it is. I ill try disabling SLI and seeing what that does. I'll also try alt tabbing next time the game hangs.

In the mean time, it ran like a peach on Xbox (albeit not nearly as pretty).
 
I did already try turning frame smoothing off. That was... interesting. I got incredibly bad studdering/hitching. It made the game completely unplayable. So, I suspect whatever is causing my hitching with smoothing off is also whats causing my weird slowmo with smoothing on. Just gotta find out what it is. I ill try disabling SLI and seeing what that does. I'll also try alt tabbing next time the game hangs.

In the mean time, it ran like a peach on Xbox (albeit not nearly as pretty).
The slow down comes from the game interpolating the frames, so during drops and skips it becomes really noticeable. If you use frame smoothing you should also limit the game FPS in the video options. Do you have the latest driver installed (372.90)?
 
The slow down comes from the game interpolating the frames, so during drops and skips it becomes really noticeable. If you use frame smoothing you should also limit the game FPS in the video options. Do you have the latest driver installed (372.90)?

Yeah, latest drivers. I may try frame limiting and see if that helps (with or without framerate smoothing)
 
Haven't found any solid benchmarks yet though it was hilarious reading comments over on IGN about how the xbox version looked better after watching a compressed 1080p youtube video
 
Haven't found any solid benchmarks yet though it was hilarious reading comments over on IGN about how the xbox version looked better after watching a compressed 1080p youtube video
You can't spell ignorant without IGN.
 
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49GB download and the damn thing crashes about 40 seconds into the intro race and I get a message that there's missing or corrupt content. Wiped it and attempting a reinstall. Its great on the XBONE. I've spent a brief amount of time with the game on PC using my 34" ultrawide and it looked really good, but I'm seeing a major difference during gameplay vs the XBONE. Playing with a XBONE Elite gamepad as I'm too lazy to setup the G29 wheel, but the driving feels really nice with the Elite pad.

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Second install works better. Wow, this game looks really nice on a 21:9 screen! Gameplay is smooth, no hitching using the Ultra preset with frame lock at 30.
 
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Got the game last night. After troubleshooting terrible performance despite having a 980 Ti, I finally got it to where most of the stuttering is done. For some reason my fps options are 33, 41, 55, 83, and finally 165 which is my monitors refresh rate. No idea why they are so odd.

I settled on mostly high/ultra @ 1440P and played at a locked FPS of 51. Occasional dips but mostly holds. Hopefully there is some patch to fix performance.
 
Got the game last night. After troubleshooting terrible performance despite having a 980 Ti, I finally got it to where most of the stuttering is done. For some reason my fps options are 33, 41, 55, 83, and finally 165 which is my monitors refresh rate. No idea why they are so odd.

I settled on mostly high/ultra @ 1440P and played at a locked FPS of 51. Occasional dips but mostly holds. Hopefully there is some patch to fix performance.

The FPS options are based on your monitor's refresh rate, for some reason.
 
The FPS options are based on your monitor's refresh rate, for some reason.

Yes, they made the choice of using hard-coded dividers for the FPS limiter, so the oddball refresh rates like 165hz confuse the settings a bit.

But anyway, the game definitely suffers from some stutter issues if you go above 30fps. On my PC (sig) it's mostly smooth at 60fps/frame smoothing enabled at High settings, but it really chokes around certain areas like Surfer's Paradise. NOT framerate (like it's not just too much geometry or something) but it seems to choke badly on loading all of the assets in the area. The whole thing in general seems to handle asset streaming terribly. Even the "showroom" in Surfer's Paradise stutters like crazy while panning the camera.
 
I hear the game looks gorgeous on PC...might have to pick this up...been awhile since I've enjoyed a racing game
 
Possible cause for the stuttering/hitching could be the CPU choking while trying to decrypt game assets, thread here:


 
I have no stuttering. Am doing 60-80 fps. Game is fantastic. Signed up Armenius as my drivatar hire. If you want a wingman asshole drivatar that knocks cars off the track, you can hire me as KickAssCop.
 
I have no stuttering.

You most likely do have minor stuttering, but kind of like > 60 fps, some people just don't "see" it. Not going to argue that point with you though, just want people to know what's wrong with the game.

edit: Go to Surfer's Paradise. Cruising around in the wilderness is pretty smooth since there aren't as many assets being streamed in.
 
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I do get minor stutters here and there and some framedrops.. but for the most part it feels good @ 60 fps.

Running in 4k..

Love using my new car here -
zXlIFsM.jpg


(I scaled the screenshot down to 1080p)
 
So, this game is UWP, but does it support SLI? One of my cards won't cut it at 4K, but that's why I have two...
 
some of the screenshots I've seen look photo-realistic...might be the best looking PC game ever...do you need to play in 4k to get it to look that good or does it still look amazing in 1080p (or in my case 1200p)?
 
some of the screenshots I've seen look photo-realistic...might be the best looking PC game ever...do you need to play in 4k to get it to look that good or does it still look amazing in 1080p (or in my case 1200p)?

Maxed out Ultra settings look amazing. I've settled on Dynamic High for my settings using a single 980, you could pull that off with the 970 I'm sure. Ultra settings definitely look much better IMO then the High settings, but High is still pretty good.
 
Anyone with a GTX 970 running this game at 1080p? Looking at buying it but i'm wondering if the 3.5Gig problem is going to show it's ugly head. It did on the previous Forza game (the free one) in the store that I tried. Had to back off the detail settings in order for it to stop stuttering once in a while.

Also kind of wondering about performance.
 
Performance is mixed and highly environment/effects dependent. I've got no graphics issues with the majority of the game but the urban area (Surfer's Paradise - honestly I would have chosen a different name for this) tanks all frames.

This is definitely the best Need for Speed game I've ever played but I do have some problems:
- race balance is awful
- Drivatars are, as usual, pretty terrible
- handling is inconsistent across surface media
- audio sliders seemingly do nothing
- engine/tire audio is too low in any camera other than the chase cameras

I've had a fair amount of CTDs and stuttering. I definitely believe that the decrypting of game assets is killing the CPU.
 
I have no stuttering. Am doing 60-80 fps. Game is fantastic. Signed up Armenius as my drivatar hire. If you want a wingman asshole drivatar that knocks cars off the track, you can hire me as KickAssCop.
I get 80-90 FPS on my PC everywhere at 2560x1440 and Dynamic Ultra. I only get the stuttering when traveling at speeds over 200 MPH. Definitely will have issues if you like to go full bore in the Koenigsegg One:1.

It sucks that you have to be suggested a crew member to hire them, unless I'm doing it wrong. I had been waiting to get you, but I at least hope my skills are paying your bills.
So, this game is UWP, but does it support SLI? One of my cards won't cut it at 4K, but that's why I have two...
No SLI support, and I don't know if we'll ever get it.
Performance is mixed and highly environment/effects dependent. I've got no graphics issues with the majority of the game but the urban area (Surfer's Paradise - honestly I would have chosen a different name for this) tanks all frames.

This is definitely the best Need for Speed game I've ever played but I do have some problems:
- race balance is awful
- Drivatars are, as usual, pretty terrible
- handling is inconsistent across surface media
- audio sliders seemingly do nothing
- engine/tire audio is too low in any camera other than the chase cameras

I've had a fair amount of CTDs and stuttering. I definitely believe that the decrypting of game assets is killing the CPU.
Surfer's Paradise is an actual location on the east coast of Australia. Champ car had a street race there back in the day.

In my opinion this game has the best handling yet of all the Horizon titles released to-date. It's really tight with simulation steering enabled.

I will agree with you on the audio, though. But this has been an issue with all Forza titles that has never been addressed.

As far as stuttering, see my comment above. I had to do a PC restart after 4 hours on Saturday to get performance back. For some reason after 4 hours of playtime exactly the game crashed and performance was horrible when I went back into the game.
 
There's no cheaper option for this game other than the $60 on the Microsoft store, correct? Just making sure before I bite the bullet.
 
There's no cheaper option for this game other than the $60 on the Microsoft store, correct? Just making sure before I bite the bullet.

Nope. In order for us to get MS games we have to pay the price in the store.
Or you can buy the Xbox One version at a discount if you can find it.
 
Nope. In order for us to get MS games we have to pay the price in the store.
Or you can buy the Xbox One version at a discount if you can find it.
You can still buy download cards that give you a key, and those can be discounted and/or found on grey market sellers. Since it's Play Anywhere an "Xbox" key will allow you to get the PC version.
 
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