I think it’s also important to keep in mind that they obviously prioritized getting the PS5 version out, they rushed something out when they got MS blessing but it likely wasn’t getting the attention it deserved until then. It’s not like the Xbox version had been sitting there near done waiting for the OK.
As a result, I dunno if I’d read too much into this one.
Great points. I think it looks like a case where the developer just looked to favour SONY and didn’t put the effort in to make the Series X version better
If I’m wrong on that I’m sorry to any member of staff who worked on the game mind
As a follow-up on the Xbox One graphics api discussion, I’m going to refer to this analysis piece as I no longer have my old SDKs and dont feel like writing up my own summary:
Perhaps the biggest surprise of the SDK notes - beyond the seventh CPU core revelation - is the existence of two separate graphics drivers for the Xbox One’s onboard Radeon hardware: we know about the mono-driver - Microsoft’s GPU interface designed to offer the best performance from the hardware, but there was also the user-mode driver (UMD) - something that you’ll see referenced throughout this piece.
A well-placed source informs us that while it was an Xbox One-specific driver, it had a lot of additional checking and error-catching, designed to help debugging and to get software up and running on the console as soon as possible - at the expense of raw performance. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. Let’s begin at the beginning.
…
Changes continue to pile up for the user-mode driver but by July 2013, Microsoft begins to introduce a preview version of the Monolithic Direct3D driver (known as the mono-driver when mentioned publicly), designed to evolve the stock D3D features to be more console-specific by eliminating unnecessary features and reducing unnecessary overheads. Yes, remarkably Microsoft had two GPU drivers in circulation, all the way up to May 2014 when the user-mode driver was finally consigned to the dustbin. The mono-driver becomes the key to improved performance for future Xbox One games but the version utilised for launch titles would have been somewhat sub-optimal compared to the version in circulation today. One section in the SDK in this period gleefully exclaims “Tear No More!” - a feature that seems to see the introduction of v-sync and adaptive v-sync support. In addition, support for 720p output is added, but it appears that output is simply downscaled from 1080p.
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Throughout the coming months there are plenty of updates corresponding to the low-level D3D monolithic runtime. Hardware video encoding/decoding is added in March, along with asynchronous GPU compute support. By May, support for the user-mode driver is completely removed in favour of the mono-driver, explaining (in part at least) the marked improvement in Xbox One GPU performance in shipping titles from Q2 2014 onwards. The focus on the mono-driver appears to pay off as throughout 2014, Microsoft posts GPU performance improvements nearly every month, including some remarkable increases in draw call efficiency in July.
I don’t think John did anything on purpose but after watching the whole video I think some things in it were questionable.
Again and again his comparisons show a Sega-blue sky and high noon, super sharp shadows on the GT side, and then the Forza side has a hazy, purplish sky and indistinct shadows. The implication is that Forza always looks like that. But Forza also has clear blue skies and crisp noontime shadows. I don’t know if it’s down to the time of day or the weather conditions John chose (he said he tried to match as closely as possible…), or possibly even random variations in cloud cover and humidity. But the comparison always seems to be between GT with strikingly high contrast and sharp shadows, and Forza looking hazy and cloudy by comparison. Even though Forza is capable of those exact same conditions.
Not to take anything away from GT7, it looks fantastic and the detail in car models undoubtedly beats Forza. I’m just not sure that video did as good a job showing off Forza’s lighting and weather as it could have done.
I found those comparisons very nitpicking. If you need someone else to teach you how different two games are, maybe they are not so different ?
FM got Racing game of the year, this year. GT7 is still a very good game, they are very close with different priorities and excellent gameplay.
A real fact, Polyphony is master on pushing the playstationnhardware by hiding its limits in a very polished way and a focus on having cars very well modeled. What Turn 10 failed is the level of polish. What Turn 10 succeeded is an excellent gameplay, highly detailed tracks and some more realistic graphics (real life is not shiny like GT make it to appear for example).
He did and he was very careful and selective in the comparison all designed to have GT7 win.
You couldn’t give a fair comparison to the two games anyway since FORZA has a dynamic time of day and weather system for every track FORZA is also handling real time ray tracing in-game on all of the 24 cars. The FORZA engine has to handle different technical requirements and issues to those in GT7. I don’t think it’s even fair to compare FORZA to Horizon 5 either.
I found his tweets to quite the wind up too against Xbox fans. John is very good at his work and I enjoy the videos but for me his bias towards SONY.
I do agree with John on the technical bugs in FORZA are really disappointing and not up to Turn 10 usual impeccable standards. The game seemed to be rushed out and could have done with a 3 to 6 month delay.
The thing that interests me is that DF normally are all over anything that uses the new tech over old tech in the way FM does with RT vs GT7. Yet in this instance seem to not really want to reward pushing the medium forwards. They hammer games for not using RTGI yet in this instance it seems using SSR etc is fine - and its all the end result.
I don’t mind either way but it seems like they pick and choose when to champion new tech vs when to talk about ‘the end result’.
Its pretty obvious to me that T10 spent a lot of time making RT work on track and maybe that took too much resource away from other things. They probably expected to be praised for pushing racing tech forwards but instead the things they couldn’t do were given the focus.
I don’t think there is bias or whatever, but I do think its a slightly unfair set of comparisons to take a mature game using last gen tech and compare it to a new one trying to utilise current gen graphics features and tech that’s only just out. I’d probably find it more useful if they talked about why RT is a bit of a flop on console and maybe shouldn’t take so much focus in games where it doesn’t do much. But instead they wanted to focus on ‘comparison’.
I haven’t played Forza MotoSports or GT and only watched about 20 minutes of the DF video. Is the photo mode indicative of the game’ s in-game visuals as it seems like that was what the few minutes I saw were mainly based on.
I think Forza has dynamic weather so it can be different even during the same time of day.
Absolutely not for GT7. Replays are not indicative of in-game visuals either.
Then won’t the comparison be somewhat dishonest if they are based on photo mode captures unless it changes seeing I only watched like the first 20 minutes. I often thought the photo mode could be enhances as all those details don’t seem there in game but do pop up in the photo mode.
I guess my point is just like you have pop ins in many games the closer you get to a target. If photo mode is such then it would be a silly way to compare the visuals as all the details could pop in for the photo.
One important difference, which John did note, is that Forza allows 24 cars on track and (to my knowledge) never dips below 60 FPS. GT7 allows 20 cars and does dip below 60 FPS at times.
The conspiracy theorist in me wonders if the career in GT7 is made up of passing challenges instead of grid start races specifically to minimize the number of cars that are likely to be on screen at once. 
Honestly, I don’t think the guy is the right person to make comparisons. This should be left to an expert, and they could have done it a better service by actually visiting race car drivers and the sim race car enthusiasts to get a proper comparison. This felt more like another bait to incite console wars and put down Xbox again. Also considering they had a sit down with the forza team why didn’t he bring up the nitpicks. It would be nice to see other competitors on this analysis. DF has pretty much become all there is and the NX gamer is pretty much mired with IGN.
He did, mentioned it in the original tech review.
A game with RT has better tech than a game without, but you can not deny that Polyphony is master at showing good results with limited tech and their cult for details is very impressing. They also focus on cars and replays, which is good for automated demo, but hardly important in race.
On the other side, you can also wonder why RT in a racing game, where when you see such details, you are too close from your opponent.
It is clear to me that FM is the better tech-equipped game but GT7 is the most polished. Hopefully, FM bugs can be ironed soon, then we can focus on its excellent handling and gameplay.
Playground has shown how excellent the Forzatech engine can be when properly mastered.
Sheesh, someone really didn’t care about that NDA, lmao.
Have to say I’m a bit surprised at how rough some of that footage looked.
Watching a ship fight near the end where the player ship just swats tons of AI ships that all randomly seem to explode upon death, cannon trailing effects that look like pipe cleaners instead of smoke and cannon balls that create the exact same impact effect on sails as they do on the ship… and it seems like the hit boxes are massive as a lot of shots looked like misses to me but clearly registered as hits.
I knew they were struggling but given that since day one the game has heavily featured a ship shooting another ship I would have thought they’d have really nailed that bit. Makes me think the rest of it will be rough as hell.
https://x.com/dark1x/status/1742800659005542564?s=46&t=O_AGT9SEnlptKOF_2SxtqQ
Thank you for waking the sleeping giant.
I mean, those are all things they were planning to do, or is the internet now under the impression that Xbox devs don’t constantly work to improve their games after launch?