Forza Motorsport promises ray traced reflections, ‘fully procedural’ clouds, and loads of other technical doodads

Whenever there’s a new sports game, especially a new racing game, there must also be the traditional listing of the Granular Technical Advancements™. For the next game in the Forza Motorsport series (Forza Horizon’s older, more serious sibling), that moment came during Wednesday’s Xbox and Bethesda “Developer Direct” showcase, and it was a doozy.

Here’s a summary of everything promised by Forza Motorsport’s developers in the video embedded above:

• Over 500 cars at launch, 100 of which are new to the series: “The most modern race cars ever featured” on a Forza Motorsport roster
• 800 unique car upgrades
• 20 race sites, including five new locations to the series
• “Physically based lighting and volumetric fog effects”
• “A fully procedural cloud system” (very important!)
• “Tens of thousands of fully-animated 3D spectators”
• “Fully dynamic time of day and weather” with “dynamic track temperatures, wet driving surfaces, and rubbering in” (that’s when tires rub off on the track)
• New, higher resolution materials and shaders that are “optimized” for raytracing, at least on Xbox (no details about PC raytracing support were mentioned)
• Car paints “sourced using a spectrophotometer” which “yields a paint model that has a “much more realistic light response across color, metal flake, and gloss” (Science paint, got it (opens in new tab))
• Each car has a unique “damage and dirt buildup” model
• Simulated paint chipping which accounts for paint thickness and directionality
• This is the first Forza Motorsport to be “mixed natively for immersive audio formats like Windows Sonic and Dolby Atmos”
• The car parts you choose alter your car’s sound, and there’s a new “regional track announcer system” and “improved tire and suspension audio”