What you need to know
- Forza Horizon 5 is an ongoing open-world racing game on Xbox and PC that is always evolving.
- Playground Games has revealed that players can look forward to a plethora of PC-centric improvements with the game's next update.
- Forza Horizon 5 is gaining support for in-game ray tracing, NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution, AMD FSR 2.0, and more on PC.
- Forza Horizon 5 Series 14 "Donut Media" is arriving on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2022 for all players, for free.
Forza Horizon 5 is one of the most critically acclaimed and well-reviewed racing games you can currently play, especially among open-world options. Part of this success can be attributed to Forza Horizon 5's constant evolution, driven by Playground Games' commitment to consistent, community-driven, and free content updates delivered over time. On Thursday, the studio revealed some of the PC-centric features players can expect in the near future.
Arriving alongside the Series 14 "Donut Media" update for the Forza Horizon 5 Festival Playlist, PC racers are about to be treated to a myriad of brand-new graphics and performance options to improve the overall experience. Playground Games is implementing popular PC features that enable improved performance without sacrificing visual fidelity, while also providing new high-end graphical options for those with the most powerful PC setups.
The new PC features heading to Forza Horizon 5 with the Series 14 "Donut Media" update include:
- Improved in-game DirectX ray tracing. Forza Horizon 5 already features ray tracing, powered by Microsoft's DirectX gaming technologies, on PC and Xbox Series X|S. However, the game's current ray tracing iteration only works within ForzaVista, the game's "presentation mode" for viewing cars. With Forza Horizon 5 Series 14, PC players with the right configurations will be able to enjoy full in-game ray tracing for car reflections and Photo Mode.
- Forza Horizon 5 Series 14 will include two new ray tracing performance modes on top of the existing "Medium" and "High" with "Ultra" and "Extreme" (you can see how the modes compare in the image above)
- The new ray tracing modes support ray-traced car-based reflections across cars in Free Roam and races, with "Extreme" supporting higher resolutions
- Both modes also support ray-traced car reflections in Photo Mode, including for AI cars
- The new ray tracing modes even incorporate reflections for player Drivatars when in Photo Mode
- Understandably, players will need powerful PCs in order to take advantage of the new ray tracing options
- AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.0 support. All players with AMD, NVIDIA, and Intel graphics will be able to take advantage of AMD FSR 2.0 in Forza Horizon 5's performance mode, an ingenious gaming technology that can render Forza Horizon 5 at 4K using only a 1080p frame buffer, massively improving performance with ideally negligible nerfs to performance.
- NVIDIA Deep Learning Super Sampling Super Resolution support. Players with powerful NVIDIA RTX cards will be able to take advantage of NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution, which also can render Forza Horizon 5 at 4K using only a 1080p frame buffer.
- This also includes NVIDIA DLAA support, which is AI-powered technology that can anti-alias native resolution images at high qualities
- Forza Horizon 5 is using DLSS 2.4, with Playground Games not confirming plans to incorporate DLSS 3.0 supported by NVIDIA's RTX 40xx series GPUs
Forza Horizon 5 is hands-down one of the best racing games on Xbox and PC, and it's about to get a whole lot better on the latter. Forza Horizon 5 Series 14 "Donut Media" is officially arriving on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2022 for all FH5 players, and will include a brand-new Festival Playlist and plenty of new content alongside the new graphics and performance features for PC players. Regardless of your Forza Horizon 5-equipped PC, the next update is bound to have something to improve your experience.
The Logitech G920 remains one of the best racing wheels for Forza Horizon 5, thanks to its quality construction, plethora of high-end features, and an appealing price tag thanks to the existence of its more expensive successor.
