Forza Motorsport, the latest installment in the long-running racing series, launched earlier this year for PC and Xbox Series X|S consoles. It promised a ‘next-gen’ experience built on a new engine with advanced visuals and real-time ray-tracing. However, the launch-day version fell short of the pre-release hype, with many players criticizing the game’s downgraded visuals. Now, a new mod for Forza Motorsport has unearthed a hidden visual mode that reveals the game’s true potential. This mode utilizes files from an unused folder to replace those in the ‘Ultra’ visual mode folder, adding ray-traced global illumination (RTGI), increasing the level of detail, expanding the draw distance, and transforming flat ground textures into full 3D grass with foliage. It’s essentially a copy-paste operation that unlocks a significantly more visually appealing experience. As demonstrated in a recent video by Digital Foundry, this hidden mode significantly upgrades Forza Motorsport’s visuals on PC. RTGI adds depth and realism to environments, addressing one of the primary criticisms of the game’s visuals – the flat appearance of tracks, cars, and environments. More realistic shadows and lighting contribute to a sense of depth and detail that was previously lacking. However, this hidden mode isn’t without its drawbacks. While impressive, there are instances of excessive noise in the image quality, hinting at Forza Motorsport’s unfinished advanced ray-tracing features. The existence of this mode, even several months after the game’s release, suggests that Turn 10, the game’s developer, may be holding back a more visually impressive version. If released officially, this mode could utilize NVIDIA’s DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction technology to enhance the visual fidelity and improve the quality of ray-traced reflections. Performance-wise, the hidden mode comes with a noticeable hit. Digital Foundry observed a 27% performance reduction when racing using the car exterior view and a 40% reduction when racing using the car interior view on a GeForce RTX 3080. The latter adds RTGI and reflections to elements like the dashboard, leading to a more substantial performance impact. This discovery is fascinating, drawing parallels to the RTGI developer mode found in Capcom’s RE Engine, which enables advanced ray-tracing in games like Dragon’s Dogma 2 and the Resident Evil 4 Remake. It remains to be seen whether Turn 10 will officially release this hidden mode, but its existence provides a tantalizing glimpse into the visual potential of Forza Motorsport.
Forza Motorsport’s Hidden Mode Reveals Stunning Ray-Traced Visuals
