Forza Horizon 5’s ray tracing is no longer restricted to its Forza Vista and garage modes. This is thanks to a new cheat engine mod available on the PCGamesWiki, which brings ray-traced reflections to all of the game’s exciting races. These effects are limited to the player’s vehicles and are not applied to other cars or the environment, however.
From Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry, which shared a comparison video demonstrating how the ray-traced reflections look during races and their effect on performance:
In many scenarios, the changes can be subtle – especially in-game – but close-up to the car, the difference can be extraordinary, so using the mod in photo-mode can be highly beneficial in getting a much better shot. In fact, the thumbnail image on the video [is] based on a Playground press image, which does have ray tracing enabled: you can see the vehicle reflected in the mounted lights at the front of the car. It’s also worth mentioning that the pre-rendered cinematics on the introduction also use the effect. And why not? The cars are the stars of the show and hardware-accelerated ray tracing makes these beautiful models look even better.
The mod has opened up the possibility of Playground Games adding a higher level of ray-tracing support to Forza Horizon 5 in a future update. Xbox head Phil Spencer revealed last week that the open-world racer had the most successful launch of any first-party Xbox title ever.
We've invested for years in Xbox so more people can play. With 4.5+ million players so far across PC, cloud & console, Forza Horizon 5 shows that promise coming to life. Largest launch day for XGS game, peak concurrent 3x FH4 high. Thank you players & congrats to @WeArePlayground
— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) November 10, 2021
Source: PCGamesWiki (via Eurogamer)