Forza Horizon 2, the sequel to 2012’s excellent Forza Horizon released by Playground Games, was announced yesterday for Xbox One and Xbox 360; among other things, the announcement caused some concerns that the Xbox 360 version would cause the Xbox One version to be held back and compromised as well, concerns that were quickly addressed. Now, we have learned more about the visual trickery that Forza Horizon 2 uses, information that should further allay any fears about the game’s visual performance that someone might have had.
The game features fully dynamic lighting throughout, reports IGN – “We believe next gen beauty isn’t about poly counts. It’s not about texture resolution. Those are last-gen concepts. Next-gen beauty is about light,” said Creative Director Ralph Fulton and Art Director Ben Penrose.
“Our challenge in this game was really to make that dynamic. To make those systems work and combine in a vast world at any time of day, and in any atmospheric or weather condition. We also had to make that scale. We have a huge world which we need to fill with light. Light from headlights, light from streetlights.
“With Horizon we pushed dynamic lights with the headlights. Now every single light in a scene is dynamic, which is only something we’ve been able to achieve with the switch to a next-gen platform.
“The headlights themselves are no longer just standard dynamic lights; they’ve actually got modeled aberration and chromatic aberration from a proper headlight, which is why when drive around the scene and you see the headlights reacting to certain objects you’ll see a slight rainbowing on the edge. That’s all down to that particular part of the system,” they concluded.
Forza Horizon 2 is due for a release later this year. We will surely learn more about it at Microsoft’s E3 presser next week, which should be on the morning of June 9.
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