The frame-rate metrics hold up, regardless of mode.
Even so, more so than any Horizon game before it, this is the most fluid, and consistent open world I've seen from the series on an Xbox One machine. Jumping into a high horsepower vehicle allows you to push the streaming technology harder though, making occasional LOD transitions are more apparent on trees. It's rare you'll catch sight of pop-in, or any sign that the X hardware is struggling to cope with the magnitude of objects being rendered in. For example, for the most part, foliage renders in seamlessly across the bend of a valley. As with the last Horizon title, CPU and GPU resources are carefully managed to avoid bottlenecks, while at the same time maintaining visual consistency. The quality mode at 4K remains solid, and that 30fps frame-rate is basically rock solid from the first hour I've played of the preview build. There's more to come on this closer to the game's launch - but needless to say, the engine changes are impressive and Playground is getting more from the hardware than simply resolution and frame-rate increases. But this time, the developer has targeted the system more specifically, with a studio-wide focus: Xbox One X is treated as the lead platform, and the options are broadened. Playground has experience with Xbox One X of course, with a small team porting Horizon 3 to the six teraflop system earlier this year, delivering a beautiful native 4K presentation. In Forza Horizon 4 we're doing seasons, so we had to capture all four seasons." We've built a new rig for this game with a slightly higher level of fidelity. "We've continued to use that - we've actually enhanced it. "One of the big things we did in Australia was the sky capture technology which kind of pioneered on that project," he continues. Previous techniques Playground pioneered return for Horizon 4 too. It was really a very cross-disciplinary approach to solving all the many problems that come with that." The challenge was to make it less than a 4x modifier on the cost, because that just wouldn't have worked. "It was a challenge for tooling, pipelines, as well as for rendering, art creation. "Each individual season touches pretty much each individual asset in the game in some way," creative director Ralph Fulton tells us. However, it still represents a fundamental challenge from a technological perspective. It's a bold new direction for the series but the switch from season to season isn't a gradual transition, but rather a hard cut - it fades in and out, planting you in the middle of an idealised version of each. The open world map size is roughly similar to Horizon 3 all told, but the new four-way split helps multiply the possibilities. From spring through to winter, materials, foliage, sky-boxes and of course, driving physics change with the conditions. The game's four seasons also distinguish this move to Britain too. ForzaTech shines as its global tour finally returns home to Great Britain, and while the push for colour, confetti and fireworks keeps the series' trademark bombast, at its core the terrain is accurately modelled, with photo-realistic takes on each country's landmarks. The 60fps mode is significant, especially in terms of its sheer consistency, but running the game at its default 4K30 should be the first port of call in appreciating the sheer quality in the visuals. It's a long-requested feature, and while a mainstay of the Forza Motorsport games, it's been off limits for the Horizon series on Xbox - until now. For the first time in the Horizon series' history, console users get a choice between 4K resolution at 30 frames per second and a new performance mode that delivers a solid 60fps. Based on a preview build we recently sampled, Xbox One X offers up two compelling ways to explore it too. Developer Playground Games excels in creating vibrant, varied landscapes - and Forza Horizon 4 doesn't disappoint.