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bad HDR calibration you say? well, this explains the funny looking tail lights on many cars especially when they glow bright orange during afternoon and overcast settings! I have other HDR games that I'm playing on my SDR TV and they look fine in all contrast conditions. the tail lights looked almost perfect in fm6 and fh2. don't know whey they need to change things which look nearly perfect.

My biggest complaint about FORZA 7 graphics (ONE X version）is：
The headlight beam wont illuminate the trees along tracks, like GTS or Assetto Corsa does.
The trees/woods are always dark at night.
Night racing on tracks like Nordschleife often feels tiring because of the lack of perception of the surrounding environment, in the dark of the night.
Can anybody explain this?

Edited by user Wednesday, June 5, 2019 11:11:37 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

I feel the same as you sylosis81 - only explanation is that's just how the lighting model is for night driving - and it is quite inconsistent.

E.g. on Sebring and COTAS, you'll find that headlight beams light up the road in front and surrounding to a believable degree. Now race at Silverstone or VIR and the beams are just faint as if the headlights are broken or the car only has fog lights on. No amount of fiddling with HDR will resolve this. For comparison, go to FM6 and drive the full Ring layout or any other track with night (not VIR as same headlight issues) - and you'll see how wonderfully headlight beams bounce off the tarmac, surrounding environment, especially cones and metal barriers. It's a beautiful effect, really - Forza's first attempt at night driving - executed brilliantly but did not carry over to FM7.

Why is FM7 so dark and dull at night? The night driving lighting model needs re-imagining or at least use the same one from FM6 and improve it further.

I always felt that FM6 was way too bright at night. Driving at night irl with no illumination around you is tough, you barely see anything. You'd be surprised what adjusting the HDR actually does, I'll try to capture the difference on my phone soon.

Not a perfect comparison ofc but they're taken at the same time of day in-game, same track, same position, same camera angle, same everything. You can clearly see the brake lights are much brighter in one, the track detail is more apparent & the reflection on the road much more vivid:


My HDR calibration


Forza's HDR Calibration

The HDR calibration sucks in this game. Some probably goes with the SDR tbh.

Also obviously FM6 is going to look better. Nothing at still was dynamic. Graphics have to be cut for youngest feature unfortunately.

Hi Evan,

Please tell us how you calibrated the first screen shot?

Also the in game HDR slider has to be brought down by twelve ticks before the Forza logo disappears for me. I have the 2017 Samsung 6 series 4k HDR with X1X

Of course! Sorry for the late reply:

I maxed out the Gamma & HDR brightness. Then I adjusted my TV's brightness until the Gamma logo was just visable (1 click on my TV's brightness lower & the logo would've disappeared). Then I adjusted the in-game gamma dow by either one or two clicks until the logo was at its least visable before disappearing entirely.

I left the HDR brightness maxed out.

Hmm, second shot has better looking shadows and looks more natural. Brake lights actually look believable.

Too bad I'm on an SDR screen. In-game calibration really stinks for regular TVs as the brake lights seem to have no life. They either look flat and dull red with no glow/halo or glow so bright that the tail lights look broken. As in, a bright whitish/orangish glow..... "rave" brake lights with no hint of red at all!

FM5 and 6 looked great. I don't know what they did to 7, although it does do a few thing better visually.

I have noticed this same crappy calibration BTW in games like PCARS2 where the brake lights just look flat and washed out with no real sense of being red brake lights. Shadow of TR and GOW4 are both HDR games as well but look perfectly fine on SDR screens, with no unusually bright or washed out colors.

Edited by user Thursday, June 6, 2019 10:06:40 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Those tests aren't precise. If you want to know how detailed your screens low blacks are, use this page. http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/black.php
And this for the contrast (usually the highest setting that doesn't make 254 invisible) http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/white.php
For the most accurate picture, dynamic contrast should be off, and HDMI black level should be Normal.

That's all great to know, but that doesn't mask the inconsistent lighting issues and frankly speaking, downright bizarre auto-exposure feature in FM7. Everybody's screens are fine, the game is the problem. I wish they would revert back to the FM6 or FM5 exposure correction feature.

Did a little experimenting last night taking photos in a variety of daytime track conditions - lowering the exposure from the default 50 value down to 30 or 25 gets the brake lights to look nice and red, not bright orange or yellow (but then everything else is too dark). Auto exposure and calibration is all over the place in this game It's a mess, to be honest because FH3 and FH4 look fantastic on my SDR screen.

I'd say again: revert back to auto-exposure from FM6/5 Turn 10! This dynamic lighting/time of day thing isn't working out, sorry.

I'm a bit late to the game. I just bought it after playing FM5, FM6, and the 4 FH games on the Xbox One S. Talk about ugly graphics compared to all of these. The least T10 could've done is crank the contrast on the grass textures. What a disappointment. I'm running just a 1080p screen.

edit: just cranking the contrast up on everything would be a simple way to make it look sooooo much better and hide the garbage textures.

Edited by user Thursday, May 14, 2020 12:08:25 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

It's true 4K 60 FPS game, it's a masterpiece and you need to lower something else for it but still, nothing better exists.

I ended up changing my Xbox display settings to "PC RGB" and 36bit colour. That seems to have crushed the blacks enough to make it look more contrasty on my non HDR TV.

I always use PC RGB on my non-HDR TV with that YC-something-something setting enabled. I've calibrated the picture settings around these Xbox settings with no crushed whites or blacks at all. In fact, it's fantastic with better colour gradation and 'picture pop' compared to Standard colour space.

4K resolution is very demanding and useless. 60fps IS mandatory.

Next forza should be 1440p at 60fps and with high polygone circuit assets , lightnings, dynamic shadows, occlusion ambiant, global illumination , night day real time rather than 4K.

Turn10, make the right choice this time , Gran Turismo and other license looks better.

Let's make it 480p, black and white, mono sound.

Why would they make their next game technically inferior ? The next generation Xbox will be able to deliver most if not all things you ask for in 4k

4K is great for racing games like Motorsport. 60 FPS is minimum, next Forza should have at least 120 FPS. 60 is console compromise but not for long I hope.

Returned my settings to normal. After giving the game some time, I find it looks really good much of the time.

It's only really the grass edged tracks that look terrible in midday sun. Different times of day have much better lighting and everything looks so much better. Avoid midday racing. LOL.

Yes, there's only a handful of TVs that do RGB properly with a game console - in most cases, you will see overexposed whites and crushed blacks. RGB full looks great on my 10-year old screen, but when I enable the yc3r3yrc3454 setting ... umm, whatever it's called - then I can instantly see better 'separation' between the layers of whites and blacks.