Forza Horizon 4 is an excellent open-world racing game, but not without its faults. For car enthusiasts that can spot it, the car engine noises have taken a slight drop in quality with noises being either mellow or less accurate compared to previous Forza Horizon entries.
And as such, there’s a strong demand within the game’s community for an improvement in the audio department for the upcoming Forza Horizon 5.
The latest Forza Horizon 5: Let’s ¡Go! dev livestream focused entirely on sound, in particular engine noises, and rest assured, fans should at least be content with the direction the game is going.
First, the audio team has recorded over 320 new car sounds added in their existing library for the past 2-3 years. The team at Playground Games even got to record the sound from a Jaguar XJ220, a Lancia Stratos, a three-wheeled Morgan car and an Iveco truck. Multiple different Toyota Supras (with different tuning configs) were recorded as well, which confirms the elusive JDM car is set to return (and is seen running in-game too).
There’s also some behind-the-scenes changes to how the engine noises are processed into becoming sound bytes we hear in the game as well. All the cars in Forza Horizon 5 will be using a new technique of sound recording- the cars are recorded out on the track instead of on a dyno- and are rendered at 90fps (compared to 30/60fps that the game can run on consoles), which should make the car sound more reactive.
There’s also new tyre skid sounds, which should sound different based on tyre size.
But the biggest change, however, is that cars will now sound different based on what upgrades you slapped on. Changing your intake, turbo and drivetrain will now affect your car noise.
Taking a page from Need For Speed Heat presumably, you can now rev the engine anytime while you are in the car upgrade screen.
But unlike Heat, which lets you cosmetically adjust the exhaust note, the exhaust notes on Forza Horizon 5 is affected by what upgrade you put on, with changes affected in real-time. You can hear the distinct changes of the Vauxhall Monaro here when it’s powered by a supercharger versus a pair of turbos.
There will also be 500 new engine swaps available, so should the new system works as intended, there’s definitely more variety of engine sounds for each car.
Also, drivetrain flex is back, which means you can see the car wobble a bit when you are revving the engine.
There’s also some use of audio ray-tracing, which means the echos will be a bit different depending on where you are, with tunnels being highly echo-y and the jungles being more damped.
Forza Horizon 5 will be out on November 9 on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and PC (Steam, Microsoft Store)