BeefJack

There is still more performance to be squeezed from the Xbox 360, says Forza Motorsport 4 director Dan Greenawalt, thanks to “new blood” from Hollywood and sharing tips with Epic and Lionhead – meaning that a Forza 5 could look even better.

Turn 10′s Dan Greenawalt still believes that the Xbox 360 hardware has more to give even after six years, and that there are always new ways to push the console for more performance and better visuals.

“I think a lot of it comes down to new blood, and new approaches on the team,” says the Forza Motorsport 4 game director. “But the process of optimisation for console really, it’s like, I don’t know if you’ve ever packed a truck if you’re gonna go move, and you pack it really well, but if you actually took the time to unpack it and repack it, you’d find more space every single time.”

“It’s kind of like that; every time we start a new project, we actually take a look at our code, we unpack it, we find new optimisation, and that gives us more CPU, GPU and RAM that we can use for other effects.”

Getting in new talent to the studio plays a big part in making the most of the console: “We hired in guys from Hollywood, more like the Pixar and Disney animation lines, and they had different ways of doing lighting effects that, traditionally, games developers just don’t use those approaches. Some of them were very expensive, so we can’t use those, but some of them were actually very cheap. And that’s just a new approach by having new blood.”

Sharing tricks with other developers also help: ”It’s not just that we’re doing optimisations and learning things, but we learn things from Epic and we learn things from Lionhead and we learn things from other developer communities, so the communication strings are very wide open, and that allows us all to advance together.”

Asked if all that meant that a future Forza 5 could look even better than the upcoming fourth entry in the series, Greenawalt told NowGamer: “I do. Absolutely… do I know how I would make it look better? I absolutely don’t, but I believe that history is a good guide that we will continue to find optimisations all the time.”

http://beefjack.com/news/we-can-get-even-more-out-of-the-360-says-forza-4-dev/

What he fails to mention is how little difference any further optimization will be on the 360.

I highly doubt it, it would only be slight if it is true.

Wouldn't the XBOX 720 be out by the time Forza 5 gets released anyway?

Still looking forward to Forza 4, the screenshots look amazing.

Of course they could. I dont thnk they could get much more. I mean it already looks at the top of its genre. It would be more of a fine tune than a graphical leap. Forza 4 is gonna be as good as this gen will get in this genre.

I hate how virtually every developer says this.....WE ALL KNOW THIS ALREADY! It's common sense.

Yeah, like we expect differently from an MS first party...

I'll second that.

And I thought the Top Gear Test Track in GT5 was amazing, Forza 4 will go far beyond that.

The graphics look stunning too, the footage shown in the Swiss Alps looks decent, but the screenshots look unbelievable.

With enough effort and a talented enough developer, God of War 3 could have been done just as well on the Gameboy. They just didn't push the console to its maximum potential.

ok not trolling or anything but gt6 could have shown some even better graphic's if gt5 wouldn't have taken so long to dev, but we'll never know.

forza 4 will be an awsume experience(even on kinect) and may likely show the 360's final push for graphic's and may also be the best looking game on the 360 when all is said and done.

forza 4 will continue to mark my return to the racing genre.

Forza has released a new game every 2 years since 2005. This means Forza 5 will likely be a 2013 game, which is the year many people anticipate the next X-Box to release. My guess is MS won't make Forza a launch title, so for once were going to have to wait 3 years for Forza 5. Then absolutely it will look better.

For now, Forza 4 is the best looking SIM on the market (better then GT5, heck Forza 3 is about as good looking as GT5). Unless GT6 or FM5 come out this gen, Forza 4 WILL be the best looking SIM this gen. That says a lot for how much Forza has evolved.