Here's How Forza Horizon 4's Engine Sounds Compare To The Real Deal
After years of having to tolerate Gran Turismo games packed with cars that sounded like vacuum cleaners, the rise of the Forza franchise showed gamers that there was another way. Suddenly, you could drive cars that actually sounded something like their real-life counterparts.
But how does Horizon 4 - the latest Forza title - shape up in this regard? Thanks to these two videos from YouTuber NM2255, we get a good idea.
They blend the channel’s own supercar videos with in-game footage, and overall, it’s quite a mixed bag.
Some (Audi TT RS, LaFerrari) are pretty decent, others (C204 Mercedes-AMG C63, McLaren 720S) not so good, and at least one (we’re looking at you, BMW M4 GTS) we’d go as far as calling ‘terrible’.
Have a watch/listen and see what you think.
Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.
Comments
I think they underestimated the power of Nissan gt-r.
To all the people that will hate on Forza for the sounds
The development process of the sound is quite complex. First you need a lot of recorded sounds. These things can be as much as a gigabyte per car. To save space within studios server these are then compresed using .flac file. Most of your songs are compressed using .mp3, but flac is 10 times larger. This gives devs a good quality/space ratio. After hours of cutting, synthesis and background removal you are left with somewhat damaged sound, but perfect for a game. Unfortunately, due to engine and hardware, games have to compress their audio even further. From 100-200MB per car to 2-4 MB per car. They use different formats depending from platform to platform. Most devs use .aac. After all of that, a virtual surroundings machine lowers the quality even further, in order to make the sound placing more realistic.
Is there another way? Yes. We could simulate sound using notes. That process would take even less space and sound brilliant. HOWEVER it stresses the CPU and in some instances if it’s programmed to use CUDA the GPU a lot, leading to terrible game performance.
So basically… T10 is even more amazing than just their graphical content? I mean… we can hate on it all we want, but they all sound better than in GT Sport…
The sounds in Forza 7 were a LOT better than Horizon 4. For example the Viper ACR sounds like the real thing in Forza 7 when in Horizon 4 it literally sounds like an auto tuned fart. Why didn’t they just transfer Forza 7 sounds over? Is it because of space it would take up?
Ok but for some of these cars they couldve just ported the sound to fh4 from fh3. Like the skyline sounds were pefect…so why didnt they just reuse them
Wow I never knew it was that difficult. The game I’m working on (an F1-style racing game) sounds fairly decent with just a single 5-second audio sample for each car. Of course it doesn’t come with the pops and crackles but the main tone is correct. On the other hand some of the cars in Forza sound at the wrong pitch for their RPM which seems like an easy thing to fix.
I like it how we complain abt the car sounds in FH4 while we don’t complain on Gran Turismo Sports’ car sounds I mean it’s like yesterday when we complain abt Gran Turismo having vacuum sounds
GT Sport has pretty good sounding cars but for some reason has a vacuum cleaner-y overlay
It may be because we expect better of Forza
I don’t actually complain as much about the sound, because i know how hard it is. Except for stuff like the viper, which literally sounds broken.
There are other, easily fixable things that bother me much much more, because there is no reason for them to be that way. Mainly two things: why do so many cars not have the track-adjustment option? Especially if their pendant from other brands do? (V10 rs6 and M5, one does and one doesn’t)
And why are half of the onboard cameras placed like it’s an 8 foot tall granny driving the car?
Both are easy fixes and both are pointless and ruining the feeling of this brilliant game. Those are the things that really bother me.
Forza 4’s replication of the e46 m3 is of the worst of any game out there.
I’m surprised I am the only person who seemed to notice in FH3 the sounds for the supra, r34, and m4 were the same.
People only car about the supra and r34, if they sound good all the other can be bad. Just watch what the drama is about FH4, people only care that the Rb26 is making the wrong sound
Play Assetto Corsa
Why is the M4 GTS in Forza so high pitch tho?
The crackles were great tho…
Hello - you guys seem to be fortunate in having engine noises to listen too. Found many internet postings concerning total lack of engine sound that is similar to my experience. Thought I had been allocated an electric car in a competitive event because I could not hear an engine! From then onwards all my cars now have silent running engines. There does not seem any way to adjust this separately and I have tried various settings to no avail.