Over the past few days, I've been testing Forza Horizon 6 on various gaming PCs, monitor resolutions, and settings. Overall, the game looks and runs great—even on older hardware—without needing upscaling or frame generation for decent frame rates. However, one setting has left me disappointed.
As the headline suggests, it's the ray tracing options. There are two: one for reflections and one for global illumination. Both work as intended, producing pixel-perfect lighting on shiny surfaces. But neither really elevates the game's visuals to a level worth using.
Ray-traced reflections look better than screen-space ones, which often pop in and appear odd. However, when you're speeding past scenery, you barely notice the flaws of screen-space reflections before they're gone. The bigger issue is ray-traced global illumination (RTGI), which should matter everywhere but feels underwhelming in Forza Horizon 6. This might be due to the open-world nature—buildings and objects are correctly lit, but you can't get close enough to appreciate it. Worse, the RTGI implementation actually scrubs out surface details in some cases, like the doorway area shown in comparisons.
Normally, I max out every graphics setting, then tweak upscaling and frame generation for performance. With an RTX 5090 at 4K using DLSS Quality, the Extreme preset with ray tracing costs about 36% frame rate compared to the Extreme preset without it. That hit is manageable with more upscaling or frame generation, but since RTGI looks poor and screen-space reflections don't bother me, I've been playing without ray tracing entirely—even though my hardware can handle it.
Still, it's a change from settings that eat half your performance for prettier graphics. If you like ray tracing, it's very accessible at lower settings and resolutions. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to test a minivan in Tokyo—wish me luck.