Introduction

Forza Horizon 6 is the latest entry in the famous open-world racing series developed by Playground Games and published by Xbox Game Studios. The franchise has been one of the most important of the racing genre since 2012, combining arcade-style driving with a massive open world, featuring hundreds of licensed cars, and a festival atmosphere. Forza Horizon 6 is set in Japan, featuring a vast and diverse landscape spanning mountain passes, coastal highways, rural countrysides, and the dense urban streets of Tokyo—the largest city environment in any Horizon game, according to the developer. FH6 features a full seasonal cycle with dynamic weather, and gameplay revolves around the Horizon Festival—where it's all about fast cars and music.

Playground Games uses their own proprietary ForzaTech engine in Forza Horizon 6, older versions of the engine have powered previous Forza Horizon and Forza Motorsport titles. As expected, the only rendering API supported is DirectX 12. Render-tech includes ray-traced reflections and ray-traced global illumination. When RT is disabled, screen-space reflections (SSR) and screen-space global illumination (SSGI) can be used. Upscaling support is comprehensive, covering NVIDIA DLSS, AMD FSR, and Intel XeSS, with native-resolution AA modes available. Frame generation is only available via NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation—AMD and Intel GPUs do not get any frame generation option.

This review will evaluate the performance of Forza Horizon 6 across a wide range of contemporary graphics cards, compare image quality settings, and analyze the game's VRAM usage to provide insight into the hardware requirements needed for an optimal experience.