This has been on my mind since release. Personally, I've never had a problem with performance as my work PC is the same one I play games on, and is therefore extremely high-end. This is not most people. Most gamers have midrange hardware. These players are setting their in-game graphics to look comparable, or in some areas, worse than previous Horizon titles. Seriously. I have friends who have FH4 looking and running better than FH6.

Let's address the elephant in the room: Map size. The sheer size of the map requires tons of diversity with assets. Different trees, buildings, foliage, and terrain all require unique textures. The texture quality in FH6 is genuinely outstanding. Properly futureproof and a noticeable step up from FH5. However, [this iconic post in the same group](https://www.reddit.com/r/ForzaHorizon/comments/1tqh4m0/i_found_out_a_problem_with_this_game_vram_issue/) has proven its inefficiency. I could name several significantly better looking and running games like NFS 2015, KCD2, and Battlefield 1, but I went with RDR2 due it's similarities with very diverse biomes, assets, and giant map size.  Both games are also around 150gb in size. 

Both games have stunning assets. The devs nailed it with both games, by creating amazing quality objects that interact with the game world. Except one did it WAY better than the other while utilizing half the resources.  
\- Draw distances: FH6's pop-in is abysmal. Max settings drawing in LODs so close to the camera, and for a high-speed racing game, this is unacceptable. The settings are broken with 3/6 of the options making zero visual/performance differences.  
\- Deformable terrain: Sand and snow deform in both games, yet RDR2's is not only higher in poly count, but is remembered/rendered further into the distance. Driving through fields squashing down sunflowers only to have them pop back up only a few meters behind the car is not immersive. It's antiquated.   
\- Lighting: How does the game with raytracing look worse than the last-gen game with rasterized rendering? Last-minute addition, it feels like. Firstly, at max settings and high resolutions, there's still visible noise. It looks very early 2020s. Cyberpunk 2077's original RTGI looked noisy like this. Nvidia has seriously improved it's denoising with DLSS 4.5, so why is this so subpar? The foliage kind of renders shadows, a big improvement from FH5, but only very close to the camera. Nowhere near like Kingdom Come: Deliverance from 2018. This very clear lighting radius changes the whole colour palette of the game in real-time as the player drives along. It's inconsistent and distracting.

My theory:  
In game development, things like adding on new tech, backwards compatibility, and legacy support for various things result in cruft. As [expertly explained by the late Shamus Young](https://youtu.be/8Ov_qN2Oub0?si=8tD0th1rdZkVhGM4&t=246), carrying over tried and true features such as water rendering, LOD fades, and foliage flattening  from FH3 (2016) into FH6 but with denser geometry and raytracing features, this cruft slows down rendering and make it significantly inefficient.   
Rockstar did this right. Take GTA V and RDR2. Yes, they ported GTA V onto 8th-gen consoles and gave them new assets, however a vast majority of the game was built entirely for 7th-gen consoles. RDR2 was built solely for 8th-gen. What they did was scrap everything GTA V had that worked, and made it better. Water physics, vegetation physics, foliage instances, shadow penumbra rendering, global illumination, and particle effects were entirely scrapped and built from scratch. Clean slate, funded to be efficient as hell, and it worked. Horizon hasn't done this in over a decade. The cruft = inefficient rendering and obsolete graphics. Bethesda is notorious for cruft. Terrible graphics and performance. A lose-lose.

I assume this is due to budget constraints and release windows. Who knows when development started? Maybe late 2022? Early 2023? They clearly view these things as insignificant. They don't want to fund R&D into improving every aspect about the game, which is why [numerous complaints of old car models](https://youtu.be/XTS-RasY6UE?si=NIPpH7SzgjtuP_Ol) are so common among the Forza community. If PGG [can't properly design new aero](https://youtu.be/VvGv2Ik6OlM?si=cgS35jI3-XnBOMJJ) that's been long-requested, there's not a chance they're going to improve on visual improvements, physics, and performance.

So what have they done? Kneecap ambition. Miniscule improvements/additions like slightly higher poly count for newer car models and terrain, basic RT reflections and GI, and calling it a day. This is unacceptable. Just because the game runs smoothly for most doesn't mean it's optimized. It means they took decade-old tech, put a new coat of paint on it, and sold it to you. You don't have to agree with me on the visual presentation, but you should not be tolerant of instability and inefficiency. This is the video game equivalent of shrinkflation.

PGG, do better.

We need to talk about FH6's poor overall optimization. I suspect it's budget constraints and "cruft". Read carefully.