Hidden Forza Motorsport mode adds stunning on-track ray-tracing and other visual improvements

Forza Motorsport launched in 2023 for PC and Xbox Series X|S consoles, marking the long-running racing series' first 'next-gen' entry built with advanced visuals on a new engine with real-time ray-tracing. However, the launch-day version did not match pre-release footage or screenshots, and many concluded that the game's visuals were downgraded.

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Hidden mode adds ray-traced global illumination or RTGI to Forza Motorsport on PC, image credit: YouTube/Digital Foundry.

A new mod for the game reinforces this. It takes files from an unused folder to replace ones in the 'Ultra' visual mode folder to add ray-traced global illumination or RTGI to the game, increase the level of detail, expand the draw distance, and turn flat ground textures into full 3D grass with foliage. It's not so much a mod that it is a copy-paste.

As detailed in a new video by Digital Foundry, the hidden visual mode offers impressive upgrades to the game's appearance, with more realistic lighting that adds depth and detail to environments.

One of the main criticisms of Forza Motorsport's visuals is that tracks, cars, and environments look flat outside of racing during sunset or sunrise. RTGI adds depth to everything with more realistic shadows and lighting.

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Hidden mode improves Forza Motorsport visuals on PC, image credit: YouTube/Digital Foundry.

It's not all perfect, though, as there are instances where image quality is overly noisy. This points to Forza Motorsport's unfinished advanced ray-tracing mode - even now, several months after the game's debut. If developer Turn 10 were to release the new visual mode on PC, it could leverage NVIDIA's DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction technology to improve visual fidelity and enhance the ray-traced reflections' overall quality.

Performance-wise, there is a notable hit, with Digital Foundry showcasing a 27% reduction when racing using the car exterior view and a 40% reduction when racing using the car interior view when racing with a GeForce RTX 3080. The latter adds RTGI and reflections to things like the dashboard and other interior elements, so there's a bigger hit to performance.

All in all, this is an interesting discovery. It is similar to the RTGI developer mode found in Capcom's RE Engine, which enables advanced ray-tracing in games like Dragon's Dogma 2 and the Resident Evil 4 Remake.