Forza Horizon 6 is shaping up to be one of the best looking racing games of this generation, especially on powerful PCs.
A new Digital Foundry analysis highlights how much the game benefits from its ray tracing features. The biggest upgrades are ray traced reflections and ray traced global illumination, both of which make the world feel more realistic in motion.
That matters because Forza Horizon 6 is set in Japan, with dense Tokyo streets, reflective storefronts, wet roads, bright signs, countryside water, and detailed car paint. Those surfaces are exactly where ray tracing can make a visible difference.
| Forza Horizon 6 visual feature | What it improves |
|---|---|
| Ray traced reflections | Cars, buildings, storefronts, water, and urban surfaces |
| Self reflections | Cars can reflect their own bodywork more realistically |
| Car to car reflections | Vehicles can reflect each other |
| Ray traced global illumination | More realistic light bounce, shadows, and object grounding |
| Traditional raster lighting | Still works alongside RTGI |
The ray traced global illumination appears to be the most transformative part. It helps objects feel grounded by adding more realistic shadowing and light bounce. Roads, walls, and objects can reflect light onto car paint in a way that feels more natural.
Digital Foundry’s point is that you may not always notice the exact technical change, but your eyes can still tell that the lighting behaves more realistically. In a racing game, that matters because you spend so much time looking at the car, the road, and fast changing light.
Ray traced reflections are also a major upgrade. Without ray tracing, games often rely on cube maps and screen space reflections. Those can look convincing, but they break easily when objects leave the screen or when a reflection needs information the camera cannot see.
With ray tracing enabled, Tokyo’s buildings, storefronts, and cars reflect much more accurately. The effect is especially useful in city driving because the environment is full of glossy surfaces, glass, signs, and dense geometry.
The countryside benefits too, especially around water. Reflections in lakes, rivers, and wet surfaces help the open world feel more alive.
Right now, this full ray traced experience is mostly for high end PC players who can run the game at high resolution and 60 FPS. But the analysis also raises an interesting point about Xbox’s rumored Project Helix hardware.
If Project Helix is closer to a PC style Xbox system, the PC version of Forza Horizon 6 could theoretically carry these same advanced visual features forward. That would make the game an early example of what Microsoft’s next generation hardware might be able to deliver.
This does not mean Project Helix is confirmed to run Forza Horizon 6 this way. It simply shows the path Microsoft could take if its next Xbox is built to inherit PC level settings more directly.
Forza Horizon 6 launches on May 15 for Premium Edition buyers and May 19 for everyone else. Based on this early technical analysis, the PC version may be the showcase build for players who want to see Playground Games’ Japan setting at its most advanced.
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