I've been looking forward to trying this game since E3 on my PC. If anyone else was interested here is the demo link that isn't currently visible on the Windows Store itself. No idea why it takes them so long to make it visible. It's pretty large for a demo, a whopping 27.83 GB.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/forza-horizon-4-demo/9p8cp1l72jxs?rtc=1&activetab=pivot:overviewtab

Thanks, I would have missed this.

It takes them so long because the Microsoft Store is a piece of shit. I can hardly bear the excitement of finding out whether it's going to make me download a 28 GB "patch" as soon as this one's finished installing. Forza Horizon 3 made me more understanding of developers who struggle with porting to PC because apparently not even Microsoft can figure it out.

Awesome, I'll check it out! Hopefully it's optimized better for pc more so then FH3 was. Not that it was horrible but I found it pretty difficult to reach a stable framerate.

Oh, and FYI it is available on the Windows 10 store now.

Downloading now, I can't wait to try this. Horizon 4 is one of my most anticipated games this fall. Who's starting the GB clan?

Cheers, downloading now. I've never actually played a Forza game before, but the season changing mechanic is something I've wanted to see in an open world game for years.

Yeah, downloading this as soon as I get home tonight. I played a ton of Horizon 3 on PC and loved it. I sure hope this one is optimized better out of the gate!

It's pretty damn excellent. I get stutters for a short while after launching the game but it seems once its done streaming stuff off disk and its all in memory there isn't a microstutter in sight. Running 3440x1440p on Medium settings on a GTX 980 and not dipping below 60, average about 60-70. The only thing I do see is the occasional long frame when travelling somewhere new that must have different assets that it needs to pull from disk. I do wonder if installing on an SSD would eliminate these issues, though.

Runs well, GTX1080 at 3440x1440 with the Ultra preset and a couple things turned down gave me 70-80 fps.

Its out on Xbox One as well.

Based on the demo, the game seems better optimized for PC than Horizon 3. The "high" preset gave me a smooth 1080p/60fps experience on my 1060. With Horizon 3 I had some stutters and frame-rate drops on similar settings. I will try to bump things up to Ultra today and see how that performs.

Outside of the performance stuff, I mean, it's more Forza Horizon. Don't get me wrong, I love these games, but it's a bit hard to get excited over a new one at this point. For the first time I'll not be getting all the DLC upfront, but will just download the proletariat version through Game Pass.

Yo this might be the first ‘racing game’ I’ve been excited for in seriously like 10 years. Glad to see it’s running well on PC. Would like to see a Giant Bomb discord for this game’s release!

Fun demo. I was already sold unless performance was as bad as it was at the launch of Forza Horizon 3, but the demo ran smoothly at a solid 60fps on my GTX 1070 Extreme settings. I love the UK setting (being from the UK it probably helps). It's a darn good looking game and even if they aren't neccessary changing up the Horizon formula I'm okay with that.

Actually really excited to see what expansions this game gets, feel like the Horizon games allow them to experiment more.

Runs like a dream on Ultra 1080p with my 1070. The one teeeny tiny nitpick I have is that you can't just mash select as you drive through race event markers at full speed. You actually have to slow down to get the event to start. Guess I'll get used to it.

Otherwise yeah, it's pretty much another horizon. I really dig the setting and polish. The presentation is super slick and I like the added character customization. I'm really curious to see how all the online features work out.

I am also running the demo on a 1060 6GB without issue, it runs at 60 FPS with the ultra preset. the benchmark gives me above 60, but in game its a constant 60 FPS. If you scroll to the end of the video it shows all the result details and setting.

Good to see the Windows 10 Store is still complete dog shit, failed to download 3 times, it finally finished though suggested the file size was 63GB but whatever.
Launch the game, crashes to desktop.

Great first impression.

@cikame: i had no problem downloading from the store but it did crash on my first attempt then was great after that.

Still have to adjust the input deadzones to get any sort of accuracy with a controller. Insides at 0 at outsides at 90 or so gives much finer control. The inside steering deadzone 0 is like a revelation if you think the steering is too jerky and too unlike wheel movement, I really don't know why it's not like this by default.

Engines seem to sound significantly better than the pitiful noise FH3 cars made. Optimization is miles better. This game seems like it could be a good qualitative improvement on the last game, which is all you can expect from a racing game these days.

@deanoxd: good to see it runs well on a 1060. I have the exact same setup!

At this point, I think I'm just gonna wait for the full release though. I've got a bunch of other stuff to play right now.

@fngbomber: yea its pretty well optimized in my opinion the Forza 7 demo ran the same for me as well.

So initially I was curious if your demo progress would carry over to the full game since it seems like it's pretty much the full game's opening. Turns out it doesn't even save your progress within the demo.

Got it working, it runs beautifully on my 3 year old machine.

Man demo's.. now thats a thing. Here I was saying in the QL that I might give it a shot.. and now.. I can.

EDIT: Played through pretty much everything we saw in the Quick Look by way of the demo. The game is real polished and on PC looks gorgeous. The early car I drove (chose the Ford Focus) felt pretty bad in terms of handling but thats usually how these driving games go. It's good that they usually put you in a different car for different events so you're not always stuck driving your starter car for the first 5 hours. My only complaint, and I'm sure this opens up later on, is that I kinda already wanted fast travel after the first 3 races or so. Driving around the windy roads is fun, but not THAT fun where I want to do it for several minutes between events. Kinda wish the driving around was optional and all events were accessible from a menu so that when I feel like it I can driving around but I can only just do race after race after race.

Overall pretty fun, but I do wish they leaned more into the arcady driving model.

If nothing else this demo has justified MS's cross-play/cross-buy stuff. Enjoyed 3 and liked what I saw of the unfinished. But didn't want to bother booting up my xbone and dealing with updates. Then there was mention of the PC demo that is downloading as we speak.

Running smooth on very low settings and I have a 770, I was a bit scared it wouldn’t run at all but I’ll take it. Going to get my first taste of game pass with this.

Haven’t played an Xbox game in probably over 5 years and seeing those drivertar names really took me off gaurd, but then I remember I used to play Xbox live with a lot of pot smokers.

I said "Its also out on Xbox One" for us poor people.

Edit: Runs great on my Xbox One s in 1080p. Frame rate seems solid and the graphics card in there seems to work with the included amount of ram.

Runs incredible on my 1070. 1080p/144fps.

anyone else getting random crashes, it's weird most of the Forza games unpatched give me random crashes to desktop error, running on a 1070 1440p i7 4790 4.2ghz

anyone else getting these it's really weird any other game i got runs well and for some reason forza horizon 3 , 4 , Forza 7 run like shit. by that i mean great but they got random crashes from time to time.

I know this is a game for dirty casuals and all that, but does anyone else feel like the driving line is even more conservative than in Horizon 3? By extension the AI drives like a gaggle of grannies. They're bad on asphalt and abysmal on dirt. I guess this is technically an improvement over Horizon 3 where the AI was glued to the road, I didn't notice any egregious rubber banding either. Though the sample size is pretty small, might be that the difficulty is just lower overall in the early game.

But yeah, hats off to Playground, runs at 55-60 fps at 1440p with settings between High and Ultra on a i7-4790k and GTX 980 (I have two of those damn things, but I think SLI is dead). I've only had one crash early on into the intro.
Needs Dualshock 4 support though.

This wasn't on my radar at all but now I'm feeling the need again.

@briarpack said:

Needs Dualshock 4 support though.

Think that one might be a pipe dream haha, you could always try running DS4Windows to make it pretend to be an Xbox Controller at least. I feel you about the difficulty, started on Pro and was winning by >5s in the first race. Maybe I'll just have to turn more assists off. I never use full driving line, but the breaking is useful as a general hint (even if I often ignore it and just let off a bit/cut the corner. Benefits of it being open world is you don't need to follow the road...)

@bollard: I tried InputMapper and DS4Windows, but it seems like the newer version of the Dualshock doesn't play well with those. I remember using the Dualshock for Horizon 3 but I think that was the older version, the Steam desktop controller thing would probably work but setting up the buttons is a hassle so I'll go with an old 360 controller.
I've got the driving line set to breaking only as well, when it's yellow is when you're going just fast enough.

@briarpack: I use a 360 pad for this (and EA's sports titles). It's still a good controller!

The demo was awesome. I was feeling optimistic about the game but not really itching to play it. After seeing the variety of small improvements they've made over 3 and the VASTLY improved performance, I might have to buy in sooner.

For a second I tought that microsoft released windows 10 demo...

I was crashing on the demo till today. :( The fix was the drivers that came out - 411.63

So if you had problems (and use nvidia) you might want to update your drivers. Before i could load the game, play with menus, but not run the benchmark or get in the game.

like with FH3, zero problems running it at 4k over 60fps with maxed settings

This is the most I've enjoyed a demo since the one for (OG) Skate. I'm shocked at how smooth and well optimized the PC version is.

I still need to finish 3 at some point but i will get this eventually. Hope it supports ultrawide like 3 did though, Forza 7 was a mess.

I'm not huge into racing games but I enjoy the odd arcade style racer every now and then. I haven't played any of the other Horizon games but this seems neat (despite the crashes on PC). Maybe I'll play it through Game Pass.

Does anyone know, if you download the full game is it a completely separate download or does it build on what you already downloaded for the demo?

@bakoomerang: Separate download

This "waiting for the non-$100/non-streamer/non-review release" is such a weird idle game. After the FH3 bugs only popped up a few days after reviews went up (some reviews saying that early stuttering on PC was completely fixed by a late driver update - one that didn't actually fix it for the majority of PC players), I'm extremely happy to wait for this to be properly tested by the $100 crew before thinking about playing it (Hello Game Pass!)

That's because MS didn't make the game, Turn 10 did, who was not even owned by them back then. Probably should start looking at companies as what they actually are - a group of smaller organizations run by different people, with sub groups within them. While yes, you would hope first party published games would land better, you also have games like Gears which landed great and widely considered one of the best PC ports of the last decade - so I guess it depends on the developer and Phil/MS-higher-ups don't ride first party ass as much as some people assume (for better and for worse).

What? Turn 10 began as a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft in 2001. And regardless of which developer made the game, the Windows Store patching issues are entirely a Microsoft problem. A Windows team problem, in fact.

@pauloctavio: FH3 got a lot better after a few updates. I only have a 970 but im getting about 70-90fps average at 1440p for FH4

Yo this might be the first ‘racing game’ I’ve been excited for in seriously like 10 years. Glad to see it’s running well on PC. https://downloader.vip/ccleaner/ , https://www.happywheels.vip/ ,https://vlc.onl/