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In retrospect, Forza Motorsport 5 was something of a technological miracle bearing in mind the tumultuous Xbox One launch, characterised by rushed software and obvious technical challenges in working with the new console. For the most part, Turn 10 achieved a solid 1080p60 - an impressive achievement bearing in mind that most of the production occurred on unfinished hardware, with Microsoft engineers still tuning the hardware as the studio entered the final months of development. Forza Motorsport 6 is an important release then - it demonstrates what one of the most talented first-party development teams can achieve with a clear two-year run on final Xbox One hardware. The new game is an object lesson in refinement, and its predecessor starts to look just a little rough around the edges by comparison. In technical terms Forza 5 remains a solid start for the series on Microsoft's new console, but it seems that Turn 10 was still feeling its way around the Xbox One architecture, carefully trying to balance a next-gen leap in graphical quality with the studio's uncompromising stance on 1080p60 gameplay. On top of that, the transition to the new engine clearly had implications for the volume of content the team was able to include, and there were a number of shortcomings: fewer cars and tracks than Forza 4 and a handling model that felt a little too excitable. Lighting could also appear quite harsh, while the lack of anisotropic filtering on elements of the presentation meant that the increase in texture detail on the roads was blurred out just a few feet away from the camera.
Free from the time constraints of a console launch deadline, Forza 6 is a more substantial game than its predecessor, providing both more content and some eagerly awaited gameplay modes. A much larger roster of cars and tracks is joined by new features such as wet weather and night-time races, in addition to a better structured single-player mode free from micro-transactions. From a technological standpoint, Turn 10 also brings about some welcome additions to the engine, though perhaps understandably, the insistence on targeting that unrelentingly solid 60fps still comes with some compromises. However, one major takeaway is that the studio hasn't thrown away much of the work it did on its predecessor - Turn 10 seems happy that it got the basics right on its first try, so we are seeing an iterative improvement from one game to the next, as opposed to the more dramatic leap we saw between Forza Motorsport 2 and its successor on Xbox 360.
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