Forza Horizon 5 PC Support/Issues Thread

YoungRhombus

YoungRhombus

186
United States
Missouri, USA
YoungRhombus
Hi all,

I wanted to start a thread here specifically for PC players to report the issues they are experiencing with the game. In order to raise awareness about these issues as well as help others solve them, I wanted this to be separate from the general discussion. Please, when posting an issue you've discovered, list relevant PC specs in order to help others diagnose the issues you're experiencing with the game.

SPECS: Intel i7-6700HQ/Nvidia GTX 1070/16 GB 2400 MHz DDR4 RAM. Game is installed on an HDD, monitor is natively non-HDR 1080p. The game selects "Ultra" 60FPS as the default setting.

Anyway, I just downloaded it and got through the introduction up to the first showcase event. My experience on my PC was...less than stellar with the number of issues I've had already. Admittedly, I have a 5-year-old gaming laptop so it's obviously not the perfect hardware these days, but it still runs FH4 splendidly almost maxed out at 60FPS/1080p. I will document what I've seen as of yet in my post:

  • Right off the bat, everything looks very jagged in my game, like anti-aliasing is off even though it's on medium-high settings across the board. The game frankly looks like it's running in 720p most of the time. I can add a screenshot whenever I get back to playing tomorrow, but I want to see if anyone else was having issues with the rendering resolution looking off. Needless to say, it looks absolutely terrible in the current state.
  • Textures are loading weirdly intermittently, distant textures look fuzzy or almost like a birthday cake (if that makes any sense?)
  • I'm getting the dreaded "Low Streaming Bandwidth" warning in some areas with the classic loading errors, I'm sure there's some tweaking I have to do there that will fix it but it's worth noting.
  • Mouse cursor doesn't want to disappear when using a controller.
  • Engine sounds are extremely quiet compared to gameplay I've seen on Xbox.
I mainly want to get to the bottom of the first issue, because at first glance I think it may be something that a Nvidia driver update will have to fix. Please share your issues below to bring awareness to them, and if you find a solution to any of these issues or the issues of others, feel free to post them as well. I will post any updates I discover tomorrow.

EDIT: I already fixed the first issue! Turning Resolution Scaling totally off fixed it. Don't know how I missed the "Off" option!
 
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YoungRhombus
  • I'm getting the dreaded "Low Streaming Bandwidth" warning in some areas with the classic loading errors, I'm sure there's some tweaking I have to do there that will fix it but it's worth noting.
  • Mouse cursor doesn't want to disappear when using a controller.
  • Engine sounds are extremely quiet compared to gameplay I've seen on Xbox.
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I can second that.

Had the issue that I just couldn't resume the game. Had to fiddle around with the graphics settings during the intro "mission" to get to the festival and some changes require a reboot of the game. So it restarts and you can press continue but it kinda freezes on the loading screen after that. Could only fix this using the app preferences. There are 2 options to reset the app. One just repairs the app the other resets everything incl. the savegame. Had to use both options since first one wasn't enough.Wasn't a problem at that point since nothing was achieved but I hope this issue won't come back again after having played some hours and then loosing the savegame. Could be a good idea to backup the savegame. But where is the savegame location? Didn't find it in the FH4-location.

Specs: Ryzen 7 3800X, RTX 3060Ti, 32 GB DDR4 3200, 970 Evo SSD for Win + 980 for Games
 
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Apart from the issues listed in OP i've noticed a bit more, unfortunately:

  • Weird scanline-ish artifacting in the terrain when driving, i've found disabling FXAA has reduced this but not completely eliminated I think
  • Game always launches with Screen Reader on, just opening the accesibility menu turns this back off but still annoying
  • Brake calipers seem to flicker in garage or during upgrading
  • Engine sounds turn off during upgrading when changing parts like an exhaust for a bit until they 'reset'
 
zotobom
Apart from the issues listed in OP i've noticed a bit more, unfortunately:

  • Weird scanline-ish artifacting in the terrain when driving, i've found disabling FXAA has reduced this but not completely eliminated I think
  • Game always launches with Screen Reader on, just opening the accesibility menu turns this back off but still annoying
  • Brake calipers seem to flicker in garage or during upgrading
  • Engine sounds turn off during upgrading when changing parts like an exhaust for a bit until they 'reset'
Click to expand...
I've noticed the "scanline" effect too, it's especially noticeable with the snow in the Bronco leg of the intro. Thanks for pointing that one out, I forgot about it!
The screen reader was an issue for me too, but when I relaunched it after I finished the intro it didn't say anything. Maybe I got lucky. I'll see if it still does it once I'm out of class today.

I've also wanted to mention that I've experienced some pretty slow load times, but that's likely more the fact the game is on a 5-year-old laptop HDD. It's still worse than I was expecting though, so maybe I can tinker with that too.
 
YoungRhombus
Engine sounds are extremely quiet compared to gameplay I've seen on Xbox.
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I noticed this, I think the game is outputting 7.1 audio (making sounds quiet because there's no centre channel) by default and there doesn't seem to be a way to fix it. I enabled surround sound mode in Logitech G Hub (listening through a G Pro X headset with the USB DAC that came with it) and it fixed it, so I have submitted a ticket saying there doesn't seem to be a way to make it output stereo audio. Have you noticed that the audio of cars that pass off the bottom of the screen (i.e. if you pass them or they pass you going the opposite direction) cuts off instantly? It's very jarring, but that's also fixed by enabling surround sound mode for me so that's more evidence that it's 7.1 audio by default as that audio would be set to the left and right rear channels.

I also have a persistent cursor, I think either FH3 or 4 (maybe both) was also like that at launch, I remember being pleasantly surprised when they patched it so that pressing any controller input would hide the cursor, I'm sure that'll be patched.

The aliasing issue is probably a conflict between your frame rate target and dynamic resolution scaling, I've noticed pretty bad aliasing and I'm sure it's because I've got the DRS set to ultra quality and graphics defaulted to high (GTX 1080, 1440p) but frame rate cap set to 144fps, so I guess it prioritises the frame rate over resolution. I might disable DRS and see what frame rate I end up with, honestly I kind of agree with the game though.

Other than that, I haven't had any other issues. Maybe some missing loyalty cars (I have the Senna and can't remember what the FH3/FM7 cars should be) and no VIP bonus (can't remember seeing it, also can't remember not seeing it) but I'm sure I just need to maybe restart Steam and launch the game again or something.
 
neema_t
The aliasing issue is probably a conflict between your frame rate target and dynamic resolution scaling, I've noticed pretty bad aliasing and I'm sure it's because I've got the DRS set to ultra quality and graphics defaulted to high (GTX 1080, 1440p) but frame rate cap set to 144fps, so I guess it prioritises the frame rate over resolution. I might disable DRS and see what frame rate I end up with, honestly I kind of agree with the game though.
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That was indeed the culprit, I just turned off DRS and the game looks miles better without much performance hit for me at least. I'm still going to fiddle with settings and see if I can iron out anything else.
 
YoungRhombus
I've noticed the "scanline" effect too, it's especially noticeable with the snow in the Bronco leg of the intro. Thanks for pointing that one out, I forgot about it!
The screen reader was an issue for me too, but when I relaunched it after I finished the intro it didn't say anything. Maybe I got lucky. I'll see if it still does it once I'm out of class today.

I've also wanted to mention that I've experienced some pretty slow load times, but that's likely more the fact the game is on a 5-year-old laptop HDD. It's still worse than I was expecting though, so maybe I can tinker with that too.
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Yeah, the load times were absolutely awful. I had it installed on an HDD before, and launching it the first time was like 3 minutes for the main menu, 10 minutes optimizing, five minutes 'regular' loading... switched it to an SSD ASAP and now it seems to be bearable atleast
 
neema_t
I noticed this, I think the game is outputting 7.1 audio (making sounds quiet because there's no centre channel) by default and there doesn't seem to be a way to fix it. I enabled surround sound mode in Logitech G Hub (listening through a G Pro X headset with the USB DAC that came with it) and it fixed it, so I have submitted a ticket saying there doesn't seem to be a way to make it output stereo audio. Have you noticed that the audio of cars that pass off the bottom of the screen (i.e. if you pass them or they pass you going the opposite direction) cuts off instantly? It's very jarring, but that's also fixed by enabling surround sound mode for me so that's more evidence that it's 7.1 audio by default as that audio would be set to the left and right rear channels.
Click to expand...
Well, my workaround no longer works. I'm sure it's that it will only output 7.1 audio which doesn't work with stereo speakers, you can test it by parking up perpendicular to a road and listening to what happens when a Drivatar drives past you: you hear the car approach, then the sound cuts out when they're in front of you and then you hear them drive away - that means it's got the left and right channels (which are the stereo speakers you've got) but the centre channel is missing. If you could set the game to output 2.0 instead of 7.1 (or maybe 5.1) audio it would mix what would've been the centre channel into the stereo pair.

I've just downloaded the free trial of Dolby Atmos and now it's working again.


Edit: So I didn't realise the online bit is supposed to be working... I had assumed it was just offline until the 9th! I get this error every time I try to connect and attempts to retry instantly fail as if it's not even trying to connect:
20211106005706_1.jpg


Haven't figured out a fix yet, there are lots of posts about this in relation to FH4 but no solutions. Teredo is working so I'm at a loss. Any ideas?
 
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The dynamic resolution must be messed up, I had it set to ultra quality and turning it off made everything look a lot sharper with basically no performance loss like @YoungRhombus mentioned, combined with turning off the FXAA I think it was the weird scan line issue is gone, and I haven't seen any low video memory messages or artifacts since then either.
 
Network loss is still a issue even if I can play online events and others players appear in the game. It wouldn't bother me to just get the message but everytime the message appears it kills your actual skill chain. Which beep programmed it this way that a irrelevant error affects the game in this way.

Also the "bootloop" problem mentioned in my first post reappears after every gamestart. Luckily it heals itself using the Windows-Key to open the startmenu and close it again. With this workaround the game continues to load my profile.

And I can also report 2 or 3 crashes back to Desktop in random situations after ~8 hours of gameplay.
 
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Frizbe
The dynamic resolution must be messed up, I had it set to ultra quality and turning it off made everything look a lot sharper with basically no performance loss like @YoungRhombus mentioned, combined with turning off the FXAA I think it was the weird scan line issue is gone, and I haven't seen any low video memory messages or artifacts since then either.
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I have not managed to fix the scan-line effect issue yet myself; turning off FXAA doesn't change anything for me. The game is running a bit better now that I've explored around a bit, but I'm still having issues regarding loading things. That includes load times, but also engine sounds when upgrading or switching cars, terrain and the map in general, and sometimes textures.

I'm sure this game will be optimized along the way. Horizon 4 ran pretty badly for the first couple of months for me (the game was even causing me to BSOD!), but it runs pretty well now minus a couple minor issues. Heck, I'd argue that FH5 runs better than FH4 did at launch for me. I don't know if anyone else feels that way, so maybe it's just anecdotal.

Otherwise, I have no other major issues to report still. Sound balance is still a problem, especially with certain cars and their engine sounds, but I don't know if that's a PC-exclusive issue at the moment. Hopefully they will fix that up a bit because there are times where the music is too loud over the engine depending on the car (sometimes but not always), or the engine is too loud over dialogue, or ambient sound is too loud over everything (like during dust storms). I've messed with sound settings in-game and also in Windows but I have yet to find a fits-all solution that I like.

EDIT: No crashes to report yet. Knock on wood.
 
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I have some graphics issues;

Some textures are very bad (environment texture quality ultra, environment geometry quality ultra)

HY3H4ON.jpg


Mountain here is very low quality:
XWkpZ1C.jpg


Location:
hZmkPdI.jpg

Also poor performance compared to FH4, anyone else have this issue?

PC Win 10
RTX 2060 6GB
16GB RAM
Ryzen 5 1600X
 
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Performance is good on my end, but texture/LOD issues galore. Also the occasional network notification (like, I don't care, just restore the connection already, no need to blab a popup in my face all the time).

i7-11700/RTX3060ti/32GB RAM
 
@MalibuClub I seen people on reddit say the texture issue is a known bug, because of that though I use the extreme texture setting and for me at least it didn't make a big impact performance wise using extreme vs ultra, but the visual quality made up for what little impact there was 1000x.
 
Frizbe
@MalibuClub I seen people on reddit say the texture issue is a known bug, because of that though I use the extreme texture setting and for me at least it didn't make a big impact performance wise using extreme vs ultra, but the visual quality made up for what little impact there was 1000x.
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Yep, they list these texture loading issues as a known bug on Forza Support's website. They also list the scan-line issue as being due to SSAO. Turning it off did indeed fix the issue for me. They also mention foliage pop-in as an issue, which I've noticed as well.

Horizon 4 ran pretty poorly for me on the same computer at launch too, so I'm sure they'll optimize as we go. But the game looks so good I'm not even mad that it runs a little slow in some places.

I've noticed that this game is extremely CPU-intensive, so that may be part of the issue as well. The CPU is by far the biggest bottleneck in my computer (being a 5-gens-old laptop processor: i7-6700HQ rated at only 2.6 GHz), and I think that's a lot of my issue too. A combination of bugs and an aging slow CPU don't tend to make for the best time.
 
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Getting too much brightness when driving in cockpit behind the wheel ,change too just dashboard view and all is well, turned hdr on and off, no difference, and no vibration effect through my T300rs. glad too see plenty tarmac but no character to the tracks like fh4
 
My main issue has been consistent crashes during start up. I've tried doing all that was listed on the support page and it's made practically zero difference. These technical issues mean I have to play on console for the time being
 
Ill just be playing like i normally would and my screen gets extremely blurry and pixelated for a solid 5 seconds then reverts to how it should look. I had the same problem with horizon 4 but i cant find a fix anywhere. The problem started months after i began playing 4, but no one else seems to have this issue. Also cant play in fullscreen, or else i have to run it at 48fps exactly. So ive been playing through windowed mode which is really annoying. If anybody knows a fix by any chance, let me know.
Rtx 2070, intel core i3 10100, 16gb 3200mhz
 
The only issue I’m having at the moment is my PS4 controller that works perfectly for FH4 and everything else on my PC isn’t even recognized in FH5. Really annoying! Any idea how to fix it or I can just hope it gets patched soon.
 
lilcat89
The only issue I’m having at the moment is my PS4 controller that works perfectly for FH4 and everything else on my PC isn’t even recognized in FH5. Really annoying! Any idea how to fix it or I can just hope it gets patched soon.
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Joy2key can be a workaround
 
Is there some bloom or similar graphics setting somewhere?

Sun and reflections are too bright and shadows and dark places too dark.

No HDR and my screen is calibrated and looks good in other games.
 
YoungRhombus
They also list the scan-line issue as being due to SSAO. Turning it off did indeed fix the issue for me.
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Oh yeah, turning off the FXAA made a difference in the large scanline like things I was seeing, turning off the SSAO made the smaller ones I hadn't noticed disappear as well though.

I've been running into some other issues with the game crashing though, if I used my wheel for more than 30-45 minutes the game would lock up at random points but mostly when leaving events, updating to the new Fanatec beta drivers (v423 as of today) seems to have fixed that at least for the hour or so I was able to play earlier with the new drivers installed.
 
Jakewiszo
Ill just be playing like i normally would and my screen gets extremely blurry and pixelated for a solid 5 seconds then reverts to how it should look. I had the same problem with horizon 4 but i cant find a fix anywhere. The problem started months after i began playing 4, but no one else seems to have this issue. Also cant play in fullscreen, or else i have to run it at 48fps exactly. So ive been playing through windowed mode which is really annoying. If anybody knows a fix by any chance, let me know.
Rtx 2070, intel core i3 10100, 16gb 3200mhz
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With regards to refresh rate: I noticed that FH5 locks refresh rate to whatever your desktop refresh rate is set to, so you can't select something different even though your monitor supports it (e.g. my desktop is set to 75, so FH5 displays only 75, despite 60 also being available). So checking out what your desktops refresh rate is set to and changing if needed may help.

Texture/LOD pop-in sounds like a (texture) streaming issue, which a lot of us have noticed. So unless you are running at settings that are inappropriate for your hardware/off a HDD rather than SSD/etc. I'd say we all need to wait for a patch.
 
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Uninstalled my FF-wheel drivers and used the wheel without drivers installed and after that it (TS-XW) worked on PC. The force feedback does not feel at all like using the same wheel on my Xbox one but it is better than not having a wheel at all. Setting FF-inverted ON and lowering most of the settings it is okay but not great.

Some off the buttons can't be used and had to re-map every button, accelerator, brake and use keyboard to access map and start races.

Also discovered that I can use my flight sim joystick as handbrake if I set deadzone to 55. That was pretty cool makes drifting much easier.
 
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I still can't get online, they said there was a server side update to address connection issues but it didn't help my issue. I figured out why I wasn't making any Festival Playlist progress though and now only need one more point for the NSX-R GT so I can keep waiting, but the homicidal drivatars constantly driving at the speed of light on the wrong side of the road keep killing my skill scores... I was able to do the monthly rivals event too so some online features do work.
 
Well that hour or so it worked with my wheel was a false positive, after leaving any event the game fails to load 75% of the time and if it does start to load the game world again it will CTD and then I have to open task manager to force close it fully. Even tried more beta drivers today, hopefully a patch will be out soon.

Also yeah I can only play in solo right now, trying anything with the Horizon Life or whatever it is called will eventually crash the game, usually within about 5 minutes.
 
So the game loads fine, and looks fine, but once you go through the intro part and come out of the festival site for the first time, I can't complete either of the missions. The barn find and the dust storm mission both soft-lock at the point of completion, and I have to task-kill the game.
 
I thought FH5 looked good until I started Forza Horizon 3 for the first time in 4K on my hardware I got now. It was like that spider man glasses meme. It looks ten times better that FH5 looks on my PC. Everything is more colorful and sharper looking, I can see farther without things looking blurry or simple 3d models and so on.

I have not played much with graphics settings in FH5 but it is set to native 4k resolution no scaling and Ultra preset. Something must be wrong with the PC graphics, it looks more like my Xbox one version of the game while FH3 looks amazing.
 
First couple times I started up the game it would take forever to load in from the main menu (5+ minutes) and sometimes crash as soon as I could see my car. Theres a setting in the accessibility options at the bottom i think to turn off motion/animated backgrounds in menus. This turns off the video of all the different scenery when starting to load from the main menu. Now it goes right to the real loading screen (with the horizon loading icon) and starts up in under 10 seconds.
 

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