The makers of Forza Horizon 3 put real sky in the game – here’s how they did it

warthog, xbox, forza

These days, video games are bursting with detail and crammed with realism.

Cars look like they can leave tyre marks on your mum’s carpet, planes are using your porch lights to line up for landing and explosions risk singeing the dog’s bed.

The days of making a stickman jump onto a stick platform to fight stick monsters are long gone. But even by today’s standards, the makers of Forza Horizon 3 took graphics in gaming to a whole new level.

One of the Lamborghinis in Forza Horizon 3
One of the Lamborghinis in Forza Horizon 3

A team from British firm Playground Games, which has developed the latest title in the popular racing series, built a revolutionary new camera, shipped it across the world and slept in the wilderness with deadly spiders to film one thing – the sky.

“They camped in the Australian Outback for the summer. It was hard, because everything wanted to kill them,” said Ralph Fulton, Creative Director at Playground. “Every hour they had to change the camera lenses, but that also meant ‘de-spidering’ the camera because there are little crevices which are perfect for spiders to hide in.”

The result is that the sky you see in Forza Horizon 3 IS real-life sky that was filmed in Australia over several months. And because it is real sky, it also produces real light that “refracts, bounces and reflects in a physically correct way off every surface” in the game, Fulton added.

Forza Horizon 3, Xbox, Windows

Forza Horizon 3 is due for release on Xbox and Windows 10 this month as part of Microsoft’s Play Anywhere initiative, which lets gamers buy the title on one platform and play it on both. Players can drive more than 350 cars – including the Halo Warthog – across open-world maps set in Australia.

To ensure the game was authentic as possible, Playground Games spent around £100,000 building a 12K High Dynamic Range (HDR) camera rig, which no one had ever done before. The team then shipped it to Australia to film real footage of the Outback.

What they captured “completely changes the look of the game” and gives it a “generational leap forward in visuals”, Fulton said.

“We looked at Forza Horizon 2 and where we could improve,” he added. “We built an incredible atmospheric simulation in our sky system in that game, which still exists in Forza Horizon 3 and is fundamental to the lighting; but when you see clouds in real-life, they morph and fold in on themselves, and that’s very difficult to do with traditional methods. However, it’s an effect we get with our camera [in this new game].”

The Playground team took “hundreds of thousands” of photos of a range of weather conditions in Australia and physically shipped a terabyte of data a day back to the UK, because “you can’t email files that size”. Once back in the studio, the data were worked on by lighting artists and rendering engineers to stream it into the game.

The results of the hi-tech operation sit alongside standard photogrammetry in the game, which makes roads, walls and trees look very realistic.

Fulton was pleased with the outcome.

“I have high hopes [for this game]. That’s testament to the work Playground has done over the past couple of years. It’s the biggest and the most technically challenging game we’ve ever made, but it’s also the best one we’ve done so far.”

A history of Xbox

Halo: Combat Evolved is released

November 15, 2001
Halo: Combat Evolved is released

Xbox launches

November 15, 2001
Xbox launches

733 MHz x86 Intel Celeron/Pentium III Custom Hybrid CPU 233 MHz nVidia custom GeForce 3 NV2A DirectX 8.0 based GPU 64 MB DDR SDRAM at 200 MHz dual-channel 128-bit configuration giving 6400 MB/s

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Xbox Live is launched

November 15, 2002
Xbox Live is launched

Halo 2 is released

November 9, 2004
Halo 2 is released

Xbox 360 is launched

November 22, 2005
Xbox 360 is launched

New controller 3.2 GHz IBM PowerPC tri-core CPU codenamed “Xenon” 500 MHz ATi custom Radeon X1800 DirectX 9.0c based GPU codenamed “Xenos” 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM @ 700 MHz 22.4 GB/s, 10 MB EDRAM GPU frame buffer memory

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Gears of War is released

November 7, 2006
Gears of War is released

Halo 3 is released

September 25, 2007
Halo 3 is released

Gears of War 2 is released

November 7, 2008
Gears of War 2 is released

Halo Wars is released

February 26, 2009
Halo Wars is released

Xbox Live adds Xbox 360 games for download

August 11, 2009
Xbox Live adds Xbox 360 games for download

Redesigned and thinner Xbox 360 is launched

June 14, 2010
Redesigned and thinner Xbox 360 is launched

Xbox 360 Kinect is launched

November 4, 2010
Xbox 360 Kinect is launched

Xbox 360 Kinect claims a Guinness World Record for the fastest-selling consumer electronics device ever, after selling eight million units in its first 60 days.

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Gears of War 3 is released

September 20, 2011
Gears of War 3 is released

Windows version of Kinect is launched

February 1, 2012
Windows version of Kinect is launched

Surface RT is released

October 26, 2012
Surface RT is released

The Surface RT was launched alongside Windows 8

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Halo 4 is released

November 6, 2012
Halo 4 is released

Surface Pro is launched

February 9, 2013
Surface Pro is launched

The Surface Pro featured a higher-resolution screen, a Surface Pen stylus for touch input and a full version of Windows 8.

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Surface 2 available to buy

October 22, 2013
Surface 2 available to buy

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Surface Pro 2 is released

October 22, 2013
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Xbox One is launched with new controller and new Kinect

November 22, 2013
Xbox One is launched with new controller and new Kinect

1.75 GHz AMD x86-64 eight-core CPU codenamed “Jaguar” 853 MHz AMD Radeon HD 7000 series DirectX 11.1 based GPU codenamed “Durango” eight GB of DDR3 RAM @ 2133 MHz 68.3 GB/s, 32 MB ESRAM GPU frame buffer memory.

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Surface Pro 3 is released

June 20, 2014
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The Surface Pro 3 was announced on May 20, 2014, at a New York City event, pre-orders were opened on May 21, 2014, and the first models were released on June 20, 2014 in the US and Canada, with the Intel Core i3 and Intel Core i7 models released on August 1, 2014. The Surface Pro 3 was launched in 25 additional markets on August 28.

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Surface 3 available to buy

May 5, 2015
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Surface Hub released

July 1, 2015
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Surface Pro 4 is launched

October 26, 2015
Surface Pro 4 is launched

Surface Pro 4 is ultra-thin, fast and versatile, the perfect balance of portability and power. With 6th generation Intel Core processors and up to 1TB of storage, it’s built to run professional-grade software. And the PixelSense Display has stunning colour and contrast that comes to life with Surface Pen and touch. Simply connect your Surface Pro 4 to Surface Dock and use up to two high-resolution monitors, a full keyboard,…

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Surface Book available to buy

October 26, 2015
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Halo 5: Guardians is released

October 27, 2015
Halo 5: Guardians is released

Halo 5: Guardians is released

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Xbox One S is launched

August 2, 2016
Xbox One S is launched

Blu Ray / DVD RAM: 8GB DDR3 Clock: 2133MHz Bandwidth: 68.26 GB/s + 32MB eSRAM / Bandwidth: 204 GB/s(102 In/102 Out) 8GB flash memory CPU: 8 Core AMD custom CPU / Frequency: 1.75 GHz GPU: Clock Speed: 853 MHz / Shader Cores: 768 / Peak Throughput: 1.31 TFLOPS Storage: 500 GB (5400 rpm) hard drive non-replaceable, external hard drive support available Backwards compatibility HDMI input and output (4K support) API: DirectX 11.2  

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Gears of War 4 is released

October 11, 2016
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Surface Studio launched

October 26, 2016
Surface Studio launched

Surface Studio is an new device designed for the creative process. Its roomy and adjustable 28-inch PixelSense Display provides a huge canvas for all kinds of work. Position it upright to sketch, paint and edit photos, or lay it flat to draw on it like a drafting table.

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Surface Book i7 released

October 26, 2016
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