Inside the Forza Scorpio Demo

Inside the Forza Scorpio Demo
Here, you can see the ForzaTech tech test (heavily downsampled) running on Project Scorpio

Digital Foundry has provided more information on their comprehensive Forza Scorpio demo. While I recommend reading the full article for all the details, there are several key takeaways.

Here are the major points:
  • All of Microsoft’s first-party teams are involved in the development of Project Scorpio’s hardware
  • Forza was ported while Project Scorpio’s tech was mere components in a cardboard box
  • The ForzaTech stress test ran from day 1, on this collection of thrown-together parts
  • Running ForzaTech at native 4K, 60 frames-per-second (fps) with 4K textures utilized an average of 60% of Project Scorpio’s horsepower
  • Adding the 4K textures only affected available GPU power by 1%
  • The same stress test, running at 1080p 60fps on the Xbox One with regular assets, used 84-90% of the Xbox One’s GPU power
  • Even when the PC Ultra settings such as shadow quality, foliage and motion blur were added to the Scorpio stress test, the console never dropped a single frame
  • It’s important to note that the Forza engine developed by Turn 10 is highly optimized
  • However, other teams are seeing “similar positive results

This is certainly impressive stuff. Personally, I’m looking forward to seeing how other games, such as Middle Earth: Shadow of War, perform on the system. Fortunately, we only have a short while longer before E3. There, I’m sure we’ll see Xbox show this system in full force.