Latest Forza Horizon 5 update address online and wheel performance

A new update has landed for Forza Horizon 5, just in time for the latest Festival Playlist series that brings with the Horizon World Cup and new Chinese vehicles.

Online gameplay performance seems to be the main priority here, with the promise that the online player list is now functioning correctly, as it had a habit of omitting online friends since the game’s launch. The right car and player levels should now also be visible.

As Tom Butcher, Senior Producer at Playground Games explained on a recent Forza Monthly stream, this update includes ‘bandwidth optimisation’ which “hopefully will improve [the] reliability of our online game modes.”

Previously, if you lost connection to Horizon Life you would lose your culminated skill chain, but this should no longer be the case.

Wheel peripheral changes

Steering wheel peripherals have not been ignored either, and as is the trend with several other racing games of late, button-mapping support for Hori devices is now present.

Some wheels, such as the Thrustmaster T150, didn’t deliver rumble but this should now work and Logitech G920 users should no longer lose force feedback after suspending the game.

A bug that prevented handbrake accessories from performing consistently is also said to have been eradicated.

Accolade fixes

It wouldn’t be a Forza Horizon 5 update without some changes to the Accolades – something that Traxion.GG team member Oasley will no doubt be very happy about.

The ‘Stay Frosty’ and ‘Shopping Spree’ Accolades are noted as ‘fixed’. Some, but not all, players were not able to unlock the ‘Proof Positive’, ‘Canyon Statue’ and #Statues beneath Blue Water in El Camino’ Accolades, but now that should be possible for everyone.

Some Accolades that pertained to Horizon Arcade weren’t unlocking after the third round, but this should now be resolved, similarly, the Rival Accolades not unlocking when racing a P2P event should be a thing of the past.

Finally, selecting ‘Jump to Reward’ in the Accolades menu will now take you to the accolade, rather than the category.

Festival Playlist updates

Series 4 of the Festival Playlist will introduce the Horizon World Cup, but also lower the difficulty of most challenges and for the next four weeks, mainly give away cars as prizes.

Now, progress through a Seasonal Championship will continue uninterrupted, even after changing the difficulty level in the pre-race menu. Selecting a Horizon Open challenge from the Playlist menu will now let you match make straightaway too.

In addition, players must now take part in a complete Horizon Arcade (complete 3 rounds or all 10 minutes) in order to complete the Festival Playlist challenge.

The retroactive points for previous bugged challenges do not arrive in this update, but Butcher said it would “hopefully release in an upcoming content update.”

Disconnected alert

After the launch of this latest update, it seems as if some players are stuck in an alert loop claiming that they are disconnected. The Forza Support social media account posted that it will “update as soon as we have more information.”

There are a whole host of other changes, and we’ve listed them down below, but these include improved foliage textures for PC players running on ‘ultra’, some closed farming loopholes and load times should be quicker on PC for those running an unlocked frame rate. Several of the cars have received detail and sound changes.

Let us know in the comments below if you’ve been looking forward to some of these changes, which are available now on PC, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S.

Forza Horizon 5, 1st February update changelog

Version Number

• Xbox One: 2.422.400.0
• Xbox Series: 3.422.400.0
• PC: 3.422.400.0
• Steam: 1.422.400.0

Game Stability

• Miscellaneous stability, memory, and performance fixes
• A crash could occur when the game was installed at a path that was too long (Steam only). An error message will now appear instead.
• Fixed a bug that could block progress on Horizon Stories, with later chapters not unlocking despite meeting their requirements
• Fixed a crash that can occur when deleting a Rival Notification in the Message Center

Multiplayer

• Various fixes for server stability and bandwidth optimisation to improve the reliability of all online game modes
• Players will no longer lose their Skill Chain when they disconnect from Horizon Life
• Fixed an issue that would prevent friends from appearing in the Online Player list
• Fixed the Online Player list displaying the incorrect car and player level for other players in the session
• Fixed an issue where Horizon Arcade “Stay with the group” message could get stuck on screen after the event finishes
• Fixed a bug that could cause the “Finding a Session” notification to persist on screen
• Fixed an issue where the car names may not appear in the Online Player list
• Fixed a bug that could cause the Horizon Tour matchmaking HUD to display when matchmaking for the Trial
• Players will now be placed at the Horizon Tour sign up location after their tour is complete
• Added an on-screen message when matchmaking into Horizon Open
• Prevent invites via LINK while in the Horizon Open session, waiting for the next event to start
• Fixed a bug that could cause Horizon LINK invites to exclude the event type
• Players can no longer accept LINK invites to PR stunts they have not unlocked
• LINK can now be used to join a Seasonal Championship
• Fixed a bug that allowed more than 6 players to enter a co-op event via LINK
• Players can now respond “Thanks <Gamertag>” after being sent “Good Luck” via LINK
• Prevented the Horizon Adventure screen from appearing during Horizon Arcade events
• Added audio cues to the Mini Mission HUD in Horizon Arcade
• Updated Horizon Arcade messaging when quitting the session
• Fixed a bug that could cause the Mini Mission HUD to stay on screen once the round was complete
• The Pinata Streak Bonus in Horizon Arcade now scales with player count
• Group Waypoint will now be cleared if set to a Horizon Arcade event that closes
• Group Waypoints are now removed when the player is no longer part of a convoy
• Fixed a bug that would prevent players from accessing the map in Eliminator
• Fixed a visual glitch with the sky, that can occur in Eliminator during a season change
• All players will now see all Horizon Outposts during Eliminator, regardless of whether they have unlocked them yet
• In Eliminator, if a player disconnects after you challenge them you are now considered to have won the challenge, rather than lose it
• Fixed inconsistency in Team names in the end of race leaderboard

Wheel Compatibility

• Fixed missing rumble on Wheel input devices on PC
• Fixed a bug that could cause the player to get stuck in Change Input Mapping settings after changing input for a Steering Wheel
• Fixed a bug that could cause FFB to be lost on the Logitech G920 after suspending the title
• Added wheel mapping for Hori Force Feedback Wheel
• Addressed a bug that would prevent some handbrake peripherals from working consistently

Exploits

• Rebalanced some Car Mastery tables to remove exploit loops. This will refund player’s Skill Points on any affected cars. 
• Fixed an exploit which allowed players to earn Skill Points whilst AFK
• Fixed an exploit with Wheelspins

PC

• Improved the distance texture quality when running the Ultra quality setting on PC
• Improved the foliage quality when running the Ultra quality setting on PC
• Turning off screen effects now turns off chromatic aberration
• Fixed chromatic aberration becoming too extreme with ultra-wide resolutions
• The Limit Frame Rate option now works as expected
• Fixed a bug that caused longer loading times on PC when the framerate was unlocked
• Adjustments were made to the Target Hardware Profiler to better select the correct graphical preset

Cars

• Fixed hole near wiper on Zenvo ST1
• Fixed car reflectors clipping with rear bumper Toyota Arctic Cruiser
• Fixed Toyota Celica where applying JSP Motorsport Sport Rear Wing flips vinyls upside down
• Fixed Lamborghini Espada broken textures on wipers
• Added missing ForzaVista pins on Jaguar XJ220S
• Fixed Jaguar XJ13 cockpit cameras being too dark
• Addressed cockpit camera being too dark for convertibles when the roof was down
• Fixed rear brake position on Hoonigan Porsche 911 which was causing clipping issues
• Fixed collision on Reliant Stabilisers
• Fixed AO on the back of the Can-Am Maverick
• Fixed Trial – Street Front Bumper being overly dark
• Added new engine audio for the Pagani Zonda Cinque.

Accolades

• Fixed the ‘Stay Frosty’ and ‘Shopping Spree’ Accolade unlocks
• Fixed Proof Positive, Canyon Statue and Statues beneath Blue Water in El Camino not unlocking for some players
• Fixed the Horizon Arcade accolades which required you to complete a specific Arcade type, not unlocking when it was the third round of a Horizon Arcade
• Fixed some Rival accolades unlocking without beating the Rival ghost
• Fixed some Rival accolades not unlocking when racing a P2P event
• The ‘Jump to Reward’ option in the Accolades menu will now take you to the accolade, rather than the category

EventLab

• Previously created routes can now be edited
• Difficulty bonus payouts from EventLab now scales with the number of Drivatars in the event
• Players can now add and edit checkpoints when using Route Creator at a Street Race location
• Players can now search EventLab events by keyword
• Editing a text string in EventLab (such as notification text) will no longer delete what is already there
• Added a “2020s” car restriction option
• Added Chinese car restriction option
• The flask poster icon (indicating custom rules) will now appear correctly after publishing the event
• Fixed up some assets that were missing collision
• Tooltip added for the “Add Rule” pill
• EventLab events can now be started via LINK
• Additional EventLab creations will be surfaced at all activation points
• Fixed a bug that caused surfaced EventLab events from being duplicated on the event select menu
• Crowd will no longer disappear after quitting EventLab event creation

Festival Playlist

• Fixed an issue where Seasonal Championships wouldn’t complete if the player changed difficulty settings on the Pre-Race menu
• Players can now match make into an Horizon Open event directly from the Horizon Open tile on the Festival Playlist
• Prevented progress on the Festival Playlist Weekly Challenge being reset after the user experiences a server error
• Fixed a bug that caused PR stunts to disappear after the weekly season change
• ‘Weekly Challenges Completed’ stat was fixed to show the number of completed challenges, rather than chapters
• Seasonal Collectible challenge progress will now persist between boots of the game
• Treasure chests and seasonal collectibles are no longer counted towards the Bonus Board collection stats
• Players must now take part in a complete Horizon Arcade (complete 3 rounds or all 10 minutes) in order to complete the Festival Playlist challenge
• The Weekly Challenge will no longer show incorrect progress towards its chapters when driving a car that does not meet its requirements

Other

• Added simplified Chinese Voice Over
• Fixed a bug that would allow users to redeem multiple manufacturer rewards from the Car Collection screen
• Some items in the Forzathon Shop will now only be purchasable a limited number of times
• Livery Editor’s default scaling option has been changed to ‘non-uniform’, in line with previous titles
• Added “Mobil” decal to the Livery Editor
• Head to Head challenges in Freeroam are now cancelled if the opposing player gets too far away before accepting the challenge
• Fixed several instances of overlapping text in some languages on the Tuning screen
• A new option has been added to the Video settings screen to open the HDR system calibration app (console only)
• Voice over that plays when finishing a Super7 event is no longer cancelled when returning to the Super7 screen
• Prevented users from being able to erroneously publish Super7 events with both props and traffic enabled
• Fixed a bug that caused controller rumble and haptics to be lost after exiting during Horizon Open signup
• Improved car shadowing when entering tunnels
• Fixed a bug where players sometimes couldn’t make progress on V10 Horizon Story if they earned 3 stars in a previous chapter.
• Fixed some text overlapping on the Race Scoreboard in some languages
• The game will now show an explanation popup when trying to select exclusive emotes or clothing, rather than a marketplace error
• Players will no longer be announced as the winner after quitting and losing to the selected rival
• Notifications showing the CR earned in an event will now show after all events, when returning to Freeroam
• Fixed a bug that would remove car control from the player if they switched cars while changing the convertible roof state
• Fixed a bug when rewinding on the finish line in Rivals, causing an impossibly fast lap time

Source: Forza