Forza Motorsport, Xbox Studios's cinematic 2023 live-service racing sim, is getting a nice visual upgrade in an upcoming update (titled Update 15) shortly after the first anniversary of its release. On December 9, Forza Motorsport will get Ray-Traced Global Illumination (RTGI), making the racing game and all its shiny cars look more realistic. RTGI will be available for all PC versions of Forza Motorsport as of December 9—as long as the game is up-to-date that is—although it will need to be manually enabled in the game's graphics settings. After being enabled, RTGI will apply to both gameplay rendering and in-game cinematics, as well as the built-in photo mode.

While Forza Motorsport's minimum recommended GPU specification is an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060, you will need at least an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20-series or AMD RX 6000-series graphics card to take advantage of RTGI, with the game's developer, Turn 10, recommending an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 or better for high graphics and RTGI settings. For the uninitiated, RTGI helps increase realism by simulating how light interacts with surfaces and materials, more accurately rendering indirect lighting and shadows in-game. In NVIDIA's blog post announcing the updated visuals for Forza Motorsport, it recommends using the RTGI in conjunction with DLSS Super Resolution or DLAA to get the highest frame rates. Forza Motorsport is available for PC on Steam (currently 50% off), the Microsoft Store, and PC Game Pass

More than 600 games and applications feature RTX technologies, and each week new games integrating NVIDIA DLSS, NVIDIA Reflex and advanced ray-traced effects are released or announced, delivering the definitive PC experience for GeForce RTX players. This week, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and Marvel Rivals launch with DLSS 3, Path of Exile 2 enters Early Access with day-one support for DLSS Super Resolution, and the Delta Force PC Global Open Beta kicks-off, also with day-one DLSS Super Resolution support. On December 9th, Forza Motorsport's next update introduces support for immersive Ray-Traced Global Illumination lighting. And in the near future, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2's next update introduces support for DLSS 3 Frame Generation.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle Launching With DLSS 3 & Ray Tracing
Uncover one of history's greatest mysteries in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle on December 6th with the game's Digital Premium Edition Advanced Access launch, followed by its general release on December 9th. Step into the shoes of Indiana Jones and embark on a single-player, narrative-driven journey that spans the globe during the height of the legendary archaeologist's career. From the hallowed halls of the Vatican and the sunken temples of Sukhothai to the pyramids of Egypt and the snowy peaks of the Himalayas.

AMD has released its latest version of AMD Software Adrenalin drivers, version 24.8.1 WHQL. The latest drivers update adds game optimizations for Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Open Beta, Concord, FINAL FANTASY XVI, and Star Wars Outlaws, as well as expands HYPR-Tune support. It also adds Anti-Lag 2 support for Ghost of Tsushima DIRECTOR'S CUT and adds support and optimizations for Amuse 2.1 with FLUX.1 model on select Radeon, Radeon PRO and Ryzen AI series products.

AMD also fixed several issues seen with previous drivers, including intermittent application crash or driver timeout in Black Myth: Wukong, Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess on some Radeon RX 6600 and 6700 series GPUs, and Pacific Drive or KINGDOM HEARTS -HD 1.5+2.5 ReMIX-. It also fixes artifacts in games like Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales or Rust, improves "Optimizing Shaders" time when launching Forza Motorsport, and fixes issues with Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering settings for some OpenGL applications. There are also several known issues, and AMD also issued an important note that it is working with the developers of Star Wars Outlaws to address an intermittent corruption issue that occurs after changing certain in-game graphics settings, which can now be resolved by relaunching the game.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Software Adrenalin 24.8.1 WHQL

Capcom's latest entry in the iconic Street Fighter series, Street Fighter 6, punches its way into the cloud this GFN Thursday. The game, along with Ubisoft's XDefiant, leads six new games joining the GeForce NOW library. A new reward makes its way to the cloud gaming service's Ultimate and Priority members. For a limited time, GeForce NOW members who are new to Xbox PC Game Pass can get three months of Microsoft's subscription service free, just by opting into the GeForce NOW Rewards program.

Get Ready to Rumble
Unleash the ultimate Hadoken with Street Fighter 6 on GeForce NOW. The renowned 2D fighting game returns with intense battles, special moves, combos and Super Art attacks to defeat opponents. With a roster of 22 iconic fighters, including classic World Warriors like Ryu, Chun-Li, Guile and Akuma, plus all-new characters like Kimberly, Jamie, Marisa and Manon, there's no better time to hit the streets. The newest installment introduces innovative features and enhanced visuals across three distinct game modes - Fighting Ground, World Tour and Battle Hub - for gamers to level up and put their skills to the test. The game's blend of classic mechanics and fresh enhancements is captivating longtime fans and newcomers alike. Become a World Warrior in the cloud with a GeForce NOW Ultimate membership and stream all the fighting glory at up to stunning 4K resolution. Witness every punch, kick and Hadoken with others by hopping online for some head-to-head competition.

Hi everyone, in January we shared with you all a status update on 3 key areas of feedback from the Forza Motorsport community that our team is working to improve—Car Progression, Forza Race Regulations and Drivatar AI. For Car Progression, today we began collecting feedback from various sources on changes that will give players freedom to equip the parts they need regardless of car level. We have additional changes to the system in various states of design and testing with plans to implement these changes as soon as possible. For Forza Race Regulations, we have enabled Race Marshals and some content creators the ability to flag in-game incidents for review to help feed changes to the adjudication model that will improve the system. Lastly, we're testing out fixes to the Drivatar AI to alleviate competitors bunching up around Turn 1 and causing the first few AI opponents to reach insurmountable leads. Beyond those key changes, we're investigating other priority fixes for the AI that improve their overall driving behavior and reduce how aggressively they stick to the racing line. These are just a few examples of where we are prioritizing work in these areas, and we will be sharing more on each soon.

While we have 3 distinct teams here at Turn 10 working on these key improvements, we're also actively developing fixes and improvements to other areas of the game. These will begin rolling out alongside Update 5 in February and will include a Skip Practice option to the Career mode pre-race menu to make it more discoverable, and a save point after finishing a Practice session so you can complete the Featured Race later. We're also developing fixes and quality-of-life improvements to the Livery Editor based on the reports you've shared with us, including custom advanced zoom for applying decals, the ability to paint upgraded brake calipers, and a prompt to save your design when exiting the Livery Editor. While this update is in active development, we wanted to share an earlier-than-usual look at some of the changes we're targeting for this release.

Forza Motorsport Update 4 introduces the prestigious Daytona International Speedway—a truly iconic racetrack renowned for its marvels in engineering. Meanwhile, a new Italian Challengers Featured Tour invites you to build four staples of Italy's automotive heritage! Let's dive into the details. Update 4 will be available to download on Xbox Series X|S, Windows PCs and Steam beginning on Tuesday, January 16. New events across the Career, Featured Multiplayer and Rivals will start on Thursday, January 18.

Get ready for race weekend with Daytona, new Spotlight cars and the Italian Challengers Tour
On Tuesday we'll share details about the fixes contained in Update 4. This version is focused on new content and events, and contains only minor fixes for car and track content compared to our previous updates. Work on game fixes to address top community issues is ongoing—look out for additional improvements in Update 5 and beyond.

Logitech G, a brand of Logitech and leading innovator of gaming technologies and gear, and McLaren Racing are excited to announce the sixth season of the Logitech McLaren G Challenge racing competition, featuring the genre's hottest new title, Forza Motorsport by Turn 10 Studios. Last year, over 3,500 gamers participated in four months of exciting competition that came down to the wire, with the winners from Singapore, Germany, Canada, Chile, and Ireland, taking home the grand prize. For motorsports enthusiasts and amateur drivers, the official 2023-24 Logitech McLaren G Challenge racing season launches on November 16th, 2023 and will feature several opportunities to win prizes for both casual and hardcore drivers.

"We are excited for this new season of the Logitech McLaren G Challenge," said Joseph Bentley, Head of Logitech G's Experiences & Production Team. "We wanted to make this season a special one, so we're excited to share that this year's G Challenge will be integrated in-game using Forza Motorsport's Rivals system, as well as include live semi and grand final grid races. We look forward to hosting an awesome G Challenge that is sure to thrill racing fans worldwide."

Put the pedal to the metal this GFN Thursday as Forza Motorsport leads 23 new games in the cloud. Plus, Acer's Predator Connect 6E is the newest addition to the GeForce NOW Recommended program, with easy cloud gaming quality-of-service (QoS) settings built in to give Ultimate members the best streaming experience.

No Breaks, No Limits, No Downloads
Take the pole position thanks to the cloud. Turn 10 Studios' Forza Motorsport joins the GeForce NOW library this week. The realistic racing sim features over 500 realistically rendered cars across 20 dynamic and world-famous tracks, each with dynamic time-of-day, weather and driving conditions, so no two laps will ever be the same. Unlock more than 800 performance upgrades and outbuild the competition, either online or against new, highly competitive AI racers in the single-player Builders Cup Career Mode. Stream every turn at GeForce quality on nearly any device and max out image quality thanks to the cloud. Ultimate members can get in gear at up to 4K resolution and at up to 120 frames per second for the most realistic driving experience.

Intel today released the latest version of Arc GPU Graphics Drivers. Version 101.4887 beta adds support for the new Arc A580 desktop graphics card, which you'll hear more about soon. The drivers also add optimization for "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III" (beta), "Total War: Pharaoh," and "Lords of the Fallen." The drivers also offer performance improvements for "Starfield," with up to 117% performance uplifts at 1080p with Ultra settings, and up to 149% uplifts at 1440p with High settings, as measured with an Arc A770.

The drivers also introduce performance uplifts for "Forza Motorsport," with up to 8% uplift at 1080p with Ultra settings; and "F1 23," which now yields up to 12% gains at 1440p with Ultra High settings; and up to 136% at 4K with Ultra High settings. With this release, Intel fixed a bug that caused "Minecraft" (DirectX 12) to exhibit color corruption in night scenes with DXR ray tracing enabled.

DOWNLOAD: Intel Arc GPU Graphics Drivers 101.4887 beta

As autumn continues, we have another week of big game releases to look forward to, hopefully with something that'll suit most gamers here. This week's AAA title involves a lot of sand, wars and monuments. As for the rest of this week's new games, you can be a tycoon, a driver of very expensive motor vehicles, craft your own stick, pretend to be a starship captain or you could be a monster slayer. Let us know if any of these tickle your fancy in the poll.

Total War: Pharaoh / This week's AAA title / Wednesday 11 October
In Total War: Pharaoh, the newest entry in the award-winning grand strategy series, immerse yourself in ancient Egypt at the zenith of its power and experience the dramatic events that threaten its destruction. With dynamic real-time battles and incredible turn-based empire management, can you rise above your adversaries to become Egypt's last great Pharaoh and stand against the collapse of an iconic civilisation?

Included in the Forza Motorsport Premium Edition and Premium Add-Ons Bundle, you can play the full game and begin your racing career up to 5 days early on Xbox Series X|S, Windows and Steam. On Xbox and Windows, Forza Motorsport Early Access rollout is region dependent. At 12:01am local time in your country, the game will be available to play. On Steam, this unlock happens globally at 12:01am EDT on October 5.

Upgrade to the Premium Add-Ons Bundle with Xbox Game Pass and enjoy a 10% discount with up to 5 days early access to Forza Motorsport and all the additional content included with the Premium Edition. Forza Motorsport Early Access has started to unlock around the world! Here is the time you can play the game in your country:

If you're looking for some spooky games, some fast ways to drive away from anything spooky, or just some great games to load up and dive into the story… have I got some recommendations for you! We've got some games available today for you to check out, some more coming soon, and even a reminder on some you might have missed that we snuck in last month. Let's get to the games!

Available Today:
Gotham Knights (Cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X|S)—Batman is dead. A new expansive, criminal underworld has swept the streets of Gotham City. It is now up to the Batman Family - Batgirl, Nightwing, Red Hood, and Robin - to protect Gotham, bring hope to its citizens, discipline to its cops, and fear to its criminals.

The Lamplighter's League (Cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X|S)—Available on day one with Game Pass: Sneak, steal, and shoot your way through a world of pulp adventure in The Lamplighters League! Globetrot across a variety of exciting locales around the world and outwit your enemies in strategic turn-based combat and, if you play your cards right, you might just save the world.

Since the first Forza Motorsport launched in 2005, the Forza franchise has been about falling in love with cars and building community. As a co-founder at Turn 10 Studios, I had the honor of working on the very first Forza Motorsport and have been with the studio for 20 years. In that time, we've grown considerably but, through it all, a constant has been our love for cars, pushing the limits of gaming technology, and creating a racing community for everyone. With less than two weeks to go before we release the brand-new Forza Motorsport globally on October 10, we wanted to share more of our vision for the game, explain how Forza Horizon titles have informed our racing sim, and share our approach for both new players and our core community.

To start, we've been asked why we didn't call this "Forza Motorsport 8," and it's a fair question. From the beginning, we've designed the latest Forza Motorsport to be an evolving racing platform, with new content that adds to the experience of automotive entertainment through skill and competition. Last week we shared a little more about what players can expect with our evolving racing platform on forza.net. It's due to this shift that we didn't need a number in the title; we created a platform.

Forza Motorsport will expand with new cars, tracks, career tours and online events. Here's how we're building an evolving racing platform to give players a steady flow of new challenges and gameplay experiences. Forza Motorsport launches on October 10 with over 500 cars, 20 completely rebuilt tracks and our new career and online racing modes. It's a massive game from day one and it'll continue to grow over time.

We want to ensure you always have something new to play in Forza Motorsport. That's why we built the game to be an evolving racing platform. Once the game has been released, we expect to regularly add new content with monthly content drops that will help you fall in love with cars through skill and competition, as well as tweaks to gameplay and systems.

Here's how Forza Motorsport makes you fall in love with cars and build community through competition and skill. We're about to be at the starting line for a new era of Forza Motorsport, and today we're excited to tell you more about our vision behind the game. We also shared the first hour of gameplay with media and creators over the past few weeks, so keep an eye out for impressions of what they thought of the experience. And for those of you who can't wait, we shared a video on Forza Monthly featuring some of the gameplay from the first hour of the game.

BUILDING SKILL THROUGH COMPETITION
The Forza franchise has always been about falling in love with cars and building a community of car lovers and gamers. Forza Motorsport does this through competition and skill. In the new Forza Motorsport, we have completely rethought what it means to play Motorsport. This is a massive game with over 500 cars and 20 tracks, all featuring 24-hour dynamic time-of-day with weather. These cars were handpicked by our team, curated to deliver the absolute best experience across both Builders Cup and Featured Multiplayer for clean, thrilling and competitive racing.

To celebrate our presence here at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany, today we revealed that the local and world-famous Nürburgring GP circuit will be available in Forza Motorsport at launch on October 10. What's more, as part of our plan to regularly bring new content to the game after release, we are also happy to confirm the iconic 12.9-mile (20.83 km) Nordschleife will be coming in Spring 2024.

Both tracks have been completely rebuilt for the Xbox Series X|S and PC. Nürburgring GP is the latest addition to the 20 tracks featured in Forza Motorsport on day one - with more announcements remaining, check out the list of tracks we've announced to date. In addition to our track lineup, Forza Motorsport starts with over 500 cars, and this list will continue to expand beyond launch. Check out the cars we have announced so far and stay tuned for future car reveals as we get closer to release day.

Xbox is coming to Gamescom 2023 in full force, showing 30 titles in three blocks. Starfield, Forza Motorsport, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Ara: History Untold, PayDay 3, Mortal Kombat 1, are just some of the titles that will be at the Xbox Gamescom booth.

Running from August 23rd to August 27th, Gamescom 2023 will definitely have some pretty big names from the game industry, and its Opening Night Live will be live on August 22nd, hosted and produced by Geoff Keighley.

Today at the Xbox Games Showcase we revealed that Forza Motorsport is coming to Xbox Series X|S consoles, Windows 10 and 11 PCs via the Microsoft Store and Steam, and Xbox Game Pass for console, PC and Cloud Gaming (Beta) on October 10, 2023. We also shared more details on Forza Motorsport's cover cars. The stunning 2023 No.01 Cadillac Racing V-Series.R racecar and 2024 Chevrolet Corvette E-Ray will be available for fans to drive in Forza Motorsport at release.

The Forza Motorsport community is fueled by its passion for competition. We can't wait for you all to experience these innovative and ultra-modern cars from General Motors in our game. In addition to this closer look at Forza Motorsport's cover cars, we also revealed our latest trailer during the Xbox Games Showcase, which was captured in-game on PC.