Making the Award-Winning Sound of ‘Forza Horizon 5’ – A Glorious Game Audio Deep-Dive with Fraser Strachan:

T here’s undeniable joy in getting behind the wheel of a souped-up ride, blasting the radio, and driving like a maniac without any worry at all – that’s the experience that Forza Horizon 5 delivers. And their all-new approach to the game audio makes this experience even more satisfying.

Fraser Strachan, the award-winning Lead Audio Designer on Forza Horizon 5 at Playground Games, takes us through their upgraded process of capturing cars around the globe with help from studios like Pole Position Production and WB Sound, scaling back on post-processing like compression and limiting to keep engines sounding dynamic, redesigning how engines are built in-game using granular synthesis, recording new source for collisions and impacts, capturing original field recordings in Mexico for in-game ambience, explaining the new ‘Audible Upgrades’ feature in-game and its impact on the sound team’s responsibilities, designing and mixing Forza Horizon 5 for Dolby Atmos, creating exclusive music tracks and curating songs that celebrate the game’s Mexican locale, and tons more!!

Forza Horizon 5: Official Launch Trailer

As a game franchise, Forza always puts so much detail into the sound of the cars – not just the exhaust and engine, but also the doors, interiors, and car ‘foley.’ What was on your hit-list of sounds to capture for each car in Forza Horizon 5?

Lead Audio Designer Fraser Strachan

Fraser Strachan (FS): When we manage to source a car, it’s really important to us to make sure that we record everything about that car. The exhaust and engine are only two parts of a hundred things that we make sure that we get. We have a checklist for every car we record, which does vary depending on the type of car. We generally try to record all the doors opening and closing, the hoods, and trunks. The car horns are really important, actually. We get lots of different variation takes — short ones that can be played back as NPC cars that sound happier and also long takes so the player can play them back.

We take the car out to record ‘ramps’ or ‘sweeps’ for getting engine sounds into the game. But it’s really important for us to capture the cars doing lots of maneuvers for cinematics, as well.

The exhaust and engine are only two parts of a hundred things that we make sure that we get.

It’s actually a very small section of the recording process to get what we need to capture the car audio for the game. Because Horizon is such a cinematic game, there’s always connecting tissue between the different bits of gameplay where cars are just doing the wildest things possible – probably pushing cars to limits that you’d never normally do in reality.

It’s really important for us to try to get the drivers to push their cars to the limit – getting them to do donuts, skids, coming to stops really quickly, or switching down a gear and then back up a gear really quickly just to get a bit more of an aggressive take-off on the car, and so on.

When possible, we’ll ask the drivers if we can bounce up and down on the car, as well….to record the different sounds of the suspension noise…

It’s important to get five or six different elements at a time: elements for the cinematics, ramps and sweeps, and all of the car foley. When possible, we’ll ask the drivers if we can bounce up and down on the car, as well. I remember a particularly fun one – a Ford Raptor pickup truck that could fit 6 people on the back – and we were able to jump up and down on that to record the different sounds of the suspension noise and all the creaks, wobbles, and rattles on the inside. We do this with the engine off so we can then play them back in the game and simulate what it’s like for a car to go over uneven terrain.

It’s a really wide variety of sounds we capture when we get the cars.
 

Are you recording in a controlled environment, like a garage or warehouse? Or are you recording out in the world? Where do you get the best recordings that sound the most natural?

FS: In previous Horizon games, we had recordings from cars that were recorded on dynamometers, which is like a rolling road inside a garage. (It’s like a treadmill for cars.) It’s how drivers figure out how much torque their car has and how they can push it to the limits and measure the performance of their car without having to take it out on a track. That has some advantages in that you can set up as many microphones as you want with as many recorders as you want and record all different types of perspectives.

What we did find with that though is that you can’t get away from the fact that it sounds like a car that’s in a garage. And that inherently comes with the reverb of that environment.

…you can’t get away from the fact that it sounds like a car that’s in a garage. And that inherently comes with the reverb of that environment.

We also wanted to fully switch to granular synthesis on this game. To do that, you need to get the car to do both a full acceleration sweep and a deceleration sweep. That requires you to push the car all the way up to the red line but then freely let it come to a stop.

Dynamometers don’t do that with cars. You drive up to the top of the red line, let off the gas, and it decelerates straight away so you lose all the pops and bangs and detail in the deceleration which separates it from the sound of the acceleration.

For us, it makes sense to record the car outdoors, in the scenario that you’re going to be experiencing it in the game; recording outside helps to replicate that the most.

So we take the cars out onto airstrips; that’s our preferred method. That’s not just because we can get the car performing in its natural environment. For us, it makes sense to record the car outdoors, in the scenario that you’re going to be experiencing it in the game; recording outside helps to replicate that the most.

Also, it allows the car to do all those things that we couldn’t do in a garage – donuts, skids, and stunts that produce unusual sounds from the engine.

For us, it’s not just about capturing the sound of the engine, and then heading home and processing all of that. We have to make sure we’re getting as much from the engine as we can and doing that on a track (or airstrip) gets us the best quality and the best variety of source that we can get.

Forza Horizon 5 Official Initial Drive Trailer

Experience the first minutes of gameplay from Forza 5 here:

Do you get any pushback from the owners about doing donuts and stunts in their multi-million dollar vehicles?

FS: You’d think so. It’s surprising, a lot of car owners own cars to have fun; a lot of people just keep their cars in their garage. As much as we have to go out and find the owners to come to the airstrips, they do like to have fun when they’re out there.

We’ve had some racecar owners bring along a mechanic just to make sure they’re able to drive home at the end of the day.

I think it’s a bit harder when they have a rare racecar or something because then it’s less about the owner not wanting to push the car to the limits but more about how much can they push this car to the limit before it breaks. Some cars are expensive to get working again if they do break. We’ve had some racecar owners bring along a mechanic just to make sure they’re able to drive home at the end of the day. Fortunately, we’ve never had any horrific breakdowns.

Generally, owners are willing to push their cars to the limit. We don’t necessarily like to force the owners to push their cars to the red line because when it’s doing that, it’s probably doing damage to the car.

… we’re in a very good space where owners of cars love the sound of cars as well.

But most owners love the sound of hitting the limiter on their cars. So, fortunately, we’re in a very good space where owners of cars love the sound of cars as well. Above most things, that’s what they talk about first when asked, “Why do you like your car?” They’ll be the first ones to push it to the limit and it’s us saying, “Whoa, let’s take it down a notch. Let’s capture the stuff we need first.”

Forza Horizon 5: Car Audio Recording Behind-the-scenes

Check out this behind-the-scenes footage from the Forza 5 car recording sessions:

What mics do you find are best used close to an engine? An exhaust?

FS: We’ve tried a variety of mics over the years. Coming from an audio production background (i.e., mixing and recording bands), it’s fairly standard to try out loads of different types of mics on the cars as if it was a drum kit. That was easier when we were recording them on dynamometers.

…it’s fairly standard to try out loads of different types of mics on the cars as if it was a drum kit.

These days, I use almost entirely DPA omnidirectional 4062s. I find their small profile makes them easy to mount to the side of the car without too much duct tape. And since they’re lightweight, there’s not much chance they’re going to get knocked off by the wind. Their small profile tends to not pick up as much wind or cause drag on the car.

Also, they have a flat frequency response so it doesn’t color the sound of the car; that’s really important when you’re capturing something that most car enthusiasts know exactly how it should sound. Capturing the car with a flat frequency response is really important to us.

Capturing the car with a flat frequency response is really important to us.

We don’t want to cover the whole car in those types of mics, so we do use a variety of other DPA mics – the 4018 cardioids and 4017 shotgun capsules. Those are also really good because they have great pads you can put on the mics. We pretty much never have issues with the recordings clipping these days. We’ve certainly wrecked a number of mics that weren’t designed to be next to an exhaust that’s 180 dB.

We’ve learned over the years to go to our ‘old faithful’ mics.

Combined with that, we use recorders that are 32-bit capable because using limiters or trying to avoid clipping on the recordings was quite a big problem, especially if the car would spit out fire or backfire and cause really loud pops that we weren’t necessarily aware was going to happen. So using those 32-bit recorders gives us the opportunity to record without it clipping at all, and we can deal with any minor issues in post when we get the recordings back to the studio.

For the car interiors, are you using ambisonic mics?

FS: We’re using ambisonic mics in combination with a stereo pair inside the cockpit. That’s because we want to future-proof ourselves on these recordings. It’s hard to get owners to record these cars and if we realize in the future that there’s some ambisonics tech we want to use, we don’t want to have to go back to scratch and re-record all these cars again.

I do prefer using just a set of stereo mics, though, like the DPA 4061s, as a spaced pair, or even using a set of your favorite X/Y mics. The reason I prefer using stereo mics instead of the ambisonic mics is that we have done a lot of experiments with ambisonics and we tend to find that when it’s put into the cockpit of the car, and if we upmix that, it doesn’t translate very well when it’s downmixed again using our current non-ambisonics pipelines. It causes a bit of phasing.

… if we realize in the future that there’s some ambisonics tech we want to use, we don’t want to have to go back to scratch and re-record all these cars again.

So, currently, the best solution that we have is to use that stereo recording, which best simulates that binaural feeling you get from the stereo pair. We find that translates the best and we can upmix that – perhaps move it into the surrounds – and that mixes down without causing phasing.

There’s no real hard-and-fast answer. We’re always changing the techniques we use for internals. I would be interested in using a binaural dummy head. We would probably get the same results that we got with ambisonic mics, but it’s something we would love to look a bit more at in the future.

Where would you put the binaural head? Would you strap it to the back of the driver’s seat so that it would be as close to what you’d hear in the driver’s position as possible?

FS: It’s interesting because a lot of the cars we have in Forza might be a different side of drive than what you’re used to. Some types of cars are right-hand drive and some are left-hand drive.

Putting the head where the driver would be, you get a really skewed stereo image.

Putting the head where the driver would be, you get a really skewed stereo image. We find that if we want to share a recording between two different cars, that perhaps are known to be two different sides of drive but they’re both a V8 engine, for instance, the best thing for us is to put the mics right in the middle of the car between the passenger and driver seats. That essentially means there’s not an imbalance in the stereo image and that translates well to any car that we put those recordings into.

How many cars did you record for Forza Horizon 5?

FS: We had this lofty goal of replacing all the engine sounds for all 500+ cars in Forza Horizon 5. And to do that, we knew that we needed some help.

Playground went out and recorded lots and lots of cars, and we also sourced cars from companies such as Sounding Sweet, Pole Position Production , and WB Sound. That helps to not only gather more recordings in a shorter space of time, but it allows us to gain access to cars that we may not have as much access to in the UK. If we have some recordists in the US helping us out, they might have more access to American muscle cars than we do here. We at Playground were out recording more classic UK rally cars.

…it allows us to gain access to cars that we may not have as much access to in the UK.

We learned on this project that to get the coverage and massive rise in quality we wanted, we needed to work together with lots of different people from lots of different sources. I think working closely with those partners has brought us that consistency and quality that we always wanted on Horizon.

In total, we recorded and sourced about 320 unique engines for this game.

In total, we recorded and sourced about 320 unique engines for this game. Those are spread out amongst the 500+ cars. There are certain cars, such as the Toyota GT 86 and the Subaru BRZ, which use — literally — the same engine. So we are able to share engines in instances like that.

When you send these teams out, do you ask them to use the same mics in the same positions that you use?

FS: Yes. It was very important for us to develop the checklist that we have at Playground to record cars, and ensure that everyone we’re working with is working to the same checklist.

We wouldn’t have been able to get the consistency across the 500+ cars if we hadn’t ensured that we stuck to this checklist.

So when we get recordings back, we not only have everything recorded with as consistent a microphone selection as possible but also that we get everything back with the same types of content and foley that we’re looking for in a Playground session. We wouldn’t have been able to get the consistency across the 500+ cars if we hadn’t ensured that we stuck to this checklist.

After recording three or four cars, the routine for recording becomes fairly ingrained. We found that most people we work with have very similar methodologies; they’ve learned very similar things to us having been out to record cars. So often it was easy for them because it’s the mics they use to record these types of sounds.

The end result was fairly consistent across the board, among all the partners.

What were the most challenging cars to record? What were some of your challenges?

FS: I found supercars the hardest to record. They tend to be single chassis bodies. So unless you can take the whole chassis off, you can’t get access to the engine bay.

We recorded a bunch of McLarens a few years back, and we weren’t able to get into the engine bay. You end up having to externally attach mics as close to the engine bay as possible. Those mics then inherit buffeting from the wind. They don’t pick up as much of the engine sound; the noise ratio isn’t as good as you’d like. We end up having to record more of that type of car in order to get the source that we need. It can be costly and time-consuming because you have to record more of them in order to cover one car.

We end up having to record more of that type of car in order to get the source that we need.

I find it interesting to record cars with only a single seat because often we’ll have an audio recordist in the car with the driver of the car. We can sit with them and instruct them how to go about driving the car in order to get the right source for the game. When you have someone sitting in a single-seat car, you essentially have to try and train the driver as much as possible, and then send them off with the recorder in the car. We’re listening to the car going up and down the runway to tell if they’re recording the right thing. But often with those sessions, you don’t really know if you have the right stuff until you get back to the studio.

We’ve learned what types of phrases to use with drivers who aren’t as familiar with recording techniques as we are. We’ve definitely gotten better at recording those types of cars as a result.

You also captured ambiences for the game — original field recordings of locations in Mexico. What was that experience like?

FS: That was fantastic. We partnered with Molinare Post Production. Glen Gathard and his team were essentially an extension of the Playground audio team. We worked very closely with them.

We worked with the art team here at Playground to figure out which biomes we were including in the game. And Forza 5 was going to have the most diverse in-game biomes to date. We had 11 different biomes, all visually and audibly unique. So we did a study with the art team to find out what the biomes were, what type of wildlife is in each of those areas, and how the art team was going to visually represent these areas as different because we wanted to make sure the sound of each biome was different.

We had 11 different biomes, all visually and audibly unique.

For instance, we have these two biomes: living desert and sandy desert within the game. You might think we’d have the same sound on both types of deserts but they look very different. One is very lush and full of foliage and cacti. You can see lots of flowers. We wanted to make that feel really full of life and have birds and wildlife from those types of areas in Mexico. In contrast, the sandy desert sounds starker and feels drier.

Using that art brief, we worked with Molinare to figure out which areas of Mexico we can visit that would best represent each of these biomes. We had a hit list of the types of birds and wildlife that we’d like to capture.

We ended up going out multiple times, and that was great because it allowed us to figure out what we had recorded already and then go back with an even more specific hit list the next time.

…we worked with Molinare to figure out which areas of Mexico we can visit that would best represent each of these biomes.

It was interesting because we were doing it in the middle of one of the first Covid lockdowns. As a rule for Horizon games, we like to capture the base layer of an environment — such as a city. Most sound designers will be familiar with trying to create a walla that doesn’t have a specific sound of someone walking past and talking loudly. A Horizon game doesn’t typically have those pedestrians walking around. So the ambience needs to sound like a location without having anything in the recording that sounds too close, which would make the player want to drive toward that sound.

Recording in the middle of lockdowns, there were far fewer pedestrians around. We found our recordings were much cleaner as a result. It made the source easier to use and we got a lot more from the source than when we recorded in Britain for Horizon 4.

What were some challenges you faced when capturing these ambiences?

FS: Mexico is an interesting country. We have to consider what it’s like for a recordist to walk around with a lot of equipment which draws a lot of attention. The equipment draws attention sometimes for the wrong reasons, but often people are curious and want to know what you’re up to. There is a bit of a language barrier there, as well. When recording in the UK, it was easy to explain to anyone who approached us that we were recording ambience. So we had to think about that a bit.

Making our way through the mangroves and recording as much as possible, getting right up to nature, was a fantastic way to get into the depths of both the jungle and the swamp.

Another challenge was just getting to and from all the different locations within Mexico. It’s a logistical challenge to sort out transportation to get between all the areas. One of my favorite biomes was the swamp. So we headed to swampy areas fully loaded with different mics, such as a parabolic microphone held at the front of a small kayak. Making our way through the mangroves and recording as much as possible, getting right up to nature, was a fantastic way to get into the depths of both the jungle and the swamp.

Full disclosure: I love playing the Forza games but I absolutely suck at them. I’m the type of driver that literally crashes into everything. The car impacts and destruction sounds in-game mean a lot to me personally. It must have been fun to capture those sources!

FS: The car destruction sessions are always the most fun sessions to record for our games. We’ve done a variety of recording sessions, from going up to scrap yards and just smashing a car to pieces as much as we can using a range of tools. We chuck things at the car, use bits of the car to hit the car — just seeing how much damage we can do. It’s actually physically exhausting to beat up a car with your bare hands. So you need to work out if you want to do that sort of stuff, which I was not cut out for.

We’ve done a variety of recording sessions, from going up to scrap yards and just smashing a car to pieces as much as we can using a range of tools.

We’ve done many different sessions though, like dropping cars from heights to get that sense of landing a jump. In Horizon, you’re always jumping off of stunts, or jumping across canyons. That means your car is always landing in an awkward fashion in the middle of a ravine and we need to make sure we have the sounds to match that. So while we had the sounds of panels being beaten in our individual foley sessions, those larger sessions of dropping cars from heights gave us things like suspension creaks and the pure chassis manipulation that happens with a force that we couldn’t replicate otherwise.

So when we’re designing the sounds for car collisions, we’re also trying to make sure that you never feel like you’ve done something wrong.

There are lots of source recordings that we captured for impacts. Horizon is an interesting example of a game that makes you feel a certain way. So when we’re designing the sounds for car collisions, we’re also trying to make sure that you never feel like you’ve done something wrong. The sound should always be fun. It should never be punishing because Horizon is a world that you drop into for 20 minutes, have a bit of fun jumping off of stuff, do some races, or join your friends.

Something that we’ve honed over the years was the sound of the collisions so that they don’t sound too daunting or dangerous. This way players don’t feel like they’re in mortal danger. Much of that comes down to the mix and the volume of the impact sounds.

But it’s also about our sonic choices — which sounds do we use? Do we include ones that have a bit more debris tails with the glass, creaks, and bits of plastic? Or do we include ones with harsh transients? It tends to be somewhere in between that.

We never want players to come away feeling like they’ve done something wrong. If they’ve crashed their car, that’s something they’ve done purposely.

You captured tons of custom recordings for the game, but were there any helpful sound libraries that you used as well?

FS: All of our collision sounds are bespoke recordings that we’ve done at Playground Games. Sometimes the best sound is the one you recorded yourself. It’s unique and no one will be able to replicate that. That’s what adds a lot of interest to the industry, that no two sounds will be the same. I don’t think it would be interesting if every racing game had the same collision sounds.

The collision sounds aren’t just cars colliding with walls or other cars. In Horizon, pretty much everything is ‘smashable.’ We recorded as much new source as we could, smashing up lamp posts, wooden fences, wire mesh panels, and pretty much every type of material we could think of – including snow and cardboard – to create a unique sonic palette for the game that we haven’t heard in any other media.

That has benefited the sound of Horizon 5; it’s brought a freshness and vibrancy to the sound of these objects you hit and that makes it more fun to weave in and out of traffic, smash through stuff, and it doesn’t feel like it’s something you’ve done wrong. It feels ‘gameified,’ this fun and varied palette of destruction sounds. It makes it fun to drive around. We want people to smash stuff!

How did you approach the editing and mastering of all these wonderful recordings you captured? Earlier in our conversation, you mentioned going completely granular with this game. How did that factor into the way you handled these recordings?

FS: When we started Horizon 5, we knew we wanted to ground the game more in reality. We had learned from previous games that sometimes less is more. On previous Horizon games, when you think about the car being super loud, the music being super loud, the collisions, and the surfaces, it’s a game that could be perceived as loud all the time — perhaps there’s not much space for dynamics. We used to build that into the sounds by limiting, compressing, and making sure you could hear the tail on everything.

We’ve gone the opposite way for ‘Forza Horizon 5’; we’ve added those dynamics back into the game…

We’ve gone the opposite way for Forza Horizon 5; we’ve added those dynamics back into the game to make it a game that people can live with for a long time. We want people to play the game and not get ear fatigue. To do that, it almost touches all the sounds we process for this game.

For instance, for the cars, we stripped back all the DSP and entire effects chain/signal processing we had within the middleware engine. We decided to go back to basics with the cars, to make sure we were getting our cars to sound the best using basic things like EQ and riding the volume on the tracks instead of using compression or limiting.

We decided to go back to basics with the cars, to make sure we were getting our cars to sound the best using basic things like EQ and riding the volume…

I, personally, try to use compression and limiting as little as possible when it comes to sources that are inherently loud.

With the cars, we’re trying to let you hear all the unique, nice details without distorting the original sounds too much. That also applies to everything from collisions to voiceover to some extent. We don’t want to smash that too much. I think that’s created a cleaner mix for Horizon 5 and it’s something I’m really happy that we’ve done and we’ll continue to invest a lot more effort in the future to figure out ways to let the assets (the real recordings) shine.

Most likely if something isn’t working, or it sounds too compressed or limited, or you’re not too keen on the sound, it’s probably because we weren’t happy with the source in the first place.

To touch on the granular side of the cars, we definitely needed to process the car recordings in a certain way for our granular tech for this game. We needed a sweep up and sweep down for every single car, plus we chopped out all of the gear cracks, all the limiter samples, and all of the idles for each of the cars.

We feed a very specific bunch of assets into our granular synthesis engine. By doing that, it makes it less of a daunting process to ask audio designers to design the sound of 500+ cars…

We feed a very specific bunch of assets into our granular synthesis engine. By doing that, it makes it less of a daunting process to ask audio designers to design the sound of 500+ cars, because it’s then a measurable quantity. It’s easier to schedule. You understand the process from start to finish.

And if you open up a Pro Tools session with car recordings processed in it — any one of the 320-odd sessions we have — each one is going to look exactly the same and have the exact same assets that are going into this tool in this pipeline, making it easier for any audio designer on our team to fix a bug or manipulate the sound of a car if they have to.

Organization for a game like this, where you’re dealing with so many assets for so many cars, is important. You need that regimented approach to organizing these sounds…

FS: Absolutely. We always listen to our community and look at the feedback we get on games. Like on Forza Horizon 4, oftentimes when players mentioned something they might not like, they might be picking up on some inconsistency with how something is done and that’s a pipeline problem that we have to fix over a longer period of time.

…we went back to the drawing board for all our pipelines, our organization, and how we were processing everything…

That’s why on Horizon 5 we went back to the drawing board for all our pipelines, our organization, and how we were processing everything in order to get that consistent end product where all 500+ cars were going to sound great.

Forza Horizon 5: Audible Upgrades Preview

Hear some of the sounds for the game here:

How did the new ‘Audible Upgrades’ feature in-game impact the responsibilities of the audio team? Did you have to do additional recordings? What did it take to make this happen?

FS: We knew we wanted to do ‘Audible Upgrades’ pretty much from Day 1. That helped to feed into our plans for car recording. We wanted to make sure that when players upgraded the sound of their cars that we weren’t changing the volume, or we weren’t just changing an EQ on a slider, which to anyone who works in audio could sound transparent.

We were always talking about character as opposed to adding an effect, like distortion or EQ.

We wanted to make sure that when you upgraded the sound of our car, it literally sounded like you were changing a car part — a whole exhaust, or a whole camshaft — which would really change the character of the car. We were always talking about character as opposed to adding an effect, like distortion or EQ.

To make that happen, we needed to record more cars than we’d need to if we were just doing one for one. We needed to analyze the database of cars that we were going to include in the game. We worked with the car content creators at Playground Games to see which cars they wanted to feature in Horizon 5, and then we did a broad sweep to say that, ok, we have 100 V8 engines, 200 V12s, a whole bunch of new Porsches that are flat 6s, and so where do we need to put our efforts? What have we already recorded? Which ones don’t necessarily get upgraded as much? We have a bunch of drift cars and race cars and they are ostensibly at the top of their upgrade path (as we call it).

I wanted to make sure all the audio designers on my team were getting interesting and diverse things to work on.

We ended up focusing more on what we would class as ‘ordinary’ cars — the type of car that you or I would have but we can upgrade to a street or race exhaust if we wanted to.

Because we knew we were doing Audible Upgrades from the start, and we were looking at all of our pipelines, I didn’t want an audio designer dedicated to this for the whole project. By the end, they would feel like, “Ugh, I can’t believe that’s all I worked on.” I wanted to make sure all the audio designers on my team were getting interesting and diverse things to work on.

We developed a modular system that looked at the database values that we had and we created a library full of parts — all the pops, bangs, horns, door open/close sounds, and all the different engine types and sounds — that was categorized on how aggressive they sounded or how fun they sounded.

…those two cars could sound completely different because they’re all using different pops and bangs.

We used this modular system at runtime to look at the cars and decide that, ok, this is an American vintage car with a V8 engine and the player has given it this type of gear shift sound. It will use that information to configure all those library assets that we’ve created at Playground, and pull them all together. So, even if we’re using two engines in two different cars, those two cars could sound completely different because they’re all using different pops and bangs.

So this was something we really considered from the outset as part of the pipeline so that it didn’t become a cumbersome task for one or two audio designers for the entire project.

This granular system you built, was it proprietary technology created for the ForzaTech game engine? Or was this a pre-existing, 3rd party solution — something like Krotos Igniter?

FS: It was something we created in-house at Playground Games. It’s been growing since Forza Horizon 3. For that game, we used this tech to work about 10 cars into the game. We had a combination of different types of playback for car audio at that time.

On Horizon 4, we tried to push that a bit further by recording more cars to get into the granular tech.

Because it’s such a complicated system, a complicated tool, it needed a lot of investment. We’re always on a two-year development cycle for each of our Horizon games. But with Horizon 5, we knew we were going into a 3-year dev cycle. We wanted to take more time to invest in the audio tools and audio engine, and every other department was investing in the tools that they were using to build the game so we could make a generational leap.

We wanted to take more time to invest in the audio tools and audio engine…to build the game so we could make a generational leap.

We took the time to invest in our granular tech and take it to the next level — looking at lots of different granular playback systems and figuring out what we would need to work with in-house to enable us to make these cars quickly and efficiently and to the best quality that we possibly could.

I think having a proprietary engine in-house allows us to do very bespoke things that are unique to Horizon, as well as do a lot of things that other racing games don’t. That’s really important for a game like Horizon, to be pushing the envelope and pushing the limit of what car audio in racing games sounds like. That’s part of our responsibility and something we have a lot of fun with, making sure that every game has car audio that’s even better than the last game.

Can you talk about your approach to mixing Forza Horizon 5? What were some opportunities to use the Dolby Atmos surround field for this game?

FS: It was very fun on this game to work with Dolby Atmos. Horizon 5 became the game where Dolby Atmos is ingrained In every system that we worked on.

Knowing we had it from the outset allowed us to think about how everything is affected when you’re including height speakers. We have some amazing pieces of gameplay, like dust storms and tropical storms, that have some of the biggest uses of Dolby Atmos in our game.

‘Horizon 5’ became the game where Dolby Atmos is ingrained In every system that we worked on.

The POV isn’t simply behind the car; the player can choose an interior POV. Hearing how those dust clouds are hitting off the top of the roof above you as well as around you makes you really feel like you’re surrounded by something dangerous.

It’s also an experience that lots of players are familiar with — the sound of being in a car in bad weather — and it made that experience more authentic.

Horizon is also a game that has some extreme situations that people probably won’t experience in real life, such as driving against big cargo planes or monster trucks, or even personal watercraft. Oftentimes, those vehicles will be jumping across your car as you’re racing against them. That adds so much interest to the 3D soundscape when you’re in one of these races. So, Dolby Atmos was a tool we had at our disposable to make the mix more dynamic and to push sounds into the heights and surrounds.

We also think about how that folds down because games are very different when it comes to Dolby Atmos compared to linear media, like cinema.

We also think about how that folds down because games are very different when it comes to Dolby Atmos compared to linear media, like cinema. We have multiple endpoints: Xbox consoles, and Windows Sonic, but we also have DTS. We have Dolby Atmos for home theater as well as headphones. We always have to listen to all those different endpoints and figure out how it’s all coming together and folding down with the different EQs of those systems.

With the rest of the mix in Horizon, we have to think about fatigue because it is something that most players will get with racing games. Often, I say to my colleagues that a racing game is similar to an RGP where your main character is screaming all the time. Imagine your main character is just going “AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” all the time. Eventually, you’re going to reach for the volume dial on that sort of mix.

Often, I say to my colleagues that a racing game is similar to an RGP where your main character is screaming all the time.

Whereas many other racing games that are simulation-based will have cars right at the front of the mix (super loud all the time), Horizon is a more relaxing experience. We want players to feel a certain way and we don’t want people to reach for the volume knob. We try very much to make sure the cars are balanced with the music. It’s a fine line. Some people play Horizon just for the music, so we don’t want that to feel like a secondary experience. We put a lot of thought into the game to figure out how to make sure the players don’t turn the audio off.

You spend so much time and care making sure the engines sound great and there’s weather happening in the Atmos surround field, but then the radio is on! How do you work that out in the balance so that all that beautiful detail isn’t masked by the music?

FS: We did a study at the start of development on Horizon 5, looking into different types of mixes we’ve seen in lots of different types of media — whether it’s films like Baby Driver (which had a big influence on us since it’s a music-heavy film but there’s lots of action happening with cars) or documentaries where everything is a bit more laid back (mixed more like a broadcast TV show), or games where cars are at the front of the mix.

We decided to attribute these different types of mixes to the different types of experiences you can have in ‘Horizon’

We decided to attribute these different types of mixes to the different types of experiences you can have in Horizon. For instance, we have new experiences we call ‘Expeditions’ that are more cinematic. That allows us to bring the music and the car volumes (including foley) in and out at different points depending on what the focus needs to be for the player. Those can be very cinematic experiences.

We have ‘Horizon Stories,’ which for us feel more laid back, more ‘broadcast’ style. We can afford to let the music sit back a touch more because those experiences last longer for the players.

It was important for us that we didn’t have just one standard mix; that we had three or four other ones we could flip to.

Or, we have our new ‘Horizon Arcade’ with piñata pop, where you can drive around and it is ultimate chaos. That is probably the most like Baby Driver where the music is ramped up and the car takes a backseat because you want the player to have fun and feel like the fun is never going to end, but you also don’t want them to feel bombarded with sound.

It was important for us that we didn’t have just one standard mix; that we had three or four other ones we could flip to. Or, if the player is in free roam, the mix could be more dynamic and change based on what they’re doing at that current time.

So the mix does change and fluctuate depending on what you’re doing. We hope that players do have a lot of fun and notice those really subtle differences.

Are these mixes generated from a ‘hierarchy recipe’? Are there set parameters for each different mix approach?

FS: Yeah, we use the snapshot system within FMOD Studio. So our base mix (if nothing were to touch the mix) is our free roam mix. Then we use snapshots to bring in and out different elements. So for example, if you go through a speed zone, we’ll turn on a snapshot for that. That will filter the music and you’ll hear a bit more of your tires while you’re doing some skills since you need to hear that information in order to do better in those types of environments.

So our base mix…is our free roam mix. Then we use snapshots to bring in and out different elements.

When you go into things like Expeditions, we turn on snapshots that are overriding for those sections which will change it to the cinematic mix.

There are blending snapshots that we have for dynamics such as jumping off a cliff or the amount of air time you have; they will blend on top of that new, overarching mix.

There are lots of different hierarchies that we have in place and that does create a lot of complications once we get to the end stages of the game.

There are lots of different hierarchies that we have in place and that does create a lot of complications once we get to the end stages of the game. There are always going to be situations where the hierarchy just isn’t working, or something sounds a bit strange, and that’s what we’ve spent the last few months getting fixed up before launch.

The music in Horizon games always feels fresh and fun; it’s music that makes you want to drive fast! Can you talk about your process of curating music for the six main radio stations, and the music playing through the loading screens?

FS: Music curation is by far the most challenging and time-consuming task we undertake on every game. We have far more criteria now for music selection than previous games because the gameplay is so much more varied. Whereas previously we might have been considering how a song makes you feel while you’re driving around a large open world with your friends, we also now have story missions, arcade-style challenges, and adventurous expeditions to cater for.

We have far more criteria now for music selection than previous games because the gameplay is so much more varied.

We categorize all our music into gameplay “Playlists” so that appropriate music is always playing.

The soundtrack for Horizon 5 was developed over the course of three years. We were listening to all the latest releases and unreleased music from labels so that we ensure there is fresh music in the game when we launch.

And of course, we have six varied stations so we are also always challenging our own personal music preferences to reach into genres we may never normally listen to. There is a lot of research that goes into every song that is chosen so that we can be sure we’re providing a soundtrack that will have something for everyone to listen to.

We were listening to all the latest releases and unreleased music from labels so that we ensure there is fresh music in the game when we launch.

Our opening screen music was an interesting area to create music for considering it’s a song that sets the tone for the whole game. We’ve deliberately created a song that is very different from previous titles while intentionally evoking similar emotions.

Previous games had featured existing licensed music that leaned heavily into the Horizon Festival vibe, providing a euphoric feeling before starting the game. We wanted to ensure that the player still felt this way while also embracing Mexico as a location so that from the start of the game you knew exactly where you were about to jump into.

Can you elaborate on how the Mexico locale influenced your music selection for this game?

FS: We try to embrace the culture and regionality of every location of our games, but none more so than Horizon 5. Mexico has an immediately understandable palette of instrumentation, composition, and culture and that was very exciting for us to jump into and explore further than we ever had done before.

We even have a classical radio station featuring well-known songs you may not have realized were from Mexican composers.

We wanted to fill each station with a collection of music that was authentic to Mexico through a hand-picked curation of rock, indie, or electronic artists. We even have a classical radio station featuring well-known songs you may not have realized were from Mexican composers.

We have dived deep into blogs, local news, and indie outlets to explore many local up-and-coming artists from Mexico.

So, while the soundtrack immediately gives players a distinct feeling of place in the world, it does that through authenticity as opposed to shoehorning in clichés.

It’s also very important to us to showcase up-and-coming talent in our games. It would be easy for us to fill the playlists with well-known artists but that wouldn’t be a realistic depiction of a music festival or lead people to discover music from fantastic musicians they wouldn’t have otherwise heard.

We have dived deep into blogs, local news, and indie outlets to explore many local up-and-coming artists from Mexico. We’ve also included some of our favorite artists that we believe are creating incredible music. As a result, I think that we have created one of our most varied and interesting line-ups to date.

There are ‘exclusive’ tracks written just for Horizon 5. Can you talk about your collaboration with the artists? Did you let them create whatever they thought most fitting, or did you give some general guidelines (like tempo, length, energy level, etc.) to work within?

FS: At the beginning of the project, we started thinking about the new Expeditions experience and our opening drive in the game, and how we wanted them to feel cinematic. We wanted them to be streamer-friendly so that the world could hear them as intended when shown in videos online.

And we also wanted to work with local Mexican artists such as Sotomayor to create music that no one had ever heard before.

So right from concept of Horizon 5, we knew that we wanted to make an original soundtrack to complement the curated licensed music on our radio stations.

We provided some detail about track length, tempo, and style but a lot of our brief was used to sell what the experience was going to be.

I actually started with detailed music briefs for each of the gameplay sections we wanted to create music for. We provided some detail about track length, tempo, and style but a lot of our brief was used to sell what the experience was going to be.

The game didn’t exist when we started approaching artists so we were using concept imagery and diagrams to help explain where a song from them would fit into our narrative as a whole.

We still approached each song like a linear piece, but we crafted them with unique sections to suit the arc of our stories.

While all of our artists are very experienced composing music, not many of them had written music for a game before so the idea of looping sections, stems, and transitions was something I wanted to translate through diagrams and understanding of pacing. We still approached each song like a linear piece, but we crafted them with unique sections to suit the arc of our stories.

Every artist really took each of the briefs in stride and provided amazing initial concepts. Most of our feedback was around structure and instrumentation to help tailor the songs to the visuals as they started to drop into the game.

We ended up with our first-ever official soundtrack for a Horizon game consisting of several amazingly distinct pieces.

Forza Horizon 5: Soundtrack Exclusives

What station do you like to listen to when you play the game? And, why?

FS: It’s funny because while I was developing the game, I always headed towards Horizon Pulse. It’s the station that most commonly features music that aligns with my tastes.

…my player statistics tell me that Horizon Block Party is my most listened-to radio station.

However, now that the game is released and I’ve been playing it a lot, my player statistics tell me that Horizon Block Party is my most listened-to radio station. I think perhaps that’s the vibe that I’m most enjoying at the moment while jumping in for casual gaming sessions. But who knows, next week it could be classical!

I think that’s the joy of the soundtrack; I love all the tracks we have on there and hopefully, others jump around just as much as I do to enjoy everything it has to offer.

What was your favorite part of creating the sound for Forza Horizon 5?

FS: I genuinely think it’s being able to take what is the fifth installment of a franchise game all the way back to concept. It would have been easy for us to essentially ship the same game with the same sounds and call it 5, but we really stripped this game back and thought about how we can create this much more lively mix with more dynamics that sounds better and more consistent.

It’s been a point of pride for me to make sure the team felt they had everything they needed at their fingertips to design the best sounds possible, to make sure they’re well-rested and healthy.

Being able to throw away everything we’ve worked on for the last eight years on previous Horizon games — to know with confidence that we can use all the knowledge we’ve learned to re-record and re-design some of those systems to take the game to the next level — was really great for me.

Another part is a little less about the audio design side and a bit more about the actual process of making games. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed leading an audio team. It’s been a point of pride for me to make sure the team felt they had everything they needed at their fingertips to design the best sounds possible, to make sure they’re well-rested and healthy. I don’t think you can do your best work without being happy and feeling empowered to come to work and do your best. It’s been one of the proudest experiences of my life to lead the team and see how much they’ve flourished and to hear some of the incredible sound design they’ve done on this game.

A big thanks to Fraser Strachan for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the sound of Forza Horizon 5 and to Jennifer Walden for the interview!

Please share this: