WITH 450 cars, 26 location, 24 on-track online competitors and 70-hours worth of game-play, Forza Motorsport 6 is an impressive video game.

However, for the game developers, the most exciting aspect about the upcoming Xbox One release has to do with the meticulous detail of the rain in the game.

Creative director Dan Greenawalt said the team spent endless hours perfecting the weather to offer players the genuine simulation they were asking for.

“It’s important for rain that we completely capture that experience, both in how it looks and how it feels on the track,” he told news.com.au.

“In real racing, they call rain the great equaliser because it’s a true test of a driver’s skill and so it’s important for us to capture every aspect of that rain experience.”

To add to the authenticity, the team worked hard to master the feeling of hydroplaning. “It’s when a wheel comes into contact with water and loses traction on the road,” Greenawalt said.

“We have measured the friction values for puddles, elasticity, drag and all those things.

“Even when you get a single wheel in the puddle, you will feel the car dragging and this is an accurate simulation.”

In addition to focusing on how it plays, the team was relentless in ensuring the look was accurate too.

“In Forza Motorsport 5, we put a lot of time and effort into how light reflects from our surfaces,” he said.

“The same applies in Forza Motorsport 6 and all of our surfaces have their own velocity measure to find out how coarse that surface is.

“This means water visually collects differently on all our surfaces depending on how coarse they are.”

After playing a demo of the game, it was easy to understand why the team were so proud of its attention to detail.

Forza Motorsport 6 will be released in September.

Matthew Dunn flew to Los Angeles as a guest of Microsoft.

Originally published as Xbox’s most ambitious game design to date