Forza Horizon 4

Forza Horizon 4

59 ratings
Graphic Settings for Steam Deck Users
By Mookel Meers
You own a Steam Deck and you want to play Forza Horizon 4 on it and you don't want to spend too much time tinkering the settings so that it works fine? No worries, because I did that and found out some things that you don't need to discover by playing and tinkering. I hope I can help.
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First things first
These Graphic settings are personal preference, it certainly doesn't look absolutely stunning in the end, but it's a good mix between power efficiency and good graphics. That said, you can customize your settings as different as you want. My settings make the game run for about 4 hours theoretically, but I didn't come to the point to test this, especially because I don't want to play this game for 4 hours straight through. You'll need to find that out yourself. I also did a few tests on an external monitor (Resolution 2560x1440) to test if it's still enjoyable on an external monitor. We'll get back to this later.

Also, in the beginning you will have lots of lagging gameplay, regardless of what settings you will use from this guide, because the game fills up it's shadercache while you're playing. It will be around 25GB big and you will have to drive around every single part of the map to have everything loaded. As soon as you have done that you will soon realize, that the game stops lagging.
Settings on the Steam Deck
Since the default Compatibility Settings changed quiet a bit since I wrote this guide, I will now specify a specific version of Proton. I found that the current versions of Proton make FH4 fully offline, if you're after that, go ahead and do that, though if you want to play online, I recommend Proton 7.0-6. This version seems to be fully compatible with FH4s Multiplayer. I left the Game Resolution on Default, even on external Displays. The game will only run 720p Resolutions with these settings, also on external displays, because I want to focus on the smoothness on the gameplay and the graphics at the same time. The experience on external Displays will still not be completely fluent, because of some settings we'll be setting up later.

Now it's time to open up the Game so we can create a Performance profile for Forza Horizon 4. You can copy these Settings:
Refresh Rate: 40
Allow Tearing: On
Half Rate Shading: Off
Scaling Filter: Integer

Update: I found it to run more stable by locking the GPU Clock Frequency to 1100.
Settings In-Game
First disable dynamic optimization. We'll set some specific settings later.
I've seen a lot of people reducing the resolution so the game runs smoother, which doesn't help at all, so leave the resolution on 1280x800.
Set the Framerate to 60FPS (although we will never reach it).
Disable V-sync.
Don't activate full screen by any means!
Disable Motion Blur.

Now switch over to the advanced tab.
Apply all these settings:
Anisotrophic Filtering: Ultra
Night Shadows: On
Shadow Quality: Low (You won't recognize it when on handheld mode)
Environment Texture Quality: High
Static Geometry Quality: High
Dynamic Geometry Quality: Medium
MSAA: 4x (I found it to add a lot to the experience)
FXAA: Off
SSAO Quality: High
Reflection Quality: Medium
Windshield Reflection Quality: Medium
Mirror Quality: High
World Car Level of Detail: Medium
Deformable Terrain Quality: Medium
SSR Quality: Medium
Shader Quality: High
Some last words
As I already said before, the game will stutter a bit on 60FPS, so if you're playing on an external monitor, the only way to have a smooth experience is to have a Display with variable Refresh rate. But still, I think it's quiet enjoyable on an external Display even with the stutters and the lower resolution.

If you have any other Recommendations, drop them in the comments, I may give them a shot. Anyways, have fun playing. If you want to have some new music in the game, I will shamelessly plug my Mod over on Nexusmods, that replaces the Radio of Forza Horizon 4 with the Music from Forza Horizon 3.[www.nexusmods.com] Have fun playing everyone.
7 Comments
ErtenBits 23 Jun @ 8:35am 
For better gameplay, you can use the settings specified by the author, but I will note. Set the shadows to high, the quality of the lighting becomes better, and make Lock at 50fps, you will have a stable game, But 2 hours of work, and the heating of the system will not be higher than 71°
Mookel Meers  [author] 29 Aug, 2023 @ 11:30am 
Another thing that could cause the blurriness could be any kind of upscaling method used by the steam deck. to switch that off open the steam decks Game profile by pressing the button with the three dots while the game is running and switch the option "scaling filter" at the bottom to "Linear".
Forza Horizon 5 also has it's own Upscaling methods in the settings, not sure if they impact the text in the game though.

Aside from all that, you're right that the text in the game is kind of small and sadly I don't have a fix for it, that's just how the game works.
Mookel Meers  [author] 29 Aug, 2023 @ 11:30am 
That sounds like you are using the wrong resolution. You might have accidentally fixed your resolution to something different than the steam decks screen supports.

Be sure that in the games Properties on Steam "Game Resolution" is set to either "Native" or "Default". After booting up the game, the game should still look blurry, you can fix it by going into settings, under Display there is another resolution option. For the default steam deck resolution, select "1280x800".
Finley 29 Aug, 2023 @ 10:36am 
Hi. Thanks for the info. Is there anyway to help with the in game menu text? The text is really small almost like a distorted look. Like the resolution is off. But I tried different res settings in game and on the SD nothing seems to help. Any ideas? The game itself looks and runs fine though.
IlnarKu 8 Jun, 2023 @ 4:05pm 
Hi, thank you for your guide. I found it useful. Originally I found your guide in another website.
Mookel Meers  [author] 30 Apr, 2023 @ 6:05am 
I have issues with crashing too, not sure where these issues come from though. I don't force Steam to use any other compatibility layer and as much as it does crash, it didn't bother me that much.
Dred07 28 Apr, 2023 @ 2:40pm 
Hi there thanks for the instructions, they were critical in getting the game to work without any crashes.

However I tried to play today and the game wouldn't launch using proton experimental. I assume either the game, proton experimental or both were updated recently. Any idea what's going on? proton 8 seems to work but crashes more regularly.

Thanks