Which game engine was used to design Forza Horizon 3?

Forza Horizon 3 was designed using the ForzaTech game engine.

ForzaTech is Turn 10 Studios’ proprietary technology platform for the Forza series. Rather than relying on a general-purpose engine such as Unity or Unreal Engine, Forza Horizon 3 used the in-house technology shared across Microsoft’s racing games.

The engine supported the game’s combination of detailed vehicle simulation and a large open-world setting. Horizon 3 moved the festival to Australia, with deserts, rainforests, beaches, cities and off-road environments that had to stream together while vehicles, lighting and physics remained consistent.

ForzaTech was also important to the game’s technical presentation. Its physically based rendering helped support realistic lighting, reflections and materials, while later updates enabled enhanced features such as HDR and native 4K output on Xbox One X. The name can be confused with Turn 10’s development tools, but ForzaTech refers to the underlying engine and technology family.