Forza Horizon 2 Has Been Ported to PC, Along With Gears of War 2

The community continues to bring older Xbox games to PC. Following the unofficial port of Gears of War 2, Forza Horizon 2 has now made its way to Windows. It originally launched in 2014 for Xbox One and Xbox 360, but Microsoft never released a full PC version of the game.

The Azimuth project makes it possible to run the Xbox One version on PCs. It is not a conventional console emulator, but a wrapper that translates Xbox WinRT calls to Win32 and the Xbox DirectX 11.X graphics interface to desktop DirectX 12. It supports game version 1.0.0.64, and the launcher runs on Windows 11.

The project is currently available in version 0.9, so its developers warn that it may contain bugs and other issues. Performance is already quite good, however. According to the author, the game runs on Steam Deck at around 720p at 60 fps or 1080p at 30 fps, so PCs with similar or better performance and at least 16 GB of RAM should also handle it without major issues.

Azimuth also offers more graphics settings than the original Xbox One version. Players can set the resolution from 720p up to their monitor’s native resolution and choose between 30 and 60 fps.

Three graphics presets are also available. Low offers lower quality than the original Xbox One version and is close to the settings used for splitscreen. Default is roughly equivalent to the original console graphics, while High further improves image quality. At the highest setting, shadows and reflections are twice as detailed, shadow draw distance is tripled, and cars use more detailed models from photo mode. 16× anisotropic filtering is also included. Image anti-aliasing can also be configured, with options for no anti-aliasing, MSAA 2×, and MSAA 4×.

Because the port does not support Xbox Live, Forza Horizon 2 can only be played offline. Multiplayer and achievements are therefore not currently available. The project itself also includes no game files or copyrighted materials. Users must provide their own copy of a supported Xbox One version of the game and select its data folder when they first launch the Azimuth launcher.

Following Gears of War 2, Forza Horizon 2 is another older Xbox game coming to PC through community projects, without an official port from Microsoft.

Azimuth is available on itch.io.

About this game

Forza Horizon 2

Release: 3 October 2014

Genre: Racing

Developer: Playground Games

Publisher: Microsoft

Game profile →

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