Ray Traced Audio was a total lie. And other audio complaints.

[Beethy]

I have a RTX 2080, not that it matters.
The developers mentioned the game uses ray tracing to calculate how your car sounds depending on where you are. While it's true that every car sounds significantly different depending on the location, it's absolutely not calculated in real time by your hardware.
They may have used ray tracing to record the samples, but that's such an insignificant fact, not a selling point.
You can test this yourself easily by driving around in the city, through tunnels. The audio does not change if you're closer to a wall, or if the streets are more thin or wide. It changes when you exit the city area.
I'm a bit annoyed because I was looking forward to proper real time 3D audio using ray tracing.

Objectively, the audio processing in FH5 is worse than Dirt Rally 2.0 for instance. Go through a tunnel in Monte Carlo if you don't believe me, and report back.
Forza also has pretty bad tire on track sounds. It plays at the same tempo, regardless of your speed. You can test this on areas with cobblestone. Going slower just lowers the volume, it doesn't space out the sound.
You also don't really hear your tires turn, the sound of dirt also lacks complexity. It just sounds like 1 or 2 layers, whereas Dirt Rally has 5 or 6.
To describe this, Dirt Rally 2.0 has these sounds on gravel, when turning while going fast.
- small rocks and pebbles hitting the undercarriage or skid block.
- soft plumes of dust
- tires turning on gravel (when steering)
- tires digging into the dirt, the gravity and depth changes depending on your brake or turn speed
- tires sliding on dirt, back and front tires sound different in helmet view

And this is just the sound of gravel in that game, it has multiple other layered sounds happening simultaneously like wind, general ambiance, multiple different parts of the car can be heard which change depending on their current condition. Most of the audio in this game is reinforced by visuals.

Maybe I never realized how incredible the sound design in Dirt Rally 2.0 was, and that many other driving games feel worse because of it.

I do like FH5, which is impossible to tell based on this post. But I was expecting much more in the audio department because of the marketing behind it.