Update 7 September: Turn 10 – the developer of Forza – has just announced that Apex is now out of beta and has wheel support. It’s been four months since the game launched and the major omission was steering wheel compatibility. A blog post on the Xbox site says adding wheel support “has been the result of months of hard work from the Turn 10 and Windows teams.” So, while it may seem like a trivial addition, at least you can now fire up the game and see if your racing wheel works. There’s a full list of compatible wheels on the blog post, including Logitech and Thrustmaster models. Fanatec support is coming soon, as is support for the Logitech G29’s H-pattern shifter. H-pattern shifters are fully supported in Apex for all other compatible Logitech wheels.
Forza Motorsport 6: Apex: How to get it
You can download and play the game from the Windows Store which you’ll find in the Windows 10 start menu (or you can just click that link to take you straight to Forza in the store).
Forza Motorsport 6: Apex minimum requirements
Here’s what Turn 10 recommends for the minimum and recommended specifications. As this is a DirectX 12 game, you’ll need Windows 10, and you must be running build 1511 or later. This is the November 2015 update, so chances are you already have it. The download is almost 19GB, but you’ll need 30GB of free space.
Forza Motorsport 6: Apex gameplay and features
According to Turn 10, Apex delivers “a focused and curated single-player tour of Forza Motorsport’s best content, including authentic wheel-to-wheel action, unique automotive experiences, and constant rewards, all running on DirectX 12 at resolutions up to 4K”. The Xbox One tops out at 1080p at 60fps, but Windows users with a high-end PC will be able to see Forza in Ultra High Definition with four times the detail available on the Xbox. AMD Radeon R7 250X AMD Radeon R9 290X AMD Radeon Fury X One issue, though, is the ‘single-player’ aspect. Multiplayer will surely come later, we hope, but even now the game is out of beta, there’s still no online multiplayer. You can play the various – and changing – Spotlight Series challenges to beat others’ times, but you cannot enter a race and compete live with other people.
Unlike the Xbox version, which has 450 cars, Apex currently offers 63 cars and six locations with 20 track configurations. So it’s considerably more limited (hence Turn 10’s use of the word ‘focused’). However, there’s good news for BTCC fans: a couple of last year’s cars are included, including the ebay BMW and the WIX Racing Mercedes. In addition to the career mode there are Spotlight Series events, which are challenges that change all the time. There’s a new Race Points system which will reward you for turning off the driving aids.
Jim has been testing and reviewing products for over 20 years. His main beats include VPN services and antivirus. He also covers smart home tech, mesh Wi-Fi and electric bikes.