Pinyon Shift

<p align="center"> <img src=".github/pinyon-shift-banner.png" alt="Pinyon Shift logo" width="800"> </p> <p align="center"> <b>The Xbox 360 release of <i>Forza Horizon</i>, recompiled to run natively on Windows.</b><br> Built on your own PC from your own disc, with internal resolutions up to 4K. </p> <p align="center"> <a href="https://github.com/arcanite24/pinyon-shift/releases/latest"><b>Download the launcher</b></a> · <a href="#play">How to play</a> · <a href="#roadmap">Roadmap</a> </p> <p align="center"> <img src=".github/launcher-ready.png" alt="The Pinyon Shift launcher, ready to play: Vulkan at 1x (1280 × 720), with Play and Settings buttons" width="800"> </p>

Pinyon Shift is not an emulator. The game's PowerPC code is translated ahead of time into C++ with ShiftGlue, our fork of ReXGlue, and compiled for x86-64 on your computer. The GPU command stream the game builds is executed by a native renderer written for Forza Horizon, on Vulkan (the default) or Direct3D 12. The project is a playable preview: early, imperfect, and surprisingly drivable.

This repository contains the launcher, build tools, host code, configuration and the pinned ShiftGlue submodule needed to create the preview on your own computer. It does not contain the game, game assets, generated translations or a prebuilt game executable.

Early days. Rendering regressions, accelerated crowd animations at high frame rates, and slowdowns in some areas remain possible. See the 0.3.0 release notes for what the latest release contains and its known limitations.

Highlights

• Native code. The title's executable is recompiled ahead of time; nothing is interpreted or JIT-compiled at run time.
• A renderer built for this game. Every draw, clear, resolve and swap runs in order with the game's own shaders, translated to SPIR-V (Vulkan) or DXBC (Direct3D 12). On Vulkan, one thread decodes the game's command stream while a second records the draws.
• 60 and 120 fps at the right game speed. The render rate is decoupled from the console's 30 fps, with the simulation kept in step.
• 1x to 4x internal resolution, FSR 1 output scaling, anisotropic and trilinear filtering, FXAA, and optional motion blur and depth of field.
• Settings in game (F6) for display, graphics, audio and controls, plus a trainer (F10: credits, game speed, time of day, free camera, collectibles on the map), photo export, save backups and mods.
• The Treasure Map included. The add-on that showed every discount sign and barn find on the map was sold for Tokens through a service that no longer exists; it is on by default and can be turned off in the launcher.

Performance

Measured on 2026-09-30 on one machine: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X (8 cores), 128 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 (driver 581.08), Windows 11 Pro 26200, 3840×2160 display at 120 Hz.

Against Xenia and the old Xenos renderer

The same scene on all four, from a new profile: the game's opening intro cinematic and the start of the opening drive in the Viper. The internal resolution is 1x (1280×720) and every program runs in a window at its default settings.

Program	Intro cinematic	Opening drive
Xenia Canary (67d80958c, Direct3D 12)	30.0 fps	30.0 fps
Pinyon Shift 0.1.0 (ReXGlue Xenos renderer)	28.3 fps	29.0 fps
Pinyon Shift, native renderer on Direct3D 12	118.7 fps	119.5 fps
Pinyon Shift, native renderer on Vulkan	119.8 fps	120.0 fps

On the console Forza Horizon runs at 30 fps, and Xenia and the Xenos-era build keep that cap. The native renderer renders at up to the display's refresh rate, here 120 Hz, which caps both native rows. The race below shows how much headroom is left.

<details> <summary>How these were measured</summary>

Each program started FH1 from a fresh profile and was driven by the same script: A was pressed every five seconds, as the repository's fh1-opening-sync route does. Xenia got the key as real input while its window was in the foreground; the others got it posted to their window. Each target had a warm-up run first, and the measured run started from a fresh profile again with only the shader and pipeline caches kept.

• Windows. The intro cinematic is 105–165 s after launch and the opening drive 185–240 s, on all four (checked in window captures every 15 s).
• Xenia and the 0.1.0 build. Frames are counted on screen with DXGI Desktop Duplication, and only frames whose image changed count, since Xenia presents the same image several times. Averages are over one-second counts; the worst second was 29 fps for Xenia and 21 fps for the 0.1.0 build.
• Native rows. These are the game's own frame log. The same on-screen count gives 109.5/119.6 fps on Direct3D 12 and 116.1/118.2 fps on Vulkan, slightly lower because consecutive frames sometimes look alike.
• Xenia with vsync off. Xenia then shows about 125 distinct frames a second, but its emulated vblank is no longer synchronized and the game's clock runs fast: it reached the drive about 25 s early. Those runs are not in the table.

</details>

The race, native renderer

The scripted race (fh1-race-sync) is the heaviest route. It is measured over the race's last 600 frames with the frame rate limited to 120, in a hidden window, from the same save.

Internal resolution	Vulkan	Direct3D 12
1x (1280×720)	110 fps (9.1 ms)	79 fps (12.7 ms)
2x (2560×1440)	79 fps (12.7 ms)	66 fps (15.2 ms)
3x (3840×2160)	35 fps (28.7 ms)	57 fps (17.5 ms)

Median frame rate and frame time over the race's last 600 frames, its busiest part.

Vulkan is the default because it records draws on a second thread, which makes it the faster backend at 1x and 2x. At 3x and above the GPU is the limit, and there Direct3D 12 is faster: the Vulkan backend spends more GPU time on the game's multisampled surfaces. The optional single-sampled surfaces (fh1_scaled_msaa_single_sample) bring Vulkan at 3x to about 24 ms. How the Vulkan path got here is in the performance backlog.

Play

1. Download PinyonShift-Launcher.zip from the latest release.
2. Extract the two files to a folder and run PinyonShiftLauncher.exe.
3. Drop the ISO you personally dumped from a supported original disc onto the launcher, or choose it with Choose ISO.
4. Confirm ownership, then choose Verify and build.
5. Leave the launcher open while it installs the Windows build tools and builds the preview. The first build can take 20–60 minutes and needs roughly 25 GB of free disk space.
6. Choose Play. Press F6 in game for settings.

<p align="center"> <img src=".github/launcher-settings.png" alt="The launcher's Settings panel: graphics API, internal resolution, output scaling, the resulting resolutions and the Treasure Map toggle" width="800"> </p>

Settings in the launcher picks the graphics API (Vulkan, recommended, or Direct3D 12), the internal resolution and the output scaling (bilinear, CAS or FSR 1), and says what that means on your screen: for example, renders 1280 × 720, FSR 1 upscales to 3840 × 2160. The Treasure Map toggle is there too: on by default, and once a save's map is revealed it stays revealed, as after a purchase. Vulkan is faster at 1x and 2x; for 3x and 4x choose Direct3D 12, which prepares shader packs for your computer before its first start. Everything else, including the Performance 120 and Quality 60 presets, is in the in-game settings, where most changes apply at once; the graphics API and the language are among the few that need a restart.

The preview launcher is not code-signed yet, so Windows may identify it as an unrecognized app. Use only the archive attached to this repository's release and verify its published SHA-256.

The launcher verifies the image before reading it. Unsupported or modified images are rejected. Your image and extracted game files stay on your machine. The launcher downloads build tools and the pinned ShiftGlue source, extracts the disc locally, generates the translation locally and compiles the executable locally. Administrator permission is requested only if Visual Studio Build Tools must be installed.

To build on another drive, choose Change next to Installs to on the setup screen of the packaged launcher. The launcher remembers your choice for subsequent launches. This selects an installation; it does not move an existing installation or save. You can also override the remembered location from PowerShell:

$env:PINYON_SHIFT_INSTALL_ROOT = 'D:\Games\PinyonShift'
.\PinyonShiftLauncher.exe

Source, downloaded tools, extracted game data and the default save and cache tree live beneath that folder. Existing installations and saves are not moved; an existing PINYON_SHIFT_STATE_ROOT override still takes precedence for saves and caches. Launchers inside a repository checkout continue to use that checkout. This is a custom build location, not a portable install: the choice is remembered in %LOCALAPPDATA%\PinyonShift\install-root.txt, and Microsoft Build Tools still need system-drive space.

If setup fails, the launcher shows which step failed, its exit code, the first real compiler, CMake or file-copy error from that step's log and a hint for common causes (a full disk, low memory, antivirus, a file in use). The same report is saved in .local/logs/setup-error.json, next to the complete logs. Include that report when filing an issue; the final "build failed" line alone cannot identify the cause.

Portable install

To keep everything in one folder you can move or carry, put an empty file named portable.txt next to PinyonShiftLauncher.exe (or start the launcher with --portable for a single run). The launcher then keeps the release source, downloaded build tools, the build, logs, crash reports, saves, settings, photos, save backups and shader caches in a data folder beside itself, and the setup screen reads Portable: followed by that folder:

PinyonShift\
  PinyonShiftLauncher.exe
  pinyon-shift-source.zip
  portable.txt
  data\source\<version>\                  release source, tools, build, setup logs
  data\source\<version>\.local\preview\   saves, settings, game logs, crash reports
  data\temp\                              temporary files of setup and crash reports

Nothing is written to %LOCALAPPDATA%\PinyonShift or the registry, and PINYON_SHIFT_INSTALL_ROOT and PINYON_SHIFT_STATE_ROOT are ignored. No absolute path is stored: the launcher finds every location from its own folder at each start, so the whole folder can move to another drive or Windows PC. A build moved this way plays as it is; the next rebuild (after an update) configures the moved build folder afresh and recompiles.

Extract a portable install into a folder you can write to, such as D:\Games\PinyonShift: the launcher refuses read-only locations like Program Files with an explanation. Keep the path short, too: the build creates files about 185 characters below data, so the launcher will not start a build when the data folder's path is longer than 70 characters. Outside the launcher's control are Visual Studio Build Tools (a system install, added again on another PC at its next build), the graphics driver's own shader cache, and the files .NET unpacks from the launcher into %TEMP%\.net when it starts (set DOTNET_BUNDLE_EXTRACT_BASE_DIR to a folder of your choice to move them too).

Requirements

• The USA retail base disc, serial MS-2505, title ID 4D5309C9.
• Windows 10 or 11, x64.
• A GPU with Vulkan 1.3 (the default) or Direct3D 12. Only NVIDIA GPUs are qualified so far; AMD and Intel are untested.

This is a public preview, not a finished remaster. Please report reproducible problems with the issue template and do not attach game files or generated code.

Reporting crashes and bugs

Keep the launcher open while playing. If the game exits unexpectedly, the launcher catches the exit, creates a sanitized diagnostic ZIP, and offers one button to open a prefilled GitHub issue with that ZIP selected in Explorer. Attach the selected ZIP and add the shortest reliable reproduction steps.

The public report includes build hashes, a stable crash ID, exception details, the end of the runtime log, runtime settings, Windows build, CPU, GPU and driver versions. It excludes the game, saves, generated code, input capture, local paths and memory dumps. A fuller dump stays on the player's computer and should only be shared privately if a maintainer requests it. Non-crash bugs can be reported with Report a problem in the launcher.

Build from source

From a PowerShell terminal in a repository checkout:

.\tools\setup-preview.ps1 -IsoPath C:\path\to\your-disc.iso
.\tools\launch-preview.ps1

The setup script provisions pinned dependencies, initializes ShiftGlue, verifies and extracts the disc, generates translated source, and builds Release with both the Vulkan and the Direct3D 12 backends. python tools/pinyon.py launch starts the built game the same way without PowerShell, with --state-root, --hidden and game arguments after --; it is the launcher for Linux builds. See Building and Troubleshooting for details.

Roadmap

Where the project is going; the open items are in no particular order. The ordered plan, with vertical slices, sizes, dependencies and acceptance gates, is the native port backlog; renderer performance work is in the performance backlog.

Done since 0.1:

• Change resolution and render scale while the game is running
• Apply graphics settings without restarting the preview (all but the graphics API)
• Support ultrawide (21:9 and wider) displays, with a 16:9 HUD and a field of view setting
• Ship a modding API for loading custom content: native plugins, file and archive overrides, database patches and texture replacement
• Let mods add HUD labels, menu actions and replacement text
• Play in any of the disc's 18 languages
• Achievements, photo export, save backups and a trainer in game
• Support portable installs

Next:

• Lower the hardware requirements and qualify AMD and Intel GPUs
• Fix the remaining rendering regressions
• Keep crowd and purchase animations at the right speed above 30 fps
• Hold 120 fps in every race, and reach 4K at 120 fps on Vulkan
• Make the first build faster and fully validated
• Update to a new release from inside the launcher
• Install, enable and order mods from the launcher
• Sign the launcher and preview executables
• Support more disc regions
• Load the car-pack add-ons from your own Xbox 360 content
• Import a save from an Xbox 360
• More trainer options: unlock cars and events, and let any car enter any event
• Verify DualSense, Steam Input and variable refresh rate displays
• Let mods add items to the game's own menus
• Build for macOS and Linux
• Ship a Steam Deck build
• Port the runtime to Android
• Import cars from Forza Horizon 2

Measured findings and validation rules are in development findings and priorities.

Project boundaries

Only independently authored project files are licensed under the BSD 3-Clause License. Microsoft, Xbox, Turn 10 Studios, Playground Games, Forza Horizon, and third-party dependencies remain the property of their respective owners. Pinyon Shift is not affiliated with or endorsed by them. See Legal and distribution and Third-party notices.

Contributing

Start with CONTRIBUTING.md. Repository checks reject disc images, executables, generated translations, extracted assets, build products, and other machine-local material.

Supporting the project

Pinyon Shift is and will remain free. If you would like to support its continued development, you can sponsor arcanite24 on GitHub. Sponsorship is entirely optional and does not provide builds, game content, support, or influence over the project roadmap.