Forza Horizon 6 player still drives with late best friend through Drivatar appearances

A Forza Horizon 6 player has shared a clip showing that he can still drive alongside his late best friend in the game, thanks to the Drivatar system. Forza photographer Samohteht posted the video to Instagram, where it has since been viewed more than 2 million times.

The footage shows two cars cruising side by side. One is Samohteht’s car, while the other appears under his friend’s name, even though he died four months ago. Samohteht said the Drivatar still turns up from time to time, giving him a brief chance to see the two of them drive together again.

How Drivatars keep a friend’s name in the race

Drivatars are AI drivers that learn from the way real players drive, then appear in other people’s games under that player’s name when they are not online. According to the source material, the system has been part of Forza since the first game in 2005.

They also began appearing in friends’ games with Forza Motorsport 5 in 2013, which is why Samohteht’s friend can still show up months after his death. That makes the encounter feel less like a random AI car and more like a familiar presence arriving at the right moment on an ordinary drive.

Samohteht described the effect as temporary but meaningful. “For a little while, we get to cruise together again, no words needed, no goodbye, no sadness,” he wrote in the caption.

He added that the sight of the car makes things feel normal for a moment before reality returns. “The world feels normal again,” he said, before adding that the game can be the closest thing he has to seeing his friend again.

Samohteht’s Instagram post struck a nerve

The post’s emotional tone helped it spread quickly, and the comments filled with stories from other players who have had similar moments with Drivatars tied to people they lost. One commenter said his best friend’s Drivatar still appears after more than eight years, while another said the system had been doing the same thing for him and his brother since FH1.

That reaction also brought some players back to the game. One person said they were “currently redownloading the game as I speak,” after losing a best friend three months ago.

The same theme came up again in another comment, which described the feature as a way to keep people present across the series: “Amazing thing about the Drivatar system is it keeps them alive throughout the games they never got to play.”

Why the clip connected with Forza players

The video’s appeal comes from how ordinary the moment looks. There is no scripted scene, no tribute screen and no special event attached to it, just a regular stretch of road and a familiar name appearing in traffic. That kind of chance encounter is exactly what the Drivatar system can produce, and in this case it gave one player a short, unexpected reminder of a friend he lost only months ago.

Samohteht later thanked viewers for the response once the comments became too much to follow. “Thank you all for the nice words. We honored him. He would be proud,” he wrote.

The clip has now become another example of how Forza’s long-running Drivatar feature can carry a personal story as well as an AI race line, with one player’s friend still appearing on the road long after he died.