Brendan Rorrison

One of the biggest announcements from Xbox’s E3 showing was the unveiling of Forza Horizon 3 – the latest installment in Playground Games’ open-world racing series – with the game taking center stage at the keynote conference on June 14th. The showing included an official reveal trailer and a small discussion about the game’s features. However, Microsoft may have teased (accidentally or intentionally) an unannounced manufacturer for FH3 as willbsn13 has spotted on the GTPlanet forums.

It’s an age-old argument that has been at the centre of attention for quite a while, but the usefulness and validation of professional racing simulators has been called into question yet again, this time by F1 World Champion Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton. Last weekend’s Grand Prix took place in Azerbaijan – a new race in the calendar – and in regards to steps taken to learn the Baku circuit, Hamilton was more critical than most about the simulation suites provided by F1 teams:

The push toward Virtual Reality is coming hard and fast, with Sony’s Playstation VR launching this October – if you can get your hands on it – while HTC’s Vive and the Oculus Rift are already in consumer hands for the PC market. From a sim racing perspective, Project CARS leads the way for inclusion of VR with support for both Oculus and the Vive. Slightly Mad Studios will further show off their VR capabilities this Saturday as they host the ’24 minutes of Le Mans’ in conjunction with Audi.

Open world racing title ‘The Crew’ is now available to download for Xbox One users as part of Microsoft’s ‘Games With Gold’ initiative. Joining ‘Goat Simulator’, Ubisoft’s USA-wide street racing MMO includes over 40 vehicles, extensive visual and mechanical customization with plenty of missions to rack up the mileage on your tour across the states. The Crew received a mixed reception when it launched in 2014, achieving a 64 critic score on Metacritic.

Kazunori Yamauchi has confirmed in an interview with German outlet ‘Inside Playstation’ that Gran Turismo Sport will incorporate extended online support for servers in the much-anticipated ‘Sport’ mode of the game.

Despite being a no-show at yesterday’s Sony E3 Keynote conference, a massive amount of new screenshots from Gran Turismo Sport have emerged over the past 24 hours. The new screenshots feature the same venues we have become familiar with in the past few weeks, however in terms of cars we see our first glimpse of the Hyundai Genesis GR.3 caught in the Arcade mode capture below.

Since the reveal of Gran Turismo Sport, Kazunori Yamuchi has once again been pushed into the spotlight of the broader gaming media – a new iteration of Gran Turismo brings in a level of hype unmatched by many series in the genre and gaming medium as a whole. One such outlet who are covering the recent unveiling of Gran Turismo Sport is Red Bull’s gaming section, who conducted an interview with Kazunori himself. Whilst a lot of the article reiterates points we already knew and reported on, there are some interesting statements from the head of Polyphony Digital.

As Assetto Corsa’s console launch approaches the new summer release date of August 30th, coverage of the game continues to gain traction. Just a few weeks ago, Kunos Simulazioni held a special event at the Autodromo Vallelunga circuit where lucky members of the press got to play the console version of the game before heading out on-track in reality to drive some of the most impressive supercars on the planet.

With the big reveal at the Copperbox Arena happening just weeks ago and GT Sport being playable at the Nurburgring 24H race, Polyphony Digital is aiming to keep up the momentum of coverage this weekend as Gran Turismo Sport will be shown off to Japanese audiences this Saturday at 11:15 local time.

A key area of much discussion in the Gran Turismo series is the quality of audio. Compared to other games in the genre this is an area that GT hasn’t quite met the benchmark for in the past. However, Kazunori Yamauchi has confirmed to GTPlanet that there will be an entirely new system of reworked audio in place for the launch of GT Sport.

Kazunori Yamauchi has confirmed that Gran Turismo Sport will not feature dynamic time-lapsing or weather. In the interview conducted by GTPlanet, Kazunori made clear that there will be no ‘transitions’ during races and conditions will be chosen prior to entering a race. These features were two of the stand-out attributes for Polyphony’s PS3-era games, however they could only be accessed on specific tracks within the game’s track roster, which meant the level of quality each track had could vary depending on what was chosen.

In amongst the many announcements made at last week’s Copper Box blow-out of Gran Turismo Sport, Thrustmaster made a quiet reveal of their own on the show floor, showing off a new wheel coming in the future that will presumably be the official steering wheel of GT Sport.

It’s been a long wait, but in today’s big media blowout for GTS in London, we finally learned how many tracks and locations to expect in Gran Turismo Sport – with some lovely surprises also revealed.

Many consider June 2008 the birth of the ‘Gamer-to-Racer’ movement – this was the starting date of the immensely popular and successful GT Academy. Before the Sony-sponsored initiative however, there were pioneers who made the jump from digital to reality through different racing simulations. One of these drivers is Mark Drennan, a sim-racer who started off on the classic ‘Grand Prix Legends’ and has recently obtained a drive in the Battery Tender MX5 Cup. The story of how Drennan got his big break is exciting as it is inspiring for the racing simulation community.

Need For Speed’s DLC support has come to an end. In the 7th post on the ‘Under The Hood’ blog, Ghost Games confirm last month’s Speedlist update will be the last content-based support for the game.

So far in GTPlanet’s World Tour of Dirt Rally, we’ve stopped in Wales, Monaco, Germany and Finland. The finale is upon us however and as such, we take a look at the snowy banks of Sweden and the gravely trails of Greece. Let’s do this – one last time.

Welcome to week two of GTPlanet’s DiRT Rally World Tour. Last week we looked at two of the game’s more technical locations; Wales and Monaco. The focus on this week will be on two locations that are far and away the fastest countries rally moguls will have to deal with: let’s take a look at Germany and Finland.

UPDATE: The ESRB have now removed the separate Driveclub VR listing. Did we stumble upon something we weren’t supposed to?

The new monthly update for NFS is due to go live tomorrow bringing all-new competitive multiplayer playlists, ‘Prestige Events’ and the return of the Speedwall Speed Run/Drift Corners seen in Need for Speed: Most Wanted 2012 for all 3 platforms.

In my review of DiRT Rally I praised the game heavily in many areas. One such area I would like to explore a bit deeper and make a point of is just how good the locations are within the game. This is the first of three articles that showcase all six countries represented in DiRT Rally. The format will be simple: each country will get one showcase track that I will drive in a car I either haven’t driven at all or one I haven’t driven much, in order to give a good look at how each track feels to a regular driver as opposed to an ‘expert’. All runs are also made against the ‘community delta’ for those curious as to what time I’m comparing to. So, let’s begin, shall we?