Mini Enduro, Grand Valley, Merc Black '20. Saturday 9th March 18:00GMT.Open

[Zolon32]

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the first thread produced by Totally Disorganised Racing for an event on GT7.

In this case the objective is to get as many people as possible to enjoy the experience of thrashing the amazing AMG Mercedes Black ‘20 around Grand Valley for 32 laps. This car can be won by completing one of the Master ‘A’ licences at gold level, but I can’t remember which one! Alternatively, it costs just over 400,000 credits at brand central.

Thirty-two laps is a long way, of course, and will take about seventy minutes. Don’t worry, because you will be fully engaged throughout… Half of the field will be starting on SS tyres, and half on SH tyres. Everyone must pit at the end of the sixteenth lap, and change. If you start on soft you put on hard, if you start on hard you put on soft.

In this way the whole pack will begin to close up with sixteen laps left to go, and everything to race for right up to the finish line (hopefully).

Fuel use will be set such that it will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to make half the race on one tank, so that pitting around eight laps in might be a consideration. But do you put new tyres on too? Who knows.

Tuning prohibited, track limits and collision penalties will be on. The time will be mid day, and there will be no chance of rain.


Further details to follow, but since there are only a few days left before it is scheduled to take place, I thought I should get a thread running, to see what interest there is.


Cheers, Zo,

 

[Hun200kmh]

Don't like GT7 much, but since this is a TDR event, I'm in 👍

 

[half_sourly]

Moderately likely to join.

 

[jammy21]

I think I could do this.

 

[Zolon32]

Glad to have you aboard chaps. Anyone got any experience racing against Sophie? I've done a little bit, and found it to be a lot better than the usual AI serving. Just thinking of putting one or two in to mix it up a bit.

 

[half_sourly]

Glad to have you aboard chaps. Anyone got any experience racing against Sophie? I've done a little bit, and found it to be a lot better than the usual AI serving. Just thinking of putting one or two in to mix it up a bit.

Nope.

 

[Zolon32]

Nope.

Half, please try to be a bit less opaque with your replies, I'm really having difficulty understanding what you mean.

Anyway, I can recommend it, and if anyone knows how to disable the cartoon reactions the 'drivers' of the other cars make, please let me know how. But in any case, I found to my surprise that I was able to more or less ignore that slight irritation, and enjoyed the fact that the cars behaved much more like they were being driven by fallible human beings than any other AI I have encountered.

 

[Hun200kmh]

I sincerely have no clue on whatever it is that you're writing about. I'll guess it is AI driven car(s) ? IIRC the AI in GT7 was atrocious but I can live with that!

 

[jammy21]

Sophie includes PS5/GranTurismo. I'm still using PS4 so no Sophie.

 

[bloodyboyblue]

So we’re only allowed to switch between SS and SH tires at the end of lap 16, so if we change tires at any other point we’re only allowed to put on another set of the same compound? Of course I haven’t practiced or even played the game this week so I don’t know what the wear will be like but for example if we start on SS and pit on lap 8, we have to put on another set of SS?

 

[Zolon32]

So we’re only allowed to switch between SS and SH tires at the end of lap 16, so if we change tires at any other point we’re only allowed to put on another set of the same compound? Of course I haven’t practiced or even played the game this week so I don’t know what the wear will be like but for example if we start on SS and pit on lap 8, we have to put on another set of SS?

Sorry Blue, missed this....

 

[Hun200kmh]

Well, that was an interesting experience for someone, like me, with litle knowledge of this game. GT7 definitely has a peculiar physics engine, with its own quirks, but I can't honestly fault it for them, maybe I'm so used to PCars2 that I simply need to readjust.

The car was way too understeery for my liking and the way it behaved mid corner was anyone's guess, but not something I could anticipate. High speed corners especially were a gamble for me. I guess experience with the game's physics would eventually shave this off.

The track itself (Grand Valley ... Highway?) was nothing I could recall from my GT3, 4 and 5 era of playing. I thought I was going to meet the good old Grand Valley Speedway but no. The track got bigger but not (IMHO) in a good way. Also wasn't aware of the penalty system being such that if you crash and lose time you are penalized with ... losing more time I can understand a penalty system that punishes corner cutting and wall riding but not this.

Back to the track, I remember thinking that the surface was way too smooth, its unrealistic smoothness spoils a bit of the much needed immersion. Speaking of immersion, the sound, especially engine sound, was better than I remember from previous Gran Turismos. The collision sound though remains the same, sounds a bit arcadey. Tyre sounds are also clearly outdated. Still about immersion, the force feedback was a bit weak (and that didn't help) but that I guess was because I didn't have the time to fine tune it before going into my first online adventure with GT7.

After Grand valley Highway we moved to Road Atlanta and all my criticism about track layout and smoothness vanished. This is a real track and I guess the fact that the PD guys couldn't add some blind "after-the-crest-hairpins" to it is to be thanked. Also the roughness of the track surface, with all its imperfections, was a good experience. I sucked at it, obviously (last I played Road Atlanta was 20 years ago, with a controller, in the old PS2 "24H of Le Mans" game) but - unlike Grand Valley - I will return to it (and therefore to GT7). I guess that one truth remains about Gran Turismo, the good tracks are the real tracks. Well that and Apricot Hill (does it exist in GT7? Have to check)

Final thoughts: Not knowing the tools a lobby host has at his/her disposal I still can't comment much on the online mode of GT7. One thing I think I got, you can't add AI cars into the mix of human players. Which I think is a loss, especially if you like online races with particular settings (like multi class endurance) that only 2 or 3 of your friends also enjoy. The other cars yesterday were a bit laggy/jittery - surprising considering we were only 4 and all european - but that's maybe because the servers get a bit overcrowded during a saturday evening.

In the famous words of our preferred T-101 ... I'll be back. Want to check a few more real tracks and understand a bit better the physics and how to be confortable in a car (something I wasn't yesterday, grrrr the understeer )

Thank you Zolon for getting me in a GT7 lobby, again it was a very interesting experience. And re-visiting Road Atlanta made it very worthwhile, I have a particular love for that track. Here's a goodie, old YT video still high among my favourites. It regards the final race of the ALMS champioship from many years ago, where a team I used to follow (Highcroft) became champions again. Beautifully made, you will recognize the track and the world class of cars racing there (although the focus of the video is obviously LMP2 and Highcroft, you'll notice that at the front you had the then-existing worldwide formidable battle between Audi and Peugeot)

Again, many thanks, hope you enjoy the video