Some very good questions raised here, I have some thoughts/opinions I'll put out there for everyone to chew on.
Cars: We're going to try to be as authentic as possible so I'd like to figure out a way to use the F1 cars. I'd like to do some testing to see if we could get the 2 models on a fairly level playing field, but I've done some reading on this and I'm not sure if it's possible because they're 2 totally different machine's. Owens and I will do some testing though to see if we can make it work. If we can get both models on the grid then it wouldn't be quite so visually boring. 👍
I also really want to try the multiple tire rule out, it would make a much bigger difference on a road course than the oval.
But, both those cars are very expensive and not everybody has them or can get them. I'm not sure if they can be acquired with a ticket or not, but the lack of availability may be something we have to take into consideration. For the sake of simplicity, we may be forced to use the FGT. If we do, we will try to get them spec'd to the real life lap times.
Social Group: Having a main thread in the Online Racing Forum seems to work out well, but a social group can be handy. What I'd like to do is have a social group to supplement the main thread. I could setup areas in the social group for rules, registration, videos/pics, members list etc. so we could link to them in the main thread and keep some of the clutter down. Most of the discussion would take place in the main thread where it can be seen easily and attract interest. If nothing else it would just serve as a way to keep track of everyone because once you join you'll be on the "group members list" and we could easily find people.
The Monaco GP will probably be at least a few weeks away, we have a lot of testing to do and need to decide on a format. The Indy 500 didn't go quite as smoothly (starting procedure, connection issues) as we hoped, but I think we learned quite a bit and we can put that knowledge towards the next event. Also, because of the PSN being out for so long we were really scrambling to get the Indy 500 together, but we should have time to get everything sorted and tested for the next event. 👍 We really want to do 3 rounds of knockout qualifying, but so far I haven't been able to figure out a way to make it work within the limitations of GT5. I really enjoyed how we did a week of qualifying for the 500 and had an exciting bump day, if we can't figure out how to make knockout qualifying work we might go back to a similar version of that. Any ideas or suggestions about how to make knockout qualifying work are encouraged.
Side note: Was anybody able to watch the video stream I had up during the race? I glanced down at it during the pitstops and it showed I usually had around 10 viewers throughout the race. I literally threw that together right before the race, but it seemed to work out. Owens is going to try to get a webcam too so we can have at least 2 feeds up during the Monaco GP. If anybody else has a webcam and would like to broadcast during the race, that would be awesome! I love the idea of a gang of GTP members being able to view our races! I ran the feed through Justin TV, it's free and very easy, I was registered and broadcasting within 90 seconds. I just set the cam in front of my wheel so all it could see was the tv, I'd love to have 3 or 4 views up during the race!
Thanks again for all the great feedback and participation. 👍 Hopefully this will be the first of many fantastic, authentic events!
Brandon
