GTPlanet Community Spotlight: Hot on the Wheels of Victory

– SRT Tomahawk S, Special Stage Route 5, June 26th, 2015, courtesy of TheChallenger.

The SRT Tomahawk is finally upon us, and perhaps extends the most challenging obstacle by way of the The Green Hell. That’s right, in order to obtain the X variant of the Tomahawk one must go around the Nordschleife and record a time of 6 minutes or less. Of course you can always buy all three versions directly from the dealership and call it a day, but how else are you going to be able to experience the high-stakes insanity right out of the gate?

There is now a maintenance notice for Gran Turismo 6 scheduled for next week Wednesday, July 1st – what could it be? As always, it would ideal to curb any and all expectations, especially given the realization that update 1.20 has just released. Having said that we expect there are at least two more updates coming to the game: the long-awaited course maker and the FIA Online Championship.

There’s quite a bit to get through this week so I only have but one question: who’s ready for the Spotlight?

GTPlanet Picture of the Week

This week’s featured image comes to us courtesy of Pebb and features the W Motors Lykan HyperSport touring Japan in Driveclub.

If you like what you’re seeing and have a suggestion for next week’s featured image, start a conversation with me, entitle it “GTPlanet Picture of the Week” and fill it to your heart’s content with suggestions and they’ll be featured in upcoming Community Spotlight articles. NOTE: You cannot elect your own work.

GTPlanet Gallery of the Week

As outlined in the first issue of the Spotlight, this particular segment takes the concept of the “Picture of the Week” and goes one further by celebrating an entire user gallery, but is in no way, shape, or form explicitly limited to galleries celebrating a game where a photomode feature is prominent.

That contrast begins from this week onward as this week’s featured gallery is Boffin’s photography gallery, and is brought to you courtesy of Boffin. Boffin’s gallery, opened on the 19th of July in 2009 is primarily focused on car culture; whether it be capturing the perfect moment on track or simply capturing the “essence” of an automobile out in public, the gallery makes great use of abstract angles, colors, and of course, cars.

The showcase doesn’t begin and end with car culture as you’ll soon find diversity by way of photos depicting the simple “slice of life” offering such beautiful vibrance, and environmental shots further diversifying the gallery.

You can find Boffin’s gallery here to look through a gallery soon to be 6 years in the making, offering a stark contrast in comparison to the galleries featured beforehand. The latest update to the gallery was last week Tuesday, June 16th.

If you like what you’re seeing and have a suggestion for next week’s featured gallery, start a conversation with me, entitle it “GTPlanet Gallery of the Week” and fill it to your heart’s content with suggestions and they’ll be featured in upcoming Community Spotlight articles. NOTE: You cannot elect your own gallery.

GTPlanet Thread of the Week – 1/64 Model Collectors

– Celebrating Porsche’s 1-2 victory at the 2015 24 Hours of Le Mans, June 14th, 2015, courtesy of RCKakashi14.

It’s no great mystery that the GTPlanet community loves cars and the culture entailed, and whether that love been born through a video game or the first car driven, it is something that will eventually evolve into something more; a hobby that transcends reasoning and cautioned spending habits, and one of the earliest addictions for many will have been diecast cars and/or models. This thread created by our own SVX on the 17th of July in 2009 wishes to celebrate just that, a gathering place for enthusiastic collectors of 1/64 scale models. A place to show off and discuss everything revolving around said collection.

– Coffee Skyline, May 23rd, 2015, courtesy of Daniel008.

The thread is highly active and you are more than encouraged to stop by the thread and show off your collection of assorted 1/64 scale models. You’ll even see plenty of custom pieces that will inspire you to conjure up your own that you’ll be anxious to show off. So what are you waiting for? Stop by the thread now, have a look around, and contribute to the discussion!

Need For Speed (2015)

With everything that went on last week, it’s no surprise this is one of the many games that fell into the list of things that I wound up not talking about for fear of talking about everything.

Need For Speed is a reboot of the franchise after 20 years and is returning to what is synonymous with the franchise – rich customization, authentic car culture, an open world, and an immersive narrative. If anything above sounds familiar there’s a good chance you’re thinking of NFS Underground, one of the most well-received titles in recent memory next to 2005’s Most Wanted.

The reboot will employ the following features, courtesy of the 2015 thread in our Need For Speed forum:

– Extensive customization (Speedhunters is obviously helping out)
– Night time only. (Dusk to dawn.)
– Runs on Frostbite engine
– Takes place in Ventura Bay (Los Angeles area)
– Map is about two times the size of Rivals
– Storyline
– Improved AllDrive
– Wheel compatibility (?)
– Online connectivity required. (GameSpot Article)
– 5 ways to play: Speed, Style, Build, Crew, and Outlaw.
– 2 handling modes: grippy (Black Box era) and drifty (Criterion era).

For even more on the reboot due for release on November 3rd, be sure to turn your attention toward the aforementioned thread in our NFS forum.

GTPlanet Vehicle of the Week

With a long history at Le Mans and more wins than any other manufacturer, Porsche returned to the top level of endurance racing in 2014 with the 919 Hybrid but would ultimately fall unfortunate as the No. 20 car, driven by Mark Webber, suffered a broken anti-roll bar with just one hour left in the race after closing in on the leading No. 1 Audi R18 e-tron quattro.

Revamped for 2015, the second-generation 919 Hybrid is touted as a “comprehensive evolution” in comparison to last year’s car. The output of this year’s car, a 2.0L twin-turbocharged V4 unit, powers the rear axle with more than 500 horsepower, and when the driver recalls the stored energy from the battery, an additional 400 horsepower drives the front axle thus allowing the 919 Hybrid to temporarily assume the role of a four-wheel drive car with around 1,000 horsepower.

———

Mission accomplished: Porsche has achieved its 17th overall Le Mans victory at the 83rd running of the famous 24-Hour race in a perfect way with a one-two finish. Drivers Earl Bamber (NZ), Nico Hülkenberg (GER) and Nick Tandy (GB) won the coveted trophy in their innovative Porsche 919 Hybrid exactly 45 years after Porsche’s first overall win at La Sarthe was achieved. Timo Bernhard (GER), Brendon Hartley (NZ) and Mark Webber (AUS) in the sister car added the icing on the cake when they came home in second. Romain Dumas (FR), Neel Jani (CH) and Marc Lieb (GER) brought home the third Porsche 919 Hybrid in fifth.

No other brand has managed to win the world’s toughest endurance race so many times and is connected that closely to the myth of Le Mans. The previous win was also a one-two – back in 1998 when Allan McNish (GBR), Laurent Aiello (FRA) and Stéphane Ortelli (MC) finished first in their Porsche GT1.

– Borrowed from the official press release, which you can find here.

What’s Your Audio/Home Cinema Setup?

Another expensive hobby is, without any doubt, electronics. This thread started by our own 2ez2KiLL on the 21st of February in 2004 cuts straight to the point: what’s your setup for your entertainment needs? There are some outright impressive setups in the thread, ranging from full-on dedicated rooms offering a theater-like experience to living rooms to pictures that can only be described as “cinema porn”.

– May 16th, 2014, courtesy of 12thgear.

If you’ve yet to share your cinema experience with the rest of the community you can do so in the thread right here. For those of you wondering, I’m working with a 39 1/2″ 1080p LCD with the old yet still capable Logitech Z-5450 5.1 surround system, but having said that I am looking to upgrade the system before year’s end.

GTPlanet Tune of the Week

– Renault Clio Cup, April 24th, 2015, courtesy of taz.

This week’s featured tune, recommended to us by Im_Lukas and courtesy of Johnnypenso, features the Renault Clip Cup Car tuned to dominate around Oulton Park Circuit.

“After trying to figure out how to tune this car for an hour I wanted to punch myself in the face. I had no trouble fixing the crazy oversteer, but a ton of trouble with the front left overheating and trouble going fast. For an hour or more I was stuck in the low 1:50’s but after monkeying around with the LSD to get a better jump out of the corners, the sway bars to make the car more responsive in the chicanes, and smoothing out my technique, it finally came together. I still can’t get the left front under 100C for too long without torpedoing the tune and seeing as how this is a hotlap competition, I left it the way it was and you get one or two good laps out of it before the left front overheats. Be prepared for some restarts!

I did use the paddles for this one although I think the car comes with a shifter. ABS and TC are off but you can use a lot of brake pressure before locking up the wheels when braking in a straight line. Trailing throttle in the sweepers for smooth entry is one of the keys to speed. The exit to the first chicane was also very challenging for me and it took me a while to figure out the combination of brake/turn/throttle to smooth it out. I followed a couple of the lead ghosts and they seem legit. They carry more speed through the fast corners than I do, but I can’t figure out how they do it. Ultimately I ended up with a 1:48.988 for 9th place, but a full two seconds back.”

Stop by Penso’s Garage for the full details on the tune and have a go in a car that isn’t afraid to lean into corners should you be so daring.

Reiza Simracing Bonanza! | Crowdfunding Campaign

See our Game Stock Car thread for more details!

The Last Lap

So, AMD’s “Fiji” silicon is now out in the wild in the form of the Radeon R9 Fury X (bet you can’t say that five times fast), the first GPU in the world to use High-Bandwidth Memory. What is HBM you ask? To save an incredibly long-winded dialogue of technical babble, one of the key benefits of HBM is space. Now before anyone says “performance and efficiency should be the first things mentioned!” nothing will drive the point home more directly than a comparison of how much space is saved, as you’ll now see below.

Mind you, power and efficiency are the cornerstones of HBM but you can’t illustrate that without numbers or comparison graphs which would muddy things. I’m trying to keep this as simple and straight-to-the-point as possible.

HBM affords the ability to not only fabricate smaller PCB wafers (printed circuit board) as already evidenced by the R9 Fury, it also allows the memory chips themselves to be moved directly onto the same package as the GPU die itself. It is genuinely an interesting piece of tech that will undoubtedly mature as the months move forward before Nvidia introduces HBM2 next year with their new GPU codenamed “Pascal”. For those of you wondering what the Fury X looks like…

– Image borrowed from TechPowerUp.

I’m looking forward to picking one of these up but I’ll sit on my GTX 970 for the time being as the current performance numbers are incredibly underwhelming. It should come into it’s own soon enough, hopefully before the $100 cheaper R9 Fury launches. And then there’s the dual GPU unnamed Fury variant to look forward to.

As you have no doubt noticed by now, the Spotlight (I almost wrote Rewind again!) has a different look to it this week, a different feeling – a feeling that will be carried out for the foreseeable future. It was always my intention to highlight almost everything the GTPlanet community engages in and it finally felt like the right time to slowly begin to roll out these changes that will, given enough time, make the Spotlight (I almost did it again!) a unique outlet week in and week out. There may even come a point where my tech musings become a regular staple of the Spotlight as I do enjoy talking about PC’s and their anything-but-stagnant assorted technologies and innovations.

There’s still so much to talk about and so much to cover, but I’ll leave you to wonder what those things could be and when they’re coming. So until next week, keep racing!

See more articles on GTPlanet Community Spotlight and GTPlanet Member of the Week.