GTPlanet Community Spotlight: Paranoid, Complicated, and Down for Another Thrill

– Audi R8 LMS at Tokyo R246, July 30th, 2015, courtesy of edwinpr.

Just when you think it’s all calmed down and you can finally kick your feet back and rake in some relaxation, in comes Gamescom with its own share of tantalizing information. Make no mistake, me kicking my feet back and raking in any kind of relaxation with everything that was going on prior to Gamescom was nothing but a pipe dream but it drives the point home; a point that’s been liberally hammered upon since E3 and prior, and it’s the fact that 2015 is action-packed with racing games and virtually every other game genre under the sun.

Over the past two weeks a sentiment that was once celebrating the wealth of opportunities available at the helm of the number of racing games available throughout this year quickly became one that erred on the side of caution, it’s no fairy tale that too much of anything is never a good thing – your physician will attest to this, and while the two matters may rest on two completely different plateaus the one constant between them is moderation.

Having said this here’s an entirely different challenge: if you could borrow the best aspects from every racing game due out this year, what would you borrow, why, and what would you end up naming that unholy amalgamation of everything awesome?

While that’s being pondered I have but one question: who’s ready for the Spotlight?

GTPlanet Picture of the Week

This week’s featured image, recommended to us by doblocruiser and courtesy of MeanElf features the 2010 Murciélago LP 670–4 SV.

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

– July 11th, 2015, courtesy of Giulietta73.

Once a month, instead of highlighting a single gallery and placing the spotlight on one individual, the spotlight will be placed on multiple people at once showcasing their work in a gallery open to everyone, thus allowing for even richer discussion and participation.

This week’s featured gallery is a community effort all in the vein of rivalry.

“I had this idea in my head floating around for a while, basically just share your photos of epic rivalries within Gran Turismo 6. It could be a battle of two racing cars of the same series, or two road cars from rival manufacturers, whether it be on the track or the road, post your shots here.”

You can find the appropriately-titled thread here that was championed by our own MrWaflz55 if you want to take a look at the rivalries cooked up by our community thus far. When I came across the thread originally I imagined it would be entirely based around real rivalries like those between Ferrari and Ford, Ferrari and Lamborghini, Aston Martin and Jaguar (if for no other reason than Die Another Day), and the likes thereof. It’s refreshing knowing that it’s simply any rivalry for any reason under any circumstance. Let’s get it on!

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 – The Real Driving Simulator No More?

– Tribute to the late Juan Manuel Fangio, entitled “Honor”, July 31st, 2015, courtesy of Alex de Bonis.

Before your imagination runs wild, this thread, put together by our own VBR cuts straight to the point with the following question: Should PD drop “The Real Driving Simulator” slogan for the next GT game? My personal thoughts on the matter lean toward “Absolutely not.” because not only is “The Real Driving Simulator” synonymous with Gran Turismo, but changing such a recognized phrase would essentially be creating an entirely new identity, an all-new persona for a game that quite honestly doesn’t need it.

Of course it isn’t perfect but the slogan itself is slightly being taken out of the original context; when Gran Turismo first hit consoles in 1997 it was the only game of its kind and had no real competition. Now with the landscape being as it is that same slogan comes across as disingenuous to some as it now has fierce competition, with more newcomers seeimngly rising by the hour and yet this isn’t enough of a reason for that slogan to be discontinued in lieu of something else.

What’s your opinion on the matter? Drop by the thread and let us know whether you think the slogan should remain as is or dropped altogether.

First Formula Car for R3E Previewed

This is exciting, but of course I would say that because when have I ever been impartial to a Formula car? Sector3 Studios, formerly known as SimBin Studios, have previewed the FR2, the first open wheel car to hit RaceRoom Racing Experience. In a game dominated by sports cars and prototypes you could very well imagine how much diversity this is going to add when it’s made available in game when the time comes.

The Formula RaceRoom 2 was first seen in a developer stream this past May where the point was made that the team wants not just one Formula car but multiple, which could make some very interesting track time if and when this comes to fruition.

Then there’s Spa-Francorchamps which also hasn’t been seen since that same developer stream this past May, and considering both the vehicle and track models look fairly complete could this be indicating that both these pieces of content are closer to release than is being let on?

Rally World RX Now Available for DiRT Rally

The first of two rallycross-themed updates for Codemasters’ DiRT Rally is now out in the wild, and the update itself is a part of the game’s official partnership with the FIA World Rallycross Championship. Another Rallycross-themed update is due that will introduce yet another new track, more rallycross cars, and online play.

The details of the first update are as follows:

Features

• Embark on a new World RX Career and Custom Events
• Two new circuits, Höljes, Sweden and Lydden Hill, England both with three routes each
• Official FIA Rallycross Championship drivers, cars and liveries
• Anti-cheat stuff which will stop the small few from messing up our leaderboards. Our next step is to tell your mum you’ve been cheating – don’t say we didn’t warn you
• Ability to identify your device as a wheel if you own one which isn’t supported yet
• A brand new DiRT Daily Event type where you’ll be competing against the community Delta
• Ability to repair a puncture mid-stage
• Ability to disable replays in the options (this should help fix the stuttering some users experience)
• Ability to remove the drivers arms without causing him to bleedout
• Now have the ability to return the wheel back to zero degrees when your car is reset

Additions

• Three new World RX cars: the Ford Fiesta WRX, Volkswagen Polo Rallycross and Peugeot 208 WRX.
• Two new tracks: Lydden Hill, UK and Höljes, Sweden.
• New music tracks for your listening pleasure.
• Toggle added to enable centring of the steering wheel when the car is reset to track or starting a new race. This can be turned on/off from the “Advanced Wheel” menu in the options menu by toggling “Centre Steering”. The strength of this effect can be tuned from the “Vibration and Feedback” menu by changing “Steering Centre Force”.
• Added a FFB slider to control the strength of the force applied when centring the wheel.
• Clutch deadzone and saturation sliders have been added to the advanced wheel options screen.
• Added support for the Leobodnar Sim Steering FFB system.
• A game preference has been added to allow for the driver arms and steering wheel to be hidden when using an interior camera.
• Progress bar now has red/green markers showing the split when completing a sector.

 Fixes

• The “Little Light” achievement now unlocks after fulfilling the criteria.
• Win Championship based achievements now unlock after a player loses an event during that championship… Sorry.
• All Hillclimb achievements now unlock correctly when the requirements are met.
• Terminal reset lines on the Monte Carlo rally route Pra d’Alart have been pushed back from the track edge.
• General art fixes to the Germany routes.
• Visual co-driver calls improved throughout all tracks.
• Ambience added to German routes.
• Various fixes to benchmark mode race playback
• Solved issue where the game would freeze and stutter while driving when the user has multiple hard drives.
• Added functionality to override the type of device for a controller or wheel – enabling advanced options for these input device respectively.
• Steering linearity is now being applied to the Microsoft Wireless Speed Wheel.
• Position difference. Indicator shown in the Championship Standings for a Hillclimb event now displays the change in championship positions.
• Fixed an issue where the distance required to unlock the later engineers wasn’t updating.
• Fix for replay camera sequence sometimes getting stuck on the onboard camera.
• Issue where the default vehicle tuning settings were not being applied correctly is now fixed.
• Fixed an issue where cars would flip or launch into the air when driving at speed near low height objects… We’re gonna miss watching those videos.
• Upgraded motion platform and telemetry peripheral support so you can now run as many DBox and UDP streams as you want, simultaneously without the need for 3rd party software.
• Finishing 16th in a championship event will now give considerably less rewards.
• Fixed a problem where the game would cause random inputs in the menus that didn’t come from you.
• Various fixes to improve stability and reduce jitter in post race cut scene and replays.
• Fixed the championship position indicators displaying the wrong information.
• Fixed issue where warning message were still present on screen after completing an event.
• Updated vibration and feedback screen to display descriptions for each of the options.
• A wide range of fixes and tweaks to prepare for the upcoming content.

GTPlanet Vehicles of the Week

GTPlanet Tune of the Week

– December 7th, 2013, courtesy of Mazda787.

Once every month we showcase the community’s efforts to tame/tune the Car of the Week, and this month is no different, so let’s get right down to business.

“Another month, and another request! This month is only a single car, but I’m sure many will enjoy the choice. I normally give credit to the one with the suggestion, but will quote this time around, from steefpeef in my garage:

I enjoy driving a tune, even sometimes racing it, and the 515 and 525 are really different so I think it is a good idea to separate them.

…A Mazda RX500 tune! It is a cheat car but so much fun, and there are not many tunes for it out there. I hope one day that it will be the tune of the month so there will be lots of super tunes for it, like the S7 some weeks ago.”

A unique challenge for the month of August is what you’re looking at here, with a unique car to boot. How do you intend to tame the rotary powered RX500? If you’re up for the challenge then have a look at this month’s thread and have at it!

The Last Lap

Right away I’d like to give my apologies for the late arrival, the environment I write in was less than hospitable this week and I couldn’t bring myself to focus on getting this out sooner, but seeing as it’s later in the evening now things are far more tolerable and here we are. With that said, what an interesting juxtaposition the last two issues of the Spotlight have been. 2015 is definitely overrun with racing titles and updates to pre-existing titles from last year, but how much is too much? Is there such a thing as too much and if there isn’t where can a line be drawn?

I’ve been playing racing games for about as long as I can remember and there has never been any one time that I can recall where every direction that can possibly be looked toward was a racing game either on the horizon or receiving a new lease on its shelf life. It truly is an amazing time and I’ll stick by that, however, the other side of that coin deserves just as much attention as it can very well lead to a proverbial “stock market crash”. Okay, maybe not as this is still a niche genre even though it’s expanding at an exponential rate thanks to something being available for just about everyone and their mother’s mother.

If you’re wondering why this week’s title rolls off the tongue and sounds familiar that’s because it should as I’m again loosely referencing a song from Gran Turismo’s past, this time it’s “I Think I’m Paranoid” by Garbage. It’s a good thing going these homage titles but worry not about them being overused because that’s simply not going to happen; I’m not going to bring up the topic of moderation and then deliberately overuse something that works – what do you think I am, mad?

That’s a little teaser image of The Crew: Wild Run which was featured in the Spotlight once before a few weeks ago, and is set to have another place in the Spotlight next week. I’m none too sure about what’s going on with that C7 but I’m loving it to pieces, and is that a Peterbilt in the background?

I played the beta for the game extensively, so much so that it somehow completely thwarted my intentions of actually picking up the game on release which I had every intention of doing, but Wild Run may just be the saving grace I need.

This past Wednesday I had a new office/gaming chair delivered to my door but I’ll save those details for next week seeing as I’ve yammered on long enough as is alongside even more racing goodies and whatever else I can dig out from this pile of news that’s bound to bury me whole sometime soon.

Until next week you all know what to do, keep racing!

See more articles on GTPlanet Community Spotlight.