Sim racing: PC, PS3, XBox, Wii

@Nate....I agree with the other posts about the PS3. GT5 is going to be the benchmark for race sims. And with the new F1 and WRC games coming out it looks to be a banner year! Just need a cheap way of mounting my G27 so I can play it on the PS3......:sad:

I have not tried iRacing as I have been a part of a great group of guys that race a modded version of rFactor. Check out News — Grid Motorsports for more info. Lots of fun !

 

Pursuit of perfection keeps Gran Turismo 5 in the pits

Nov. 2 was the latest release date announced for Gran Turismo 5, but it has sadly come and gone with still no game on store shelves. Needless to say, frustration in the gaming and automotive circles is high, and Sony hasn't come forward with a new date yet.

In a bid to get some answers, we caught up with Mr. Gran Turismo himself, Kazunori Yamauchi, who is in Las Vegas for the eighth-annual Gran Turismo awards during the SEMA show. We talked about the future of the Gran Turismo franchise, his cars, the reasons for all the game delays, and we asked the most important question of all: When will GT5 be released?

We know you're here for SEMA and that you're giving out the Gran Turismo awards, this being the eighth-annual one. Can you tell us how this award came about?

First off, all of us at Polyphony have a lot of curiosity. The start of it all was really us wondering how we could get involved in a show like SEMA, which is really one of the biggest automotive shows in the world.

There are five categories in the awards including best hot rod, Asian import, European import, domestic and truck/SUV. Then it's your job to pick the best in show from those five. What's the most important thing you look for when picking the best in show?

Looking back at the cars that have won in the past, the criteria for a car to win the Gran Turismo award is not necessarily speed. It hasn't always been the fastest car that has won. I think what's more important is the story behind the car, the background and the story that caused the car to take shape. It's really hard to express in a few words because when you look at something that is really nice, it kind of comes to you.

So this year's winner is going to be in the next Gran Turismo installment, which I'm presuming will be Gran Turismo 6. It's probably too late for Gran Turismo 5, right?

Right.

You have this award at SEMA and you sponsor the 24 Hours of Nürburgring. Gran Turismo has become more than a video game now. What's next for the brand?

We love cars and have the utmost respect for the people who make cars. What motivates me is what makes people who make cars happier and thing that cause them to be energized.

It's been many years since the first Gran Turismo on PlayStation One. When you were working on the original game, did you ever think that this game would get as big as it today and have the die-hard following?

I didn't expect it at all. It really is an honor.

What's the most special thing about the series to you?

It's hard to say, but I think it's that strive for perfection that it boils down to.

That strive for perfection is probably a tough part of the job, but a lot of people look at you and see that you play with cars and are making a video game. A lot of kids growing up dream of being video-game designers, designing cars or driving cars for a living. But out of all the things, what's the most stressful part, or what you consider the worst part of your job?

I think video games being developed now, the scale is getting bigger and bigger. We have a 140 staff at Polyphony Digital working on Gran Turismo, and if you include all the external people involved in the development process, there's several times more than that. With that many people involved, it's quite hard to keep the project on a single track during that development process. That's something that is hard to balance.

We're all car guys here, and I know you have an impressive collection of cars. What's your latest car purchase in the past year?

I actually haven't purchased anything in the last year. I'll think about what I want next after GT5 is out the door. One thing that has happened is that one of my Ford GTs was being tuned over the past few years and it was just completed a couple of months ago.

There's been a lot of build up to Gran Turismo 5, and one of the things you did was work with Adrian Newey on the Red Bull X1 Prototype. What do you have to do to get it in the game? Please don't say we have to complete 100 percent of the game before we get it.

Gran Turismo 5 has two different modes of play. One is the A-spec and one is the B-spec mode. In A-spec mode, you are the actual driver behind the wheel, and in B-spec mode, you are the director of a racing team where you nurture your drivers that race for you in the races. When you get to a certain level in either A-spec or B-spec, the X1 car will be available for people to try.

One interesting rumor out there is that there will be engine swaps. Any truth to that?

No, engine swaps, you can't do that.

Sorry, but we have to get to this. Nov. 2 was the last release date for Gran Turismo 5. What's the reason for the latest delay?

It was really to adjust it so it would be perfect. The first game that I made was Motor Toon Grand Prix for the first PlayStation. The year and a half that it was in development, the last three months as the release date approached, myself and my staff were getting three hours of sleep a day to try and get the game done. Near the end, the people from Sony came to our development studio and told us it was good enough and that we could release it. At the time, I probably wasn't thinking very clearly, being as exhausted as I was, and I talked myself into thinking this was good enough and it went to release.

But all the things I thought were not enough yet, the users said the exact same thing when the game came out. That was something I regretted very much when that happened because I knew it was coming. And that happened at the beginning of my career, and it was something I vowed would never happen again.

Do we have a new release date?

There should be an announcement sometime soon.

Will we be playing it by Christmas?

I think so.

I know you're trying to push GT5 out the door. Is development underway on GT6?

Yeah.

Can you give us any idea on what we can expect for GT6?

It's not something that we can talk that lightly on. It took 2,000 days to get all the ideas that went into GT5. It's just too early to be talking about GT6.


Read more: SEMA: Pursuit of perfection keeps Gran Turismo 5 in the pits

 

No big surprise, the date has been bumped so many times, I'd have been more surprised if it actually came out Nov. 2nd. Despite the maddening delays, it's definitely close this time.

 

Soooo many rumors floating on GT5 release date! Apparently the SONY Style retail website sez "on or around Nov 30", while folks who seem to have some sort of inside line to SONY believe it will be released on Dec 7 (both Tuesdays)...

I've got my pre-order in at Amazon, and am hoping to be able to spend some time with it this holiday season, but in the meantime, on the PC, iRacing has released their 2010 Season 4 build, which replaces the Pontiac Solstice with both left and right-hand drive versions of the Mazda Miata... It's the best build yet, with improved graphics, a much-improved tire model, and the Miatas - though handicapped somewhat by their smaller tires, are far more interesting and fun to drive than the Pontiac was. (Fans of the Slowstice... er, the Soulless, I mean the Solstice.. need not worry; it is still available as one of the basic cars.)

Also new in iRacing as an add-on, is last year's Williams F1 racer, which is a hoot to drive... And best of all, iRacing has implemented "FUN" series competitions, which allow any members to drive the F1 cars in organized competition events throughout the season, without the need to attain a high-level license first!

Many new tracks are on the way, and there are some nice promotional packages going on right now....

How 'bout the Grand Prix Promo, which gets you a year of iRacing membership (including 5 cars and seven tracks in 14 configurations), PLUS the Williams F1, PLUS two additional world tracks, Silverstone and Zandvoort, both of which have multiple configurations, for only $75! Offer good until December 31st this year.

For those who might be a little timid about that kind of outlay, there's also a much easier on the wallet "Buy 1 Get 2 Free" deal, which gives you three months membership for the price of one, $12. Not sure when that one expires... [edit: Just checked, and this one expires Nov 30, 2010]

Check out iRacing.com | The Premier Online Sim Racing Game and look for the "promotions" page.

If you do decide to sign up, I'd be much obliged if you were to reference my email address am0ebah (at) yahoo.com so I can get a few free credits for hosting private sessions and purchasing additional content. Whether you give me a referral or not, I hope to see more of you online at iRacing. I thought it was great when I joined last Spring, and it has improved substantially with each build since then.

_Dave_

 

Jerry, found this on Amazon today, might be a reasonably cost-effective solution to mounting yer wheel:



<$100...

[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Regular-Xlerator-Logitech-Driving-Playstation-3/dp/B002V3KOMS/ref=tag_dpp_lp_edpp_ttl_in"]Amazon.com: Regular Xlerator Wheel Stand for Logitech Driving Force GT: Video Games: Reviews, Prices & more@@AMEPARAM@@http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41OSuVS0PTL.@@AMEPARAM@@41OSuVS0PTL[/ame]

_Dave_

 

I just got myself that same wheel stand Dave and am loving it. I love being able to sit at the couch and race all day then simply unplug my G27 and stand it up in the corner.

Another great option for online sim racing is at News &mdash; Grid Motorsports. A bunch of really nice guys and a very refreshing take on the whole online racing thing. They race on a modded version of rFactor and have weekly races Fri and Sat's. They race everything from touring car tin-tops, to older F1, and even a CART (type) car.
Check them out!

I heard from a guy who knows a guy at a distribution warehouse that the street date is tentatively 12-21 for GT5............we'll see.

 

So do you guys really think GT5 > GTR2 from Simbin on the PC?

From the preview/demo of GT5 a year or so ago, it still felt a bit arcade like compared to GTR2.

Of course, it's a lot easier to plug a PS3 into your TV set...

 

Hey guys. I don't post much anywhere, but I got sucked into this topic - I'm pretty passionate about it. Hope you don't mind me sharing my .02.

I own all of the various releases of Gran Turismo so I guess you could say I'm a pretty big fan. Especially considering I only own 4 other Playstation games outside of the GT series and one of those is Tourist Trophy -which is the sport bike equivalent of GT.
I also subscribe to iRacing and enjoy it very much. (I had to build a new PC to get it to run the way I wanted it to though.)
I've run many PC racing sims that use the same basic old Papyrus (which EA bought) engine that has evolved into what iRacing uses. Grand Prix Legends, EA's NASCAR, EA's Indy Car etc. (BTW - Grand Prix Legends was AWESOME!)

So yeah, I'm a armchair racing geek. (I do trackdays in my MINI too though!)

IMHO, GranTurismo, while it's the most "sim" like of any of the console driving games is still not a "sim" like iRacing or rFactor because of 1) the physics aren't stressed quite enough. (that's just for playability by the less serious crowd) and 2) they haven't done anything to nurture the competitive sim side of the game. Putting in some iRacing type algorithms for keeping the riff-raff to a minimum would be a HUGE step in the right direction.

The PS3 renders graphics way better than your average PC, moreover, Polyphony makes works of art when they create the graphics for a game.
The physics between the two are close but the nod goes to iRacing.
Which is cool because that's what iRacing is about.
But lord, if you could take GT's graphics, tweek the physics and then add iRacing's format - - well, I'd probably wind up divorced! :lol:

All that being said, I also have GT5 in my Amazon cart...waiting.
I just saw on two different sources that Sonystyle.com now has GT5 releasing Nov.30th. I can't get to sonystyle.com to confirm this though. I won't hold my breath - but we can hope!
**just got on to sonystyle.com and they do show 11/30/10 as the release date now.

 

So did iRacing overtake Simbin's GTR2 in the last few years as the PC sim of choice?
Last time I spent any time over at NoGripRacing.com, iRacing was just getting off the ground and it was all about GTR2...

Curiously yours..
Joe

 

That's the same one I have. Love it. Glad you were able to make it happen.

Now, all I need* is a nice monitor that's big enough to see with my myopic eyesight, without busting the bank or filling the room... A decent 26" monitor would prolly do just fine...

_Dave_

* and of course Gran Turismo 5!

 

Scott, thanks for the link to Grid Motorsports. I hadn't seen that before. Looks interesting, but I'm planning to stick with iRacing for a while (exception: Gran Turismo 5, because I too purchased a PS3 in order to run GT5, and also have every release of Gran Turismo, and not a lot else on the PS - I did get Grid and Need For Speed SHIFT, both of which got stale fairly quickly.)

Anyway, the main reasons I like iRacing over all the variations or rFactor and GTr and whatever else is out there for the PC is because with iRacing, there's very little code actually resident on the local PC (I'm running a 32GB XP Partition under Boot Camp on my 2008 MacBook Pro, and the freakin' OS uses most of that, so I have very little space for software) and because of the way the racing is run there.

There's no cheating, as far as I can tell, mainly because most of the code is on the iRacing server, and therefore hard to get at to tweak, so it's a level playing field; Your actions have consequences, and it can be very challenging to maintain a decent safety rating while trying to accumulate competition experience to move up through the license levels; and there is ALWAYS a bunch of folks online racing, or practicing, or holding hosted sessions. Many pro drivers around, and almost everyone seems willing to help out a newbie, and forgive the inevitable minor transgressions.

I think iRacing looks and feel better than rFactor and the others too.

Downsides:

Limited selection of cars and tracks because there is no user-generated content, but they are constantly expanding the selection and every new piece of content is of the highest quality.

You have to pay for use of additional cars and tracks, and you have to pay monthly or annual membership fees to keep racing - but that means just about everybody there is motivated and interested and fairly serious about making it a worthwhile experience.

You MUST be online and have a reasonably fast internet connection to do ANYTHING. Even to select paint colors, or just to look at a car or track. I think the quality of the internet connection is more crucial than the power of the PC you run it on. My old laptop graphics card can get me some pretty decent-looking graphics at 60 frames per second or more most of the time, and framerate seems to be the biggest factor in how realistic it feels.

And you have to be careful with your on-track behavior during official events, to avoid dragging down your safety rating and getting demoted to a lower license level, and thereby not able to compete with some of the better cars. (Of course the new FUN series helps with that, and you are free to "test" any car/track combo you "own" by yourself, and you can always set up a hosted session for $3 and make it open to everyone, or password protect it, so that you can control who gets to participate. We've had a bunch of 4-hour invite-only practice sessions on various tracks with all kinds of cars.)

Anyway, not intending to knock the other PC options, just explaining my choice.

So... when's GT5 coming?

_Dave_

 

New Official Gran Turismo 5 release date - November 24, 2010!

Just saw this announced on several sites, including SONY's Playstation Gran Turismo Forum. Even Amazon.com is showing this date now.

This is apparently a worldwide release date, and looks to be as genuine as possible.

Here's a link to KOTAKU's announcement, referred from Jalopnik: Gran Turismo 5 Has a Release Date, For Reals, Really Reals, Seriously

And here's the complete official car and track list: The Cars, Tracks of Gran Turismo 5

I know what I'll be doing on Thanksgiving and Black Friday...

_Dave_

 

I am.....what is your PSN name?

Mine is .......wait for it......wait...........scottinbend!

 

I think I am at level 15/16 on A-spec. Have got the first 3 licenses and a few cars.