Here’s a replay of a recent online race I took part in on Gran Tursimo. I qualified third and then managed to win.
It was a good race although nothing too strenuous. It’s best to qualify as high as possible because there’s normally a massive shunt-scene at the first corner if you are lower down. My general method for online racing is to try and steer clear of other cars and take a wider line in corners if there are cars around me. There have been many times that I have been driving well and then some wanker punts me off! He gets a slow down penalty of 4 seconds and I end up at the back of the field. I hate that!
I spent a few delightful hours at Brands Hatch over the weekend to watch the Blancpain GT Series Sprint Races. I do like this type of car. I think I have grown out of F1, it’s not that interesting and full of masses of bullshit. I prefer the “honesty” of GT and Le Mans Prototype type racing. This closed-wheel racing seems more fun and spectacular. I know these cars don’t really bear much more than a passing resemblance to their road-going cousins but I like the look, sound and overall racing of these vehicles.
Audi R8 LMS
The first part of the WEEKEND OF NOISE was a trip to Norwich for Thrashersaurus. This was the second part of the weekend and my ears were still ringing from seeing Xentrix play the Brickmakers.
The day started with a free pitwalk and a chance to get close to the cars and drivers. Hence the above picture.
Anyway, the first race watched was the GT 4 European Series with many cars on the grid it was pretty good but there was a number of safety car periods and this stifled the racing somewhat, but it did mean there was a good lot of close racing.
I did like the KTM cars which had a lovely rear end.
After that was the first of the sprint races for the GT series and the hour of racing included a pitstop and driver change. It was an impressive sight and good fun to watch. The weather was perfect, lovely and sunny. You know it’s summer when the circuit commentators are reminding spectators to put on plenty of sunscreen.
The beginning of the race was a rolling start and I captured it here:
As I watched the race from the Brabham Straight I got to see the podium celebrations:
Final Podium
It was a good day with plenty of noise and ice cream.
Audio R8 LMS GT4
It’s very nice being back at Brands Hatch. It’s the place I spend an awful lot of 2004 and 2005, almost every Sunday. Not sure I could have that commitment again but a couple of times a year seems a good start.
Just because I can, I decided to have a go racing a similar race to the GT series on Gran Turismo and, just because I like most of you, I have uploaded that replay on to YouTube. Enjoy (or not).
Having looked recently at the energy I use in the house and while driving I thought I’d turn my attention to not-real things. Specifically my racing life within the game Gran Turismo Sport.
Pink Collection
Here is a collection of my pink cars taken in Hawaii. I like the photo mode in the game but it’s not the be all and end all for me. I have seen some people comment that the car editing and photomode tend to be their favourite parts but not me. I like racing the cars and the other aspects of the game are incidental.
There’s a page of achievements that encourages you to play more:
Achievements GT
The row of pink is lacking as that is online racing and it’s quite unlikely I’ll get those filled up. Unless I find “that one race” I won’t get many pole positions, I need to find “that one race” and play it over and over.
So, the achievements page will give actual figures and from that I can work out my average speed and fuel consumption.
GT Sport TimeGT Sport Distance
So, my average speed is 96 miles per hour. Given that some tracks are quite twisty I think that’s a pretty good speed. Even more so that I have spent the time to complete all the licence tests and every track experience. I do tend to race in group 3 or 4 cars as I find them the most fun.
GT Sport Fuel
I have used 8,567 litres of fuel within the game to race 9,242 miles. So, I’ve done that maths and that gives:
4.86 miles per gallon
I have no idea how this fits with real racing cars. We can have an estimate I think. Current F1 cars have a tank that can hold 100kg of fuel which is about 125 litres. F1 race distance is mandated at at least 305km. I’ll do the maths for you again and the fuel consumption turns out to be around:
6.8 miles per gallon
I guess that this all seems reasonable. A high fuel consumption within the game that matches the real life is probably closely worked into the game and I’m happy with the figures the game has produced.
I don’t like the use of miles per gallon as we should, by all rights, in this country use the standard of litres per 100km as the rest of the EU does but people don’t really want to change, especially those old weirdos in power and the media.
I spent real money on a computer game add-in. Like I really pressed the “buy” button with the full knowledge that it was going to cost me money. However, I think it was worth it. I have spend actual £ on an F-18, and F-35 and now a MV22B Osprey.
There are real ospreys that fly over Lake Bassenthwaite in the Lake District and now I have my own [made from steel, although more likely carbon fibre as it’s a very expensive aircraft].
MV-22B Keswick ApproachMV-22B Head-On Lake DistrictMV-22B Keswick Take OffMV-22B Lining Up With Runway
What a lovely looking beast. I haven’t managed a successful landing yet. But I will keep trying.
This naming is incorrect. While that section of track is informally called Graham Hill it is not named anything officially.
The corner is most definitely named Graham Hill Bend but the downhill section is name-less. It is occasionally and informally referred to as Graham Hill, but clearly should be called Graham Hill Hill if it was going to be named correctly.
Here, just for fun, is a list of corners I still strugglw with in Gran Turismo Sport. I can’t consistently take these corners in a manner that makes me feel I’m getting the lowest lap time.
Spent a short while last night reading through some discussion groups about how to fix my garage issues within Gran Turismo Sport mentioned in this communication. I found a good level of discussion over at GT Planet and came up with a possible method for returning my cars.
I am a member of Playstation Plus and so my saved games are backed up regularly to the PS+ servers. If the save data there is old enough I might be able to download that save file and restore my garage. There was an anxious wait while I started the PS4 and hoped that it hadn’t uploaded my save file anytime in the last 48 hours. When I could see the remote storage space I did indeed see that the game save file was over a week old. I think this is largely to do with me turning the PS4 off correctly rather than leaving it in stand-by mode all the time. I suspect that if I had left it in rest mode the remote save file would have been newer and I would not be as cheery today.
I was able to download the remote file and overwrite the local version. Then I had to start the game and wait.
The game loaded fine and the car shown on the homescreen was, in fact, one of those that had disappeared. So, I was confident that my cars were back. Shortly after that the game must have synced some information with the GT servers because I received 4 cars for completing my “daily workout”. My money wasn’t restored and the few races I had done over the last week were blank again but at least there was success in getting my cars back.
So, thanks to me turning off the PS4 and not using rest mode I think I have managed to restore the garage and my happiness. Once I did get into the garage it turns out I have over 200 cars and my initial estimate of 100 was quite low!
I had about 100 cars in my garage yesterday. Now there’s only 23. WTAF? #GranTurismoSport
I am annoyed. Very annoyed and if I make it through this communication without using expletives I will be fucking impressed.
Yesterday I logged into Gran Turismo Sport. I wasn’t going to play but you get bonuses when you’ve logged in for 100 days etc and I thought a couple of minutes looking at the new user content would entertain me.
On the screen the Monza scapes icon was glowing with a little red dot meaning I hadn’t looked at it since the last update. Well, I thought, I could take a couple of photos of my own cars around the iconic circuit. So, I opened up the Scapes option and then chose a decent corner with some nice rumble strips. Then I went to add one of my own cars to the scene and that is where rage starts.
I ONLY HAD 26 CARS IN MY GARAGE
I have spent a lot of in-game credits building up my garage with lovely new cars and a few of them I have used for a significant amount of races and set them up so they behave in a way that I can drive fast.
AND THEY WEREN’T IN THE GARAGE
Somehow, about 60 cars have disappeared from my garage. They don’t show up in my custom liveries as they aren’t IN MY GARAGE.
I am going to get in touch with support at some point and I hope they can fix this. I am quite annoyed. I have earnt around 20,000,000 in-game credits and so have spent around that much too. I am so pissed off I might even have to say “bollocks” to this game and just fucking quit.
If the magicians can get my data back then I will be happy. I’m not even sure why that particular group of 26 cars still exists in the garage. My main concern is that every time you make an action in the game it saves the data. It is possible that the save file with all my cars in has been over written many times. I’ve also tried rebooting the PS4 in case it has some bizarre reason to do with the machine itself but no success there. Fuck this shit.
In a follow up to this communication I’ve spent some time getting to know the Nurburgring and I’m getting there. These two videos show the same lap just from different perspectives. There’s the TV view and then the front spoiler view. The front spoiler view is the main one that I race with.
I suspect that you are going to get bored of these over the next while as continue to mess around with the livery editor in Gran Turismo. These next few shots are another F5 livery I created. It’s a Japanese car this time, my next one might end up being a Ford F150!
F5 Number 5Nice Ass
This livery is called Sylvana for obvious reasons. Perhaps you want to ponder the union flag being so prominent when I care not for nationality?
Finally, here’s a photo, just because it looks beautiful.
When I’ve finished racing in Gran Turismo and don’t have time for more detailed races I sneak over the the livery editor and create car liveries. This feature is surprisingly more fun than I had expected.
Gran Turismo has a feature where graphic files can be uploaded and then added to the cars you design. However, this has meant I have had to learn how to edit SVG files and mess around with a graphics editor. For whatever reason the file size for upload is limited to 14kB. This isn’t a great deal and means you have to be quite creative within the editor software. The SVG format is perfectly sensible but Microsoft don’t really deal with them, however, there is a free editor available, I use Inkscape.
This car livery is my own design, even the polygon arctic camouflage pattern. I think it looks good:
Arctic RAF
This is partly based on an RAF Jaguar scheme, I might try and look up some more planes and get a decent version of each. I know the car is German, but it still looks good.
In the new Gran Turismo it is possible to design the paint scheme for cars, helmets and racing kit. I’ve done some terrible versions, trying to get use to the UI, and now I have finally created quite a nice looking car.
Aston Martin Vantage
This is an Aston Martin Vantage for the Fulham Five reprobates. I’ll try and get some more shots because not all the detail is visible from here. I like the wing mirrors.
How’d It Get There?
And, because some of us are US based, here’s some location in the USA.
F5 in NYC
Finally. This is a clip of me taking the thing around the Kent Brands Hatch Grand Prix circuit:
I think I have finally figured out how to upload decals to Gran Turismo. This means I can add whatever I want (within bounds of decency) to car liveries.
Cromwell Place
The best bit is I can save video to YouTube!
Now all I need to do is colour match my decals with this website and upload some groovy KSC based colours!
I had to complete a Gran Turismo challenge which required racing sections of the Nurburgring Nordschleife. I’m not normally blown away by graphics in games, I tend to concentrate on the action more than anything else and so I don’t really see the quality of the graphics. HOWEVER, this challenge had me racing around dawn and the lighting of the Nordshleife was incredible. Then, there were the mist patches. There was actual mist along the track. Just amazing. Really impressive. It looked awesome.
I did a Gran Turismo Race Challenge. There were three laps around the Willow Springs Horse Thief Mile.
Horse Thief Mile
On the last corner I missed the tarmac and hit a bump, it was a big bump. The car launched into the sky. I managed to take some photos during the replay. They are below. A good thing is that I don’t know how the car landed. I launched and then passed the finish line in the air and so the race finished!
I put some pictures on here from Gran Turismo Sport in this communication. However, I had used an iPhone app to get these pictures. I have now messed around with exporting straight to a USB stick from the PS4 and, not surprisingly, I get better resolution and quality pictures. So, here they are:
First, Triumphant:
Triumphant
And then there was more:
TouringSpeedWinning But UngainlyThere Was A GapFirst Livery
I know you aren’t that bothered by these pictures but I do like them and after winning [or losing] some races it’s nice to relax and mess around within the game without having to concentrate so much.
