Gran Turismo Sport recently updated and added the Spa-Francorchamps circuit in Belgium to the roster of tracks. I’m looking forward to some of the originals coming back such as:
High Speed Ring
Grand Valley Speedway
Autumn Ring
Trial Mountain
Deep Forest Raceway
All of these circuits were great fun and hopefully they’ll appear. I’d even play them in low-definition just to have the opportunity to race those corners again.
I was shaky at Spa at first, but I’m getting the hang of the circuit and I think I’ll keep improving bit by bit. I’ve played a few time trials using my favourite cars and then I uploaded the saved video to my YouTube channel.
The following is in my shiny Porsche.
Here are the times I’ve got for Spa so far along with my “branded” cars.
Nissan GT-R
Porsche Cayman GT4
I’ve been to Spa twice. My first time was in October 2003 about a month after I bought my third motorbike, called Steph. There were/are rules about naming of motorcycles which may or may not have been explained in these communications. Here’s a photograph of Steph loaded up in full touring gear on the Eurotunnel train heading under the channel.
Here’s another couple of Lego models for me to catalogue. These came attached to one of those magazines that cost around GBP5. But I think the models look quite cool.
Dwarf Spider Droid micro edition
U-Wing micro edition
It’s probable that the U-Wing is part of the rebellion against the established government of the galaxy. If we use a neo-con view of the world then we would probably think they are rebel scum, all those terrible people fighting for the rights of everyone. Could it be that they are the bad side?
I raced a race the other night and I really enjoyed it. The car was a lovely little Renault Megane Sport and the track was Mount Panorama in Australia. The circuit is amazing and I’d love to see some real racing there one day. The car performed well and was remarkably balanced for that circuit, the braking was sharp and there wasn’t much under-steer, I didn’t notice any over-steer. I sent the video to YouTube and you can watch it below:
I like the way the red rims on the wheels make it look like I’ve got proper glowing brakes. A reason for publishing this video was to bump a band video down my list a little, it wasn’t a good performance.
First communication for the new year of 2019 is a couple of pictures from Gran Turismo photographic mode. The first is my Chevvy over-steering around the penultimate bend on the Sainte-Croix Circuit. You can see a list of circuits here.
Chevrolet
This second picture is of my two favourite cars on GT Sport. Both have a really good balanced feel and I’ve raced over 500 miles in the Porsche.
I found out about this cool feature on PlayStation.com where Sony will create a short video detailing your playing history over the five years of the PS4. Here’s mine:
Having recently bought another PSVR to train myself to get better at playing on it [I normally feel sick super fast] I thought I’d give Beat Sabre a go. It’s a game where the two PlayStation move controllers become light sabres and you have to destroy blocks as they move towards you in time with the music. You end up a little tired and if you complete a level well then it’s quite satisfying. It’s a bit like that disco dancing arcade game but for people who don’t like moving their feet.
Here’s what my view looks like, except for the fact that inside the PSVR it’s a wraparound view.
It’s interesting to see that video as I wouldn’t have said I move around that much and that my view tends to be quite static and then you realise that’s an illusion caused by the brain to make you able to see things while you are moving. I would imagine that VR could be used for some lovely research into how the brain works.
This next view is what I look like outside the VR world.
I think a game like this is a little more of a workout than the Nintendo Wii but overall it’s absolutely nowhere near as good as getting out for a run.
I have had some issues where the right hand controller isn’t detected and I think that’s down to the outside light coming through the front door, it’s simple to fix.
Rock Band and Guitar Hero had a training area to try and get up to speed with the hard stuff and I might have to slow the songs down in Beat Sabre to get the extreme version playable and practiced. After getting used to a song I reckon I’ll be ok for full speed. Let’s wait and see.
The game is officially called Beat Saber but that’s plainly spelt wrong. Hence nearly everything I’ve written is Sabre. It’s the English way of spelling the French word. The following is from the Online Etymological Dictionary [a favourite website of mine].
saber (n.)
type of single-edged sword, 1670s, from French sabre “heavy, curved sword” (17c.), alteration of sable(1630s), from German Sabel, Säbel, probably ultimately from Hungarian szablya “saber,” literally “tool to cut with,” from szabni “to cut.”
The Balto-Slavic words (Russian sablya, Polish szabla “sword, saber,” Lithuanian šoblė) perhaps also are from German. Italian sciabla seems to be directly from Hungarian. Saber-rattling “militarism” is attested from 1922. Saber-toothed cat (originally tiger) is attested from 1849.
I don’t think this will last long. I’m having another go with the PSVR. It’s a virtual reality set for the Playstation. The last time I used one I felt sick almost immediately and got cold sweats. I expect the same to happen again, but this time I have a plan. I am going to keep working at it and try and overcome the sickness.
The other night I set it up and then tried a few of the simpler, slower, non-moving experiences and I coped quite well with that. As I felt good I went on to have a go at driving in Gran Turismo. I did a couple of laps of an oval in a slow car and felt OK. I then managed a few more laps in the same car around Brands Hatch GP circuit. By that point I was tired and starting to get very slight cold sweats. I stopped.
I reckon, that with time and sensible use I might be able to play it enough to be happy with the financial costs. It will take time.
The principle reason that made me get a PSVR again is that I should be able to hook it into the PC and get the flight sim working in VR. This will be an amazing improvement to the sim. This should be reasonably simple so I am going to wait for a time when I have a whole day uninterrupted to do this. I find that setting things up on the PC either take twenty minutes or four hours. There isn’t really an in-between.
I’ve been trying to keep my hand-in with the Nurburgring racing circuit. I’ve been trying to race it a couple of times a week. Most tracks don’t take that long to get back in the swing of things, but given that this one is 14km or so long it takes an age to get used to it. While racing my lovely Porsche around I noticed that my times for the 24 Hour circuit were getting close to nine minutes and so I’ve been playing with the aim of beating that.
Here’s the proof I finally did:
Under 9 Minutes
Look for the fastest lap time in purple in the bottom right hand corner. I’m quite happy.
This is the gorgeous beast that I achieved that time in:
After a visit to the RAF Museum at Hendon I came into contact with a couple of not-Lego models that while not-Lego certainly look nice and have a good size. These are Cobi blocks and it looks like they are made in Poland.
I’m currently working through the tests and track challenges on Gran Turismo. This is largely due to a corrupted save file that lost my 400 or so cars. So, I decided to start again. It amused me that one of my sector times was:
The Devil’s Coming
I was then amused even more when I was typing in “The Devil’s Coming” into the WordPress media file editor the following tweet appeared in my desktop side bar.
I’m not happy. I’ve been playing Gran Turismo Sport for about six months. I had an issue in the past where my cars disappeared from the garage and I managed to fix that one using a cloud save that hadn’t updated in over a week.
This week it happened again. I remember the game crashed while moving through the menu GUI and I restarted the PS4. Then, I reloaded the game and it worked fine. I had all the cars and I completed the daily workout. I saved the game and then exited the program. Finally, because I thought it was all working well I copied the save game file to a USB stick. After that I watched some Netflix on the PS4 and so I think the PS4 transferred my save file to the PS Plus cloud save.
Next time I go to play the game all my cars, just less that 400, had gone from the garage. Only the DLC ones were visible. So, I try copying the save file form the USB stick, but that one is corrupted. Then I look at the cloud save file but that one is bad.
So, I restore the PS4 using a back up external hard drive from two months ago. That made no difference even though an old version of the save file was there. I think the GT server file must be buggered too.
My final test was to delete the entire game. Rebuild the PS4 database and then reinstall the game with its 60GB of download and then copy the two month old save file from the system restore from the USB stick, I had copied it across earlier.
Nope. Fuck you went the game. You can’t have any of that shit.
So. No cars in the garage but all my progress saved. I am currently pondering starting again from fresh. A complete new game. It’s OK. I’ll have to complete every lesson and test again and also all the circuit experience but maybe that will be fun.
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!
Possibly the last one from the mid-year season. This is a Guardians / Avengers mix-up. I’m not sure if I know which part of the MCU this actually comes from but that doesn’t matter. It’s got Groot.
A weeks ago I noticed that the Cinema Amp wasn’t outputting sound correctly. I managed to figure out what was causing the issue, I had turned on HDMI control to make it easier to turn the whole system on but that changed the sound field settings. While it might now take three separate buttons to turn the TV on and hear stuff it now all works as it should.
Except for the Surround Back Left speaker.
SBL speak is quiet. It’s not the speaker. It could be the wires? Next weekend I’ll be re-wiring the lounge. Only 9 speakers.
In the room there are nine speakers. These cover the following:
Centre
Left and Right
Surround Left and Right
Surround Back Left and Right
Passive sub fed through the main L and R channels
Active Sub fed by it’s own low freq channel
While playing Gran Turismo Sport, which is rather more than a hobby for me, I noticed that the sound output from the Surround Back Left wasn’t as loud as it should be. Even by changing the channel levels I couldn’t get the sound up to a decent level. SBR was on -5dB and SBL was on +5dB but this didn’t work. It is also a rather unsatisfactory solution.
I have had a few bits of work done in the AV corner. There was a new electricity meter installed and something might have happened when that was fitted. Also, the speaker wires to just the SBL and SBR were reasonably poor quality. Swapping the speakers confirmed that it wasn’t the speakers that were playing up. So I had to face it that either the wires were bad or the amplifier was broken somehow. The cheapest of these to investigate is the wires. While I was at it I decided to tidy up all the AV corner and give it a clean at the same time.
While out at Lakeside earlier today picking up some cakes I popped into Maplins which is slowly closing. I think they have gone in to administration but I did think I might find some cheap wire. I came out of the shop with plenty of wire for a very cheap price, about 10% of what it’s worth. I also bought a hard shelled case for use as my “Range Kit”.
Maplins’ loss is my gain
When I got home I decided to fix the whole problem of the speaker. I knew this was going to take at least ninety minutes. Getting into AV corner isn’t the easiest and everything was going to come out.
AV Corner
So, all the kit was removed. Everything was dusted and then the two cables to SBR and SBL were replaced and connected to the correct ports on the amp. Once that was done the system was tested using the speaker test tone and to my (slight) surprise the whole system seemed to be working correctly and also, most importantly, SBL was working properly. I had fixed the system.
Not really wired
The above picture has the amp and ONLY the speakers, TV ARC connected and a line out to the Sonos system using the phono plugs. After this the 4 HDMIs needed to be connected along with the 8-port switch and networking cables.
Not tidy but functional
Once it’s all in the cabling at the rear of AV Corner looks like the above picture. I know it’s not pretty but I don’t have access to the rear of the devices and so it’s all kinda chucked in and then left. If I could I would have a tower system and then very neatly wire the whole thing while looking directly at it.
Investigations done. If not speaker then next easiest test is wires. Bought new wires. Fitted them. Speaker all good. I’m quite happy.
This communication is subtitled 1300 because this is communication is number 1300 that has been published. I’m proud. There are more to be completed, they are sitting there in draft form, I will get around to them one day soon.
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).
