Category: Toys

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Racing The Mountain

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.

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Lighting

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
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.

Porsche and Mazda
Porsche and Mazda
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No Rhythm

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.

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Another Go

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.

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Sub 540 Seconds

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
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:

My Baby
My Baby
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Good Looking Not-Lego

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.

So, here are the pair:

Spitfire and Warhawk
Spitfire and Warhawk

And individually:

Spitfire MkVB
Spitfire MkVB
Curtiss P40
Curtiss P40
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Timing

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
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.

The guy’s a lying prick. Ha ha.

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Gutted

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.

 

Maybe.

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BB Not 8

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!

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