I’ve been playing a game that was free with PlayStation Plus. I do enjoy the Lego games and I gave this one a go. I found it fun so I kept playing it and eventually I had completed the story mode part of the game. I then decided I would try and get all the trophies and this took an extra six hours I would say. The toughest part was maxing out the level of each playable character. I completed this yesterday and promptly deleted the game. It’s done. I’ve completed it.
This is only the second Platinum trophy I have earned on the PlayStation. The first was Gran Turismo 7 and I’m nowhere completing that game! If you could see my profile then you would notice that I have three platinum trophies but that’s because when I loaded GT7 onto the PS4 it gave me another Platinum trophy for the same game.
Lego Horizon Adventures – PSN Trophies
I enjoyed playing this Lego based game enough that I’ve bought the actual Horizons game it is based on. Hopefully I enjoy that too.
I just can’t help playing Gran Turismo. I’ve always really enjoyed it. I like the challenge and the feeling of success when I’m successful. There’s a communication here about the challenge of a lap around Spa. The most recent challenge I faced was the final test before the one lap challenges. It’s around the Nordschleife and in a stupid car – I can’t remember what car it is. There’s a section you have to complete in 56:650 as you can see below. I spend a while trying this but was over a second off the time about three months ago but recently it was time to try again with the mantra that I could do it.
Each time you practice you learn the limits and get better. Sometimes you just lose it at a corner and try to remember not to do that again. I use the ghost version of my best try to gauge how I am doing and roughly what sort of time I am going to be getting. The image below is the result of an attempt that I was sure was going to be gold. But alas. I was 0.02 seconds too slow.
Gran Turismo almost made Gold
That attempt was good news as it meant I was getting close and should be able to beat the gold time soon. I kept trying and I think about another ten attempts later I secured the Gold time.
Gran Turismo finally made Gold
I didn’t try any other GT things that day and in total I had driven 100.4 miles. I think this equates to around twenty five attempts to get this licence gold. That’s not bad. The next thing I have to do is beat the single lap times for the final part of the licence.
I’ve been grinding in Gran Turismo. Personally I wouldn’t call it grinding but I’m trying to play every day and get the daily bonus for travelling just over 26 miles. I guess I’m trying to complete the game by getting all the cars and golding every licence. I’ve already got the platinum PlayStation trophy so that was nice.
I recently tried an online race. In the past I have NOT enjoyed these. Qualifying somewhere in the top ten or so but then getting knocked off at a corner and ending up last is not satisfying. It’s incredibly frustrating. So with some trepidation I had a go. I was racing a Gr4 car around Spa. I chose my Honda NSX to race because Honda. I had a few laps of qualifying and was reasonably happy with my time but you never know how good you are until you enter a lobby. It turns out I qualified second. This seemed pretty good. But five laps of the race awaited.
The pole position person went too deep into a corner early on and I gained first place. Pole person ended up in third. Then for five laps second place person and I had a really hard and fair race. It was very good racing, even if I am judging that. When either of us moved for an overtake the other would indicate to show they understood what was going to happen. We didn’t touch each other and it was clean. I actually won because they went too deep into the first corner on the last lap. It was a great race and really enjopyable.
An online race win!
The next day I decided to have another go at an online race. I did more qualifying laps and ended up in pole position for my race. I led from the front and stayed there. I think the race finished with me around three seconds ahead. It was fun.
Another Online Race Win
Now that I’m 2-0 it’s probably a good time to quit racing in that mode. Or at least no longer mentioning it here unless I do well!
I’ve recently been trying to upskill in Gran Turismo. Or rather, I’ve been trying to remember how to drive cars the way I used to drive cars before flappy paddles came around. When I’m in a car that has a gear stick with H box I’m trying to use the actual gear stick on my rig. I’m also going to try to improve and use the clutch more, along with careful heel-and-toeing while downshifting into corners. Anyway, I was watching a replay within the game of me driving some Honda around Spa and I was really impressed with the level of detail of the car model.
Zooming Up The Straight At Spa
Not only is the level of graphical detail impressive but also the dynamic animation struck me as particularly well done.
The Level Of Detail Is Amazing
A particular animation I like is brake glow when hard braking into corners, it looks really good. All in all I’m still impressed by this game. Even if I am trying to get gold on the licences and slightly frustrated at the number of times I need to keep trying each test. The current test I am working on requires me to spaff the RC92P at speed around part of the Nordschleife and I am currently about 0.4 seconds off gold pace. I will get it eventually.
I finally managed to upload a video to YouTube after about a month of trying now and then. I don’t know why things didn’t work well for that time. But, I’ve managed to upload two videos recently. I’d been trying for ages to upload my V22 flying video. It’s now done.
I have been flying in the Simulator recently and trying out a new aircraft. I’m learning how to use the V22 Osprey and this time, compared with X-Plane 11, I am actually reading the manual! There’s a really good plugin for X-Plane that shows an on screen version of the checklist and this has made it relatively straightforward to know how to start and operate this aircraft. When I say straightforward I mean it’s ok once you have learnt where all the switches are.
V-22 Flying over the south coast of UK
Because I love how X-Plane looks and how the aircraft operates I’ve been wanting to share my experiences via YouTube. Multiple times over the last month or so I have recorded by screen and sounds using OBS and then tried to upload the resulting video. It turns out that YouTube doesn’t seem to like this. I don’t know why but after an initial decent upload bandwidth the video stops uploading to YouTube. I’ve tried leaving the upload running for a while and although the percentage seems to increase the rate is very low. I can’t wait all night just for a video to upload.
When you search for help with these problems I love the way the websites reckon it’s my fault. Have you checked your wifi? Have you checked your broadband? Have you checked the firewall? All of these things I have already checked. I’m not stupid. I just want to know why my video fails to upload. I suspected it could be that the video is approaching 1GB in size but when I downgraded the quality it still stopped uploading. Maybe I should try a PS5 upload to see if it’s me.
I really want to share some videos covering night flying, the flares being released, landing, vertical take offs and the wing blade fold system, which is really cool. I will keep trying. I know it’s not really like my “followers” are demanding this but I do want to keep adding stuff to my channel. I like the idea of sharing things people would actually appreciate. Here’s a previous video I uploaded:
There’s a company who design aircraft for flight simulators called AOA Simulations and I have to say they have the perfect mix of aircraft I really want to fly and excellent quality so I have, over the years, spent some money getting their aircraft. The most recent addition to my collection is the CV-22 Osprey. I owned this aircraft before on a previous version of X-Plane and so decided to get it again. The company do have an F35 but I have other fast jets and I’m not fussed about that.
Wind Farm Views V22
Look at how ridiculously pretty this aircraft simulation is. I’m not sure the actual aircraft is pretty, I will need to reflect on that.
Heading To The Loop V22
I’m slowly learning how to take off and also control the direction of the prop-rotors. I needed to assign extra buttons on my set-up to make sure that everything was within easy reach.
Mach Loop Journey – V22
Today I managed to transition to vertical flight mode from standard flight and I will say it is not an easy conversion, you spend some time in a stall actually!
Bridge Inspection V22
I’m looking forward to spending more time with this aircraft.
I have numerous posts about how much I enjoy the game Gran Turismo in all its variations. However, there are times when it is rather frustrating. I’d spent about twenty minutes on this licence test and at one point this was my time:
One Of Those Annoying Things
My first and current thought was “fuck you”.
Then there’s some other games I play and this time it just looked so gorgeous, except I wasn’t sure who the hell would build a chest at the end of a log sticking out over the edge of a mountain. It does look lovely though.
I’ve been trying to get the last car in Gran Turismo to complete the café menu. I need twenty million credits. I also need the car to be in the store. Every now and then I get distracted by other cars that appear in the shop or that are new in the dealer area. Hence, I’m not that close to the required funds yet. So, the weekly time trials is a good way of making money and also completing the daily marathon driving distance.
Still Happy With It – GT Speed
Here’s my time from one of the latest challenges. I’m just under 4% away from the fastest in the world. I’m still happy with this. It seems not too bad for someone who plays a little each day and not all day every day.
