"Nothing but the rain"
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.
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!
This is a lovely photo:
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:
And then there was more:
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.
I like the photo feature from Gran Turismo Sport. Here are two more offerings:
I suspect there are going to be quite a few of these communications as we go through time. I have found the photograph mode in Gran Turismo and it is gorgeous. I need more time to get used to the settings and options. Of, course I’ve downloaded the extra Scenes pack from the PlayStation Store.
I need to re-take the above photograph so the cars are the same size. Also, to get all three rear lights on the RHS I had to angle the car a little unnaturally.
St Pancras station is where my usual train to London terminates so I like this view.
I lived for two years, and worked for four, around the corner from here.
IT arrived on Thursday. The day I had to spend 13 hours in work making the place look lovely and welcoming. The packaging was lovely, even though it was a day late. I had spent some money on the collectors edition, mostly for a pretty box, a book and a toy car.
Once I got home after circling the village a few times to find somewhere to park I turned on the entertainment centre and popped the disk in. Instantly there was a 13GB update file to download. This was slightly annoying. It would take me 25 minutes or so for it to complete and so I watched some TV, all the while becoming more and more tired. This was at the end of a very long day!
I did enter some bonus content codes in the Playstation Store and got my extra goodies delivered when the game did eventually start.
I can confirm that this game looks absolutely lovely. I know there will be critics out there, but I’m not fussed. People take what they want from a game. I’ve been playing GT since 1997 [yep, I’m old] and still enjoy it. The aim of getting faster lap times or winning a hard race, thinking about pit stop strategy and over-taking tactics pleases me. I just like it. It’s also a game you can spend ten minutes on or a few hours, when you start it up you aren’t locked in to playing for a certain length of time.
I’m not convinced about the photo mode within the game. I’d rather spend my time racing but I probably will end up spending some time within it as there are bonus points to be got!
Did I say it looks lovely?
I’ll keep posting communications on this topic, as it’s a handy conversation for me. I can also track my progress.
#PS4share pic.twitter.com/UeFfP5LZeU
— Ian Parish (@iparish) October 19, 2017
I’m not sure how I found out about the Demo Version of Gran Turismo Sport but I did. The full version is due out on what I call Gran Turismo Day.
In the mean time Polyphony have released a demo version available for about four days. I suspect this is to test the network architecture they have in place and to spot bugs. I’m not sure how quickly they can change and fix code for the Blu-Ray disk run but my guess is they will release a fix patch at the release date to fix known issues.
I have to say this game looks incredibly gorgeous as they always have. There are new tracks and I can’t wait to get driving around some of the tracks I have already learnt. I’ve taken part in a few races online and enjoyed it. I notice that the clutch doesn’t work in this version on the Logitech steering wheel but that isn’t a problem. I try to drive with flappy paddles when the car is designed that way and use the gear stick when the car has one.
GT sport #PS4share pic.twitter.com/Bhw8Y52SSE
— Ian Parish (@iparish) October 9, 2017
My second online race meant I had more time to qualify and I managed pole position. The race was the Suzuka East circuit which I did go on to win. My first race I qualified in tenth although I do not know what that time was based on. It would appear that GT is going to have races that start at a fixed time and then however long before that you join in you get practice and qualifying time.
I think it is worth pointing out that the quality of the resolution and video doesn’t really matter that much. I concentrate on the road, corners and braking points so much that the background is incidental. I know they put a lot of effort into it but I suspect it is mostly for people watching alongside or for overall sales, people probably buy these games based on overall graphics whereas the eye and brain doesn’t see things that way!
First win #PS4share pic.twitter.com/7rB4APya6J
— Ian Parish (@iparish) October 9, 2017
I’ve been messing around with the share function on the PS4 and even uploaded a video to YouTube. I couldn’t use the native app to do this, I had to copy the file to a memory stick and then upload from my PC. The quality of the shared video isn’t at full resolution so don’t be put off by the video:
I am looking forward to spending time playing the actual game soon.
This communication serves only to remind me which NFL matches I have seen in the London series. I should probably create a page like my Bands I Have Seen page, but this will do for now.
I have spent part of the last few days setting up my new mobile phone so that all the music is on it and that it works how I want it to work. Given that this is an Apple phone and most of my stuff is backed up to the cloud moving stuff to a new phone is remarkably simple.
In the old days you learnt how the new phone worked by entering all the contact details manually and playing around in the settings menu. Now all you do is enter your cloud details and wait. All the settings transfer over along with contacts and ringtones. While this is an improvement and people now have way too much data the requires transfer it is also a shame as it means most people don’t mess around in the settings menu.
When people ask me how to make a phone or device do a particular thing I often ask “Have you messed around in the settings menu?”. The reply is often “no”. People expect everything to work correctly out of the box and don’t understand how to tweak things or even that perhaps they should tweak things.
The main contents I needed to transfer to the new phone was music. Now, I suspect that within five years this won’t be necessary at all as I will stream all the music that I want. But that time is not yet so I keep “hard” versions of a lot of my music. I could use iTunes to transfer music. However, iTunes hates me. Or it hates my PC. Or it’s just shit. I’m not sure which it is but iTunes often freezes on the PC, fucks up the iPhone or just deletes the entire music content on the phone. I haven’t used iTunes to back up my phone for a few years now and I don’t use it to transfer music. I do use iTunes to import music onto the NAS and also create playlists and keep the folder contents organised to some degree. I have been frustrated with the way that iTunes hasn’t been consistent with the folder structure it uses and so I often delete the xml library file, move the folders around and then get iTunes to scan for new music.
A list of music that is contained within the iTunes folder is on this page: My Music. It isn’t a list of all music on the NAS because there’s also kids stuff, audiobooks, and stuff I rarely play.
I have used CopyTrans to move the music onto the new phone. It’s way more useful than iTunes and far more predictable.
Happily using @CopyTrans to put my music onto my new iPhone.
— Ian Parish (@iparish) September 29, 2017
I have used CopyTrans in the past to keep text messages and back those up but I rarely do that now, it’s not needed.
CopyTrans doesn’t hurt the PC in the same was iTunes does. It is a positive experience and well worth looking into if you find that iTunes is unpredictable and hard work on your PC. I have transferred around 7000 songs onto the new iPhone in a few hours. Job done. I’m a happy chap.