it's about freaking time

i haven't been playing gt5 very much because i'm completely obsessed with the dc universe online beta. today, i decided that gt needed some love so i set up the wheel and did me some driving. i finally got around to removing all of the unnecessary items from the h.u.d. so that there is nothing on screen except cockpit view and the road ahead (thank you polyphony for finally making this possible). it makes a world of difference. i also switched cockpit view to zoom. it's a small difference, but i prefer it. while i was at it, i decided to knock out the beginner nascar challenge. if you know me, this may not surprise you, but i don't enjoy driving stock cars (not to be confused with a non modified car). the motorhead in me wants to find something i like about nascar, but every time i try to get into it i just come away with more dislike. suffice to say, i wont be buying a stock car anytime soon. i will be picking up an s2000 though. i'm not a power guy, and i'm not concerned with overall lap times either, i just like tuning cars until they're fun to drive and then taking them to tracks and driving around. i do the races for money. the s2 i'm about to buy will be about 260hp, 2,500lbs and will be a blast to drive. i'm going to tune the suspension around sport medium tires and i'm going to try to retain, or improve the balance of the stock car. it's also going to be my test bed for aerodynamic tuning if it is available. i'll make sure to throw up some pictures as well.

seriously, with this shit?

http://www.gtplanet.net/thrustmaster-t500-rs-wheel-releases-january-5-for-599/

i have a logitec g25 wheel that cost me $300. that's a lot of fucking money. these assholes want me to spend twice that on a wheel with no gated shifter, a luxury i'll probably have to spend another $100-$200 on later. i guess we know why they're called "thrustmaster" cause they're just steady raping dudes in the butt. that shit is absurd. i like gt5, a lot, but asking that kind of loot for an official wheel is asinine. while it's not the greatest wheel in the world, the old official wheel is $199 and has all of the features that the butt fucker t500 offers at launch... minus the clutch pedal.

gt academy 1, greshkov 0

so today was the first day of gt academy and i decided to spend some time and actually try to post a competitive time. there are three tracks, and three nissan cars and your combined time on all tracks is what they use to determine where you place. i'll tell you right now, i got pantsed. on the first track, i'm 600 something and more than a second off the leading time. 493rd on the second and over 7 seconds off and 400 something and over 15 seconds off the pace on the third track. so i wont be making it out of the first round like i had hoped. i still have until the end of jan. to post times, and i'm going to shave time off, but i'm not even close to where i had hoped to be. oh well.

on the plus side, the new updates are kind of awesome. i have been playing a lot of the dc universe online beta lately and it made me think that i'm playing the gt5 beta. it's no where near done (what the fuck were you guys doing for 6 years?), but it's improving and getting better with each update.

also, friends of mine discussed the game on there podcasty type thingamaroo (http://www.perpetualgeekmachine.net/2010/12/perpetual-geek-machine-show-00014/#more-1366) and i found it to be an interesting take from the mind of a person not demented by the game.

fuck yeah

http://www.gtplanet.net/gran-turismo-5-standard-cars-to-be-upgraded-to-premium/

this had better be true.

i've been sick as shit...

so yeah, i haven't exactly been feeling too hot, so i've only played b-spec for the past few days. i'm lvl 16 and have opened the expert series of races. l. nicolas is lvl 14 and he's crushing. he's won 54/98 races. that may not sound too hot, but considering he's my first driver, that's pretty impressive to me. my other drivers are way better, but they started racing with much better cars. i have 4 drivers unlocked out of six, and i can't wait until i can use more than one in a race.

oh, for christ's sake

continuing with my "rant" theme from yesterday, today i'm going to bitch about the mini cooper s i just bought. after buying the car i jumped in for a test drive. now, i use cockpit view, because a) i like it, and b) i really enjoy using the actual car's tachometer over that stupid digital one they give you now. one of the things i absolutely hated about fortza 3 was that some of their tachs didn't match what the car was actually revving to. the evo 8, for example, red lined at 7,000rpm on the car's tach, but you had to rev until a tach indicated 7,500rpm because the game's tach (the meaningful one) didn't red line until then. to a driver, that's really fucking annoying. however, what's more annoying is in first gear, on your first test drive, smacking into a rev limiter at 5,500rpm when the tach indicates that red line is at 6,500rpm. how fucking hard is it to make sure every car's in game red line and the red line from the car's tach actually match? apparently, it's fucking impossible.

the second, and surprisingly more annoying thing is that they classify the car as german. yes, bmw does own mini. but i don't think that qualifies as the mini brand as a whole is now german. the mini challenge has three minis racing on a union jack, so obviously, someone at polyphony doesn't think so either. but, when you try to enter the car into the british lightweights series, you can't because minis are german. that would be like if i tried to enter a chrysler into an american series and i couldn't because they're italian. fiat owns them. fuck off.

can i change tires easily, please?

is anyone else greatly annoyed by not being able to switch tires in the settings menu? so far, the only way i figured out how to do it is to go to practice, pick a track, select my tires in the window prompt, load the track and then exit so i can race with a different set of tires. WHAT...THE...FUCK?! how did that get out of the testing phase?

while i'm at it, how fucking hard is it to make it so i can change settings during practice without having to stop driving? i get it, you're real. then at least let me roll into the pits at the end of a lap and make changes there. that's fucking realistic. instead, i set a lap, am unhappy with how the car behaves so i quit, then have to go into settings and then hop back on track. all while recording numerous lap times to my top ten (that i can no longer delete) so that whatever my fastest car is completely dominates the top 10 instead of me being able to see what my 10 fastest cars are. get on that shit polyphony.

too much noise

my shifter makes way too much noise when i shift, so i decided to tackle eliminating that problem. i wrapped a rubber band around the shift lever so it pads where the lever comes into contact with the plastic of the body. that got rid of the *bang* noise, but there is still an obnoxiousness from inside. i may end up taking apart the whole things and seeing what i can fix.

while i was at it, i decided to replace the shift knob with a sparco aluminum one that i use on my real cars. it was really nice, with more weight and better feel, up until it came off in the middle of a race. i may work on something for that as well, because i really preferred it.

i reached lvl 13 in a-spec today. i have one more race to win before i have beaten all of the amateur events. b-spec, i have two more races. i may wrap them both up tonight.

gt academy

http://us.gran-turismo.com/us/academy/2011/

i just signed up. here's the reality of the situation; i'm not going to qualify. i know for a fact that my times are 3-5 seconds a lap slower than the fastest times, and there are plenty of people that post faster times than i do. i'm okay with it. i am curious to see how far i will make it though. my money is on me getting bounced in the first round. anything past that is mission success in my book. now, i just need to buy a 370z and practice my ass off so i don't embarrass myself.

my take on the thrustmaster wheel

it seems that thrustmaster is making the new gt wheel and it looks like it will be awesome. the paddles are nice and enormous, which i actually prefer, because if they're smart, and don't make them rotate with the wheel, you'll be able to flick them from just about any steering angle. having the pedals rotate from top to bottom mount is a nice feature except that it clearly looks like they designed them to be bottom mount; they look completely foolish in top mount form and i can't imagine how awkward it would be to use like that. having not used it, that's only a guess.

the fact that there is no shifter has me befuddled. there is a clutch pedal, but no gears to row through? at an already "punch you in the dick" price of $300-500usd, having to pay for an add-on gear shifter may be asking a bit much.

would i buy it? if i didn't already have the g25, probably. but i'm also stupid enough to pay that much money for a wheel. however, the current gt approved wheel from logitech is only $200usd and does everything the thrustmaster is promising. but it has a lever that allows sequential like up and down shifts (up for downshift, down for upshift). i'll have to use it before i can really pass judgment.

oh, and new picture.

beginner series beat

last night i finally beat the beginner series in b-spec. i still have to beat it in a-spec, but that's much easier to do. the hardest part of all of it is waiting for the right cars to become available for purchase in the used car shop. l. nicolas (my main b-spec driver) is lvl 10, and other than not being able to make 80% of his passes stick, he's pretty decent in the right car. on to amateur...