weekly photo

because the photo mode in gt5 turns out some awesome images, and i really like photography, i've decided to start a weekly photo post. i'll take something i think looks awesome, you look at and enjoy, maybe even download if you like. win win.

look at how awesome we are! you fail!

i got a letter from playstation network today about gt academy. enjoy.

"Round 1 of GT Academy, the ground breaking competition
that will give one Gran Turismo(R) 5 player the opportunity
of a lifetime to become a professional race car driver, has
come to a close. Nearly 55,000 people from all across the
United States entered, creating some very intense competition.
Unfortunately, you did not qualify in the top 128 players in
your region in order to move on to Round 2. To continue to
follow the GT Academy competition, join us on Facebook at:
http://www.facebook.com/GTAcademyNA

Visit http://us.gran-turismo.com/us/academy/2011/ for the
official GT Academy rules, FAQ and more.

Thank you for participating in GT Academy. We hope you
continue to enjoy Gran Turismo 5.

Sincerely,

NISSAN North America and Sony Computer Entertainment America"

6135

sony says that 50,000 people registered for gt academy. i placed 6135th overall, 1392 in my region. shabby? not shabby enough? i think that falls in the "not too shabby" category. at the very least, someone should bring me a plate of cookies. i don't think i'm being unreasonable.

seriously, you need to send me this shit

http://www.gtplanet.net/sony-holds-invite-only-gran-turismo-5-player-survey/

i have so many ideas, it's not even funny. if i ever went to college, my dissertation would be on making gt better and what they need to do.

turis anywhere

http://www.gtplanet.net/gt5-b-spec-remote-races-coming-early-february/

yeah, we've all been waiting for this. if i had a steady job, i would just sit there and do this instead.

rx-7 spirit r type a

when gt3 launched, i ended up buying a third gen rx-7 type r bathurst r. it was blue, i threw white te-37 wheels on it; it was awesome. at 350ish hp, it was amazingly fast. it was the first car in any videogame that had me doing test laps to see if changes i made to the suspension were actually working. basically, if i was going to drive in gt3, it was with this car.

in all that time (gt3 came out in 01) i've never had another "go to" car like that blue rx-7. that's about to change. i'm the pround new owner of a virtual 02 rx-7 spirit r type a. it's a different shade of blue, and since gt wont let you put its entire collection of wheels on a car, it selects a group for you, i couldn't put white te-37s on it... i settled for white prodrive gc-010g wheels. they make the car look more modern.

the goal for the car is sub 1:00 @ tsukuba with racing hards, less than 400hp and only the aerodynamics that came on the car (it has an adjustable rear spoiler stock).

because i steal everything from gt planet...

http://www.gtplanet.net/official-gt5-nurburgring-reality-check-hd-video/

this video is crazy, and also proves my point that the nürburgring is too narrow in the game. of all the tracks in the game that could use the correct amount of width, this is the one.

this shit is hilarious

http://us.gran-turismo.com/us/tv/d5521.html

if you haven't seen it yet... shit, even if you have, watch it. this video is low budget, super hype, gold. cheezy cg? check. any detail of the real cars they used fully and horribly removed? check. phantom steering wheel movement intercut with actual guy driving car? you betcha!

not that i haven't already made myself clear on this, i will say that the butt-fucker i mean thrustmaster is probably a very, very awesome wheel. i just think it cost too much. i'm not saying it's overpriced, because with all of the technology in there, they're probably charging an acceptable price, i just think it's out of reach for most people. and i think the words "butt-fucker" are the two best pairing of words in the english language. i laugh everytime, even if you don't.

okay, so i got a little carried away

some things just don't workout the way you think they will. lets take weight as an example. anyone who spends more than five minutes learning how to make a car faster learns that weight is one of the most important things you can do. by removing weight, you affect acceleration (less weight to speed up), handling (less weight to move around) and braking (less weight to slow down). your car becomes faster in every important way. shit, it even improves tire life and fuel economy.

that all makes sense, right? good. so, yesterday, when i was predicting about a half second of time gained by dropping 286 lbs off the weight of the car, i thought i was well within my right mind. the car weighed in at 2,738 lbs yesterday. today, 2,464 lbs. time dropped: +.162 seconds. yes, that's a plus. the car is slower than yesterday. i've tried changing settings too, and nothing. the only thing i can think of to explain it is that the car doesn't heat the tires fast enough to get them to prime operating temp and that i wasn't doing enough laps to get them up to temp. i'm fucking flabbergasted.

to avenge my incomprehension of the above event, i did what any car guy does when his car is not as fast as he wants it to be; i added more power. headers, high flow cat, titanium race exhaust and an ecu upgrade added 50hp (235 - 285). my time dropped to (drum roll please...) 1:03.889. mission success! not as lofty a time as i had hoped for yesterday, but to pick a target time for a car i had never used in the game and hit it is pretty impressive. i still need to buy racing hard tires and run them for time, and if i run in the sub one minute range with them, i'm playing the lotto tonight, because that will be one hell of a fucking guess.

the downside to making a street/track tuned s2000 that runs in the 1:03s at tsukuba? it is fucking garbage in the rain now. it's two seconds slower than the stock car in the rain. that brings me to two points. 1) i really wish they didn't get rid of the multiple setups you could use in gt4. i had a 2004 sti spec-c that had a tarmac, gravel and snow setup, and i could switch to whichever one i wanted to use before each race by hitting one button. now, i would have to keep a piece of paper (or in my case, a word doc on my laptop) that has the 3 different settings and manually change them for each race. polyphony, stop moving backwards.

point 2) they need to add the ability to change rim width, tire width and sidewall. why the need to change both wheel and tire width? because you can widen or narrow the width of a wheel while keeping the tire width the same and get different handling feel. at the moment, the s2k is running the stock 215 front tires and 245 rears. i want to run 255 tires on 9in wide rims all around. it will give me more neutral handling, sharper turn in and more grip. while we're at it, i want to change diameter too. 3) wheel diameter change. sure, in some cases a thinner sidewall will help handling, but i want this for cosmetic reasons. okay, i'm done. tomorrow i will throw the racing tires on, run laps until i can't lift my arms, and give you the fastest time i come up with. then the s2 is done. the next car will either be a 3rd gen rx-7 or a honda cr-z. letme know if you have a preference.

oh my gawd!

the s2000 is a beast. i have a feeling i'm going to be more than able to reach my goal of one minute, three seconds on tsukuba. with just the addition of sport meduim tires, the car is incredibly balanced and lapped a 1:06.452 without me really trying. i checked online, and a japanese racer in a stock s2000 clocked a time of 1:09.51, so my 1:09.454 is actually spot on time for a stock s2000. changing just the tires, and the car is three seconds a lap faster. that's ridiculous.

not content with the huge amount of time i chopped off, i bought a racing suspension and decided to fuck things up. the amuse s2000 was a huge inspiration for this car, and the concept of tuning it, so i went with the spring rates and alignment settings from that car. that dropped me to 1:05.562. the car had some push in it, so i tried playing with everything i could think of to make it turn better, but nothing was working. i had a faster car, but it wasn't as balanced as the stock car, and so it wasn't as fun to drive.

in real life, i'm very impressed by the suspension components that kw suspensions puts out for cars, so i pilfered their spring rates and went about tuning around them. i ended up dropping the anti roll bar (arb) in the rear all the way down and setting the front bar at 6. the car actually felt a tiny bit better at 5, but the time was slightly faster set at 6, so i left it there. the spring rates are set at 9.7kg/mm f/r and i gave the car a touch more damping in the rear to help it rotate. the car felt really good in tight turns with the camber at 2* f/r, but under hard braking entering a turn, the car would get a touch loose, so i bumped it up to 2.3* in back. toe is set at 0 f/r. a best lap time of 1:05.254 was the result.

i wanted to experiment with aerodynamics in turis, because i never adjust them, so i bought a front splitter, canards and a rear wing for the car. while i was at it, i put an unpainted carbon hood on it. 11lbs weight reduction was the result. front aero is not adjustable, but with just the front splitter the car had a touch more turn in. with the rear wing unadjusted, and with the front splitter on the car, i was turning slower lap times and the car started to understeer again. that's why i bought the canards.

with the balance resorted, i backed some of the wing off the rear and set some times. the car's balance didn't change too much, but the rear seemed less planted and times were slower. i set the wing to full downforce and the car came to life. the balance was almost perfect and times dropped down to 1:04.561. that's 5 seconds a lap faster than the stock car. it has the same horsepower and weighs 11 lbs less. that's an absurd amount of time on a short track like tsukuba. what's even more impressive is the 20 seconds a lap faster the car is on my toscana track. i'm going through most turns in a gear higher than i would in the stock car. there is so much grip.

so, we're at 1:04.561 and we haven't done any real weigh reduction or added any power. the next step is to get the car down to around 2,500 lbs. we'll see what the times are, but i have a feeling i'm going to be in the mid 1:03s with just the weight. i'm going to be adding around 45hp to the car as well, and i think that will put me in the 1:02s. if i decide to put the racing hard tires on, and they make the same kind of impact that switching from comfort soft to sport mediums made, i'll be sub one minute. for those of you who don't know (kevin), that's a really fast time. reeeaaaly fast. the multiple letters make it so.

more sk2 nonsense

last night i brought the tsukuba lap time down to 1:09.454. that leaves me with half a second left to get down to 1:08. i'm going to experiment with different lines around different turns to see if i can find a faster way around the track with this car. to get that time, i was really pushing the car. i have a much better understanding of its limits now. i also bought sport med. tires. i haven't used them yet, because of the 1:08 goal. as i stated before, i'm going to do all of my suspension and aero tuning with these tires, then throw on some racing hard tires for lapping. hopefully that combo, with a touch of power (again, i love under powered cars), will get me down to 1:03.

s2000

after spending some time doing kart races on various tracks, i finally broke down and bought the s2. at first it was just weird being in a normal car again, because the karts handle so differently. once i readjusted i started turning times slower than i though i was going to. my best time on tsukuba was 1:09.925. i was figuring to at least be in the 1:08's, but i'm rusty and not as fast as i like to think i am.

the s2k is a great car stock. it's handling is not as well balanced as an na miata, or even an rx-8, but it has great turn in and the tail is eager to come around and join the party. the quick onset of oversteer at the end of its limit is what, ultimately, kept me from quicker lap times. i'm not accustom enough with the car to predict it, or even catch it some times. if i spent enough time with it, i could probably bring a second off the time but i like to tinker, and i always make a car match me rather than my driving match the car. it's why my times aren't competitive.

in the future, i'm going to change tires and suspension and see where i end up. i would like to get the car down into the 1:03's, but i'm not going to be able to unless i can improve my driving. i'll keep you updated.

edit: it's amazing in the wet.