In an awesome demonstration of ‘virtual’ driving skills in the real world, GT Academy winner Lucas Ordóñez successfully competed in the 24 Hours of Dubai! With highly experienced teammates like former F1 driver Johnny Herbert, Alex Buncombe, and Rob Barff, the pressure was on Lucas to keep the lap times low and the car on the track. He managed to do just that, and despite a mechanical setback, helped the Nissan team finish 9th in their class 451 laps and over a distance of 2431km.
Proper Graphics’ 3D model of a Koenigsegg CCX to Gran Turismo 5’s specifications caused quite a stir. Not only was it discussed across the web, the accompanying video clip was the seventh most popular on YouTube last week! Yury Rybakov of the Belarus-based design studio dropped by our forums to help explain exactly why their model looked so much better than what we’ve seen in games so far. Mr. Rybakov conceeds the Koenigsegg wasn’t processed in real-time like it would be in a game, but it also makes significantly better use of the polygons that it is composed of. He supports his argument by highlighting several imperfections in Gran Turismo 5 Prologue’s vehicle models that have resulted in incorrect and misaligned surface reflections that most of us have probably missed!
Before you read anything else (and anyone posts this on a forum/blog without proper citation), this Koenigsegg CCX rendering has nothing to do with Gran Turismo 5. So, what’s it doing on GTPlanet? ‘Proper Graphics‘, the imaging company who created the model did actually have GT5 in mind, crafting it within Polyphony Digital’s polygon and texture specifications. As you can see, though, the level of detail is considerably higher than anything we’ve seen in GT5 Prologue, due to the fact that it’s rendered by itself on high-end computer hardware. A game’s many environmental variables probably consume too much of the PlayStation 3’s processing power to give us anything like this at the moment, but make no mistake – Gran Turismo 6 won’t look much different.
The wildly popular Inter-Forum Timetrial Championship has finally come to a close after 63 days of heated competition and 1,237 submitted times from participants around the world! The guys from Team GTros ultimately came out on top, with their member Ramon taking the top spot in the individual points standings. Team GTPlanet and our own driver holl01 came in second in team and individual standings, respectively. The Germans from Team GTRP round out the podium, and FAK of the Dude Team scored an individual third. A big thanks goes to all of the Team Captains who kept everyone in order, and especially to GTPlanet’s chief race organizer Sphinx, without whom this competition could have never occurred.
Sony is using Gran Turismo 5 Prologue to power a ‘3D’ tech demo at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Apparently, it’s a pretty impressive new display technology, but don’t get too excited – a Sony representative made it clear this television will not be headed for production any time soon. Regardless, it’s a pretty cool look at what we could see by the time Gran Turismo 6 comes around… ArsTechnica has first impressions of the display:
GTPlanet’s inbox has been filled over the past few days with reports that Kazunori Yamauchi is interested in developing a game outside of the Gran Turismo series. The news apparently comes from an interview with Japanese gaming magazine ‘GeMaga‘, where he also supposedly stated that he ‘would have wanted GT5 to come out in 2009‘. So, what’s the problem with this story? Many other news outlets have picked up and ran with the news, but their only reference is this article from PS3Center.net – a site which lost a considerable amount of credibility by participating in the recent rash of misinformation. PS3Center’s lack of hard details about the source leaves a lot to be desired, and GTPlanet cannot endorse or verify the integrity this information.
