Welcome to Around The Planet. No, we’re not a Daft Punk cover band. This feature will look at community-building threads around our forum, where folks can share their passion for one of our common bonds, on of the reasons we’re all here: sim racing, in its many forms.
Graphical user interfaces. On the face of it, a pretty dull combination of three words, the sort that you’d expect Agent Smith to utter in the Matrix. But well-designed GUI’s are essential. Look no further than your local road network, and the myriad signs that inhabit it. Look at the NYC subway map. Actually, don’t: we don’t want you getting lost.
A great GUI can have a major impact on a game, too. Gran Turismo 5’s main menu garnered a fair amount of criticism at the time of release for its unclear, sometimes-haphazard item placement. When GT6 rolled around in 2013, Polyphony Digital clearly heard the comments, as a comprehensive overhaul of the menus resulted in a cleaner, quicker experience.
With the announcement of GT Sport late last year, a popular thread in our forums was given a new lease on life. The re-christened GT7 and GT Sport User Interface Fan Art thread was started by Scuderia Paul all the way back in 2014, and if it sounds familiar, then you may have already heard about it in a Community Spotlight feature back in May. We’re going to look at just a few of the literally hundreds of images in the thread, so get comfortable.
Look at that. Paul leads by example here, starting the thread up with some serious eye-candy right off the bat. A crisp, clean background puts the Aston front and centre, and the man behind the design has cleverly combined the race liveries and Base Models approach of GT6 into the paint options themselves. How much easier would it be if we could pick out liveries based on events, as we purchase a car? As for the Aston itself, it appears Paul had a premonition, as the Vantage GT3 featured in the GT Sport announcement trailer.
In that same announcement trailer, Polyphony made mention of a Nations Cup, where players will get to represent their country against drivers around the world. Paul responded to this naturally, with an image that could easily pass as a legitimate screen grab from a game:
Next up, user HACHIR0KU gives us a splash page (the opening image up top) for how he’d like to see the game greet players upon first loading up. It follows the established GT Sport colour scheme, and sticks to simple, straight-forward menu options. Shortly after, he also posted an image for the Career Hub. The title cards for series in Polyphony’s games have always had their own style to them, and HACHIR0KU takes care to make sure these also carry a consistent tone.
User Grandea GTR has been a steady contributor to the thread, focusing on the usual menus, in addition to things like the HUD and tuning menu. Taking inspiration from GT2’s different cities, Grandea presents unique situations for the player at each login, with sales, special events, and even inclement weather. With the Gran Turismo franchise approaching the two-decade mark next year, some players may not have experienced the older titles, but Grandea has a solution for those looking to get a taste of them: a racing HUD that recall the originals! Below, you can see his updated take on the look of GT3:
Most recently, Nico_Ble99 has provided images for all sorts of aspects of the game. While they too follow the gold colour scheme of GT Sport, they also call to mind the older Playstation 2 games in their layout and general look. It’s a fine line between nostalgia and grave-digging, and Nico’s collection of images definitely fall into the former. Below, you can see his take on the main menu for GT Sport:
As GT Sport draws near, it will be interesting to see how close our community got to the final look. These are only a smattering of the images available in the full thread. Head on over there to see the rest, or contribute your own!
Enjoyed the art, great stuff guys. What I am concerned about is whether GT Sport is one part of a multipart effort from PD. I just can’t see GT Sport containing anything but pure racing cars from end to end. Beg to questions just what racing leagues will be in GT Sport and what years of racing will actually be in the game? Will this game be only filled with current race cars from the past year and current one and be updated with new cars as the season wears on? Or will it support as much of racing history as possible? Does FIA license aid PD in anyway with acquiring the cars from actual grids? If it does then this means we will finally have realistic grids with our favorite cars and manufacturers included, can’t say I have seen a commercially available game doing that, Test Drive Le Mans was the last time I saw something close to that.
I am intrigued, hope this beta comes out quickly. I want to see the advancements PD has made to their global weather/day/night systems and tire simulations, really hope they went with contact pact information and carcass simulation. Aerodynamics also should be working much better, some cars in GT6 were totally exempt from drag at high speeds. Either way I am happy to know they are working on something, just hope they don’t add in puddles if it’s not going to be dynamic that stuff is a travesty in Forza 6(no matter what the biased say, it’s horrible). Getting a race postponed because of inclement weather sounds interesting to say the least but if they have a simulation for water accumulation and reduction based on displacement that would be great but it sounds computationally expensive.
Itching to get my hands on what they have got already.
Now put Serres Racing Circuit in :P
I wonder how many people will actually take these as actual in-game screens instead of fan art… :P
Great work guys, astounding jobs. This is such a great community to be a part of.
OMG GT-3 Speedometer!!! There must be more nostalgic themes!
I hope they give you a HUD style choice. Would be amazing. I would use an old-gen GT Type hud…
Maserati MC12 Corsa ’06
Maserati MC12 Corsa ’06
Maserati MC12 Corsa ’06
I want this car now!
I want that car so much too which is my I used it.
You have good taste then. My favourite GT car of the last 15 years!
Forgot to say earlier that the MC12 corse is the reason I bought NFS shift. Paid to unlock it and used it for about 3 days after which my dislike of the game was too much to play anymore.
Some good work in here! :)
I swear, if GT Sport has a livery editor and etc. swaps like Forza, I would be a happy man. And for those who would tell me to play NFS for custom liveries, that just won’t happen, I can’t stand NFS.
I just want GT Sport to be amazing and add missing features and stuff the community want.
I can’t recall if I saw it right, but I think somewhere I’ve read February will have more info on GT Sport?
I might or I might not’ve seen that.
This stuff is Amazing but unfortunately it cannot be used on GTS…
Tradition is that in GT games every single livery of every single car must be a different car to inflate the car count… :P
Sounds good. Looking forward to it. Until then, I got FM5 & 6, as PS4 is lacking big time on racing sims. :(
the ps4 gets the beta and assetto corsa in spring so there is some stuff to be hyped about.
Kind of ironic that PS4 has a pure racing sim available at this very moment.
Johnny, you know what I mean. If you are referring to PCars, I don’t find it pleasing at all. It may be a sim, but not up there with GT or FM. vinay, good to hear. I like the PC version.
Hey Johnny, I actually forgot about F1 2015, LOL. I’m actually impressed with that game with the G29 wheel.
lol this gonna blow Flopza out water XBone more like XLame PS4 is W1N!!!1111111
Did I do it right? Cause I feel dirty for doing it.
If you were shooting for an Xbox kid thing, add more weed, MLG terms, racist terms and obscenities.
Source: Played Call of Duty since MW3 on Xbox.
I *do* actually hope Gran Turismo Sport beats Forza. I dunno, Forza feels like an endless grindfest and its wheel-of-fortune level up system really grinds my gear.
Sometimes I would get Crew mods which I don’t even use because they dirty your lap times, sometimes I would get a million credits… or sometimes I would get a car which I would sell for 50% of its value.
I’m not gonna hide it, I’d rather build my very own car selection at my own pace, like Gran Turismo allows.
IDC if it gives 0 cr. for “erasing” the car. You wouldn’t believe how many V.I.P cars I deleted because of their liveries. I do enjoy the double base credits per race, but still…
All this pictures tell me that GT Sport will be very good.
I swear they should just hire you guys. This stuff is amazing
This is awesome, right now cant imagine the GTS user interface, high spectatives
Very nice article. I am liking this Around The Planet series!
This was a nice surprise! The announcement of GT Sport certainly helped to reignite interest in designing our UIs.It is great to see so many contributors, their vision and style and the quality of the work is fantastic too. It can very time consuming work so I am grateful to each member for their contribution.
Keep them coming guys!
I’ve perused this thread quite a number of times recently and the work is outstanding. Seems all the contributors really have a good feel for what works in a GT game and much of the work is really top quality as you can plainly see above. Congratulations to everyone and keep up the good work!
Awesome screenshots!