Jordan Greer

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The new “official” GT5 steering wheel, the Thrustmaster T500 RS, releases this Wednesday, and InsideSimRacing got their hands on an early unit to provide us with some much-needed details and first impressions.

I was fortunate enough to attend the Gran Turismo 5 launch party in Madrid last November and, though I took lots of photos, I didn’t have any good video to share. Fortunately, before the festivities kicked off, I met up with InsideSimRacing’s European correspondent Andreas Nie, who captured plenty of great footage at the event and around the city. After the press session, I sat down with Andreas to talk about the event and my personal first impressions of the game. It’s all in ISR’s latest video feature, published yesterday and embedded above.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGP28KzHZiM

One of the most frequent complaints about the popular Logitech Driving Force GT is the pedals. The brake, in particular, can be quite “squishy”, making it more difficult to accurately gauge the force being applied. Since the DFGT was released, several popular DIY mods have been shared in our forums, but this one is probably my favorite: simply wrap a small bungie cord around the brake pedal and hook it around the base of the unit, as YouTuber megadarren demonstrates above (thanks, TRC_Hunk).

Full details about the new “official” GT5 steering wheel, the Thrustmaster T500 RS, have now been released, and it looks like Kazunori Yamauchi’s original tweet hinting at the price was actually correct. It will be released on Wednesday, January 5, 2011 in North America and Europe for $599.99, £449.99, or €499.99 (it’s coming Jan. 25 in Japan). Thrustmaster is clearly targeting the higher end of the market with this price range, especially considering the T500’s H-pattern shifter (to be released in the next few “months”) is not included with the package.

Over Christmas, I’ve received a lot of questions about the free “Christmas gift cars” which were announced by Sony Japan a few weeks ago. As it turns out, the three free cars, which consisted of a Lamborghini Murcielago LP 640,  Jaguar XJ13, and a BMW M3 Coupe, were only made available in the Japanese PSN Store. Even if you have a Japanese PSN account, the cars can only be used with an actual Japanese copy of the game.

The GTPlanet Forums are home to some incredible real-world photographic talent. Last year, we tapped in to that talent by putting together a calendar filled with some of the best automotive shots our members have taken throughout the year. Today, I’m proud to unveil GTPlanet’s official 2011 Calendar, available now for $25. I am even more proud to announce that all proceeds will be donated to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, funding private research, patient support, and raising awareness of this horrible disease.

With the launch of Gran Turismo 5, the steering wheel market is really heating up. Now, however, the bar has apparently been raised with the new Fanatec Porsche 911 GT2. The wheel is receiving high marks from users in our steering wheels forum, and there’s even more kind words from the hosts at InsideSimRacing, who called it part of the “best package” to play the game. Keep an eye on the wheel segment of InsideSimRacing’s Gran Turismo 5 review in the video above (you’ll find the wheel discussion begins at 24:45) for more, or watch Darin’s mini-feature on the GT2 here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8D5BcFJPiI

Gran Turismo 5 has been found to significantly benefit from the installation of a solid-state drive (SSD) into the PlayStation 3 console, according to several reports from around the web over the past few days. One of the most organized and extensive tests was conducted by GTPlanet user padadiso. Click through his collection of graphs below, or head over to his forum topic for more discussion and analysis.