Community Spotlight

The phrase “what a week this has been” was the flavor of the month in May, and the landscape looks no different for the month of June. With things seemingly revving on all cylinders day after day, it seems fitting to utter that very phrase.

As we head into the weekend of the Monaco Grand Prix, one of the ten most prestigious races in the world, and a contributing achievement to the Triple Crown of Motorsport, I have but one thing to say: it’s time to put up or shut up. While that may sound rehearsed it couldn’t be closer to the truth unless I were present at the event myself doing play-by-play commentary. While the latter half of the season can very well cement the place of the year’s World Driver Champion, the Monaco Grand Prix is an achievement unto itself and is rightfully treated as such.

These past couple of weeks have been adventurous to say the least and for me to think things would suddenly calm down was nothing short of foolhardy, if anything at all things seem to be becoming more and more adventurous as time passes on. Whether it be the excitement concerning what this year’s E3 could bring, next week’s release of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, or the increasing feedback surrounding Project CARS, the community here never rests.

I find myself repeating a sentiment from the previous week: what an absolute joy this week has been. Project CARS is finally making its way out to the world and the initial reception has been nothing short of fantastic, the scene in Formula 1 is beginning to heat up again (don’t worry, I’m not going to spoil anything!) and will hopefully carry over to the next race at Monaco because this season needs the action from last year.

GT Academy 2015 has officially kicked off with the first round this past Tuesday and features the 600-horse Nissan GT-R NISMO going to task around Silverstone, home to GT Academy for the past several years. If you haven’t had a chance to partake in the opening round you’d be best served to stop by our dedicated GT Academy forum and strap yourself in for the drive of your life.

It’s no secret that Gran Turismo 2 is my absolute favorite in the series, I mention it whenever the opportunity presents itself, however, the one thing I regret when I met Kazunori Yamauchi during Jalopnik’s inaugural Film Festival wasn’t talking to him about GT2, it was forgetting to bring my imported copy of Gran Turismo 4 with me to have it signed by him.

What a week this has been, gathering the assorted contents of this week’s festivities and ensuring it lives up to the expectational hype that’s been in play since last week has been a lot easier than one might imagine, especially considering I’ve had this planned out since last week. I can tell you right now that if you’re expecting free vouchers for your local fast-food or clothing stores you might be disappointed, but even if I had those I’d probably keep them for myself and post pictures of me ea—look, the point being this is going to be a fantastic read this week so you’d be strap in because you’ll be here for a while.

I’ve said it many times in the past and it bares being repeated: racing games have come quite a way and one of the more recent innovations is that of a photo mode where you can break free of the action on the track and attempt to tell a story by taking a picture. It is a feature that is legitimately addicting because there’s no restrictions on what one could do, you are free to tell your story and be as creative as need be, or you can simply catch that one moment during the race that made your jaw drop.

It’s going to be addressed in full later on, but I’d like to remind all of you that the Member of the Week has not been discontinued in any form or fashion, it’s simply undergone a remodel of sorts, something you’ll be enlightened to a bit later on.

The Community Spotlight has proven itself to be quite the undertaking these past several weeks, and it’s key that the community has its involvement, otherwise it’s simply me picking and choosing what I like and that’s not what this should be about. So I, T-12, need your help in making the Community Spotlight everything it should be. No, this isn’t an impromptu presidential campaign, and no I’m not pointing at my screen right now so you can stop looking around your room and scaring your loved ones.

It’s finally here, the weekend I’ve been looking forward to since the 24th of November last year, the 2015 Formula 1 season is upon us and I can only expect great things considering last season was nothing short of fantastic. How will Sebastian Vettel fair with Ferrari? Something tells me that Ferrari might be expecting the second coming of Michael Schumacher with the 4-time champion by their side. In response to this possibility, I’ll say now as I said then: if Fernando Alonso couldn’t pull it off then I don’t see Vettel being able to either.

The 2015 Formula 1 season begins next week! I’ll dive into that a bit later on, but needless to say I’m plenty excited and am looking forward to what awaits at each and every corner.

This won’t be something I make mention of every week, but gracious me is looking through threads for hours on end not a task for the weary. You have informative threads, helpful threads, threads that encourage intellectual discussion, threads that cultivate constructive criticism, threads that—you get the point by now. There’s just so much to go through how can I possibly choose one over another without finding it absolutely necessary to group everything that I’ve looked at prior?

It’s not everyday you find yourself browsing countless threads, countless galleries, and a countless number of user posts looking for those that stimulate intelligent and thoughtful discussion, are helpful, and everyone walks away knowing more than they did beforehand. It’s no easy task looking for members that present themselves in such a fashion to the community at large that they stand out among that same community – and there’s where this new feature comes in. Someone has to make sure some of the very best that GTPlanet has to offer is highlighted in a consistent and well laid-out fashion.

This weekend GTPlanet hosts its second 24 hour endurance race in GT6 of the year, the 24 Heures du Mans.

This is a special post written by Adam Suswillo, GTPlanet member and 2013 GT Academy European Racecamp runner-up. We invited Adam to put together a brief recount of his trip to this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed as his prize for winning the Aston Martin online time trial in GT6.

What an unbelievably exciting week! Not only are we on the tail-end of another Formula 1 weekend, but there’s been tasty news morsels left, right, and center concerning games of varying natures; all of which deserve a sliver of attention, and that’s not even mentioning that the Super Bowl of video gaming nirvana takes place next week.

We’re back! For the past two weeks the Weekly Rewind has taken a much needed backseat to the endless assault of news over the past couple of weeks. If you haven’t been keeping an eye on the endlessly-updating Status Updates on the forum page, then you may very well have missed the Weekly Rewind Miniature Edition that has taken the place of the full-featured article here for the past two weeks.

We’re on the tail-end of yet another weekend of the motorsport circus known as Formula 1, but I’m not here to talk about this weekend’s outing in Spain. After looking over the calendar for this year I noticed something with a familiar ring to it (you’ll soon see that pun was intended), for on the 22nd of June the circus travels back to Austria for the returning Austrian Grand Prix to be held at the Red Bull Ring, known previously as the A1 Ring and Österreichring.

Today, as I’m writing this, marks the 20th year since the unfortunate passing of one of Formula One’s greatest drivers, Ayrton Senna. Senna is often looked upon as one of, if not the greatest driver known to the sport courtesy of his outright uncanny ability to wring the most out of the car, for the uncanny skill of being able to take off into the distance on a wet race day unlike anyone else at the time; the proverbial “rain master” as it’s known in the world of F1.