Gaming

Paris Games Week 2016 got underway yesterday. For Gran Turismo fans, the event holds significance, for it was at last year’s expo that the latest chapter in Polyphony’s racing franchise was first introduced. With 366 days since that initial reveal, we’re looking back to get an idea of what’s changed since then, and — thanks to a delay pushing the title into 2017 — where GT Sport is heading.

It’s hard to believe, but SEMA has been holding the ceremony of the annual “Gran Turismo Awards” for more than a decade now. What car is going to claim the “Best in Show” at the largest automotive exhibition in Las Vegas this year? We’re going to find out next week — Wednesday, to be precise — when the 14th iteration takes place in Sin City.

It’s been an arduous week, but it all came to a head earlier today at the 2016 GT Academy International Race Camp. With a two drivers from each region remaining, the last event would see all six teams battling it out on track in identically-prepped 370Z race cars. In the end, it would be Johnny Guindi Hamui, a student from Mexico, that would be crowned champion, but not without a fight.

The men and women over at Slightly Mad Studios had cause for celebration this week, as their 2015 multi-platform sim racer hit another sales threshold. Project CARS first crossed the seven-figure mark shortly after launch in June 2015, and has now doubled that amount to two million.

It’s all been building to this. Today will see one person crowned the 2016 GT Academy International champion, beginning their path to becoming a race car driver as part of the Nissan Driver Development Program. Less than three months later, the winner will be making their competitive debut alongside Jann Mardenborough at the 2017 24 Hours of Dubai in January. You can watch it all unfold above, starting at 14:00 Silverstone time (click here to convert).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXqYs0xOV6Q

After months of teasing, Porsche Pack 1 is now available to PC players for Assetto Corsa. A bombshell announcement made earlier this year, the inaugural car pack pays tribute to the German marque, promising to deliver “the best Porsche experience ever.”

With Porsche Pack Volume 1 set to touch down tomorrow, Kunos Simulazioni have hinted that a slow trickle of information regarding the contents of Volumes 2 & 3 will arrive in due time. It appears Steam hasn’t received the memo though, and have revealed everything in one fell swoop on their database page.

It has been five years since Microsoft’s Turn 10 Studios and previous Halo developer Bungie teamed up to bring the M12 Force Application Vehicle to Forza Motorsport 4. Now, the battletested four-wheeler from the future returns to the home front for a more racy cameo in Forza Horizon 3.

We’re only hours away from the first seven Porsches arriving in players’ hands in Assetto Corsa. As detailed last week, PC players will be getting the first crack at the Stuttgart manufacturer, with PS4 and XB1 owners slated to receive Porsche Pack Volume 1 in November.

Over the course of the past few months, the qualifying rounds of GT Academy 2016 have quietly taken place across the globe, as thousands of potential competitors took their best shots using a pre-release version of GT Sport. Six regions were earmarked for International Race Camp (Australia, Indonesia, Mexico, North Africa, Philippines, and Thailand), and after all the dust had settled, six finalists were selected from each to represent their team in Silverstone.

Almost every game has secrets, and the Gran Turismo series is no exception. What hides beneath vast lines of programming code — never meant to see the light of day — can be a veritable goldmine for players vigilant enough to dig them up. Back in the spring of this year, we shared videos of the secret stunt tracks found in GT6, and today we’re switching to the classic Gran Turismo 4 on PS2.

https://youtu.be/ckX6lrpRHJA

The selection of budget steering wheels this generation hasn’t been anything to write home about. Thrustmaster basically has a monopoly on the sub £/$100 market with its T80 steering wheel. However, popular Japanese accessory manufacturer HORI is looking to open more options to consumers with its new HORI Racing Wheel Apex (RWA) launching November 21.

Thrustmaster’s latest wheel has had a quiet debut on none other than e-commerce giant Amazon.com. While not an entirely new product, the T300 GT Edition nonetheless features a few unique changes to the regular T300 RS formula (read our review of that wheel right here).

United Front Games, known most by racing fans for their work on the ModNation Racers series, has closed it’s doors for the last time, according to various reports that have spread across the internet. The Vancouver-based studio recently released ‘Smash+Grab’, a loot-and-craft based game, to Steam Greenlight. Only a few weeks later it seems that the ill-fated team has had to give up all development.

Last month, the Weekly Race Series organizers wrapped the successful GT300 Triple Mix Championship’s first bracket. Founded on the idea that every racer would have to drive each of the three available cars over the three race weekends, the response was so positive that the concept has been extended to cover a further two brackets.

Kunos continues to tease the contents of the upcoming Porsche Pack for Assetto Corsa with only a week left on the clock. After making the news official last week, the team is at it again — this time taking to the game’s Facebook page, detailing one of the seven cars set to be included in the first pack: the Porsche 918 Spyder.

Polyphony have let loose the latest batch of Seasonal Events in Gran Turismo 6. This week’s events take you to three well-paced technical circuits where corner attack speeds will determine your victory. Three challenge levels cover this week’s events, giving you a choice of capable sporting metal.

Due to the broad range of video game conferences GT Sport has been appearing at lately, we’ve been witnessing a great deal of off-screen recordings the last few weeks. While arguably the biggest shock came from the surprisingly meaty Mercedes-AMG sounds we showed you earlier this week, the latest additions provide additional glimpses at what seems to be the latest build.