Gaming

Silicon giant NVIDIA Corporation have revealed that their concerted efforts of developing self-driving cars has been aided by ‘The Real Driving Simulator’ itself, Gran Turismo.

Derek Speare Designs is one of the sonorous brands of the sim-racing components market. It crafted its popularity by producing various button boxes, pedals, shifters and other accessories of high quality. It seems that the company has no intentions of resting on its laurels, as DSD recently revealed components for what appears to be a new rig for eager driving enthusiasts.

Koenigsegg made waves last year at Geneva with the Regera. Billed as the “more luxurious” relation in the Koenigsegg family, the car had all sorts of impressive bullet-points. 1500 horsepower! Three electric motors! A single gear!

Hardcore driving enthusiasts should be able to tell how comfortable a good rig must be to push the thrill of virtual driving to higher level. rSeat is responding to the market by releasing the newest N1 rig hardware.

Death Valley isn’t the most popular environment amongst the track-making community. The unforgiving track barriers don’t help, and the desert setting doesn’t offer the elevation changes that Eifel and Andalusia can. But climbing and diving alone don’t make a track great: look at Sebring (our first TOTW recepient, actually). For the 19th week of this feature, we’ve got a relatively flat Death Valley track that nonetheless offers up plenty of fast-paced racing under the sun’s glare: Desert Valley Raceway.

Forza, along with other first-tier exclusives like Halo and Gears of War in the Microsoft camp, is considered a “system-seller”. Sony has Uncharted, Ratchet & Clank, and of course, Gran Turismo. These games help move hardware: it’s no coincidence that the highest-selling title in Gran Turismo history (GT3) was bundled with the best-selling home console.

The Swedish gaming studio Sector3 Studios (formerly SimBin) is known for pushing the hard-core driving simulation genre back to the surface at a time when it was more or less apparent that the market was oriented towards casual driving games. This movement caused major changes in the way driving games are developed nowadays and we’re all thankful for that.

With new DLC incoming, it was only a matter of time before Slightly Mad Studio’s Project CARS received another nip and tuck. As with the previous update, the new 9.0 patch for the title is aimed at PC copies of the driving simulator first. Among other things, the patch recalls several vehicles for a few technical adjustments, of which we highlight the one that focuses on the recent Ford Falcon V8 Supercar and its exhaust sound. All fixes brought by the update are listed below:

Driveclub’s community team promised us February would be a cracker for the Playstation exclusive and they weren’t lying… this update, due to go live today, is bound to please fans and tempt potential purchasers alike.

A fresh batch of seasonal events are now available in Gran Turismo 6. This week’s events are a trio of challenge events featuring the familiar non-race car and race car fare.

Remember Nimble Beat Circuit? That Week 16 selection kicked off a renewed interest in smaller tracks here in the office, and the cars that feel at home on them. There’s something immensely satisfying about the speed-conservation approach little cars offer, knowing that any velocity scrubbed away will be all the more difficult to recover from. Smörgåsbord is just that sort of circuit, and its my selection for this week’s Track of the Week.

Another month, another pack of cars to look forward to in Project CARS. After last month’s StanceWorks Track Expansion introduced a new environment and an insane drift car to tame, Slightly Mad is continuing their pattern of following up with a straight-forward cars-only DLC. Judging by recent teasers, this will be quite the popular pack.

Development on the critically-acclaimed Assetto Corsa began in 2011, and since then the game has received numerous updates. The latest of which having introduced several new vehicles, the introduction of “the best circuit in the world,” Brands Hatch, as well as updates to some of the core features of the game. But if there’s one thing that’s been noticeable despite all of the updates, it’s the quality of the tracks.

Rumble strips. They come in a variety of shapes and shades – most common is red and white, like a barber pole, or a candy cane – and tend to act as targets for racers committed to shaving every last hundredth off their lap times. For this, the seventeenth TOTW here at GTPlanet, we’ve picked a track without any.

As previously announced, Xbox One and PS4 supporters of the critically -acclaimed DiRT series will have to wait a little bit longer before experiencing the thrilling drive of the latest DiRT Rally simulator when it hits shelves on April 5th. That patience is going to be rewarded though, as Codemasters recently launched a video trailer announcing engaging novelties that will become available to all users on the release date.

NFS2015’s philosophy from the get-go was to provide a fully customizable street racing experience where you crafted the exact machine of your dreams through in-depth tuning and livery options to rule the streets. Although for the most part NFS was a step in the right direction at launch it still lacked in some fundamental areas that fans were disappointed to see omitted. With the latest ‘Showcase’ update launching today (~1.4GB), Ghost have targeted the most requested areas of customization and ways of showing off your ride.

Remember gaming magazines? Of course you do: unlike floppy disks or cassette tapes, you can still find them new on store shelves. But remember the golden age of magazines? When a 56k modem would beep-static-boop its way to a Geocities page of cheats in an eternity, magazines just made more sense.

If at this very moment you’re reminiscing about the “King of the Track” challenges from the days of Forza Motorsport 4 to secure the elusive “Unicorn” car, know that you’re in good company.

As Gran Turismo fans clamour for the latest bits of news on 2016’s Gran Turismo Sport, the drag nets are cast ever wider, and the search can yield some unexpected results. Case in point: a mysterious Gran Turismo connection to an Acura ILX race car was found at last month’s Montreal Auto Salon, thanks to forum member @Zlork (Edit: the original image was posted by @Zalex on Facebook).

On January 23rd Gran Turismo was presented with the Golden Marker Special Award at this year’s Japan Car Design Awards ceremony being held at The Gallery Too in the Minato district of Tokyo, Japan.