GTPlanet

Back to school, back to school – the days are getting shorter and the mercury’s dropping, but things are heating up in the Photomode sub-forum this month, as the Photomode Tournament makes its return. That means every week for these little overviews, coverage of the Tournament will take the top spot, and then the usual weekly competitions will be found directly underneath it. Here we go…

Already finished nicking Jeff Gordon’s clothes? Why not join one of this week’s Photomode competitions? Or even just cast your vote to pick a winner in this week’s polls? To sweeten the deal, this week sees the return of the Photomode Tournament, a knockout-style series of head-to-head matches that saw two of our forum members win the gift of Premium membership last time it was around. Theme suggestions are now being taken before signups start in a few days, so head on over to the discussion thread to get involved! Past that, we’ve got our usual weekly competitions:

Some small down-time with the GT servers doesn’t stop Photomoders! On this, the last full week of August, we’ve got four new interesting themes, with our usual varying levels of editing allowed. Just like last week, there will be in-game prizes for both the PMC and 2.0, which will be announced later this evening in the Photomode Competitions sub-forum. What are the themes, though? Read on…

A long summer break for the Photomode Competition news entries – but we’re back! For those that don’t know, our forums have a very healthy Photomode sub-section, and within it, a Competitions area, where users enter their best work for the chance to pick themes… and win in-game prizes! Each week, a previous winner provides a theme, giving users 7 days to submit their single entry. Once that’s ended, said theme provider picks their top images, and a poll is then made for the entire registered community to vote on. The winner then picks a new theme, and so on and so on. So, let’s take a look at what’s up this week in the 4 official competitions, shall we?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo8BVV602Oc

The first complete interview with 2011 European GT Academy winner Jann Mardenborough has been posted to GT Academy’s Facebook page, and offers an interesting, inside look at the competition from the winner’s eyes. Once again, congratulations, Jann!

As you may recall, a few months ago, GTlife – a Gran Turismo fan-magazine – was assembled and published online entirely by members of the GTPlanet community. After a positive response and more than 30,000 collective downloads, work began on the second issue of GTlife, and now – it’s here!

If you competed in GT Academy USA earlier this year, you know exactly how difficult it was to make the cut during the Round 3 time trials. Those who made it to the National Finals in Orlando are obviously very talented, and the final 16 going to Silverstone next week are the best in the country. What’s it like to make it that far in the competition, and how can you do it, yourself?

In addition to the Gran Turismo series, I’ve greatly enjoyed Codemaster’s rally games over the years, and if the enthusiasm in our forums is any indication – I’m not alone! The latest game in the series, DiRT 3, will be officially released this Tuesday, May 24, and I’m happy to announce GTPlanet’s new dedicated DiRT 3 Forum is now open to everyone in our community who will be picking up the title (it will be available for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and as a download via Steam for the PC). Enjoy!

After celebrating 10 years online in January, I am excited to announce that GTPlanet has already hit another milestone, with over 5 million messages having now been posted in our forums. Since the release of GT5 in November of last year, the community has grown by nearly 1.1 million posts, with an average of more than 6,300 new posts per day. 7-year member and Super Moderator, TB, takes the honor of making the 5 millionth post, with this very appropriate celebratory message.

You think you know a lot about the Gran Turismo series? This jaw-dropping collection of GT games and memorabilia collected by GTPlanet’s own edward_v12 will educate even the most hard-core fans.

This interview conducted with Kazunori Yamauchi shortly after the release of Gran Turismo 5 has been flying under the radar since it was published back in February. It was just recently brought to my attention and, though there’s obviously no bombshells, it provides a few interesting details worth highlighting here:

This week we see a return of the Photomode Tournament – a very popular format from our GT4 days, the Tournament starts this week with a qualification round – any interested entrants send their entry in through a Private Message to Nicknamealguem instead of in a thread, and all the entries are compiled into a poll next week. All forum members are then able to cast their votes on however many shots they think deserve to make it to the knockout portion of the tournament – the top 32 progress to said rounds, battling in head-to-head matches each week.

I’m very excited to announce that GTPlanet has partnered with GT Academy and the Gran Turismo Boutique to run two special challenges alongside this year’s GT Academy 2011! Here’s an overview of how each works:

It’s been a few weeks (actually, nearly two months), but we’re back on the front page for the weekly coverage of GTP’s Photomode competitions. Using GT5’s mode, and varying levels of post-game work (ranging from none in “PMC”, all the way to the Photoshop free-for-all of the aptly-named Photomode/Photoshop comp), many of our users post amazing shots on a weekly basis, and every registered forum member has the chance to cast their vote to determine each week’s winner, as well as enter if they so desire. Let’s see what’s going on this week:

As I announced a few weeks ago, Electronic Arts invited GTPlanet to a “community day” event for their latest driving game, Shift 2: Unleashed. I took them up on the offer, and I’m eager to share my impressions of the game. There’s a lot of eyes on Shift 2 after the series’ first title, billed as a realistic simulator, was highly criticized by “sim racers” for its too-friendly physics. According to EA’s marketing, these issues have been addressed, going so far as to call it “the most realistic racer ever”.

GTPlanet is very excited to team up with Nissan to co-host a live Twitter question & answer session with Lucas Ordonez, the real-world racing star that’s emerged from the first GT Academy competition! As you know, Lucas and his Signatech Nissan team just finished second-in-class at the 12 Hours of Sebring, the first race in the 2011 International Le Mans Cup calendar. They’ll be participating in all the events around the world this year, including the ultimate endurance race – the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnn41vo7A9k

After a short period of verification and clean-up, the official GTPlanet Registry Qualifier is once again open for submissions! 

The recent 1.06 and 1.07 updates have provided improvements to many areas of GT5 and even new features which have expanded its appeal and accessibility. However, it appears that these latest updates have made it even more difficult to conduct a fair and clean time trial competition of significant size where adherence to regulations and restrictions can be suitably monitored and enforced.