Wednesday night was for the private GT Awards party. As people gathered, I started meeting past Award winners, some of whom I have introduced to you here, such as Craig Morrison and his father, Art; and Philip Koenan, last year's winner. Both of these winners have graced us with their helpfulness to get you pictures and detailed information about their cars and for arranging exclusive visits for forum members here to view their magnificent creations. Thanks again, guys! Jessica Lopez and Shaun Cole were wandering around probably looking for people to interview or for the scant GT5 details they may find for their web show. Before the opening, I also found Marcel Horn, a two-time award winner, as well. Along with a few other VIPs, SWERV_GRIFFEN and I were allowed into the separate, private area where we were treated to playing the special SEMA demo. This demo was in honour of the past winners who were there to drive their own cars in GT5!
Along with the demo cars being only GT Award winners, I understand that it had later game engines than the store demo and had never been publicly shown anywhere before. The tracks included Trial Mountain, Laguna Seca, a rainy Eiger Nordwald, Toscana, Madrid and others that I have seen in other demos, such as Rome Circuit. Taku Imasaki first set me up on one of the wheel sleds with the Trans-Cammer on Rome because I can't use a controller anymore. (The demos stations that had a controller were also with the older store demo, so no loss there.) (I may mix up which car and track combos I used because I didn't keep any records, so pardon me if I get the combos wrong.) Of course, I immediately embarrassed myself by showing no control of the car and spinning out. I had no feel for the GT pedals because I was wearing a hard soled sandal versus bare feet, which I do at home. With my big feet, the top of the sandal pressed against a ledge inside the sled and I had no idea what was going on. Then he changes the combo to Eiger in the rain with the Trans-Cammer (?). Great! There I go again learning how to be a grounds-keeper. At some point, I figured out what was going on with feel on the light GT pedals and took off my sandals. Too late. Apparently, both Kaz and Taku were behind me witnessing history.
After the award program, where we learned GT5 will be out "in one month", SWERV and I had a chance to sit and drive less interrupted. The music was quite loud, so we used auto gear changing, at first. Having proper pedal feel made a world of difference and I settled into experiencing GT5's latest build more. You are going to love it. The GT wheel gives a good indication of what the cars are doing and it won't take you long getting up to speed (so long as Taku is not setting up the races for you when you first start). This was my first session with a GT wheel, too. It's OK and it didn't take long to get used to it, but I really missed my G25.
One of the first tracks I set up on my own was Madrid. The Trans-Cammer has a high enough air scoop on the hood that you will have to carefully watch where you are going, if you use the dashboard view, because it will partially block your view. The forward-back distance from the steering wheel will be adjustable allowing you to set it as you wish, within its limits. I presume we have only seen some sort of fixed default cockpit view because we were not offered a way of adjusting it. Learning Madrid will take a few laps, but it is a typical fast city course with a few chicanes to bunch up traffic. The AI did not always follow the blue driving line and made a few mistakes, too, both of which opened up over-taking and passing opportunities. The Madrid course was modeled from real photographs and not laser scans.
After seeing older show videos of people driving the Toscana dirt course, I had fears that it would be too slippery on dirt courses, so I chose HPA's AWD AUDI to keep control. I don't know how much that helped me, but the main problem for drivers not used to the course must have been just driving off the track, not loss of traction. I did my fair share of that, too, while learning the course in two-lap stints. There are a couple of curves that you will have to learn well to get good times, but overall, the car remained in control and didn't feel like GT4's dirt traction at all. Well done, PD! However, there was very little feedback from the road surface to the wheel rim leaving a sort of hollow experience. There was some road surface feedback, but not a lot, and this needs addressing. Driving fast on dirt roads should work the wheel more, and there should be more variety of road surface textures, such as vibrations from washboard ruts.
Trail Mountain's layout doesn't seem changed much and I confirmed that the ape in the tree will still be watching us lap the course. What I missed about its environment, though, was GT4's misty atmosphere. That was a beautiful touch in GT4's Trial Mountain.
As I played more combos, I also started raising the bar, a bit, by choosing different cars and tracks and using different physics levels, etc. With an opportunity to concentrate, and with raising sound volume enough to hear over the show music, it was now easier to use manual shifting. Manual shifting without sound is tricky, trust me, so I was glad to be able to change this setting and shift better than with auto. The sim feels good and I didn't really notice any obvious trouble spots. The cars, more or less, did what I expected them to do.
As the party wore down, I was able to finally meet Stefan Papadakis, another past winner. We will try to bring you more info about his award car, but he doesn't own it any more and info may be limited. Although I had previously bumped into Kazunori after the award show, Taku also introduced me to him and explained a bit about me supporting GT on this forum. He seemed to recognise who I was then. They asked for a bit of help from us with explaining to players the transition from Prologue to GT5. There will be an undetermined overlap of maybe 3-6 months before they finally pull the plug on Prologue's on-line. As I suggested earlier, this will give some leeway for players to get on-board with GT5 and it will free up resources that can be devoted to GT5. If you want better on-line events than Prologue's, too, get GT5 as soon as you can.
