Is it time to let go? Let me give you a little perspective from a guy who came awfully close, but isn't quite prepared to say goodbye yet.
About a year ago, I was racing in a parity league when the owner announced that he was giving up GT and buying a PC rig for this new game Assetto Corsa. It was still in early access, but apparently was the t*ts and more importantly, definitely going to be part of the future of driving sims. I decided to have a little look, saw some screen shots and withing seconds I was checking my laptop specs to see if I could run it! Dell i3 Win 8.1 - 4GB Ram with onboard graphics. Not sure but I bought the game anyway and promptly ordered 4 more gig of RAM just to supplement the graphics. After a quick download and some messing around with my Ferrari Challenge steering wheel, I was driving my Mercedes SLS AMG around Monza in no time and without one single bit of grinding to do it! Not to mention that every single car in the game is premium. Period. Not sure about the gameplay, but that's one thing Project Cars has done extrememly well. Working gauges and engine controls were done very well. But I would still call it the Forza of PC sims, Versus AC being the GT of them. Good thing I don't have a girlfriend because she would have been badly ignored long enough to walk out on me, and I would probably just be noticing now.
I promptly said goodbye to my friends
@ERAUfan97 -
@JKRACING23 -
@MOPARbarrett5 -
@kz204 -
@MOPARcards3 from the DERL and all the guys locally who I raced dirty with almost daily. I was moving to the future of driving sims. Almost a year later, the purchase of a G27, Project Cars, and Euro Truck Sim2 for my PC, I am back running with the DERL and occasionally racing dirty with my GT people. Things are working out fine with my laptop while I save the money to buy a serious PC and be able to retire my laptop to only programming and development, poor thing.
However, there is one thing that I have not matched yet on the PC side of it. That's the social community that GT has. My life has recently taken a very stressful turn and now that day to day living is killing me on the inside, the GT community is the group that I have had to turn back to for support and comradery during a time in my life that is only rivaled by a prison stint I did a few years back. A small aside on that. They say you are never supposed to cry in prison, and I agree 100%. It's not a good idea. But I did once. Around Christmas when GT5 came out. We were in our cell watching TV and a commercial for GT5 came on. I did cry. Not very loudly, but it was obvious enough that I had to get under the covers of my bunk so that everyone thought I was taking a nap. The first time I would not buy a version of GT when it came out was a tough lesson. I will not be allowing myself to get locked up ever again, that was so tough.
The Assetto Corsa and Project Cars communities are growing and have their advantages. Modding and addons being the biggest. At last count, in Assetto Corsa, I have 275 cars and 251 tracks, most of which are real track models, with only a few being fictional. Some of the car mods are crap, but many of us, myself included work tirelessly when we have the time to build on and improve those cars and track, and with a few exceptions, this is all for free. I don't think that's something we will ever likely see with console systems, and that's a big problem for me. I don't want to spend quadruple the cost of the game buying DLCs forever. Call me old fashioned. (49 years old good enough)?
There is some community on the PC boards, but it's not as loose as it is in the GT community and it's generally run by racing primadonas who think F1 is the only real racing in the world and that you are a Neanderthal if you are into anything else. There is little or no NASCAR community or Touge community, both of which I love greatly, the truth be told, we are badly in need of our fellow GT nuts to join us.
But when times turned Ruf (couldn't resist), I have returned to my GT community to talk, race, argue, and socialize with so quickly that I think it even surprised me when I came back. Now I am trying to maintain a good balance between the two and have even given thought to buying a PS4, should GT7 be better than average, and it should at least meet that goal. But Gran Turismo has become a lifestyle, and a social hub for a few of us who speak in terms of oversteer, understeer, PP, grind, dirty, Route X, VGT...etc.
If I owned a Dodge Daytona, and then bought an Tesla Roadster (IRL), would it be time to let go of the Daytona? Absolutely not! It might be a little old, but it is still beautiful and there are still people out there who want to hang out, look at them, talk about them, and race them. So I would keep both. In short, for me, no it is not. Thanks for listening folks. See you on track.
as everlasting gobstoppers.
