Hotel rooms are booked up, restaurant reservations are all filled, and traffic jams are occurring outside of rush hour. While this would be business as usual in any city with a healthy tourism industry, in the French city of Le Mans it can only mean one thing: it is June and another 24-hour endurance event is about to kick off, bringing a massive influx of foreigners to support the most prestigious motorsport race in the world.

The push toward Virtual Reality is coming hard and fast, with Sony’s Playstation VR launching this October – if you can get your hands on it – while HTC’s Vive and the Oculus Rift are already in consumer hands for the PC market. From a sim racing perspective, Project CARS leads the way for inclusion of VR with support for both Oculus and the Vive. Slightly Mad Studios will further show off their VR capabilities this Saturday as they host the ’24 minutes of Le Mans’ in conjunction with Audi.

PlayStation VR had a strong showing at Sony’s E3 conference earlier this week, with plenty of demos on display, the likes of which including Batman: Arkham VR and Star Wars Battlefront X-Wing VR Mission. With these and plenty others in the pipeline, and those that were on the show floor, the industry is fairly optimistic about the adoption of VR headsets.

Talk about being taken by surprise. While Kunos Simulazioni, the brains behind the critically-acclaimed Assetto Corsa, may not have made the buzz at this year’s E3 that many were perhaps expecting, the small Italian studio, alongside publisher 505 Games, have made their mark elsewhere, having just announced a partnership no one was expecting.

Yes, it’s been officially confirmed on the NISMO Facebook profile page: GT Academy has enrolled into another season of close online competitions that will try to track down talented drivers over the next several months. Although a significant number of countries won’t be supported on the initial run of the 2016 season, players residing in few select ones will get an exclusive chance to test-drive the upcoming GT Sport before everyone else.

One of the details that may have flown under the radar during the reveal of Forza Horizon 3 was the return of two fan-requested features to the franchise: the Auction House and Storefront. As we get our own content together from the show floor, we’ve got a breakdown of these two features for those unfamiliar with them.

It’s funny how things work out sometimes. When the first gameplay footage of F1 2016 surfaced yesterday, I made a point of acknowledging that the Baku City Circuit, home to this weekend’s European Grand Prix, wasn’t shown in said footage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGxxXkDqRS8

Open world racing title ‘The Crew’ is now available to download for Xbox One users as part of Microsoft’s ‘Games With Gold’ initiative. Joining ‘Goat Simulator’, Ubisoft’s USA-wide street racing MMO includes over 40 vehicles, extensive visual and mechanical customization with plenty of missions to rack up the mileage on your tour across the states. The Crew received a mixed reception when it launched in 2014, achieving a 64 critic score on Metacritic.

Polyphony have let loose the latest batch of Seasonal Events in Gran Turismo 6. This week’s events are a combination of super lap and drift trial challenges, featuring capable machines from all walks of life, with special attention toward Circuit de la Sarthe, home of the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Forza Horizon 3 is coming this September. Set in Australia, the map is said to be twice the size of the previous game, and players will have over 350 cars to explore it with. According to Turn 10 and Playground Games, doing that will now be easier, as players will have more control over how they progress through the game.

As you may have expected, the first gameplay footage of F1 2016 has surfaced from E3, courtesy of Xboxygen.

Kazunori Yamauchi has confirmed in an interview with German outlet ‘Inside Playstation’ that Gran Turismo Sport will incorporate extended online support for servers in the much-anticipated ‘Sport’ mode of the game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5xbLbt5IXE

Despite being a no-show at yesterday’s Sony E3 Keynote conference, a massive amount of new screenshots from Gran Turismo Sport have emerged over the past 24 hours. The new screenshots feature the same venues we have become familiar with in the past few weeks, however in terms of cars we see our first glimpse of the Hyundai Genesis GR.3 caught in the Arcade mode capture below.

Turn 10’s Dan Greenawalt sat down with Matt Farah and the rest of The Smoking Tire podcast crew to chat about the newly-unveiled Forza Horizon 3. In it, he lets a few choice tidbits loose on the upcoming open-world game, chief among them being the (eventual) addition of 3-wheelers.

The latest build of GT Sport is being shown off on the floor at E3, but for those not in attendance eager to see what’s in store, a new direct-feed gameplay video has begun making its way online.

UPDATE: While no new GT Sport or PSVR information was shown at during Sony’s press conference – or indeed, any racing games – stay tuned for more GT Sport news from the show floor later this week.

Forza Horizon 3 was revealed earlier today. Taking place in Australia, it promises 350+ cars, a deeper level of customization, and full cross-platform support with the Windows 10 platform when it launches this September 27. Turn 10 have now revealed the game’s pre-order details, as well as how the Forza Rewards player loyalty program will support the new title.

Microsoft kicked off their E3 Conference by taking the wraps off of the Xbox One S, the newest iteration of the console featuring a slimmer design. The conference came to a close with a look into the future of the brand, with Phil Spencer taking the stage to confirm the existence and development of the next major addition, Project Scorpio.