Sound is often considered one of Gran Turismo’s weaker points, and we’re all looking for the series to make big strides in this area for its fifth installment. So, as we get the opportunity to hear more and more car’s in-game engine noise, I’ll be putting together some “sound checks” to see how they compare to their real-life counterparts.

Here’s a nice clip to give you an idea of how the combined French/Swiss GT Academy 2010 finals went down. Thanks to gamer28 for sending this in!

Although the Official PlayStation Magazine UK editors were not provided with any new information about GT5 for their latest feature article, they did include an interesting shot of what appears to be Special Stage Route 5. As you may recall, this track was always played at night in previous GT games, but that doesn’t make it look any less cool. Thanks to Captain Roh for sharing these! Evilneal has also shared the full scans here if you’d like to see more.

At the Spanish GT Academy 2010 finals, Lucas Ordoñez, winner of the first GT Academy, got to try his hand at the latest GT5 build running the competition. Here’s his lap around the Nurburgring Nordschleife! Thanks to everyone (including Lucas himself!) for sending this in.

Most of all, the changes make the track look and feel a more realistic, and help take it away from the “better than real-life” criticism that is sometimes directed at GT’s visuals. Check out the side-by-side screen shots below, and watch for the improvements in motion with these video clips. Thanks to CoolColJ and SolidSnakex for putting these together, with video from GT5rs.com!

Remember the Photomode location in Gran Turismo 4, which let you place your car on a boat in front of the famous Rialto Bridge in Venice? Citroen managed to re-create this scene from the game in the real world earlier this week, with the radical Citroen GT concept car designed by Polyphony Digital.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3FNYJ2emp4

Polyphony Digital has updated their sales figures for the Gran Turismo franchise, and the company’s latest title, GT PSP is now on the list. In the three months since its release on October 1st, 2009, it has sold more than 1.8 million copies around the world, making it the sixth-best selling title on Sony’s portable console.

A big thanks to reader “slyght”, who picked up on my request for video from SLS AMG Driving Experience at the Mercedes-Benz Museum. He’s recorded and shared a complete (and mostly clean!) lap of the Nurburgring Nordschleife in the demo, which you can see above. According to his email, the speakers were quite muddled on the TV so we don’t get an accurate impression of the sound, but the demo does include all the basic settings and the option to select professional or standard physics. Thanks once again to slyght and everyone who sent this in!

Remember the PlayStation: The Official Magazine article which announced the Indy Racing League would be coming to GT5? That was wrong, according to a correction listed in their latest issue as found by our own RAZORBACK2015:

The games being used to run the GT Academy national finals are showing off what appears to be our first look at Gran Turismo 5’s extensive online race management features! Click through the screens below to see for yourself, paying special attention to the live weather and time-of-day information prominently displayed near the top of the screens… Thanks to Carbonfibre and Stu for grabbing these pictures!

The first GT Academy 2010 national finals are now complete! TiZzla won in New Zealand, while GTP_DHolland came out on top in Australia. Congratulations to both of you! Participants and attendees are sharing their results, pictures, and impressions from the event here in our forums, so head there to find out how it all went down.

Uh oh. In an interview with Spanish website Canarias Al Dia, CEO of Sony Entertainment Portugal James Armstrong had some disconcerting words for Gran Turismo fans. Via Google translation (user subsonic offers another, human translation):

Now that we’re into February, the second round of GT Academy 2010 is about to begin! Participants down under will kick things off this Wednesday, February 3rd, before the European finals begin this weekend. Our forum moderator Sphinx is compiling a list of each national final, along with its date, venue, and all GTPlanet users who are competing.

Remember the custom-built 1970 Mustang that won top honors at the 2009 GT Awards during SEMA last November? It’s quite an impressive machine, and PS Forums user SWERV_GRIFFIN was on hand when a Polyphony Digital team visited by Grand Touring Garage to collect data about the car. He’s shared his impressions and hundreds of pictures of the car (here, here, here, and here) so we can see it before, during, and after its extensive makeover.

Here’s an example of when bad driving turned out to be a good thing, as it provides a quick (very quick…as in 2 seconds) but somewhat interesting peek at the scaled-down production car damage in Gran Turismo 5. As you may recall, there will be two types of damage models in the game: one for racing cars and one for standard, production cars. While the damaged Subaru WRX WRC car, with missing bumpers and doors, has become a rather familiar sight, the less aggressive damage modeling has remained a bit more mysterious.

German readers, listen up! Via their “Daimler” blog, Mercedes-Benz has just announced the “Gran Turismo 5 SLS AMG Driving Experience” in the Mercedes Museum at the company’s Stuttgart headquarters. Apparently, the installation  consists of two GT5 Prologue-branded cockpits (the same kind Sony awarded GTPlanet user, Ahmed back in ’08) running yet another new GT5 demo featuring only the SLS AMG and the Nurburgring Nordschleife. What really makes it special, though, is a very generous time limit of what appears to be around 12:00 minutes.

Polyphony Digital has shared an interesting “ranking transition chart”, showing just how close the battle for the top spot was over the last few days of the Time Trial competition in North America. Of course, these guys weren’t exactly fighting for the same prize as the luckier players in Europe and Austraila/NZ (a visit to the Indy 500 or the chance to become a real racing driver, respectively), so there probably wasn’t as much desperation in the final moments as there was for GT Academy hopefuls. Regardless, I like this sort of data, and would be happy to see similar lap time analytical tools in GT5.

While there isn’t anything new shown off in these Toyota FT-86G Concept screen shots, it’s still fun to look at them in full 8MP glory.

Heads-up to all of you GT Academy hopefuls out there – the first round of the competition is now over, and it’s time for you to register with Sony if you want to compete in your national final. It’s easy enough: just go to the official GT site, select your country, click on the “National Finals Entry Form” image, and follow the instructions. You only have until midnight GMT on Tuesday, January 26th to complete your registration, so get this done as quickly as possible. Remember: they are accepting entries from the top 30 players (in case anyone from the top 20 is disqualified or doesn’t show up), so double check your ranking to see if you made the cut.