Photomode

We’ve got some good news for Gran Turismo shutterbugs: it looks like the Scapes feature is not only coming back for Gran Turismo 7, but expanding.

Photo modes are a big deal in modern games. To prove as much, a quartet of GTPlanet members recently contributed to a 68-page supplement in the Official PlayStation Magazine about just that.

Last month, user Yui-san gave us the gift of a misty-eyed stroll down memory lane for the holidays with his gallery of 23 racing games recreated in Forza Horizon 3. For the next installment in his series, the photographer has derived inspiration from iconic cars of television and movies.

Easily one of the most surprising features unveiled for GT Sport last month, a livery editor has finally arrived in the franchise. As a highly-requested feature, players were eager to dive into the editor at the Copper Box, but found everything bar the basic top menu locked out for public use. While we got a quick peak at the feature in action in the latest trailer, it raised as many questions as it answered. When asked about the level of control players will have in the livery editor, Kazunori Yamauchi had this to say:

A new Seasonal Event has been released for Gran Turismo 6, which features the Toyota FT-1 Concept at Fuji Speedway in celebration of the car’s appearance at the New York Auto show this month.

As reported a month ago, the Photo Stream service of Gran Turismo 5 has now gone live. Using this function, any photo set by any player to “Share with Friends” will be anonymously published to the official Gran Turismo website for anyone to see, rather than limiting your works to only the people on your PSN Friends list. There is, however, a small catch in that the service is not available yet to users outside Japan and Asia:

GTPlanet member Abraxas went on a trip to Austria and Italy last year, with a special goal: to visit and photograph some of Gran Turismo 5’s most impressive Photomode locations in the real-world, then compare them to Polyphony Digital’s work.

Announced today on the official Gran Turismo website (and through the in-game news function) is a new feature to appeal to all the Gran Turismo shutterbugs, named “Photo Stream”. In essence this feature allows you to share your finest images, anonymously, with the entire Gran Turismo community through an as-yet unpublished URL:

Thanks to RDK, Szmissz, iCyCo, and hsoomal!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q32V6ysLcZs

Thanks for the tip, Randy!

If you’ve been closely following the news over the past few weeks, you’ve probably seen some of these images before – but not at this resolution. The detail that lies in these 5760 x 3240 shots from GT5’s “Photo Travel” mode is remarkable, and they make for great desktop wallpaper! To see some of these locations in motion, don’t miss the short video clip below.

EuroGamer has shared their detailed hands-on impressions with the latest E3 2010 GT5 demo, and it’s full of quite a few interesting and revealing tidbits of information. While I have covered the main points below, the full article contains more detail and is very well written, so head on over there for more.