GRAN TURISMO 5

[Martin]

I heard it's going to be a PS4 launch title

[Lee_2f2f]

I heard it's going to be a PS4 launch title

 

Wouldn't suprise me, I've been waiting that Fcuking long.

[Craig855S]

Skidmarks, and a little of the TG track

 

 

Karting

 

 

Track editor info

 

"Rather than being a fully featured editor – a feature that, Yamauchi confessed, was tinkered with but deemed too complex – the course maker allows players to select certain set parameters to create a track. A theme can be selected, with the Belgian High Fens or Toscana two examples, and the individual track sectors are then defined.

 

Sectors are edited individually, with frequency of curves, sharpness of corners, degree of topography and banking angle are set with a series of sliders."

 

Interview with Kaz

 

"As Andreas, Venari and I sat down with Yamauchi, we were asked to be brief – it was, after all, lunchtime after a stressful morning and we were feeling hunger-pangs too. We didn’t quite get all the questions out that we wanted and Kazunori didn’t want to be filmed during the interview, but we tried our best to interrogate while respecting his time constraints.

 

Can you tell us anything about PSN Trophies in GT5?

 

Kazunori looked a little confused at first. We’d put to him the rumour about multiple Platinum trophies which he dismissed as just that – rumour. He clarified that he really hadn’t thought about Trophies in GT5 but that they will be in. Our considered opinion is that GT has been doing “trophies” since 1997 and it’s more likely than not that the Trophies system will be grafted onto the existing trophy aspects of the game.

 

Will GT5 feature LAN mode/multiple monitor support?

 

“Probably” was the reply. At this point, there are still aspects of the game that the 140-man strong team are still refining. My understanding of Kazunori’s precise words were more probably-likely than probably-possibly.

 

We’ve seen changing light and, recently, weather. Will this be available on all tracks?

 

“Not on all tracks, but some.”. We’d imagine that tracks with 24 hour races are more likely to see diurnal cycles, but whether you can race the ‘Ring in snow… at this point it is still up in the air.

 

With GT5, how close are you to your goal of “The Real Driving Simulator”?

 

“90%” was the instant answer. “Well, 85-90%”.

 

Are there any features missing from GT5 that you’d like to have included?

 

Kazunori said “Yes”, without hesistation. “But there’s still time to work on things!”

 

Would this include a livery editor?

 

“Probably not for GT5, though it’s certainly on our list of things to work on…”.

 

Previously we’ve seen you say things about weather, lighting, skidmarks, that you’d add them if you felt they added to gameplay. How much is this the case, compared to community pressure (from sites like GTPlanet) to add things?

 

“It’s probably evenly balanced”, said Kazunori. We’d interpret this as a borderline tacit admission that our forums – and many other sites – form research for PD, especially with regards to features. We have, after all, seen a recent addition of real-time skidmarks and reverse lights in the latest demo builds, now that there is the software and hardware to achieve it.

 

At this point we were asked if we could wrap it up quickly – we were originally told 3-4 minutes and we were already near ten. So the last question was the question I’d decided (hey, executive decision!) was the very best “alternate” question we’d received.

 

Given the time, money, space and resources, which fantasy Gran Turismo track would you create in the real world?

 

Kazunori was visibly awed by this question and spent nearly a minute thinking of an answer. “Deep Forest”, he said. I countered with “Trial Mountain?”. His next answer was complex – the team haven’t revealed anywhere near all of the tracks yet and there may be a fantasy GT5 track which exceeds Deep Forest in his estimations, and Trial Mountain in mine.

 

Kazunori continued, “A construction company in Japan [Maede] investigated the possibility of building Grand Valley. They wrote a book about it!”. We weren’t able to get an accurate title from Kazunori or Translator-san – it didn’t seem to translate well, but “Fantasy Business Scheme” was the final answer. If you know of this book, please let us know!

 

And that was that – the first meeting between the world’s largest Gran Turismo site and the game’s creator, courtesy of Alex Armour at Sony, Darin Gangi at InsideSimRacing, Andreas Nie (our co-conspirator) and Jordan.

 

As ever, we’ll let Translator-san have the last word:

 

“We need your name!”

 

“No you don’t. Translator-san will do just fine…”"

 

 

At this morning’s breakout session at the Radisson Hotel, Cologne we were told that all information and media given was subject to an embargo until 0900 GMT Thursday morning

[Martin]

Jesus Craig! Your so excited your makin me want to buy it!

[Craig855S]

I'm the one man hype machine lol.

 

anyways

 

Cars in the demo at germany this week

 

 

And the embargo info

 

http://www.gtpla.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/image01a-1.jpg

At 9am on August 18th, Andreas Nie, Venari and myself (representing InsideSimRacing and GTPlanet) along with other members of the American press were ushered in to the first breakout session of GT5. Penrose Tackie and Alex Armour (Sony) were on hand and passed on the first vital piece of information – all material and information from this session was under a strict press embargo until 9am GMT on Thursday 19th August. So we had to keep all this to ourselves… The floor was then given over to Kazunori Yamauchi and Translator-san.

 

Kazunori told us that the 140-strong PD team were still hard at work, refining the game, and that the version he would demonstrate to us had been downloaded from Sony’s servers that very morning. It was, he said, a continuation of the presentation he’d given at E3.

 

 

 

 

Exclusively revealed at GamesCom the previous day was one new track – Autodromo Nazionale Monza – and a series of new vehicles. Monza, said Yamauchi, is an interesting track for both beginners and advanced drivers as the corners are typically very fast and the track can get quite narrow. The cars were of particular importance – the Pagani Zonda R ‘09, which he credited with recently lowering the production series vehicle ‘Ring lap time record, the Impreza WRX Sedan ‘10 which had just gone on sale and the DTM-based Lexus IS-F Racing Concept ‘08. The remaining four cars were special to him. First is the Ferrari 330 P4 ‘67, which locked out the podium in the 1967 Daytona 24hr and is one of Kazunori’s personal all-time favourite cars. Second was the Ford Mark IV Race ‘67 which, at the end of that season, finally beat the P4 at the Le Mans 24hr. Third was the Jaguar XJ13 Race ‘67, which was conceived and developed as a Ferrari-beater but never made it to track – Kazunori’s inclusion of this car is to allow drivers to recreate “what if” scenarios. Last was the Lamborghini Miura Bertone Prototype P400 ‘67, modelled on the only existing surviving car and distinguished from its production counterpart by a 1″ lower ride height.

 

 

 

Kazunori then moved on to what he termed “The Red & Blue of Gran Turismo”. He explained that, in 2001, when GT3: A-Spec was released, he’d intended to almost immediately release GT3: B-Spec – many of us are now familiar with the concept of B-Spec through the affectionately dubbed “B-Spec Bob” from GT4. B-Spec was intended as a racing-driver management simulator – akin to Football Manager – or, as the PD team term it, the Car Racing Simulation RPG. However, at the time of GT3, it proved impossible to implement adequately and it has taken 10 years to reach the point where the Blue (B-Spec) is at an equal level to the Red (A-Spec).

 

Indeed in the GT Home section, B-Spec and A-Spec are centrally-placed with equally-sized icons. Your B-Spec counterpart this time round is not one driver, but a whole squad of them. You can train only one to start with, but eventually you can have a stable of up to 6 B-Spec drivers at once – with four of them required to run a 24 hour race. Each driver has their own personality, from the ultra-calm to the hot-head and how they drive can be affected by current emotional state and mental and physical exhaustion.

 

 

 

The new B-Spec mode was demonstrated to us. GT4 players will be familiar with the strategy screen showing lap/split times, track position, vehicle place and gap and the instructions, but in GT5 this can be mixed with live footage of the race, rather than switching from one to the other and tyre wear and damage status are also included. The driver can be given instructions to speed up, maintain pace, slow down, pit or not pit as before, however there is a side-effect of the personalities – a particularly tired, agitated or aggressive driver may not necessarily follow your instructions!

 

A-Spec mode, of course, remains as it ever was, though with additional refinement of vehicle physics and dynamics. Kazunori was keen to point out that the tyre and suspension geometry physics have evolved yet further and our impressions of the show floor demo certainly agree with that assessment. In particular, Kazunori was proud of how Gran Turismo has improved to the point where he felt he could introduce karting mode – a feature accidentally scooped and originally planned for GT6, but brought forward – due to the unique nature of kart handling. The demo of karting mode on the Sony stand was spectacular fun.

 

The remainder of GT Mode retains all the old favourites – licences, dealerships, tuning shop, used cars and five different levels of series (Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, Professional and Extreme) with the five different types of cars (Kart, Production, Rally, Race and Formula).

 

 

 

The next big piece of news was, as first mooted by amar212 on GTP back at the start of 2009, the Course Maker. Kazunori pointed out that they didn’t call it a “Course Editor” simply because one is not able to edit an existing course, but create wholly new ones from scratch with an intuitive interface. The player selects from one of four themes (three – Toscana Sunset, Springtime Germany and Belgian High Fens – were named), adjusts the parameters of the course and the track is randomly generated from scratch. The parameters available include switching between a loop/circuit and a rally-style point-to-point track, selecting the weather, the time of day, the frequency of corners, the sharpness of corners and the bank angle. The track can be divided into up to four sectors and each sector given a different set of corner characteristics – so you can generate a long straight in one sector and a tight, complex series of corners in the next. Kazunori demonstrated all of these features and the track generation time was incredibly short. The track is limited to 6.5 miles/10km, but since that’s nearly twice the length of an average F1 track, even the most ardent future-Tilke should be happy!

 

Though some might prefer a full-scale track editor to recreate their own Road Atlanta, Spa-Francorchamps or Bathurst – Kazunori included – at the present time the level of customisability combined with the scope and detail of Gran Turismo means it would require a huge editor program and, of course, the resulting track may not be accessible to everyone, whereas GT5 Course Maker tracks will be available to race online.

 

 

Lastly, Kazunori presented GT5’s Photo Mode, which supports 3D and was, in his opinion, the best implementation of 3D (though having seen the XJ13’s cockpit in 3D during a race, we’d disagree). Photo Mode should be quite familiar to GT4 players, but this time round it features almost all the image treatment features of dedicated photography software, infinitely variable camera angles and, as always, the time, space and backgrounds to crack out the perfect shot. Amongst the new locations is the Red Bull Racing hangar in Austria, where Kazunori briefly demonstrated photomode using a Viper SRT-10 ACR.

 

As we were the first session and had a slight overrun, Kazunori couldn’t take many questions. However, he was able to confirm that the number of unique courses available in the game is “more than 70″ – with the added scope of online Course Maker circuits – and that despite their best efforts to respond to criticism about standard car interiors, they were not able to implement cockpit camera (even one similar to GTPSP’s) in GT5 – a source of some disappointment to Kazunori, who is never happy to let down his fans and is probably his own biggest critic.

[karl]

i've had an email from play.com today saying the delivery date will be 3rd november

[Craig855S]

Not long now til Forza gets owned!

 

 

http://www.gtplanet.net/official-gran-turi...-video-trailer/

Edited September 16, 2010 by Craig855S

[Craig855S]

Watch in HD

[karl]

postponed, pmsl... to 5th nov.

[Craig855S]

Apparently its because games in the UK are "supposed" to be released on fridays, so they've moved it to the nearest friday to the 3rd. Bit rubbish if you ask me, but since shopto deliver before release date ill prob have it on the 3rd or 4th anyway.

[Martin]

this may not work because I'm on my phone but

 

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=269560

[Craig855S]

sad face. Hopefully it'll only be a week or 2. For a 3 day late gold copy a delay of more than a week is rubbish

[Craig855S]

apparently the reason the 3 days has turned into 'tba' is down to the fact the latest firmware for ps3 has been cracked so gt5 needs new copy protection. Had the discs been made already then this wouldn't have been a problem

[sidrick]

Shockeroony.

[karl]

seen something somewhere about the date being 26 november now. dunno how much truth is in it. kinda taking the pee really!