At about 10 oclock I decided I'd get it over with and get GTR Evo downloaded. I purchased it and it was quick and easy, which is nice, but the download is friggin slow. I have a 10mbit line which I routinely get 1MB/s off of fast servers with but Steam is only giving it up at 350K/s so I am probably not going to get to try the game out tonight.
Update: I only got to spend about 30 minutes tinkering with it (much of which was consumed by setting up controller and realism settings) but so far I am happier with the driving than I had expected. The cars feel very grippy, the sounds are very nice. I only tried a couple cars so far. The BMW M3 felt good, the others I tried not so much, but likely just my style. Nordschleife looks very nice. The new track surface is a pleasure to drive. I will be giving it more time for sure. I will probably try out some fun run events [... more]
I made a video of the first few laps of the first NAGT Promo race of the day at Barcelona. It features some great close racing. The combatants you'll be watching are:
Justin Rebelo (Silver Porsche)
Scott Arrington (Silver Corvette)
Dave Robinson (Red/White Corvette)
Bob Fay (Black Cadillac)
This is the first 5 laps of the race and focuses on the battles from around 2nd-7th or so, but as you can see, even by the end of five laps, we were still in a pretty tight pack. Definitely one of the most exciting races of the day for me.
Today was quite an exhausting day. I did an absolutely ridiculous amount of racing. My body and brain are both totally worn out. I am going to go pass out on the couch probably. From 9am to 9pm today, I took part in 8 races in the NAGT Promotional series. I figured lots of people were going to run events all day, but apparently none ran as many as I did, so I just put together some numbers. In the last 12 hours I have put together:
8 Races
8 T10
3 T3
1 Win
0 Poles
0 DNF
538 Km. driven
335 Mi. driven
208 minutes of racing (3 hours, 28 minutes)
Okay fuck it. I'm finishing the season. I just had to walk that one off for a while.
After finishing up a fun run at Nordschleife which was loads of fun despite my first lap crash that left me only able to fight for a top-10 spot, I went over to my girlfriend's place for a birthday sleepover and I got my gift. Among other things, she got me a gift certificate for a flight training session in a Cessna 172 at a local flight training business. They will take us up over the city and surrounding areas and I will get to take the controls around. It's going to be so awesome, but I'm admittedly nervous about it.
For some time, I have been griping about the effort and time required to launch rFactor and load up the multiplayer server list so that I can see if anyone from R2P is on track so I can go blow some time and sim-petrol with them. I have often wished there was a gamespy type program to let me do this from windows so I don't have to load up the game if there's nothing I want to run.
Well, turns out it exists and I just never looked until now. Works like a charm.
http://rfactorcentral.com/detail.cfm?ID=rFactor%20Server%20Spy
Here's a screenshot with the list filtered for only Race2Play servers:
My company has this super-lame dress code that says you have to wear pants (no shorts, no jeans) and collared shirts (no tshirts, etc). So, I just ordered myself a slick new golf shirt:
Can't wait for it to arrive!
It seems I am cursed. I had maintained a DNF-free record for quite some time here at R2P, but in the last month or so that number is now up to 4. Sadly, only one of them was an honest DNF (a mistake or a result of contact etc) in which I ran myself into the wall one too many times at Bathurst in the overly-delicate Megane cars.
The only series I care about now is Formula 1 and sadly the curse has really hit me in the balls here. My first F1 race ever at Silverstone was going excellent. I was about 2/3rds through the race running in 4th place and looking to finish with a 4th (or at the worst 5th if Heinz really moved his ass) when suddenly Connection to server lost. That dropped me down to a 16th place finish (started 8th) and was nearly the most disappointing race I've ever had.
The second round of the season at Barcelona was a great race for me. I had a smashi [... more]
I have had the Obutto for about 3 weeks now and my feelings are still very positive. I have found that the seat has become much more comfortable and now I can sit in it for several hours without discomfort, which I have been doing much of lately. :) I guess it just needed to be broken in. Everything else has been good. I haven't found using the pedal ramp to be comfortable because of the angle it puts the pedals at, so I just have the ramp sitting on the carpet below with the pedals on it so they are lower and further away. I've been doing loads of F1 testing and the cockpit has helped me with feeling settled in and comfortable so I can turn 20-lap stints all within a second or two because I don't get as easily distracted.
After the Caterhams mishap earlier this week, today's EURO WTCC event was Race 07's critical chance to keep me playing. Qualified 8th or something out of 12 and then after about 5 or 6 laps or something my very first ever disconnect.
I went to the lobby and then the Race2Play server was showing a 5000 ping. Dunno if this was just me or if the R2P server took a dump, but either way, this game is laughably buggy and I'll be saving it for an offline fun game occasionally and not competing with it anymore.
Simbin, shame on you.
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