Greboth

TCS is a good idea to begin with but when your comfortable with it’s worth turning it down. Depending on the car, I’d say off or 1 should be the aim. The only tip I can think to add is turn off cones / markers / racing line. They can be helpful if you have no experience of a track but quickly become a hindrance as you don’t actually learn a track. Drive the first few laps with it on but note where they are using the marker boards or things around the circuit such as the marked holes in barriers, start of kerbs, flag indicators, trees etc. You can also combine these to build up a map of the track in your head giving you a better idea of braking points if your in another cars tow or off line trying an overtake or defending. It will also help when you drive a track you know in a different class.

Race 1 - Catalunya Gr.3 I don't dislike this track as much as some though since they added the chicane in the last sector it is very mickey mouse. I wish more games would give the option of running the Moto GP layout which does (did?) run the older double right handers rather than the chicane. A pretty quiet race night for me all told, qualifying started off badly with a penalty on my first flying lap meaning I was about a second off my pace. Lap 2 of qualifying saw me get a good lap in, a few tenths off my PB but good enough pole which was going to be important as Phil had said it was to be a rolling start. Lee had me worried at the start though he gained 1.5-2 tenths down the straight as I think the Peugeot is fast in a straight line but a tow helped but thankfully Lee didn't go full Mike. I knew my laps were faster than Lee so it then was a case of keeping it clean to avoid any offs or a penalty. Race 2 - Dragon Trail Seaside Gr2 Again contrary to some, I don't particularly like this track, to be quick means taking specific lines which get even slightly wrong means a spin or the wall. Still, a few laps of practice saw me get the fastest time which carried over in to qualifying. This race featured tyre wear which I'd done no practice on but thankfully it was only mediums and hard so was going to be a case of run mediums until they're dead then hards to the end. Qualifying came and similar to practice, I got pole by just over 2 seconds so stupid me though easy win....until the race start. Unlike Catalunya this was a standing start which I messed up royally and bogged down losing a few places and in the pack going through the chicane lost a couple more putting me down in 5th or 6th by the end of the first sector of lap 1. Still I knew my laps were faster and 13 laps would be enough to make that up if I didn't hang around so I went straight on the offensive. I got back up to 4th by the line and right on the tail of Kiwi in third while Mike was trying to make a break in the lead and Lee holding second and claiming he was going to do all he could to hold up Kiwi and myself. Then T1 of lap 2 came, my plan was to follow Kiwi through T1 and try an overtake at the chicane or following hairpin but Kiwi braked considerably more than I expected so a quick dive to the inside avoided heavy contact but still saw some door to door and Kiwi running a bit wide. At the same time Lee was stacking it in to the barriers to meaning up to second I went. At this point I think was 6 or 7 seconds behind Mike and I think it was lap 5 I sneaked passed and then held the lead until the end.

I can give you 2 tips for manual gears. Change up when you redline. Change down when you're braking. The End. I jest but changing up is exactly that really, change up as you get to the redline. Though it will cost you time if you hit the limiter so don't. Some cars also benefit from changing up before red line but generally, it will be at redline. Changing down, this is basically tap downshift while braking. There's a rhythm to downshifting and the specific timing you'll need to experiment with - basically if you change too fast you'll over rev the car (which while no damage in GT Sport, it can cause you to spin) so time your downshifts that when you downshift you're roughly back at the redline. Once you figure out the timing you should be alright.

Like you Lee, my favourite tracks are ones I win on too.....so that would be all except Blue Moon Bay 🤣 I enjoy almost all tracks in gt sport though I think some depend on the right cars. The stand outs for me are Spa Francochamps, Suzuka, Brands Hatch, Kyoto, Maggiore, Alsace and Dragon Trail seaside. In Gr3 or 4 cars they’re all quite fast flowing tracks but with a mix of elevation, off camber, late or double apex corners etc. that provide a challenge too.

After Lee suggested having FG skins for our racing cars, Mike asked for the FG logo. As there’s no way to share in game you’ll need to upload it yourself Logo's currently made; I've also made 2 website decals, one lowercase and one all caps. Download; https://www.dropbox.com/sh/nb4yntiqnvmba97/AAA0q7UuMdnadYsdEDpnPkW6a?dl=0 If you need any other logos / versions of the FG logo let me know. I’ll keep the dropbox updated so it can act as a logo pack for us all. You need to go to the gt sport website to upload. Specific instructions on how to upload to follow shortly.

I believe it should now and forever be referred to as The NOT MATT! NOT MATT! incident 😆 My thoughts on the races; Race 1 - Blue Moon Bay oval GR3 This was always going to be a tricky one to hold the lead on due the slipstreaming and there basically being no corners to ever pull a large enough lead on. Qualifying was as expected close with it seemingly coming down to a bit of luck of who was getting a tow at the rights parts of the lap without being hindered at others. In the middle of qualifying I managed to time it perfectly, getting a tow from Mike out of turn 1 down to turn 3 then, taking a different line through the final corner, a tow all the way to the finish line too. On the race, as said, this was going to be tricky but Kiwi, Mike and I broke away then proceeded to battle amongst ourselves swapping positions a number of times each lap. It was obvious after a few laps it was going to come down to position on the final lap and through the final corner. Going on the final lap, I deliberately held back across the start/finish line so I could be behind both Mike and Kiwi coming out of Turn 1. Unfortunately Lee caught us up at the point too so I had to slot in behind him but no worries, plenty of time to draft passed. Going in to the last corner, it was a copy of my pole lap, I took a different line so I didn't catch Lee up mid corner but could get a good run out of it and a tow to the line. A mix of not quite being close enough and Lee moving break the tow to Mike and to block me ... bloody blocking cheater mumble mumble mumble not salty 😠😆... I ended up bump drafting Lee across the finish line. I'm not a fan of ovals but it was a fun race and great to see Lee get a win. Race 2 - Interlagos Gr4 A tricky race for me, I'd done a few laps practice to decide which was the fastest car but hadn't managed to do any testing for fuel or tyres. I took a gamble on the fastest car, the Peugeot RCZ and thanks to an off hand comment from Phil about tyres not necessarily making it through the race, I switched to softs, rather than super softs, and managed to get the fastest time in practice. So the decision was made, I was going to qualify and race softs. Qualifying came and went and I managed to stick on pole. The race begin and held the lead without a real challenge from Kiwi though had a worrying moment when I saw I wouldn't have enough fuel but thankfully it was just the game being rubbish at calculating remaining fuel at the beginning of a race. I kept it clean and put in some fast laps to open up the gap over Kiwi then just managed it. The last lap was tricky though due to tyre wear as the softs were ruined and going by comments of others the super softs were even worse. Race 3 - Goodwood Minis What a laugh, Phil set it up to use racing tyres and without tyre wear we all went with Racing Super softs. As it turns out, the means cornering hard will cause the mini to roll over on to 2 wheels which was further exacerbated by the high kerbs round Goodwood. I set the early pace in qualifying then Kiwi got a faster lap but I knew I could go faster if I could keep the Mini on 4 wheels. Then on the penultimate lap, with some tiny steering inputs, I got the pole back. In to the race, similar to race 2, I got away reasonably well but down the long 'straight' Kiwi caught me up but due to sticking a wheel on the grass and almost spinning / spinning it gave me the chance to break away. After that it was just a case of taking it easy and keeping far away from kerbs. Race 4 - Brands Hatch Gr3 As this was a random race at the end with no practice it was always going to play to my strengths of having one of the top amount of experience with this game, tracks and cars. Though it was going to be frustrating for most as Brands Hatch is a tricky circuit especially the rookies going in to it blind. Qualifying went well and though I could have gone faster, the last few laps of qualifying were all ruined by getting penalties but I still managed to get pole so can't complain. On to the race, I think it was Lee who lined up second and got a good start and clearly was going to overtake me round the outside of T1. Not a problem, I'm fast enough to get the lead back over the rest of the race and at the point I got nicely punted by, I think, Kiwi costing me a few more places. I fought back and caught back up to Lee just in time to see him throw it all away at T1 😞 Another bump from Kiwi saw me lose a little more time and me take a BTCC approach to get back passed (well it is Brands Hatch after all). I picked up a 1 second penalty at some point too but after all of this I was right behind Mike going on to the final lap. Knowing I couldn't slow down to get rid of the penalty and keep up with Mike, I decided to go for it and try to open up the gap. Due to a messy Turn 4 for both of us with a bit of contact, I got my penalty time down to 0.003 seconds and managed to take the lead in to turn 5. After that, I nailed all the fast right turns meaning I could easily lift out the last corner to get rid of the last little but of my penalty.

We're supposed to practice? 😕

Always good to welcome more to the PC gaming 🙂 I'd disagree with Ren though about going prebuilt, while there is more hassle in building your own at your budget I'm almost certain it will be cheaper (or a better spec) and the warranty on individual parts is usually equal or longer to that offered by system builders. GPU - Parts are a pain at the moment but as James said an RTX3070 (or AMD 6800, maybe 6700 depending on benchmarks) at minimum should see you sorted for a good few years. Obviously if you want to splash the cash there's always a 3080 too. Or even simpler - buy the highest card up this list as your budget allows; https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/reviews/gpu-hierarchy,4388.html CPU - To disagree with Phil here, I think this is AMD all the way. The Ryzen 5000 series CPU's beat Intel in everything so that's what I'd be looking at. The numbering scheme is pretty simple; for your budget buy the highest number you can. Or, again, simpler - buy the highest CPU up this list as your budget allows; https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/reviews/cpu-hierarchy,4312.html Motherboard - will depend on which CPU you go for though I'd be aiming for middle of the road on price here. Top end has everything typically but is overkill unless you're pushing voltages and overclocks etc. The cheap end tend to use not so great caps and vrm's and some with no coolers on them either. Basically after that you're just looking to make sure they have the features you want (enough sata ports for however many drives you want, 3 or 6 audio jacks or optical, enough usb ports etc.) RAM - 16Gb 3200Mhz still seems to the be sweet sport for price and performance. 16Gb is the minimum I'd recommend but should see you good for a few years and somewhere you can save some £ now as it's easy enough to add another 16Gb in a few years if you find you need it. Power Supply / PSU - 650W should be enough though I'd probably say go for 750W as you'd be in a more efficient range of the PSU. PSU's are a pain though as every brand has good and bad ones, Corsair, SuperFlower and Seasonic generally fair the best but not all their PSU's are good. Find a few in your budget and google for reviews, there's usually full teardown reviews of them and it should let you know if it that model is a good one or not. Storage - NVMe for Windows, 500Gb as an absolute minimum but 1tb would be better. After that, it depends what you want to store and how much. Case - This will depend on where you want to put it though other factors to consider are to make sure it can fit your motherboard size (itx, m-atx, atx or e-atx - the motherboard listing will tell you). After that it's just down to how many drives you want, front panel usb's etc. Some cases come with front panel card readers which can be useful as it saves digging out cables camera's all the time. The final thing to consider is CPU cooling - depending on the route you choose you need to make sure it will fit. Almost all cases will list maximum height for air cooler and fan/radiator support for AIO liquid coolers. Monitor - As already said 1440p is the sweet spot still. 4k is still a bit out of reach for gaming at good refresh rates but 1440p isn't plus it's a nice resolution bump over 1080p. If you want it for photography, I'd look at one with good colour accuracy which generally speaking means an IPS monitor. However there are good TN and VA panels too so similar to PSU's this will be best done by googling for review of specific monitors.

Yeah, last September I got a Valve Index so different but basically the same and I can confirm they are awesome! I've mostly been sticking to sim racing with it but I've played a few other games. Like you I've also tried TV/movies on it though I've been meaning to sort out a better seat so I can watch a whole movie as I really want to watch the Star Wars original trilogy in 4k in VR.

Outside of the usual bath sets, t-shirts, chocolate and jelly beans the most notable was a new lens for my camera (slight fllex 😛) and a blend your own whisky set; where they give you a few different tasting whiskys (smokey, fruity etc.) and the stuff to blend them. So that's going to be some tasty to try out 🙂

I just completed this quiz. My Score 50/100 My Time 156 seconds  

Always the way isn’t it! Which gr3 did you get? Always hard when you’re starting out but you’ll soon find you have few cars coming out your ears.

And the award for the cover that most sounds like the original goes to...

You'll need to acquire them. The easiest methods are; - Do a driving marathon each day (26.2 miles) which gives you a random free car - Do each row of the driving school thing (I can't remember it's proper name) it's 8 challenges which has a gift symbol at the end. Get all gold and get a free random car. - Do circuit experiences, gold on each section and complete track will give you a free random car Worth noting that any driving you do counts towards the driving marathon, the driving school thingy and circuit experience included, so doing them to get your 26.2 daily miles can get you several free cars a day. The circuit experience also nets you a decent amount of dollar too though there's better ways to earn money. It used to be doing some of the league races with specific set ups but I'm out the loop of the fastest way to earn dollar these days.

I assume this is Dragon Trail seaside?

Without saying too much in case you do watch Rebels, it isn't currently known what happened to Ezra after Rebels. So it's possible he won't be in one of the shows or even mentioned. The whole reason people have been saying about Sebastian Stan to play young Luke is because they look so alike! The voice will be different but I don't think that would be such a huge thing.

I’m glad you took all our comments under advisement 😆 I’m not a huge fan of the rallying in gt sport so I’m happy we’re doing the circuit. Though if people want to do the rallying then i’ll be there.

Well that wasn’t what I expected though thoroughly enjoyed it. I would expect that the series will continue with the reclamation of Mandalor consider he is now the ruler of it. Yeah that scene from Rebels came to mind for me too. I can’t remember the exact details but Sabine doesn’t take the Dark Saber in battle either as she finds it in Darth Mauls stuff. You could say Bo Katan should have fought Sabine for it but really the Rebels scene is more just the returning of the Saber to a mandalorian that could reunite the clans and rule Mandalor. Though this could also be taken further that Bo Katan obviously lost the Saber at some point so has to win it back rather than be given it. It’s not ‘clean’ but I don’t think it’s the plot hole some people seem to be making it out to be. Also, yes Sebastian Stan should play young Luke. They wouldn’t need any CGI then. While it was cool seeing Luke back, I was hoping it was going to Ezra. With the human hand I thought it might be but as soon as you saw the gloved hand it was obviously Luke. Edit: Not to mention the x wing being a bit of a clue too.

I imagine it would, I'll let you know when it happens #fixed

The bits that I can’t work out is 1) how did nvidia ever think it wouldn’t get out and wouldn’t cause a massive backlash which leads on to 2) why didn’t they come up with almost any other reason as they could have chosen a number that would have left Hardware Unboxed without cards but without the fuss.

It certainly is a method that I'm happy to support especially as it seems helpful for smaller developers to make games as it's in essence crowd funding. The issue is that it can't work for all games; something like 7dtd works as it's a survival game and while they can add more stuff (either as new mechanics or actual things like vehicles) it will remain a survival game. How does that work for a story driven game though? The only real way to do it for a single player story driven game is similar to Destiny and release content periodically that continues the story. Though that then runs in to the problem that, for a game like CP2077, how to put in enough content to span the months between releases. Comparing to Destiny, even that struggles but has a lot more (raids, pvp, special events etc.) that do help give 'content' over a longer period of time. This whole situation reminds me of No Mans Sky and Hello Games. Sure the game launched badly but Hello Games sorted it out and from what I've seen so far, it looks like CDPR are so far doing the right thing and I hope they continue to do so. The first impression is the most important sadly, NMS is still remembered more for it's botched launch than the game it's become and I think CP2077 will be remembered similarly.

So first horde night done and well it was ...... interesting. We spent on the roof of another building to not risk what we’ve gathered so far. Someone (Crispy or Rich) joked about the town we’re in being decimated as we spend each horde night on a different building. Turns out they were right, right at the end of horde night the building collapsed! As it turns out, horde night is harder because the modded zombies (the ones on the menu screen) come out but zombies also regain health on horde night! It’s a hard one, we obviously need a proper base to have a chance of surviving horde night but ifs going to be a while until we can think about building a base.

Whoops! Forgot to rsvp to the event but happy to rearrange if no one else can make it.

Have you been driving 100 miles a day? 😆 It's a driving marathon (26.2 miles) to get a free car a day. Though other way to get free cars; Driving school - each row of 8 will give you a free car if you get gold in all 8 Circuit experience - get gold on each section and full track and you'll get a free car. (also a pretty good way to earn credits) Mileage exchange - not technically 'free' as you buy them with mileage points but there's very little to use mileage points on except cosmetic stuff (paint, wheels, driver poses etc.) so they tend to build up over time. As the miles per day counts in anything, driving 26.2 miles while doing circuit experiences can net you multiple free cars a day.

Makes sense though my only concern would be if everyone has a gr2 car. As there’s only (I think) 2 or 3 is unlikely people have had them as gifts cars so will need to buy them.