Volume 76 -- Jan. 25, 2007

A Turn 10 Introduction...

By: Che Chou, Community Manager

Greetings Forza fans, and welcome back to the Turn 10 Weekly Pitpass Report. As we continue to see an influx of new Forza 2 players to the fold, I'd like to extend a warm welcome to those just joining the community. For those of us here at Turn 10, the week kicked off in joyous fashion as word through the wire announced that Forza's game director Dan Greenawalt and his wife have been blessed with twin baby boys. Congrats to Dan and family for the awesome news and we hope he can actually get some sleep in the weeks and months to come, and we certainly look forward to his return.

1982 Porsche 911 Turbo 3.3 by : sphilli22 - Official Photomode Comp...

If you're curious about what goes on behind the scenes here, or just want mini-pitpass reports all throughout the week, be sure to check out the Turn 10 blog, which is just a mixbag of random community updates, and other studio-related thoughts. Another thing we're adding as a regular part of Forzamotorsport.net each week is a series called the Turn 10 Car of the Week. The concept is simple: we here at Turn 10 have the warm fuzzies for cars and sometimes just making a racing sim just isn't enough -- sometimes we feel the need to publish articles on websites about our favorite cars in a compulsive fit of show-and-tell.

2005 Scion tC by: BnZ - Forza Central Photomode

The extra work each week is, of course, totally justified because we want the Forza community to sound-off on how they feel about some of our favorite cars. But all of this should be taken at face value; we're doing this because we're car guys -- in no way should this be interpreted as feedback or hints as to future DLC car packs. Hey, I know some of you out there and your Forza compulsions way too well. Anyway look for the first of these articles sometime Monday on the front page of this site.

2003 Nissan Fairlady Z by: K1LL4LE55 - Replica Livery Competition

Another new addition to the site in the coming weeks will be the long-awaited Forza 2 scoreboard filters that will allow students from the school of fast to essentially create their own custom leaderboards based off the data that already exists among the Forza 2 scoreboards. I got to check out the final comp. design of the feature today in our test bed and it's looking pretty cool. From any scoreboard at any time, you'll be able to pull down a menu in real-time and filter the results by date, car, game type, any and all assists, drafting,, as well as the ability to do wildtag searches for Gamertags for easy team-score entry searches. Once the scoreboard has been filtered, the entries will get re-ranked into a new ascending sequence (but a mouseover of the Rank header will quickly show the original scoreboard ranking for those that are concerned).

2005 Lamborghini Murcielago by: mnkpro - Photoshop Competition

The coolest part of these scoreboard filters is that you can basically bookmark your scoreboard filters and even send those links to friends and as long as they keep hitting the same URL, you've basically got yourself a permanently filtered scoreboard. Since we just handed off visual web design of the feature off to the web dev today, we should see a working version sometime next week, after which, we'll get the team to bash on it for bugs. If all looks good, I'm hoping it's going to go live soon thereafter. You'll hear more on how this is progressing in our next Pitpass Report. I know I'm pretty excited for this to go live, and so are the 5000 or so players we have each week who obsess over the Forza 2 scoreboards.

2005 Ford GT by: PyroDonkey - Official Photomode Competition

Finally, I just want to remind everyone that the Team Seattle Porsche 996 GT3 Cup replica contest submission deadline is fast approaching (1/31). This is your last weekend to show us your Forza 2 painting/designing/tuning skills for some big in-game prizes. The submissions began coming in as early as last week, and we continued to receive more this week. Although they're all pretty good, there's plenty of room for improvement so if you're hesitant on creating a replica because you're intimdated by the talent that's in the pool, let's just say the bar can easily be reset at any time.

We also haven't received submissions from some of the community's most reknowned replica/racing painters so fear not. You certainly do have a chance to win 15 million in-game credits for you and a friend, as well as 3 unicorn cars each. But you'll need to get your submission in before 1/31 in order for that to matter. Anyway, check out reference photos and details in this blog entry for all the info you need to get started. Have a nice one, Forza fans!

2005 Lamborghini Murcielago by: SPhilli911 - Forza Central Photomode

The Forza Motorsport 2 Community Update

By: Landin Williams, Community Moderator

Another week has gone by and our online community of racers, tuners, painters, drifters and photographers are happily participating in a whole slew of different events or activities both in-game and on our forums here at FM.net. If you are new to the site then I suggest you browse through the many past articles as well as the forum sections to get an idea of what sorts of things happen around here on a daily basis. Currently we have over 5 different sponsored community competitions where the winners are eligible for one free gift car courtesy of Turn 10. So if you are looking to get your hands on a Unicorn Car check out the links located next to the winning submissions from this week. In-case you are not already aware the community is running a weekly photomode competition, original livery competition and race livery competition, so there should be something for everyone.

Along with these community run competitions we have also just completed the first week of our Official Hotlap Series Season 2. The season has only just begun, yet we have already seen some outstanding driving from some of the fastest Forza 2 racers on the planet. This week we challenged racers to set their fastest lap times on Road Atlanta in the #2 FSI Champion Racing R8, and so far the results have been staggering. So here are a few statistics that should help you understand just how much effort and time is being put into this challenge, as well as how high the bar is being raised by the top drivers in the community.

2001 TVR Tuscan S by: Bigbluesd - Replica Livery Competition

I think it’s safe to say that without a doubt the #12 Ferrari F333 SP is the dominant car in R1. Only a quick look at the scoreboards will reveal that this car is capable of setting amazing times on almost any track when paired with the right driver. Currently the fastest R1 time on Road Atlanta is held by the almighty “IPR BackONE AbS” who has a time of 1:02.459. It is plain to see that this time is on the verge of impossible, however the real surprise comes when you consider the top times in this week’s Hotlap Challenge.

The number one time in this week’s challenge is held by “R2P KimiMatt” with a time of 1:03.002. Now when you take a look at the current R1 scoreboard on Road Atlanta you will see that the fastest driver in the #2 FSI Champion R8 is “SqR LukeJS” in 40th place with a time of 1:03.569. It is no surprise that this lap was uploaded to our scoreboards today, as evidently the drivers in our Hotlap challenge have pushed the #2 Audi R8 far beyond what anyone thought was possible. The number one time from "R2PKimiMatt" would have placed him in 11th place on our R1 scoreboard for Road Atlanta (among all of those Ferrari F333's), and that is an incredible achievement! 

1987 #17 Racing Porsche AG 962c by: Darin - Forza Central Photomode

Racing to Perfection (R2P) had a very strong finish with four drivers finishing in the top 10 this week. R2P finished in second position in season 1, and seem determined to take the number one spot in season 2. With so many strong members it will be interesting to see who can step up to challenge R2P in the following weeks. A very big congratulations going out to “R2P KimiMatt” who was able to de-throne “IPR BackONE AbS” for the first time ever in our Hotlap Challenge. 

“BackONE” was undefeated in season 1, and as a result was able to secure huge points for the Itialian Pro Racers (IPR) who took first place last season. IPR finished with two drivers in the top 10 this week, and should secure enough points to have a good start to the season. For a complete breakdown of this week’s challenge make sure to check back next Friday as we will be posting the official results from Week 19, along with a complete breakdown of the points from this week’s challenge. Congratulations to everyone who was able to place in the top 50 this week. The bar is getting raised higher and higher every week, and we are all very excited to see how things pan out in season 2 of the Official Hotlap Challenge.

Hotlap Challenge Week 18 – Top 10
1 IPR BackONE AbS
2 IPR Revolution
3 VVV Daveyskills
4 KUK RealSpeed
5 R2P SVS NL
6 VVV Nismo
7 ACC PorscheH6
8 E360 Basco
9 R2P KoRn
10 SqR Parabolica

Click HERE to see if you have been selected as one of the random 30 from Week 18!

Congratulations to everyone who placed in the top 10 in last week’s challenge. If you are not already aware the top 10 drivers each week are rewarded with a free gift car of choice courtesy of Turn 10. All you have to do is send an e-mail to forzafb@microsoft.com with your gamertag, the competition you have won and your car request. This also applies to anyone who has been selected in the Random 30 for week 18!

1999 Honda Civic Si Coupe by: PanzyMk4 - Replica Livery Competition

Community Videos

As most of you already know last week Che mentioned that we would be accepting video entries from various people in the community, and would be selecting our favorite ones to post on the blog’s and in this article. We were really surprised by some of the entries this week and so I wanted to take some time to talk about the videos that were submitted, and also point you in the right direction if you would like to check them out.

The first video that was received was a drifting video put together by “Tatakai”, a very active member of the Forza 2 drifting community. The video entitled “Forza 2 Drift Compilation” was a community drifting project that features not only a wide variety of drivers from all different teams, but also some great editing and music. This video is a must see for all you drifters out there so make sure to check it out on in our blog article HERE. I was very impressed with this video and can’t wait to see more videos from Tatakai. Great Work!

2002 Nissan Skyline GT-R by: Munky - Official Photomode Competition

The second video that was submitted was from Derrick Hopkins, the leader of the DTMRS Racing Series. This community based racing event is currently in its second season, and will run a total of 7 racers. After each race Derrick creates a video from the race replays complete with commentary and driver interviews! The Grand Prix race on Montegi was especially exciting to watch so head on over to our newest blog article HERE and check it out!

I also want to give a big shout out to the Section X Forza 2 Team who also submitted some great videos last week, that were not included in our blog article. Our website software will not accept videos from Stage 6, so make sure to upload your community videos to Soapbox before submitting them for review! We are really excited to see what kind of community videos start to appear in the near future as people begin submitting more materials!

2004 Subaru Impreza STi by: BOD Killinator - Photoshop Competition

Speaking of videos I also wanted to quickly mention the “Forza Motorsport 2 Video Gallery” that is currently being maintained in the “Photo Mode and Videos” forum. This thread has grown steadily over the past few months and now hosts over 60 Forza 2 related videos. There are short descriptions on each video along with a link to stream the video directly, so if you are looking for some cool Forza related videos to watch then check out the thread HERE.

Alright before I take off for the weekend I wanted to give a shout out to the “Auction House Clean-Up Crew”. This group of 31 community members has been generous enough to volunteer their time to help clean up the offensive liveries found on the Auction House. The team, lead by “Jerod” has strategically monitored the auction house for a few weeks now, and I must say it has been great having active members reporting abusive auctions. 

Che and I appreciate your help very much, and as a reward for your hard work and dedication we have decided to gift all 31 members of the clean-up crew a free gift car of choice. Thank you all very much for your diligence and help. Oh and to all those players out there who get a kick out of abusing the Auction House…I suggest you remove your auctions now, because if you don’t the clean-up crew will find you and shut you down!

2003 Ferrari Challenge Stradale by: JohnnyQuesttt - Forza Central ...

Ok that’s it for this week’s update! We hope you have enjoyed all of the news and multimedia generated by our incredible community of Forza 2 fanatics. Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!

Peace

Landin

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