Volume 80 -- Feb. 22, 2008

Highway through the danger zone...

By: Che Chou, Community Manager

Hello folks, and thanks for checking out the Turn 10 Pitpass Report this week. For those in the Forza Motorsport community who live and die by the scoreboards, this week has seen the most heated hotlap battles in the history of the franchise. Last Friday, we officially opened the Championship Gaming Series qualifying lobby server in Forza Motorsport 2 for a 7-day window. In cooperation with the CGS crew who are staging an epic combine and draft event in Austin, TX, on March 7th, we are granting the top 4 finishers of the CGS qualifying hotlap challenge reimbursement vouchers of $1,000 to help cover the cost of getting their butts out to Austin for the draft event.

2007 Shelby GT500 by: mnkpro - American Photomode Competition

FM.net CGS Qualifying Winners

So the good news is, we were just informed by the CGS that they've opened up another 32 registration slots for the Combine and Draft in Austin, TX. Although the $1000 travel reimbursement vouchers will still only be awarded to the top 4 runners on the qualifying scoreboard, we're now reserving registration slots for the top 18 racers from our hotlap challenge (R1R Ch0mpr and R1R JaSoN X already have their slots auto-reserved since they are returning CGS athletes).

With that said, we are pleased to announce the winners of the CGS hotlap qualifier. The top 4 guys get $1,000 travel vouchers, while the rest of the folks have registration slots reserved at the Combine and Draft event. Keep in mind that if you are one of the players listed below, you now have an official registration slot saved for you and we encourage you to get in touch with the CGS to confirm your attendance at the Combine and Draft. Email pr@thecgs.com to get the process started. The rest of you who did not qualify in our hotlap challenge but would like to compete at the draft event can head over to http://thecgs.com and register for the remaining slots. It's first come first serve so you better hurry! Remember, you absolutely have to be 18-and-over, as well as a legal resident of the United States and Canada to qualify for the event. No exceptions!

The FM.net Scoreboard Filters!

Click on the image above to see a full-sized view. Do it!

Behind the scenes here at Turn 10, this week also saw the FM.net scoreboard filter feature go into full-swing testing. I've included a screenshot above to give you a taste of what scoreboard freaks will be able to use when this sucker goes live. It's pretty straightforward, but let me just point out some of its finer details.

The scoreboard filters starting from left to right:

• Rank: After applying a scoreboard filter, the rank column will swap between the new ranks and the original ranking numbers. This allows you to see not only what the original rank is, but also how far apart the entries are in terms of the overall (original) scoreboard. Keep you mind that you can also filter results continuously until you've got nothing left to work with.
  
  
• Gamertag: Use this field to either search for specific gamertags, or use it to filter the results by a particular clan tag (e.g., TRC, SPDN, R1R, TDR, etc.) and use the wildcard to get your results.
  
  
• Car: Self-explanatory. We're actually adding a manufacturer field here to make searching for that particular model a little easier. Also note that when you type into the textbox, the car list below will auto-filter based on your first few characters.
  
  
• Gametype: This will allow you to filter out those annoying Multiplayer lap times with all the start/finish line pushing and drafting. Yay!
  
  
• Assists: Sick of seeing those dominant muscle cars with TCS? Drafting gets your goat? Well here you go.
  
  
• Date: A pair of date range window filters lets you run your own weekly hotlap challenges!
  
  
• A couple of other things to note. You can close the filter controls at any time by clicking outside of the filter control box, but your settings will not be reset when you reopen the control panel. You will also be able to save your filter set as it's basically a URL that will return dynamic results depending on how the scoreboard has changed. This allows you to send permalinks to your buddies/rivals so everyone is always looking at the same scoreboard. Once you run the filter, a breadcrumb dialogue at the bottom of the window will remind you of what your filter requirements were. If all goes well, we'll be launching this feature next week. Fingers and toes crossed.

The Grease Trap: Other Stuff at Turn 10

Turn 10 game director Dan Greenawalt droppin' the mad science on the kids from the Seattle Youth Care organization this afternoon.

It's Game Developer's Conference week, so that means a good chunk of Turn 10's developers were down in San Francisco all week soaking up the sun as well as dev techniques (psst, hey, we're hiring!). So it was pretty quiet this week, except for this afternoon when a big group of kids from the Youth Care group came by to hang out, scope the studio, talk to developers, and play Forza 2 on the triple-screen. For the most part, the group was pretty curious about what made a game studio tick, and seemed fascinated with the tools we used to create Forza 2. We also ran a local hotlap challenge and the two fastest racers walked away with free copies of Forza 2 (and everybody else got free copies of the excellent Lost Odyssey).

FM.net contributor J. Mason explains why Alfa Romeo needs to come back to the States in a big way in this edition of Turn 10 Car of the Week blog.

As always, I'm going to close out the week with our favorite car of the week here on the Turn 10 Blog. This week, our shadowy race fiend J. Mason fingers the Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione as one of his favorite cars ever. It seems ol' Mason's also got some road rage issues. Go check out his rant. And with that, I'm out!

2004 Audi TT Coupe 3.2 Quattro by: Jockamo - Fantasy Livery Comp.

Discovering the Original Forza Fansite

By: Landin Williams, Community Moderator

As some of you may already know I began contributing to this community approximately 2 years ago on the drifting side of things, releasing multiple videos with the help of my current team Project Blackjack. Before my online days of drifting and video production I was someone who just really enjoyed Forza Motorsport 1, and wanted to find other people who shared the same interest in drifting. After registering for Xbox LIVE, and finding a few fellow drifters, I soon stumbled upon Forza Central way back in December of 2005, and quickly realized it was the Holy Grail for anyone looking to find other people interested in Forza Motorsport. I soon discovered this massive community where players were setting up drifting competitions and judging each other based on a variety of criteria; essentially I had found exactly what I was looking for.

1987 #17 Racing Porsche AG 962c by: BnZ - FC Photomode Comp.

I was not the only one who discovered this community, as Forza Central (FC) was essentially the only website/forum dedicated to Forza Motorsport 1…so if you were really into the game then you were probably a part of FC at some point. Over the years this site has been a very big contributor to the Forza community, and it is for this reason that I wanted to know more about the site that had such a huge impact on me, and also the community in general.

So I made it a point to spend some time this week talking to David Blane, the man responsible for creating the Forza Central that we all know and love. I wanted to find out about the person who has undoubtedly spent large amounts of time crafting this online community. David (who is a converted PC gamer) was drawn towards the original Forza due to the simulation aspect of the game. “I used to be a PC gamer and played race simulations like Geoff Crammond's GP series and GP Legends,” says Blane, “but as a gaming platform the PC was hardly ideal. When I started to see the first snippets of information about Forza Motorsport it sounded like a perfect mix of hardcore simulation and customization.”

2005 Ford GT by: StrongSNIPER3 - American Photomode Competition

It soon became apparent that David is very involved with racing in general, and when he is not watching some form of motorsport he is working on Forza related projects. This is where Forza Central comes into the picture, as David describes the lack of a centralized area where players could get together to discuss the various aspects of the game. David took it upon himself to create an online community dedicated to Forza Motorsport. “I decided to create Forzacentral.com in 2004 on the 27th September, 8 months before the launch of Forza Motorsport. The site was an immediate hit with fans,” he says.

Over the years David has worked with his team of moderators to establish a well known and organized place for people to hang out, argue and share ideas regarding the Forza franchise. Recently he has teamed up with Robert Whittington from the Cyber Racing World Championship to bring high quality entertainment to the community. This project has been underway since May 2007, and as David explains in the interview “It is a unique experience unlike anything I'd seen before, on PC or console.” As many of you already know David and Robert have been releasing various racing broadcasts from the tournament series that is currently underway, and if you haven’t already make sure to check out their newest racing broadcast, located here.

2003 MINI Cooper S by: downloadfreak - FC Feb. Car of the Month

David and I continued to converse about their plans for the future, and while no firm ideas have been put down on paper; they do have many projects that will take advantage of the sandbox design of Forza 2. The Cyber Racing World Championship is one of these projects and I (among many others) am very excited to see its growth and progression! If you are not into competitive racing then you can check out FC’s Photomode competition or the “Car of the Month” competition where the winner gets three free cars of choice courtesy of Turn 10! Want a Lotus Exige Espionage or a Saleen S281E? Then head on over to www.forzacentral.com and get involved in this great community.

Special thanks to David Blane from Forza Central for taking some time to talk about his past, present and future projects! He also wanted to take this opportunity to thank his wife for all of her loyal support in helping him provide for the Forza community.  We all thank you for your understanding. :)

A Close Battle by: slim tricky - FC Photomode Comp.

The Forza Motorsport 2 Community Updates

As mentioned last Friday, we have been spending some time this week driving and inspecting all of the entries from the Team Seattle replica livery competition. After much deliberation we have finally decided on the grand prize winners who will receive 3 free gift cars of choice along with 15 Million in-game credits to spend at their own discretion. As you may already know we have been judging these cars based on the accuracy of the livery when compared to the original, as well as how well the car performed when taken out for some laps around Laguna Seca. Along with our good friends Peter Wilson and Paul Hagger over at MSN Autos, we were able to decide on one car that deserved to be crowned the champion.

Before we announce the winners I want to make it clear that all of the entries were amazing replicas of the Team Seattle Porsche 996 GT3. The attention to detail shown by all of the artists was amazing, and in the end it came down to what car handled and felt the best on the track. So without further ado I would like to congratulate TDR Mattystang and TDR Davinci for taking first place in the Team Seattle Replica Livery Contest! Mattystang was responsible for the very accurate and detailed paintjob, while Davinci spent the time tuning this car to perfection. Congratulations going out to Team Dynamic Racing for taking home the prize cars and credits!  Make sure to send me an e-mail at forzafb@microsoft.com in order to arrange for your prizing delivery!

Congratulations to TDR Mattystang and TDR Davinci!  Great Work. 

For those of you who don’t know, Team Dynamic Racing (TDR) is a well known racing club on Forza 2. After declaring them as the grand prize winners of our contest I was curious to find out more about the team who was responsible for creating such an amazing car. After a quick search I stumbled upon their website and spent some time browsing around to get an idea of what the team is all about. Currently TDR is heavily involved in the IFCA, as they are not only hosting races, but participating in them as well. Much like all of the other teams who have been competing in Forza 2 since launch, TDR is extremely excited to get involved with the CGS, and has already started preparing for the 2008 season. With players from North America, Australia, Ireland, England and Mexico City, TDR is poised to have a big impact on a global scale in the 2008 CGS series. For more information about TDR make sure to visit their official team website here.

In other news we are now set to begin the final week in the official Turn 10 Hotlap Series. The individual points race is still really tight after week 4, while R2P has taken a commanding lead in the team point’s race.  For week 5 we have decided to run another stock challenge (incase the Mugen Integra wasn’t enough) utilizing the 2004 Audi S4 on Maple Valley Long. The challenge has already gone live so make sure to put down your best time’s and represent yourself or your team to the fullest!

Additionally we now have the results from the European Hotlap challenge that was set-up last week, and it seems a familiar face is back in the mix. Hopefully you remember who I am talking about.  Just as an added bonus we offered up 15 Million Credits for 1st, 10 Million for 2nd and 5 Million for 3rd, so this was definitely a challenge worth fighting for!  Here are the top 10 European Hotlappers from this weeks challenge!

European Hotlap Challenge Top 10:
1 - IPR BackONE AbS
2 - Kjmj Raikkonen
3 - rTR I Nikrox
4 - IPR DriveR E76
5 - VVV Daveyskills
6 - DBP Lemon
7 - KUK RealSpeed
8 - rTR I Fullspe3D
9 - NF1 I Total
10 - IPR StevenX

Click here to see if you have been selected as one of the “Random 30”.

Remember the top 10 drivers are still eligible for a free car of choice so send us an e-mail with your details and request.  The top 3 qualifiers should also send us an e-mail in order to redeem the credits you have won!

2007 Porsche 911 GT3 by: ODINS VOLK - FC Photomode Comp. 

Speaking of challenges and tournaments, I am also set to begin the process of creating new tournament templates to replace the ones currently in use. I will be changing the track configurations for the major tournaments and adding in a few new tournaments that are more specific and restricted. This includes stock tournaments, and also “assist free” tournaments, so if you have some ideas for a tournament you would like to see make sure to post in the discussion thread here. I know it has been a long time coming, but it is definitely something that I will be working on within the next few weeks, so if you have some ideas now is the time to speak up!

2000 Saleen S281 by: Mazda6MPS - American Photomode Competition

Alright that’s it for this week’s report. I hope you all enjoyed reading, and that you take part in one of our official competitions here at FM.net, as well as the sponsored competitions on Forza Central. Have a great weekend, and good luck to everyone practicing for the CGS Combine and Draft happening next week. I am confident you will represent the Forza community to the max...like a ride through the Danger Zone!

Peace

Landin