Volume 82 -- Mar. 7, 2008

A Turn 10 Introduction...

By: Che Chou, Community Manager

Yo, MTV raps! And welcome back to the Turn 10 weekly pitpass report. Per usual these days, time itself feels like its trying to break its own hotlap record, accelerating ever faster into 2008. Here at the studio, folks are both prototyping amazing new tech, as well as engaged in production work for our next project. There's a lot to do, which is also why we're actively interviewing and hiring new talent here at Turn 10 (ironically, this also makes things even more hectic). Surely it doesn't help that those of us in the U.S. are losing an hour of sleep starting Sunday (hurray for daylight savings).

2006 Lotus Exige Cup 240 by: mnkpro - Maple Valley Photo Comp.

It's all good. More the merrier. Then there's the matter of the upcoming Forza 2 downloadable content which is scheduled to go live on Xbox Live Marketplace in a week and a half (or so). We'll make an official release announcement with full details soon. You know how these things work -- ask us no questions 'til then and we tell you no lies. In the meantime, we'll give you a menacing spyshot below from one of the cars from the DLC pack to see if you can figure out which sweet ride this is. First person to post the correct car in this thread gets three gift cars of their choice (unicorns included). Each person also gets just one guess, so it'll be the guess in your first post. I have a feeling you guys will crack this within minutes of this pitpass going live, but we're not gonna tell you what car this is until the 11th hour.

Go post your guess on what this car is here.

This week also saw the rollout of our scoreboard filtration system (that sounds like data you can drink out of a paper cup or something). There was an initial flurry of comments about what the scoreboard filter is and isn't (or rather, what folks wanted it to do). It's nice to see that folks are now starting to understand its potential and actually use it to improve their lap times or give themselves new goals within the scoreboard portion of the game. Donald Ente, one of our community members, has even posted tips on how to use the scoreboard filters in his own thread. Keep in mind that we can only display the top 1000 entries of any scoreboard on the website (you're free to browse the whole huge and massive thing in-game, however), which means any filtering you do on the scoreboards only applies to the top 1000 players. Also, folks need to understand that the reason you can't do stuff like filter by drivetrain is because the data itself doesn't exist on the scoreboards -- which means we've got nothing to work with. That's all going to change in the future, and that's all I'm going to say. Anyway, the filters are going to be a cool tool for some, and not so useful for others. Business as usual.

2002 Honda Mugen Integra Type-R by: hira - Maple Valley Photo Comp.

A couple of other things to note. This is the last weekend to get your submission in for the "magazines and website" livery competition (post yours in this thread por favor). The idea is that we know all of you are fans of videogames and motorsports, or both -- so we thought hey why not get you guys to express that fanfare with some of your creative paintjobs. We hope to see some nice (but ficticious obviously) sponsored cars from your favorite magazines and/or websites. There's obviously prizing involved, so go check out all the details. Also happening this weekend is Championship Gaming Series combine and draft event in Austin, Texas. We've got quite a few of the fastest racers in our community going out to try and get drafted for some pro gaming goodness. Wish all the guys luck and we hope to see you in the big time.

The Lotus 79 -- nope not a car you'll find in-game, but still one of the finest cars ever made. Read about it in this week's Turn 10 car of the week blog.

This week, we're joined again by our good friends P. Rod and J. Mase from the not-so-fresh car pen for Turn 10's car of the week blog. To mix things up, the love spills over into Formula One with discussion on none other than the Lotus 79, a windswept beast with a passion for lateral G's. Before I sign outta here to ponder the new heights of stupidity that is now season 4 of Lost (but hey, I want to see how they write themselves out of the paperbag), I also want to mention that we've got another "Game with Dev" event coming up in the next couple weeks. We had a blast with the last one and look forward to meeting more of you folks on Xbox Live soon. In the meantime, take care y'all.

2007 Peugeot 908 by: Duffers999 - R Class Photo Thread

"I'm Killing It" - Ryan Litteral's R33 Skyline

By: Landin Williams, Community Moderator

Hello and welcome to this edition of the Forza Motorsport 2 Community Update. This week I am going to be writing about something that easily occupies 95% of my time on Forza 2. Of course I like to get down with a good clean race once and a while, but when it comes to playing Forza 2 nothing makes me happier than throwing my Nissan S14 sideways into a corner. Drifting has been my “Forza Subculture” of choice ever since Forza 1, and as a result I have spent a lot of time playing and meeting people who are just excited about the sport as I am.

If fact I recently found out that a good friend of mine is deeply involved with drifting in real life, and is currently hard at work trying to build up his skills to eventually become a fully licensed Formula D driver. Ryan Litteral is one of the newest members of Project Blackjack, and when he is not wall grinding on Sunsent Infield, he is abusing his clutch in a right hand drive Nissan Skyline R33! (Side note: the term “wall grinding” refers to the action of scraping the back of your car against the wall during a drift) Being a drifter in Forza 2 and in real life, I was excited to get some more details about Ryan’s experience with drifting, and of course more details about his car!

Currently Ryan is driving a 1997 Nissan Skyline R33 GTS-T, which was purchased from his sponsor after he offered to sell it at a price that “couldn’t be turned down” says Litteral. Since then Ryan has been spending his time and money restoring it to the condition it was in when he initially started driving it. As you can imagine a car that is built to drift is going to take some punishment, and that is exactly what the previous owners did to the car. “It was damaged pretty badly when the fabricators decided they wanted to abuse it” he says “but since then I have worked steadily to bring it back to life”. So what about the specs? What kinds of things do you need to change in order to build a car that will accept oversteer? Well to answer some of these questions I asked Ryan to give me the low down on his ride, so here it is!

Check out Ryan's pimpin' right hand drive Skyline R33!

Ryan's 1997 Nissan Skyline R33 GTS-T

Engine Upgrades (RB25DET):
- Greddy Front Mount Intercooler
- APEXi SAFC Neo (Air/Fuel Controller)
- Sard fuel pressure regulator
- Custom Turbonetics T3 turbo
- Blitz electronic fuel controller
- MAX 3 row aluminum radiator

Suspension Upgrades:
- APEXi Adjustable Coilovers
- HICAS eliminator bar
- Kaaz 2 way differential

Along with everything listed, this R33 is also equipped with a full roll cage, Buddy Club bucket seats, and 5zigen wheels to keep it looking smooth on the track.  “The car comes from the factory with a pretty weak limited slip, so that had to be changed out along with the soft suspension” he says. He also explains how this particular model is equipped with 4 wheel steering system, so that had to be eliminated before he could scrape walls with authority.

Along with these suspension and drivetrain modifications Ryan has also upgraded the engine to pump out some much needed power. Currently this engine is outputting 254 Wheel Horsepower, and according to Ryan this is still not enough, as eventually he is looking to reach the 350WHP range...“nothing crazy” he says (yeah right I say!). So as you can see this R33 is far from stock, and is set-up to handle the massive amounts of abuse it will face when Mr. Litteral get’s behind the wheel.

Here is a shot of Litteral drifting his beloved R33 in a practice event!

So after I harassed Ryan for all the good info about his car, I began asking him questions about his passion for drifting, and how someone can get involved with this sport on a competitive level. “I started out drifting at a local practice event called Drift Buffet” he says, “and after placing well in a few events I was given a spot on the Drift Buffet Demo Team.”  He explained how running in local competitions is the best way to get involved with drifting, as you will meet people who can help you and offer advice.  It is also a good way to get in touch with potential sponsors and show them what you can do, something that is really important in competitive drifting.  So his advice for anyone looking to get involved is to find a local event and just start drifting.  “If your good at what you do and have the desire to learn and get better, then you will get noticed” he says.

Running in these local events helped Ryan to not only build up his driving skill, but also allowed him to run in the “World Drift Series”, a competition consisting of 2 events in 2 different cities in China.  This is by far the biggest event that Ryan has competed in, and he describes it as “the most exciting radical 2 weeks of my life.”  He explained how he was flown out to China, given a few cars to drift in the competition, and treated like royalty all along the way.  The drifters are treated like stars, and Ryan was exposed to everything from incredible parties and nightlife, to television interviews and coverage.  All of this mixed in with the opportunity to drift in front of 40,000 people adds up to a pretty amazing experience, especially when you consider that Ryan has only been drifting for a year! 

"I want YOU, to take a picture of ME, killing it in this S13!"
Photo by: Larry Chen, courtesy of driftfotos.com

This sort of experience would be incredible for anyone, and many Forza drifters (me included) dream of eventually making the step from drifting in Forza 2 to building and drifting a car in real life. I plan to follow up with Ryan’s progression, so keep up to date with our blog articles if you are interested. Special thanks going out to Ryan "SD9K" Litteral for taking the time to share his experiences, and for taking the time to find me a Nissan S14 for my future drifting endeavors. He also wanted me to send a big shout-out to his sponsors Inland Wheel Center, FMSpower.com. Dorki Dori Clothing, OSR Tuning and Federal Tire for helping him persue his passion for drifting!

So what about all of us who currently don’t have the resources to build a drift machine in real life? Well luckily for you, we can all drift happily on Forza Motorsport 2 without having to worry about accidentally smashing a wall after trying to perform a wall tap. The drifting community has grown tremendously over the past few months, and I bet there are plenty of you out there looking to see how you stack up against the rest. If you fall into this category then you are in luck.

A very close tandem featuring DIS by: Cyrax71 - Drifting Picture's Gallery

Team DIS (Doing it Sideways) is a well known drifting team in the Forza community that has gained recognition for being a team to trust when it comes to judging a tandem drift battle. With so much judging experience, DIS has decided to host a 64 man drifting competition, where real life prizing will be awarded to the best of the best. You can read all about the competition here, so check it! Unfortunately all 64 spots have already been filled, however they are running an alternates list, and will hopefully be running more of these tournaments in the future, so stay up to date with DIS for all the details. On another note, Team DIS has recently released their newest video project and I encourage everyone to check out all the drifting action here. Great Work!

Hotlap Series 2 Results - Congratulations to R2P!

In other community news, the results are in for the second season of the Official Hotlap Challenge and once again we have seen some incredible driving, tuning and teamwork! In order to get the full story about Season 2, I have asked our forum moderator Ncasolo (who is also very active in the hotlapping community) to give us a full breakdown of the events that have taken place over the last 5 weeks. So without further ado here are the final standings from Season 2, along with a detailed breakdown courtesy of Ncasolo!

Hotlap Season 2 – Competition Breakdown

By: Ryan Terpstra - "TRC Solo"

Greetings race fans and hot lappers. Last week concluded the second season of the Official Hotlap Series, an event designed to feature all of the different racing aspects of Forza 2. We kicked off this season with an exciting challenge on Road Atlanta, and finished with an equally exciting challenge on Maple Valley.  In between we saw drastic changes in speed with a D Class challenge, as well as a Nissan Speedway event that was completely dominated by the 1000hp B Class Charger.  In the 4th week of the series we ran a leaderboard challenge with R3 cars on Suzuka East, and after the dust had settled from this week the previous top 10 time had fallen 90 places clear outside of the top 100. This is an extremely large drop, and can only be attributed to the dedication and raw speed of the drivers competing in this series!

1994 Nissan Silvia K's by: Matrixi - Drifting Picture's Gallery

With so much buzz surrounding news that the CGS selected Forza 2 for the 2008 Season, there was an infusion of great talent this season. In particular, Team VVV joined the challenge and made a great run at a team podium position, but finished 5th after they fell short by only a few points. Team VVV was powered by VVV Daveyskills (a current CGS pro) who finished second in the individual points competition. Speaking of the individual competition we crowned a new champion this season, so congratulations to R2P KimiMatt for taking home the individual championship in season 2! Kimi’s teammate R2P ChemicaL took home third place after being narrowly defeated by VVV Daveyskills.

Congratulations going out to Racing to Perfection (R2P) for running away with the team championship in season 2! They completely dominated the competition and were able to dethrone last season’s champions the Italian Pro Racers (IPR). R2P took home the top spot in all 5 weeks of the individual season and as a team finished first 4 out of 5 weeks with Squad Recon nipping them at the line by 1 point in the Suzuka East Challenge. Last season’s champions IPR took home second place with very consistent racing every week. Although the top 2 teams had a very significant point’s advantage over the rest of the field, the real battle was for third place as VVV, SqR, and TRC fought hard right up to the last week of the season. In the end it was TRC who walked away with the third place position, beating out SqR who finished 4th.

1985 Toyota Trueno by: Takashi Shinobi - Drifting Picture's Gallery

Community Update Continued...

Thanks Ryan for that great recap and congratulations to Racing to Perfection and R2P KimiMatt for the spectacular performance in Season 2.  In case you are not aware, R2P is a seriosuly dedicated car club with some of the fastest drivers in the community, so if you would like to know more about "The Fastest Club on Forza 2", then make sure to visit their official site here.  Congratulations and once again great work in Season 2!

Season 3 is on the horizon and has yet to be announced, but make sure to read up and post your feedback in this thread to help us make the next season even better! For anyone who is eligible for prizing please contact us at forzafb@microsoft.com and we will make sure the credits and cars are delivered with minimal delay. I would like to take this time to thank everyone for not only their participation, but also for helping with this season. A very special thanks going out to forum moderator Hellbringer, who spend a huge amount of time doing the points calculations for Season 2. Without all the help from the community this event would not be possible, so thanks again! For this week we will be running Suzuka West with AWD cars from Asia upgraded to the top of A class. This challenge will not count towards the series; however stay tuned to find out more information regarding Season 3!

2005 Subaru Impreza WRX STI by: Yasvetperez - Maple Valley Comp.

Alright that’s it for this week’s update. I hope you all enjoyed reading the article and that you contact us if you have an interesting story. We are always looking for cool things to write about, so if you fit the description hit us up!  If you checked out last week's article and are interested in learning how to make your own HDR pictures like the ones featured in Pitpass 81, then check out Hadoq's tutorial thread here. There are plenty of things to talk about in the community that have not been included here, but I am going to save some of that for next week! Enjoy the weekend and thanks for reading!

Peace

Landin