Pitpass Reports Index

Volume 99 -- July 11, 2008

The Turn 10 Weekly Pitpass Report

By: Landin Williams, Turn 10 Community Lead

Roll down your windows, drop the top and kick back with your favorite tunes for this edition of the weekly Pitpass Report; the article that tells you everything you need to know about Forza Motorsport 2 and the folks who made it possible. Oh how time flies when your having fun...it's hard to believe that we are already approaching the 100th edition of our weekly article here at Turn 10 studios. I remember staying up till 12 o’clock at night just over a year ago, refreshing the Forzamotorsport.net homepage constantly…itching for Che to publish the latest edition of this very report--I needed my Forza fix and this was (still is) the only place to be for info about your favorite racer. I along with plenty of other fans roamed the forums dissecting every word in hopes of finding a nugget of information about Forza 2.

Of course since then our community has blossomed into a meeting ground where Forza enthusiasts gather to share their creations, compete with each other, and help out those who are entering unfamiliar ground for the first time. Exploring innovative ways to enjoy the game we all love is just one of the many things that occur here on a daily basis and to me the Pitpass Report (PPR) bundles everything together in a package that says “this is what Forza is all about”. Our 100th is just another milestone in our journey, and we are very excited to keeps things fresh as we push onward, towards our next big thing. In fact we’re keeping things ultra fresh with our latest attraction, the first ever Turn 10 podcast.

2004 Subaru WRX STi by bigbluesd - AVO Subaru WRX STi

Che went into all the details last week regarding our plans to release our 100th Pitpass as a podcast, and as the due date approaches we’re all feeling the excitement. The folks over on the audio team hooked us up with some nice gear to record our airwave antics--and thanks to “The Beast” and our massive Xbox 360 server farm we have a cozy little room to chill out and talk shop. Che, Fred and I, along with plenty of special guests from the studio will be hanging out on the air, giving you the latest and greatest. We also have a special guest for our inagural podcast--professional ALMS race driver Gunnar Jeannette sat down with Che and Forza 2's Game Director, Dan Greenawalt, to talk about his career in racing and his long history with Forza Motorsport. You definitely wont want to miss this great discussion!

Music will be supplied by yours truly and the world famous Che Chou, as we both get down with some music production on the side and have friends who can lay down some fresh tracks. As Always we want to keep things light and entertaining, and if it were up to me we would be bumping the 80’s classic, “In the Heat of the Night” by Sandra, throughout the entire podcast. Sadly that’s not gonna fly for a myriad of reasons--but you can expect some cool independent beats to keep things rolling regardless. Although it's still unclear how these podcasts will impact the written aspect of our reports in the future, we are planning on putting together a quick article next Friday--that means we need some cool content from our community. So, here are the competitions we are running in preparation for our 100th Pitpass Report. Check em' out and post your best!

100th Pitpass Report - Community Competitions

Photo/Livery Submission Thread: Want your picture or livery design included in the 100th Pitpass Report? Then stop by our submission thread here and share your best images. We will be selecting a bunch of pictures and liveries to feature in our 100th PPR Photo Gallery, so if you have ever wanted a direct shot at having your work included in our reports now is your chance!

Graphic Design Contest – 100th Cover Image: We need a cool looking cover image for our 100th Pitpass, so take your best photo, apply whatever graphics or changes you like, and submit it to our official graphic design contest. One lucky design will be selected and used as the cover image for this special release, so get your creative juices flowing and stop by our graphic design contest submission thread here!

Check out Team T10's brand new livery design, created by the winner of our weekly design competiton, Darkpagey. With speed, grace, and now style...we are ready to take on the community!

Team Challenge Rnd. 2: Redemption for Team T10?

Our official racing division, known as “Team T10”, has been hotlapping like mad over the past week in preparation for our second team challenge, set to go down in just a few hours. As you all should already know we were forced to accept defeat in our first challenge against the Really Good Forza Drivers…so it’s time for redemption. This Friday we will be facing off against our latest challenger, Squirrely Boy Racing (SQB), on a 25 lap mini-enduro race on Tsukuba Circuit. Team T10 is ready to give the community all we got, and you can expect a full race review to be included in next Friday’s podcast. Also if you haven’t already done so, make sure to check out our latest blog entry here, as it gives you a small introduction to the folks from Turn 10 that make up our racing division. These are the peeps that will be fighting it out with the community, so stop by and size up your competition!

Turn 10 Team Challenge Rnd. 2 - 7/11/08 - Starting Lineup

Team T10: Voodoo T10, ForzaDevChris and Albus

VS.

Team SQB: Professor PFM, SoulPanic420 and SAAB Boy

2003 Nissan 350GT by skywalker1230jh - Realistic Photomode

As an added bonus to those who aren’t able to race on Friday we put together a simple contest where you could win a free gift car of choice courtesy of Turn 10. The format is very simple: create a post with your prediction for our race, and if you manage to guess the exact outcome you win. We will be putting together a thread like this every time we have a team challenge, so if you didn’t get your guess in this time check back next week! For now we want to know your prediction for this Friday’s race—will Turn 10 be defeated (again) by a pack of squirrels, or is this our chance for revenge? Stop by the “Team Challenge – Guess the Outcome/Win a Prize” thread and post up your predictions. Also you better hustle because once the race is over (around 4:30PM PST Today) it’s over…son!

Check out the special edition Too Human Unicorn car, a collaboration between Turn 10 and Silicon Knights. With an all new design and a fierce tune from Time Race Cars (TRC), this baby will hit the auction house (limited quantities) next Monday!

While we were racing laps around Tsukuba, our in house livery guru, Fred “redesign” Howell has been working his magic in the livery editor, putting the final touches on our Too Human unicorn car. Having seen the car in-game myself I can say that the design is actually quite stunning. We can’t give it all away yet, but check out the latest teaser image to see its progress. As you can see the design has been completely changed from its original form, as Mr. Freddy over here is a serious perfectionist when it comes to liveries. The folks over at Silicon Knights got a sneak peak at our nearly completed design and they were very impressed to say the least (especially after discovering how it was created).

Also I might add that we have contracted the folks from TRC (Time Race Cars) to put together a nice tune for our TME--this baby will be ready to tackle the tarmac right out of the box! With only a few signatures left to add, the car is coming along quite nicely and will be available on an auction house very, very soon. In fact next Monday we are going to run our first official release of this car on the Auction House. At varying times throughout the day we will be uploading a set number of cars, however quantities are very limited. This first run of auction house unicorns will be individually numbered, however once they are gone we will be rolling over into the first edition release (200 cars). Once the first edition has been depleted the car will be off the market for an undetermined amount of time. Bottom line...get em while there hot!

2006 Lotus Exige by SpecOpsBob - Realistic Photo Thread

Hotlap Season 4: Week 4 is underway!

We have already passed the halfway point in Season 4 of our Official Hotlap Challenge, and as always the competition is fierce. So far we have only posted the final points calculations from week 1; however you can expect a full update on points early next week. Yes I know we’re pretty far behind but by now you should be doing your own calculations right?

In fact just as I was typing this paragraph, our forum moderator Hellbringer brought this to my attention. Apparently forum user Matio612 has taken it upon himself to put together a nicely formatted spreadsheet to keep track of Season 4 rankings. This is a great help to everyone working on the HLC and everyone participating, so much props going out to Matio. You can view the running results from Week 1 and 2 by visiting his HLC Season 4 Spreadsheet here. After taking a peek at the results myself it looks like Team V12 might walk away with another victory this season…unless of course the folks from Team GSR or R2P can lay the serious smackdown in week’s 4 and 5. The week 4 challenge features Suzuka Circuit as the backdrop, and R1 cars as the chariots of combat, so get out there and set your best lap time! For now here are the standings as of week 2 courtesy of Matio612!

Hotlap Season 4: Team Standings

Rank	Team	Points
1st	V12	1558
2nd	GSR	1287
3rd	R2P	1234
4th	TRC	1032
5th	TTR	942

Individual Standings

Rank	Gamertag	Points
1st	V12 BackONE Abs	355
2nd	GSR Kronoturbo	331
3rd	V12 Fullspe3D	325
4th	R2P KimiMatt	320
5th	R2P ChemicaL	302
6th	V12 Nikrox	302
7th	Fyrebyrd	292
8th	V12 Trasgu	277
9th	GSR cooperlive	262
10th	V12 seba grisea	256

1970 Ford Mustang Boss 429 by mnkpro - Photoshop Comp

Alright that’s it for this week! The time has come to spectate our second Team Challenge race, and while I wish I was on the grid racing alongside my teammates, there always comes a time where you must let your team roam free as they fly from the nest...let’s just hope we don’t head straight towards the ground. Have a great weekend and as always thanks for reading!

Peace

Landin