Aim! Shoot!! Duck!!!

So here’s a post that talks about something other than Transformers  .  I’ve actually wanted to post more about gaming for a long time but found that I didn’t have enough time to play games nowadays. Usually by the time I have the mood to play, the game would have been out for months or maybe even years, so no point to blog about it anymore.

I’ve always told Nick Wong, the one game that would make me buy a PS3 is Gran Turismo 5. So when it was finally released Nov 2010, a PS3 was on top of my Wanted List. Finally I made the plunge at end of Dec 2010 after finding a good deal with GT5 together. No I didn’t get the GT5 themed Blue PS3 as I didn’t feel the cut in HDD space was worth it.

Ok, back to GT5. I’m sure most people are familiar with Gran Turismo racing simulator games by now. Most would have tried it in some form from the 1st 2 games on the PS1 to the next 2 games on the PS2. There’s a new feature in GT5 that was updated in Feb 2011 which is the highlight of this post, Remote Racing.

First of all, a very brief intro into GT5. There are 2 driving modes in GT mode, A-Spec & B-Spec. A-Spec is where you yourself are the driver & driving in the races. B-Spec is where you let the AI drive for you. B-Spec was introduced in GT4 but here in GT5 it has been expanded to become more similar to a driver management mode. Instead of just one B-Spec driver, you can have up to six, each leveling up independently of each other with you managing them. Then the A-Spec race events are duplicated for B-Spec & you get awarded a different prize car for completing an event in B-Spec. B-Spec races are also usually longer than A-Spec in terms of laps & B-Spec drivers take forever to level up in experience. This is when Remote Racing becomes useful.

Remote Racing is a feature that allows you to run races on your PS3 remotely using a web browser. Before you start using this feature, your B-Spec level have to be at least 16. Then you’ll need to share online at least one of your B-Spec driver. Next you need to have a friend that also has GT5 & for him to also share online his B-Spec driver.

You can start a Remote Race on the PS3 itself & monitor it through a web browser in www.gran-turismo.com. You can also start it from the web browser in www.gran-turismo.com. In www.gran-turismo.com, look for the link ‘GT5 My Home’ on the top right corner & sign-in with your PSN login.

Gran Turismo Website

My Gran Turismo Home

To start a Remote Race on the PS3, you’ll find it under “Community” in GT Mode. Enter that, select an event, then select your driver & a friend’s driver & click on Start Race. Unfortunately you can’t start a race with just your own B-Spec driver, you must add at least a driver from a friend. If you’re hosting the race, you can only add ONE of your own B-Spec driver to the race but you can add all the B-Spec drivers of your participating friends. During the race, you can only spectate it & not issue any B-Spec race commands to your driver.

To start a race from your ‘GT5 My Home’ page in www.gran-turismo.com, you’ll first need to start Remote Race on your PS3, then select ‘Enter Server Standby Mode’ instead of choosing a race event. Then you can go to your ’GT5 My Home’ page & click the big ‘Remote Race’ button in the middle. From there it’s similar to how you start a race on a PS3.

Select an Event!	List of Previous Races
Previous Race Result	Start a new Race!

Race in Progress!!

Remote Racing gets it’s own set of events so running remote race doesn’t add to the completion of the game career mode. You also don’t win car prizes but you do win credits. You can’t choose what car your driver gets as it’s randomized. Sometimes it’s annoying as the cars picked for a race aren’t all even so you can get a lousy car. This mode is meant to help level up your B-Spec drivers & your friends B-Spec drivers at the same time, with credits as an extra incentive. In the end, it doesn’t really matter if you win the race or not, it’s more important to get the experience & credits. 

Remote racing in www.gran-turismo.com has been tested to be working on a Nokia N8 with the default Symbian & Opera Mobile 11 browser, and also on the iPhone. Though I didn’t get a chance to test on Android devices, I’m pretty sure that works as well. Special thanks to Chronozome (aka Chronozoid) for allowing me to include him in the post