| | | Aka "Gran Turismo Academy 2013," "GT6 Demo," "Gran Turismo 6 Demo" (it says something about "Powered by Gran Turismo 6" on one of the start-up screens) or "NISSAN GT Academy 2013" (on the game's icon and start-up screen)--but with some kind of online time trial times tied in with eh some TV show or contest or whatever the "GT Academy" was, or something like that. Anyway it's the GT6 demo, apparently. : P
So THIS thing I found in my PS3 download list was probably the thing I remembered playing, rather than GT6 itself? Would explain why I hadn't made any notes of actually owning GT6, but somehow had recollections that it was slightly better looking--headlight beams, for instance--but otherwise felt like a very minor upgrade to the GT5 engine that didn't run quite as well.
Doesn't run on an actual PS3 now: says "The content has expired and is no longer available." Then there's a link to "Proceed to PlayStation Store"--and when you get there, it says "This content cannot be selected at this time."
About a 1 GB download. Like GT5, installs a ton of subdirectories and files--copying them over to USB with Managunz was going to take nearly 2 hours, so I redownloaded the pkg and tried to copy the file via Managunz--and it froze as soon as I chose "Copy." Rebooted the PS3, renamed the extremely long filename ("bubble" downloads are stored in /dev_hdd0/vsh/game_pkg/[...]/) to a shorter name, then Managunz file copy worked and took about 2 minutes.
Runs in RPCS3. Doesn't have any settings noted in the RPCS3 wiki, so I'm using the settings recommended for GT6 (which runs very poorly...). |
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A very spotty sort of playthrough:
5:29 - test drive
9:11 - Gallery
9:22 - Options
10:29 - Leaf G dealership
13:27 - Sunday Cup: Race 1 - Autumn Ring Mini (GT6 RPCS3 settings)
14:53 - googling to see if it was locked at 30 fps (no)
32:34 - back to the race
41:52 - Sunday Cup: Race 1 (RPCS3 default settings)
46:48 - Sunday Cup: Race 2 - Suzuka Circuit East
50:42 - 370Z dealership
53:25 - Clubman Cup: Race 1 - Grand Valley Speedway
58:46 - Clubman Cup: Race 2 - Autumn Ring / Reverse
1:04:14 - Clubman Cup: Race 1
1:07:46 - wrap!
Academy DOESN'T RUN on an actual PS3 now: you get "The content has expired and is no longer available" and a link to the PS Store--and the Store says "This content cannot be selected at this time."
Academy is still in my jailbroken PS3's old download list--a 1 GB DL. It DOES run in RPCS3, limited to a few Cup races: passing those declares "the doors of GT Academy are finally open to you!" but the unlocked "Nissan GT Academy 2013" "Special Event" gives a "/!\ Unable to connect to server" pop-up ("[you must be signed into the PlayStation@Network[/nowrap]" ; D).
In RPCS3 on my 5-to-6-year-old mid-range gaming laptop, GT5 XL Edition hits 20 fps w/ masses of cars filling the screen--in 12-car races--and 60 fps w/ a couple cars visible; racing feels pretty decent. Academy's mere 6-car races got mostly ~30 fps, which felt bad. "Research" suggests my rig rates ~20 fps in full GT6 (not sure about car numbers).
I started Academy on RPCS3 wiki-recommended GT6 settings, plus 1080p Default Resolution and my GT5 audio buffering settings. I then tried RCPS3 default settings, but that didn't seem to do a whole lot except introduce some awful menu flickering, and extreme slowdown during the pre-race flag-wave menu transition.
I don't SEEM ever to have owned GT6; does my lingering impression of GT6 as a slightly better looking but slightly worse-running and less interestingly presented version of GT5--I played through GT5 back in the day--originate from this "powered by Gran Turismo 6" demo?
Academy's music gave me the most intense collection of pop-jank I've experienced in the series. ; D
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That Jul 6 2013 Digital Foundry analysis is https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-gt6-demo-vs-gt5 .
GameFAQs says Academy's release date was Jul 3 2013. And GameFAQs calls it "Nissan GT Academy 2013," the full name shown in the icon shown in the game's boot sequence--but on the PS3 XMB, the icon's text title is just "GT Academy 2013."
Eurogamer--home of Digital Foundry--has other interesting-sounding GT6 article titles, such as "Gran Turismo 6 launch sales were just a fifth of GT5's" and "Digital Foundry vs. Gran Turismo 6," their technical analysis of the full game, with findings of spottiness pretty similar to what they got from Academy, concluding that in GT6 "we encountered frame-rates that can reach the low 40s in 1080p mode." Of the full game, they note that, compared to GT5, "the amount of cars in any given race is noticeably pared back in the sequel - a decision that appears to have been made for performance reasons."
There's also an article there titled "Nearly two years after release, Gran Turismo 6 is getting its course creator"--which is interesting to me since my questionable lingering impression was that I'd compared a course creator with GT5...but I think this shows I must have compared __GT5's__ course creator, specifically the car headlight beams in a night-time track I'd made in it, to...Academy? But wait there's no night race in this, at least none I was able to get to. Well heck I don't know.
All of this kind of makes me want to jump the gun on waiting for my anticipated next big PC game releases of...next year?--namely the upcoming Virtua Fighter game--not super confident about that one but hey who knows--and Miyazaki's next Souls/Elden/whatever game...to make what for my tiny webcomic-based income would be a massive purchase of a new mid-ranging gaming laptop--but I SUPPOSE I shouldn't base my purchasing decisions on RPCS3 performance. ; D (Although with the self-inflicted hits the US economy is taking this year, who knows if prices WILL stay steady and even upgrade to 32 GB RAM and 2 TB HDD as standard by late next year, as I'd been hoping they would.) |
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