V8 Fujitsu Development Series

V8 Utes

Full Set

V8 Supercars: http://randompics.com.au/nmd/portfolio/types/V8SC_2010_Townsville_Sat
V8 Fujitsu Series: http://randompics.com.au/nmd/portfolio/types/V8FS_2010_Townsville_Sat
V8 Utes: http://randompics.com.au/nmd/portfolio/types/V8utes_2010_Townsville_Sun

I love shooting this car!

The orange is so heavy on any contrasting colours and you can really push orange.

Of course the lower light meant running the ISO a little high and dropping to a fairly low shutter speed, really need a bigger lens!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/norrgard/sets/72157623300000583/

When I first heard about this car it sounded like a great concept,  but then the more information I read about it, more boring it sounded. You buy a HSV because you either you want something unique or you want real race inspired performance. All this car seems to be is a unique car, built for the masses.

If you are going to take stuff out of a car, then at least strip some weight out! My impression of a true club level racer is something that has all the non essentials taken out, chuck in a roll cage, some harnesses, bonnet pins and tighten it up some more.

Perfect examples; 911 GT3 RS, Renault Megane R26R, Aston Martin

Come on HSV, bring out a real Club-Sport!

http://www.hsv.com.au/hsv/press/default.aspx?ID=1153

You think about what it was like 20, maybe 30 years ago and the cars were harder to drive, you didn’t have all these helping hands that took the responsibility away from the driver.

Take traction control for example, in a car without traction control you quickly realise if you push your throttle to the floor, you loose traction. So how do you react? You use less throttle and you learnt a little physics along the way, too much power means less control. Take a car from today, it has twice the power but a little button that controls the throttle for you. So how do you react instead, full throttle and the computer will handle the rest. We’ve learnt nothing

about how a car really reacts and nothing about the physics involved in making a tonne and half of metal move.

So all those 18 year old, mummy and daddy bought me a new car types couldn’t give a stuff of course, but these are the ones that I’m scared of! You apply the same lesson of physics to braking and handle, hence ABS and ESC and what do you have? People who have never driven a car without these helping hands, pretend driving technical advancements and they then have no understanding in what it really takes to handle a car correctly.

And what’s the result of that? Tailgating, wreak less driving and not learning the lesson until they really get into trouble when they realise just how hard it is to stop over a tonne of metal.

How do you fix it? Every new licence holder must pass a advanced driving course, teach actual driver control before they are allowed on the roads. And no, tax payers shouldn’t have to pay for it. You don’t want to invest a couple of hundred bucks into learning to drive properly, then get off the road. Catch a bus.

I have recently tested out Need For Speed Shift and although it is very good, and it is also aimed at more the driving experience rather than the arcade style game, but I would certainly still class it as a game. Where as Live For Speed is most certainly a simulator rather than a game.

LFS is that good that you can feel an individual wheel locking through the steering wheel feedback if your using a G25 or G27. Even beyond that, LFS has released news that the new version to some has a whole new tyre physics model, how many simulators/games out there have a tyre physics model, let alone one that complicated.

If you want the real feel of racing, away from the track, get yourself a Logitech G27 or even a second hand G25 and get into LFS!!

More details on the Rockingham update.

It doesn’t need to look like a magazine, it just needs to be readable like a mag.

Holden have done this very nicely by keeping is easy to use but also having the big glossy images and not overflowing with copy your never going to read.