Gran Turismo Sport Will Let You Earn A Real Racing License

Though longtime Gran Turismo overseer Kazunori Yamauchi joined us on stage at E3 for an intimate discussion about the latest installment of his storied racing sim series–the competitive-minded Gran Turismo Sport–we also had a chance to learn more about his long-term plans for the game, the franchise, and the future of motorsports during a separate behind-closed-doors presentation later that same week. Here are six facts straight from the man himself, covering everything from online etiquette to earning a real live racing license just by playing GT Sport.

GT Sport Lets You Earn An FIA License

"We also have the FIA Gran Turismo Digital License. This is a program that provides a real motorsports license* after achieving a certain level of performance within the game. Myself, I have a motorsports license, but acquiring that motorsports license is actually pretty difficult. It takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of money–and throughout the world right now, there are fewer and fewer people becoming newly involved in motorsports. So this is a program that really aims to increase the popularity of motorsports in the real world.

"To become eligible for the license, you have to complete the racing etiquette mode, achieve silver or better results in all the campaign mode events, and then maintain or exceed a certain level of driver class and sportsmanship points."

* Editor’s note: Though the license you can earn through GT Sport qualifies as a "real" license, a motorsports license is not the same thing as a driver’s license. A motorsports or racing license allows you to legally participate in on-track events. For more information, check here.

GT Sport Will Track Your Bad Behavior Online

"Because we’re running an esport together with the FIA, we have a section where you can learn racing etiquette and behavior. In the racing etiquette mode, you’re able to learn things like signals, flags, how to behave when there’s a safety car, driver’s conduct–all the knowledge that’s required of you in a real-world motorsport, you can learn here.

"In order to enable clean, fair, safe races online, players are going to have two indexes that are going to kind of evaluate their performance and abilities. So one is the Drivers Class, which shows the speed and the strength of the driver in a race, and then the other is the Sportsmanship Points, which really indicate how their manners are, how their behavior is on the track with other cars.

"Players who drive really rough online, their Sportsmanship Points are going to continue to go down. It will come to a point where they’re only matched with other drivers who drive really rough online. And then players who drive really clean races will then be only matched with other players who are able to run clean races."

Gran Turismo Sport Will Offer Worldwide Esport Tournaments

"Together with the [Federation Internationale de l’Automobile], we’re going to be running two flagship championships. One is sort of the World Cup of motorsports–the Nation’s Cup–and the Manufacture Fan Cup, where manufactures are pitted against other manufacturers. One characteristic of these series is, anyone can participate. We aim to produce lots of winners. The purpose of Sport isn’t really to find the fastest driver in the world like the GT Academy was.

"The winners of the World Finals are actually going to be awarded at the FIA Prize-Giving Gala ceremony, which is hosted every year to recognize and award real-world motorsports championships. So these people are actually going to be awarded alongside people like Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel."

Gran Turismo Sport Could Be Considered a Full Franchise Installment

Yamauchi: "In terms of the naming, I think we actually could have called it Gran Turismo 7 because it contains so many different features. There would be no problem calling it GT7. But at the time of the announcement for this game, the main focus of the title was really the ‘sport’ part, so that’s why I named it [Gran Turismo] Sport. Now that I look back and think about it, I think I actually could have called it 7. [Laughs]

"But as a result, this Gran Turismo… If you would think of GT1 through 6 as the first age or first era of Gran Turismo, from this title on, you could actually call it a brand new era because of the level of innovation and the level of technology that’s going into the title now. So naming it Gran Turismo Sport with a new title like that might not be so off the mark."

PS3 Was A "Nightmare" For Developers

"The age of the PS3 for us was sort of a nightmare. We really had to deal with this situation for a while where, ‘This is what we want to achieve, but all we can do is this.’ So there was a lot of frustration that was built up. The PS3 hardware is something that, at first glance, looks like it’s able to do this certain level of things, but in actuality, it can’t.

"In terms of development, it was really really difficult and the games, after all the development efforts were put into it, were very very low. I think it was just that the balance as a piece of hardware wasn’t very good. But the PS4 is so good. This time we’re really able to do and achieve what we want to do, so it’s really fun."

Gran Turismo Was Always Intended For Driving Newcomers

"This Gran Turismo is really geared towards people who are playing racing games for the first time. The aim was not to create a hardcore racing simulator, per se. In this game, we’ve really gone to great extents to produce a beginners’ school circuit experience. Most of the offline mode events are really geared towards people are playing racing games for the first time or people who’ve never driven cars before.

"And that’s actually the focus that I had when we originally made the game back in 1997, but over the years, the players have become more hardcore and wanted more realism and harder games. And that’s sort of the way that the game deviated. But our intent in making this title is to really rebuild Gran Turismo from the ground up so first-time players of racing games can feel the fun of driving. Driving is something that pretty much anyone can do, and if it seems difficult, that means that there’s something wrong in the videogame. And that was a mistake that we wanted to correct."

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This Is One Seriously Cool Garage-Door Opener. Seriously.

No one’s asked for a Nest-like overhaul of a garage-door opener, but Ryobi did it anyway. The Ryobi Ultra-Quiet Garage Door Opener opens a door to the future and to new frontiers of human existence.

But first, it will open your garage. The 45-pound belt-drive unit is designed for 7-foot aluminum garage doors. It’s billed as “ultra-quiet” and sports a big ol’ bank of LEDs. You get two car remotes, an outdoor keypad, and an indoor keypad—everything you’d expect from a garage door opener, especially a lime-green one.

But this thing came to party. The Ryobi Ultra-Quiet Garage Door Opener is the basis of a—wait for it—garage entertainment system. A built-in Wi-Fi antenna allows it to communicate with an iOS and Android app, because this is 2016 and a garage door opener needs a mobile app. Firing up your phone allows you to see if the door’s open or closed, open or close it, and mess around with its modular components.

Those modular components are the coolest thing about it. You can hook up a Bluetooth speaker ($54), adjustable fan ($54), or a dual-laser parking-assist module ($44) that replicates the function of a tennis ball dangling from a string but with lasers. A 30-foot retractable cord with three outlets ($64) provides plenty of juice, and a carbon-monoxide sensor module is coming soon

A handy charging bay for Ryobi’s 18V One+ battery, which is used in all of Ryobi’s cordless tools. If the power goes out, that same battery will also keep your garage door opening and closing for the duration of the blackout.

The main unit costs a reasonable $248 at Home Depot, but going full-on Katamari Damacy with the modules will cost you. Go nuts with all the add-ons and you’ll pay $504. Still, that’s a fair price to pay for the coolest garage on the cul-de-sac.

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This $15K Electric Motorcycle Made Me Love Riding in NYC

I’ve spent decades riding motorcycles, and have twisted the throttle of just about every type of street bike you can find. That includes electrics, from Zeros to Brammos, prototypes to production models. But finding a two-wheeled EV that feels “normal”—let alone great—after years of riding gasoline-powered bikes borders on miracle territory.

And that’s where Alta Motors’ battery-powered RedShift SM plants its flag. Alta co-founder and CEO Marc Fenigstein says that while it’s nice the bike doesn’t spew CO2, the company chose electric power for performance. “The idea was to build a bike that is faster than the ones we already owned,” he says. Applying 40 horsepower to a bike that weighs just 275 pounds is good for an 85 mph top speed, but even that is hardly enough to stand out in a market where superbikes flirt with 200 horses and accelerate to 60 mph in two seconds.

No, the RedShift, which looks and rides like a 400-cc off-road enduro machine, comes with a subtler upside that it reveals not on the track, but during a ride around Manhattan in midday traffic.

Alta spent 10 years designing this bike for urban riding, where it will take on commuter bikes ranging from the budget-minded Suzuki TU250 and Kawasaki KLR to high-enders like the BMW R1200GS. The RedShift’s advantages include a narrow chassis that slips easily through traffic and a high seat for a killer view of errant taxis, device-distracted pedestrians, and other hazards. If you ride aggressively, the 5.8-kWh battery pack is good for an average range of 50 miles. That’s not much for a car, but Alta’s going after city-dwellers for whom that range will prove plenty.

Performance isn’t everything, but I can’t deny loving the RedShift’s seemingly instant acceleration, thanks to the torquey electric motor. While 40 horsepower is major muscle for a lightweight bike, it’s the 34 pound-feet of torque that really matter. That’s more than enough to leave cars and most other motorcycles in the dust, at least for the first few blocks, which is all that matters in the city.

Then there’s the price: At $15,000, the RedShift proves small doesn’t equal cheap. For that price, you could take home any number of larger, more powerful machines like the BMW K1300s and Yamaha Super Ténéré, and piles of stylish entry-level models including the Triumph Street Twin, Moto Guzzi V7, and Ducati Monster 821.

The RedShift justifies its price with specialization: If you’re looking for an urban runabout, it beats all the others. On my ride around New York, the stout suspension, with a full foot of travel at the front and rear, didn’t completely smooth out the city’s crater-like pot holes, but took enough off the nastiest bumps to keep me confidently in control both at highway speeds and creeping around obstacles on congested streets. I quickly felt at home perched on its long, comfortable seat, and after a few minutes stopped looking down at the dash and controls, and rode by feel, treating the bike as a bodily extension.

Yes, motorcyclists tell that “extension” story all the time—and I doubt they experience it in full. I don’t think you can get that feeling on sofa-sized bikes like the Honda Gold Wing or Harley-Davidson Road Glide. As long as I kept my head up, the light and precise Redshift disappeared as I rode, leaving me to imagine I was floating down the street at the speed of traffic.

And unlike other electric bikes I’ve ridden, the Redshift delivers a surprising amount of mechanical feedback, a reminder that I’m on a complex machine, not an two-wheeled appliance. Twist the throttle and the motor responds with a muted clicking, crackling vibration before the power kicks in completely. It feels like someone is feathering the clutch after shifting into first gear, but there is no clutch to operate, no gears to select. As much as I enjoy shifting the six-speed transmission on my old Ducati and hearing the engine’s response, I can’t deny loving for how eliminating the chore leaves more time to concentrate on getting where I’m going.

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You Might Be Able To Watch Netflix Offline Later This Year

Video streaming service Netflix helped kick off the era of watching television anywhere you want it. By charging viewers around $10 per month to watch all of its content, the company has challenged traditional TV into rethinking its business model, with services like Hulu, and has even inspired traditional channels to go the Netflix pricing route, like HBO’s service HBO Now. But Netflix subscribers can’t view content unless they’re connected to the internet. This may soon change.

According to LightReading, Netflix will add offline playback of video content by the end of 2016. Lightreading cites COO of Penthera, Dan Taitz with saying, "We know from our sources within the industry that Netflix is going to launch this product." Taitz continues, "My expectation is that by the end of the year Netflix will be launching download-to-go as an option for their customers."

Should Netflix add offline playback to its videos, it would be playing catchup. Amazon’s online video service already has offline playback features. Amazon subscribers who know they’ll be on the subway without service underground, or want to watch videos on the go without eating up mobile data, can hit Download on a certain number of videos. If the Amazon app doesn’t re-connect to the internet within two days of first downloading, the video is rendered unusable (likely to avoid those hoping to watch without paying).

Netflix has yet to give official word as to whether it will add offline playback or not.

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Soon, You’ll Be Able to Make Money Owning an Electric Car

First, they said electric cars didn’t go far enough. Now, they reach hundreds of miles. Then, they said electric cars were too expensive. Soon, owners will be able to make money while they sleep.

Electric cars are starting to generate income by storing power and selling it back to the grid. Over the lifetime of an electric vehicle, owners could earn enough to offset most of the purchase cost.

Electric cars are getting cheaper.

Thanks to rapidly declining prices, electric vehicles (EVs) are heading for the garages of middle-class homes. Tesla’s recently announced Model 3 comes with a $35,000 price tag. State and federal tax incentives drive down the cost even further. In California, the total comes to $25,000 after tax breaks, roughly the sticker price of a new Toyota Camry. That doesn’t take into account fuel savings.

To get an idea of how existing electric cars stack up against gas-powered vehicles, check out the Department of Energy’s Vehicle Cost Calculator. The numbers vary from car to car and depend on factors like the price of gas, the price of electricity and the fuel economy of vehicles being compared. At the improbably high end, Elon Musk says Tesla owners stand to save $10,000 on fuel over five years. Soon, owners will see additional benefits from selling stored power back to the grid.

Power grids need energy storage. With renewables, they are going to need a lot more.

Grid operators respond to peaks in consumer demand by ramping up additional gas or coal-fired power plants. This is dirty, expensive and generally a blunt tool tracking the hills a valleys of energy use. It more efficient to buy back electricity stored in EVs and homes batteries — what energy nerds call “distributed storage.”

Distributed storage is essential for integrating renewable energy into the grid. How do utilities meet consumer demand when the sun stops shining and the wind stops blowing? One tactic is to time-shift power use, running energy-intensive appliances when renewable output is at its highest. Another tactic is to store surplus power until it is needed.

In 2015, renewables accounted for two-thirds of new generating capacity in the United States, with more expected in the years to come. Facing rising demand for energy storage, Tesla has begun producing home batteries and Nissan is slated to do the same. Car manufacturers are also looking to distributed storage to lower the operating costs of electric cars.

Electric cars can sell stored electricity back to the grid.

Electric cars can charge when demand for electricity is low and power is cheap and then sell energy back to the grid when demand peaks and the price of electricity shoots up. Together, a fleet of EVs can act like a power plant, leveling out gaps between supply and demand by dumping their stores of electrons onto the grid.

Researchers at the University of Delaware connected a handful of electric cars to the power grid using a two-way vehicle-to-grid interface. Each car earned around $5 a day storing power and selling it back to the grid. Nissan is piloting a similar project in the UK, outfitting electric cars and vans to sell electricity back to the grid. The company said owners of the all-electric Nissan Leaf could earn as much as $1,100 a year. That would amount to a whopping $10,000 over the life of a car battery.

When you’re done with your car battery, you can sell it.

Car batteries last around eight to 10 years. At the end of that time, they retain up to 80 percent of their storage capacity — too little to be useful to drivers, but enough that they can be repurposed as home batteries. A thriving aftermarket for car batteries could help shrink the cost of EV ownership.

One possibility is that manufacturers reuse or resell old batteries, using the proceeds to help defray the cost of replacement. BMW is spearheading a program that offers the grid energy storage from new electric cars and used EV batteries. GM recently deployed a set of retired Chevy Volt batteries, wind turbines and a solar array to power the administration building at its Enterprise Data Center.

Owners could also sell retired car batteries themselves. FreeWire, a California startup, is buying old batteries at $100 per kWh and using them to build mobile EV charging stations. At that price, owners of a Chevy Bolt could earn nearly $5,000 for a car battery reduced to 80 percent of its initial capacity.

This is good news for sales of electric cars.

Declining prices, fuel savings and a growing market for battery storage are conspiring to make electric vehicles more affordable, helping to drive up consumer demand. Tesla has received nearly 400,000 preorders for its Model 3, wedging open the EV market. Vacuum manufacturer Dyson is now rumored to be developing an electric car. And French oil and gas company Total just bought battery manufacturer Saft for almost $1 billion. Analysts project a dramatic rise in EV sales in over the next decade.

Widespread adoption of EVs will lead to more charging stations, better vehicle-to-grid interfaces and a wider market for used batteries. This, in turn, will further drive up sales, producing a virtuous circle of falling costs and improved performance.

Watch out, gas guzzlers. Your days are numbered.

Jeremy Deaton writes about climate and energy for Nexus Media. Tweet him your questions at @deaton_jeremy.

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Plants Grown In Simulated Mars Conditions Found Safe To Eat

In greenhouses at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, scientists have been growing a very special crop. Since 2013, an experimental group of plants have taken root in soil meant to simulate that on the moon and Mars. The research was funded through a crowdfunding campaign in partnership with Mars One, the project that hopes to send volunteers on a one-way trip to Mars.

The moon and Mars-like soils were mined on Earth, from cinder cone volcanos and craters, and are sandy in texture. The moon soil is nutrient-poor and has a high pH, while the Mars soil has a good amount of carbon and traces of nitrates and ammonium.

The first step of this experiment was to determine whether these plants could actually grow. And they were able to prove that 10 different crops did indeed succeed.

The next step was to figure out whether these crops were actually edible. The fear was that there would be high levels of heavy metals such as copper, cadmium, or lead, since they are present in the soil. But, after testing four of those crops (radishes, peas, rye, and tomatoes), they found that they were safe for consumption. In fact, their heavy metal levels were lower than those of crops grown in regular potting soil.

Perhaps the most important question has yet to be answered. It appears that no one has actually eaten the crops yet. “I’m very curious what they will taste like,” the project’s lead ecologist Wieger Wamelink said in a press release. And the remainder of the 10 crops still need to be tested for human consumption.

You can watch Wamelink talk about his research in the video below:

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A.I. Downs Expert Human Fighter Pilot In Dogfights

In the military world, fighter pilots have long been described as the best of the best. As Tom Wolfe famously wrote, only those with the "right stuff" can handle the job. Now, it seems, the right stuff may no longer be the sole purview of human pilots.

A pilot A.I. developed by a doctoral graduate from the University of Cincinnati has shown that it can not only beat other A.I.s, but also a professional fighter pilot with decades of experience. In a series of flight combat simulations, the A.I. successfully evaded retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Gene "Geno" Lee, and shot him down every time. Lee called it "the most aggressive, responsive, dynamic and credible A.I. I’ve seen to date."

And "Geno" is no slouch. He’s a former Air Force Battle Manager and adversary tactics instructor. He’s controlled or flown in thousands of air-to-air intercepts as mission commander or pilot. In short, the guy knows what he’s doing. Plus he’s been fighting A.I. opponents in flight simulators for decades.

But he says this one is different. "I was surprised at how aware and reactive it was. It seemed to be aware of my intentions and reacting instantly to my changes in flight and my missile deployment. It knew how to defeat the shot I was taking. It moved instantly between defensive and offensive actions as needed."

The A.I., dubbed ALPHA, was developed by Psibernetix, a company founded by University of Cincinnati doctoral graduate Nick Ernest, in collaboration with the Air Force Research Laboratory. According to the developers, ALPHA was specifically designed for research purposes in simulated air-combat missions.

The secret to ALPHA’s superhuman flying skills is a decision-making system called a genetic fuzzy tree, a subtype of fuzzy logic algorithms. The system approaches complex problems much like a human would, says Ernest, breaking the larger task into smaller subtasks, which include high-level tactics, firing, evasion, and defensiveness. By considering only the most relevant variables, it can make complex decisions with extreme speed. As a result, the A.I. can calculate the best maneuvers in a complex, dynamic environment, over 250 times faster than its human opponent can blink.

After hour-long combat missions against ALPHA, Lee says,"I go home feeling washed out. I’m tired, drained and mentally exhausted. This may be artificial intelligence, but it represents a real challenge."

The results of the dogfight simulations are published in the Journal of Defense Management.

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