Slashdot Mirror
Gran Turismo Gamer Takes Second In Class In World-Renowned Race
dotarray writes "If your parents tell you that playing video games will never get you anywhere, point them in the direction of Lucas Ordoñez. Three years ago, Lucas heard about a competition for racing game fans – the Nissan PlayStation GT Academy. Inspired, Lucas picked up a PlayStation 3 and a copy of Gran Turismo and practiced and practiced and practiced. This week, along with his teammates Franck Mailleux and Soheil Ayari, Lucas could not stop smiling as he stood on the Le Mans 24 Hours podium after taking second in class."
Second in class can mean sod all.
After all the Top Gear team came 3rd in class....out of 5 total if I remember correctly.
Great, now all my time playing Madden has not been in vain! Huge NFL contract, here I come.
and he still didn't get anywhere!
. . . if he was second overall, not just second in class.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
To get in the pilot's seat of an Airbus A380. All those flying lessons in my den will pay off big time.
Being familiar with the course is a huge advantage. Now you know. And knowing is half the battle. G.III.JOOOOOOOOOOOOOOE --www.awkwardengineer.com
Be born rich, don't be poor. How do you make a small fortune in auto racing? Start with a large one.
Guy who is good at driving also plays video games about driving.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
""If your parents tell you that playing video games will never get you anywhere, point them in the direction of Lucas Ordoñez."
Basic math: You can't draw a curve through a single point.
Not to mention that if you don't have the far-side-of-the-bell-curve combination of high eye/hand coordination, fine motors skills, and cognitive abilities (each pretty far over on their own bell curves too), it doesn't matter how many video games you play.
I suppose I should have picked a game besides frogger to get good at.
If what I just said sounded like a troll, it was probably just a failed attempt at humor.
You still have a fine career as a coyote running illegals across the Rio Grande.
Good for him but I don't know that I'd pick Gran Turismo as my top choice for a sim. Plenty of stuff on the PC, like anything from Papyrus, iRacing. I think Forza is even better. But good on him, nonetheless.
Sony eventually learned that Lucas used a PIRATED copy of GT to practice, and was immediately sanctioned to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. For recompense Lucas will now have to spend the rest of his life working in the quick lube stall at Sony's fleet maintenance. Goodbye MBA.
Whats the big deal? Most of the drivers on the road are already better than all the other drivers, so how hard can driving be?
What's interesting about racing is the pool of people able to pursue it as a career is so small that the chances of you getting the most talented natural racers into the sport are astronomically low. With soccer, track, football, baseball, etc., you have a way to work your way up from schools or the streets; if you're truly great at the sport chances are good you'll be found out and put in a position to compete. With racing you have a tiny pool of people connected enough to the sport (frequently through family members), wealthy or driven enough (drive does not necessarily imply talent) to do whatever it takes to get behind the wheel.
Lucas Ordonez was already well on the way to becoming a racing driver.
This guy wasn't a regular gamer. He karted as a kid until he was sixteen, when his family couldn't afford it anymore. Karting is where anyone with any racing aspirations starts before they move up to the junior formulas. Lucas Ordonez just had a delay in his career development and got his FIA racing licenses through a very unorthodox channel - Sony's GT Academy.
Racing success is all about the size of your bankroll and essentially, Sony paid for Lucas Ordonez.
Gran Turismo 5 hasn't been out even one year yet.
The Last Starfighter?
How is this different from any other young race car driver? I'm not seeing the story here.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
I drank formula...I was one. It got me where I needed to be.
Spoken like someone who's never raced.
The short version: Opportunity cost. If you're working 9-5, it's very hard to sit down on the console for hours on end to play racing games. It's very hard to take several days a month off to go drive real cars at your local track. If someone else is paying for your track time, meals, and roof, you have a huge edge over the guys who fund their racing budget with a 9-5 job.
I say this as a person who's done it. My first exposure to Infineon raceway was playing Tourist Trophy on a PS2. I learned the layout of the track thanks to the game. I took a few days away from work to ride the track. I raced 3 events there, finally taking a 3rd place trophy home with me.
Holding a job and racing is very very very difficult. Even if you can afford the track time, do you have a job that permits you to take a day off every few weeks to practice? Will your job tolerate you missing work to recover from injury? Do you really think you can compete with the people who spend their lives trackside, or who have been driving/riding since they were 5?
i mean, how many football fields are we talking here? and if i stacked them one on the other, how high would they reach?
teaching kids that there is nothing unusual or abnormal about deriving entertainment from killing people, so that they lose the natural 'anti-killing' instinct that platoon leaders had to contend with in WWII.
google killology for more info
rich people have a lot of their own problems. emotional, psychological, etc.
great game. i love the part where unemployment is stuck at 9% for 4 years in a row and you cant do a damn thing.
Back when I was doing the whole pro race driver thing, I'd spend several hours a week on a PS/2 and several different driving games.
It's not *exactly* the same - in particular, a lot of feedback about where the tires are relative to the grip level comes through your ass - but there's enough overlap to make the exercise worthwhile.
And especially for road courses like LeMans, the game (which duplicates the track pretty faithfully) can be a real help trying to memorize where the course goes. Much of road racing is knowing which turn follows which an where the racing line is.
Jacques Villeneuve used to do the same thing.
On the military side of things, AFV simulators like Steel Beasts Pro (which uses the real-life FCS and realistic ballistics) is great turret training. I had to be shown where the various controls were in the real turret, but once my face was in the sight, it was exactly the same. Shocked the hell out of the IG when the "newbie" was putting rounds on target and making the right corrections on his very first live fire.
So yes, for certain skills, simulation games can make a huge difference in Real Life.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Believe it or not surgeons who play games may make less mistakes. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4685909/ns/technology_and_science-games/t/surgeons-may-err-less-playing-video-games/
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
For those that want to know more about what the 24 Le Mans is, and how it is different from other races around the world, there's a great movie called "Truth in 24" which is available from iTunes for free. I think Audi sponsored it. A good movie, even if you're not a racing fan.