19.08.16: T Minus Five Weeks and Counting

There have been some jittered nerves on the Horizon 3 forums this week with very little news coming out of Gamescom. It seems that Playground Games and T10 are playing their cards very close to their chests with the Horizon 3 Ultimate Edition launch just five weeks from today.

IGN posted a somewhat insulting video a few days ago which promised new footage of Horizon 3 but was in fact the same gameplay we saw at E3 a couple of months ago. The only difference in this case was the 4K resolution display which I found imperceptible when I viewed the video on my standard desktop display.

Perhaps to placate the frazzled nerves HeliosT10 assured us that new video will emerge from a "behind closed doors presentation" very soon. It can't be soon enough in my view as I'm left wondering what the developers could hope to gain by containing us in this information vacuume.

In any case at the very least we will have our questions answered soon with just five weeks to launch.

17.08.16: Horizon 3 Car Wishlist Data Sheet

I saw ManteoMax's new FH3 car wishlist spreadsheet posted on the FH3 forum last week, so I thought I'd better get to work on collecting the data for my own FH3 car wishlist sheet. Fortunately there was only about 25 pages of data to collect which took about three days to gather and formalise, and I already had most of the code written so that only took another day to adapt to the new data.

I used a new method of converting the textual requests to the format used by my database which included all the request specifications. When I collected the FM6 data I chopped a lot of the detail off because I thought it was getting in the way of clustering the frequencies. This new method allows me to preserve the simplicity of make and model requests while also making room for the highly detailed specifications posters on the wishlist thread are fond of posting.

Not surprisingly Ford, Chevrolet and Dodge topped the list of most frequently requested manufacturers with Mustang, Camaro and Honda Civic the most popular models. At the bottom of the list were a large number of boutique car makers I've never heard of before, so it would seem that everybody had an opportunity to express their opinion about which cars they thought should be in the game. Whether or not T10 or Playground Games take any notice of these requests is another matter entirely, and one which I will refrain from commenting on.

Anyhow, take a look if you're interested, you may find it amusing.