Written by: Che Chou 

Happy 2010 Forzamotorsport.net readers! Since I was out on a sweet vacation in the nether-regions of San Francisco and then a quick jaunt to glorious Tokyo, it’s better late than never to offer our community a salutation to the new year. And what a way to kick off my return to Turn 10 and the work year with the AutoWeek Car Show Pack DLC! When I packed my bags to go on my 3 week break sometime in late December, I hadn’t the chance to test drive most of them yet – so, in many ways, I checked out the DLC this week for the first time just like most of you. Thus far, I’m seriously in love with the Lotus 2-Eleven; this open-top track toy feels like the perfect crossover between the feather-lite brutality of a purpose-built LMP race car and the agility of a rear-mid engine roadster. Without traction control, the car is happy to get footloose on cornering, but even in my first attempt with the 2-Eleven on the track, I never had any trouble flicking the car back onto the line. Anyway, there are still 9 other cars in the pack to fall in love with this month aside from the Lotus and in order to really celebrate this release, we’re putting together a bunch of community contests and tournaments to highlight these rides. Landin will have more detail in the pitpass report below but you have been warned – we’re giving away millions of credits and lots of cool prizes for some amazing content. And of course, if you haven’t already downloaded the AutoWeek Car Show DLC pack, go forth, posthaste!

Image by AMPLiiFIED - See this image and more in the Community Gallery

Other stuff happening in the borderless globalized Forza Nation:

• Hyundai Genesis Coupe Everything:  The community competition series with our sponsor Hyundai continues in January. Over the holiday break we kicked off the submission window for the video contest and have since closed submissions as of today. The folks at Hyundai are currently reviewing all the videos you guys have sent in to determine the lucky auteur who will drive away with a real-life 2010 Hyundai Genesis Coupe. Meanwhile, registration for the Hyundai Forza Motorsport 3 Championship opened last week. Be sure to get yourself signed up so you can dominate the Genesis Coupe’s custom hotlap time trial, the first of which begins on January 22nd. And finally, we will be announcing the winners from our Hyundai Photo contest next week – if you recall, winners will reap awesome cameras and other goodies. Good for Forza players, bad for Turn 10 employees who are not eligible to enter.

• Time Trial Scoreboards:  Speaking of time trials, there have been a number of changes to this area in Forza 3 and I’m pretty excited about our plan in the near future. First of all, do you even know what I’m talking about? If your response is, “Huh? Time trials?” then let me direct you to a new feature in the game you may not even have known existed. In the scoreboard section of Forza 3, you’ll find scoreboards for all of our different race modes in the game, be it circuit, drift, drag, point-to-point, etc. Somewhere in the lower third of the list you’ll see the category Time Trial; clicking into the section will present you with a bunch of scoreboards for different tracks, as well as our custom time trial scoreboards. Once you’re looking at a Time Trial scoreboard, you may click A to hotlap against a particular scoreboard. Now, as many of you are aware, we had a bug where some players could load a tune for these Time Trial scoreboards, thereby making their cars faster than the allowed stock class/PI. Now obviously, this was a bummer so we quickly release a patch (you should have gotten this title-update sometime on Christmas week). Now that the Time Trials scoreboards are free from this exploit, we'll be using it to host all of our official community events and competitions. Landin has the details on what’s happening for this week, but going forward, we’ll be doing a lots of weekly contests in this area, with even more in prizing and in-game credits. Next week, I’ll be working with a bunch of folks to determine which Time Trial boards we partially wipe, and by how much. Stay tuned.

• New Multiplayer Matchmaking Lobbies and FAQ:   Earlier this afternoon, we released an update to the multiplayer matchmaking (aka “hopper”) system. First and foremost, due to popular demand and much ado in the Forza community, we’ve created a new category in Matchmaking called “Circuit RWD”, which is exactly what you think it means – circuit track racing for RWD-only cars. Finally, RWD aficionados can enjoy a race without those pesky and efficient AWD cars out-gripping them on corner exits! The Circuit RWD category features RWD racing for R3, S, A, B and C class cars. We’ve also moved Drag and Oval racing modes into the PlayGround category. It just makes more sense there and we’re already starting to see traffic pick up in their respective lobbies. We have more hopper changes in the works, including more tag modes, a “keep it clean” mode (very sarcastic name for the game type, by the way), multi-class racing, and more. And finally, good ol’ Fred Howell (aka phredesign) has revamped our online FAQ and updated it with the latest information. If you have questions about Forza 3, please do not hestitate to click this link. In fact, click it anyway just to check it out.

• Own My Desktop For a Week!  I’m looking for good desktop wallpapers featuring Forza 3. Are you good enough to make it to my desktop? We’ve begun a photo-stitching contest for hi-res wallpapers. Winners get to have their photo on my desktop for a week, and I’ll take a picture of myself with your picture to prove how much I love it. What? That’s not enough incentive? Well, I guess we’ll also send you goodies too. We have all the details for this contest in this thread. Go check it out and make me drool with amazement at your mad skillz.

Have an awesome Martin Luther King Jr. weekend. I’ll be recovering from jetlag still since my body still thinks its living on Tokyo time. Ciao, ja ne!

Image by SideSalad - See this image and more in the Community Gallery 

Written by: Landin Williams

As Che mentioned its contest central this week and we promote the release of the AutoWeek Car Show pack. We’ve got lots of community events going on, making it a great time to get involved and integrated into our online ecosystem. For the sake of clarity I’ve listed all of the events currently happening below. Click some links…get involved and see what you’ve been missing here on Forzamotorsport.net. Enjoy!

Join the photo stitching contest (below) and you could win this unique piece of FM3 History!

The Che Chou Special – Forza Photo Stitching Contest

We’re looking for the hottest high-res screenshot of Forza Motorsport 3 to decorate Mr. Chou’s desktop. Using the nifty photo stitching techniques described here we’re challenging you to create the sexiest background using cars from the AutoWeek Car Show pack. Visit the official contest thread here for everything you need to know to get involved.

Besides the glory of knowing Che is rocking your image the winner of this contest will also get his/her hands on a official Forza Motorsport 3 standee you’ve all seen in stores (shown above)!

Forzamotorsport.net Community Competitions – AutoWeek Special

To celebrate the awesome cars in our latest car pack we’re dedicating all of this week’s community contests to the AutoWeek car pack. Check the links below to our new competition forum to get in the mix!

Official AutoWeek Livery Design Contest – Design your AutoWeek themed DLC Car!

Official AutoWeek Photomode Contest – Submit your best shots here!

Image by DB9D9 - See this image and more in the Community Gallery

Week 3 - AutoWeek DLC Time Trial Challenge

What: Official Turn 10 Featured Time Trial Challenge

When: Now until Friday January 22nd at 12:00PM PST

Where: Time Trials in Forza Motorsport 3.

Track and Car: Sebring International Club Circuit - 2009 Audi R8 LMS Show Car

How: Navigate to the “Leaderboards” menu and scroll down to “Time Trial”. Scroll down to Auto Week DLC Challenge and “Press A to Start Race” at the top of the leaderboard. Set your best possible lap time!

Find out what prizes are up for grabs in the official contest thread here.

Participated in last week's Holden Time Attack? See who was selected as a Random 500 winner here!

Image by Munky 777 - See this image and more in the Community Gallery

This week in the Forza Motorsport 3 Community!

Featured Video: AZT Tuning - Killer B Teaser Vid

Photo Mode Race Night: Marty VDubz has posted a new thread to gauge interest in a photographer’s race night. The idea behind the race night is that the photographers can use this to get some great action shots or videos. If you are interested check out the suggestion thread here.

Focal Point Blur Photocomp: The use of shutter speed, focus and aperture can create some amazing shots in Forza 3. The Focal Point Blur Photocomp looks to show off some of those great shots. All the details behind this comp can be found here.

Painters World Series Voting: The voting thread for the Painters World Series is now open. You have until January 19th to place your vote for the top five designs of Round one. Check out all the round one entries and the details on how to submit your vote here.

Image by Dewstain - See this image and more in the Community Gallery

Gearbox Patron 997 GT3 Photo Mode contest: Gearbox has put together a few photo contest to celebrate the release of their Patron 997 GT3. Details on the release and photo comp can be found here. Picking up one of these beauties not only allows you to compete in the photo comps but you can test the tune out in the RWD hoppers released this week.

Forza Rockband Livery Contest: Music meets art in the Forza Rockband Livery Contest. Enter the contest by creating a car based on your favorite musician, band or album art. There are three ways to win in this contest, you can check out all the details here.

We're out! Hit up some RWD racing and as always enjoy the weekend!

Peace

Landin

Image by BHD Cobalt - See this image and more in the Community Gallery