On October the 13th the Playstation Virtual Reality headset was released and I had ordered a set. I wanted to experience an immersive game and be able to look around the world properly.
I was very excited although it took a little while to set this up as there was a new unit to be powered and cables. None of the cable work was onerous which was what a BBC report had suggested, in fact the BBC report was bollocks, very annoying. The reporter ended with the statement “I just wish it was wireless”. This in a device that needs power and two sets of HDMI cables for the screens. Anyway the experience was pretty good, the headset was comfortable and the headphones worked fine.
PSVR Headset in action
There was a mild sense of unease and sickness but I thought that would pass so I bought the game Drive Club VR. This downloaded and I was looking forward to driving around in the headset. I managed about 2 laps of a 3 lap race and the sickness hit me. Badly. I felt rough. Now this coincided with a bout of quite harsh cold so I decided to wait a couple of weeks and see how it affected me once I was better.
It was the same. I felt ill after about two laps. Now, I am quite susceptible to motion sickness; I don’t like ferries and aerobatics can make me incredibly ill but is always worth it. However, this time I knew I wouldn’t get any better at the PSVR and so I decided to get rid of it. There is no point me having this reasonably expensive piece of kit when I can use it minimally.
However, GT Sport will be released soon and my steering wheel set up isn’t PS4 compatible and so now I had some cash to buy a new wheel. There was only one to go for and that is the Logitech G29 with gear shift stick. It arrived today.
G29 and Stick Shift
This took a short while to set up on the steering wheel system but was completed and then some GT6 played. The stick shift doesn’t work with GT6 but the flappy paddles were fine. There is quite a refined feel with this wheel.
I then connected it to the PS4 and played Drive Club and used the stick shift and clutch. That was good fun and I am looking forward to playing some more when my USB extension cable comes. The one connecting the wheel to the PS4 is a little short.
This afternoon I went to Brands Hatch to see some Club Car Championship races. It was very agreeable and a good way to spend the afternoon. I had forgotten the smell and sounds of the place!
Lotus racing at Brands Hatch. pic.twitter.com/njBB0LPV8g
As usual I took the camera to this place and got a few shots. There are a number of communications within this site with pictures of cars, but if that’s what you like then so what!
A Supermarine Spitfire flew over twice, once on the way to a show and once on the way back. It was lovely to see even though I couldn’t hear it!
This is the sound of Lotus cars, mostly Exige, racing down the Brabham Straight.
Gran Turismo is a wonderful game. If you log in on your birthday you get a car from the year of your birth. Me? I was born in 1972. This is the car I got. Sheer beauty.
If you are a regular reader of these pages you will know that I love playing Gran Turismo on the PlayStation. I always have. My relationship with GT goes back to when it was first released and playing it with my landlord when I lived in Gillingham. GT and Crash Bandicoot are two reasons I bought a PlayStation, or PSOne as it is now known! You can see other communications about GT here and my gallery here it’s been a while since I added new photos to the GT gallery and I should try and do that soon (it’s a quite lengthy process).
Gran Turismo defines itself as The Driving Simulator. Which is probably about right. It’s quite likely to be the most realistic driving game on the market, especially in terms of the physics model it uses. I haven’t played any other driving games really and so I can’t comment. I am also not a racing driver so it would be hard to me to comment on the realism. It amuses me when people describe certain computer games as unrealistic. How would you know? If I was a real racing driver I probably wouldn’t be playing GT.
I recently bought a new home PC. See this communication and the follow up to that. this made me think I could have a flight simulator and I tried installing FSX – The Microsoft Flight Simulator, last version. It turns out that FSX hates Windows 8.1. Some people got it to work and some didn’t. I didn’t want to spend ages digging into why it wasn’t working and the only way I got it to work was to turnoff some graphics function which made it look pretty rubbish on the big screen that I have. So, I had to turn to the only other alternative AFAIK.
X-Plane [I could link to the official site but then you could JFGI]
If you want to see why this is a good program then go no further than Randall Monroe’s What If? blog and see how he used it. I downloaded the demo version and played with it a bit. It is pretty good. You are stuck to the Seattle area in the demo but most of the rest of the game functions well. If you want you can use this program properly and use it professionally. Also around the time of doing this I ordered the X-Plane 10 Global edition. It contains the scenery of the world in it. All of it. I ordered this from the USA website as I didn’t want part of the profits going to a third party seller. It seemed the fairest way to buy it. I didn’t read the small print as I ordered it though. It could take six weeks to arrive. Customs issues apparently.
Here are my tweets.
I’ve ordered @XPlaneOfficial Global edition but I ordered it from the US, over Xmas, I’m waiting. And hoping.
— Ian Parish (@iparish) December 19, 2014
Number 1 son just took the Goshawk for a flight. He was pretty good. pic.twitter.com/cTDErPHNgR — Ian Parish (@iparish) December 21, 2014
Just arrived! 60GB now installing. pic.twitter.com/jVfWCSum20
— Ian Parish (@iparish) December 28, 2014
Just read the instructions. It’s 75GB and about 6 hours to install! — Ian Parish (@iparish) December 28, 2014
It looks like I ordered it 8th December and it was waiting for me after I got home on the 28th December. I guess that’s not bad. I’ve also installed a Saitek joystick and throttle (HOTAS) comnbination. I’m currently getting to grips with all the buttons and programming some functions into the joystick.
Here’s a gallery of some of my screen shots so far. I have been tweeting them so you might have seen them before. I’m trying to work with real time and weather in the program so far hence my flights are taking place around the world. I also need to work on my landings. Currently the Sabre is my favourite plane. It’s fast enough to be fun but easy to handle.
F4 Phantom
747 Approach to RAF Valley
Sabre over Lake Pontchartrain
Sabre, near Tromso
Sabre, Pearl Habor approach
F14B-D_1 somewhere
I spelt “Harbor” the American way, for accuracy.
I’m quite curious as to whether there is another type of simulation game I would like. On the Megadrive I played a submarine simulation but I would get bored quite quickly and send out a “ping” just to liven things up. I think a nuclear power station simulation would be a bit of a laugh, but then you’d try to recreate the “big ones”, Three Mile Island, Windscale, Chernobyl and see if you could have stopped the outcome. It’d probably take up a bit more technical knowledge than I have and then I’d get kidnapped by some dodgy regime to set up their nuclear program [Oh, no, that’s what Imperial did in the 80s, teach various countries their nuclear knowledge].
I don’t think I would find playing the Sims that exciting. Much like PlayStation Home doesn’t really bother me. I’m not that sociable in real life I don’t what to spend “virtual” time being sociable. I like games that challenge just me. I’ve played SimCity, but I played it once, for about 12 hours, non stop. And then I stopped.
With racing cars and aircraft you can make things happen fast. It’s about getting the timing correct. I’m not that sure that any of the following would bother me much:
I’ve been feeling that I don’t have time to do all the things I want to. I’ve been adding to the “things what I do” list and unfortunately I don’t see a lengthening of the day to allow me to do these things. I think this means that I have to give up or lower my priorities of “things to do”.
Not enough time to get stuff done.
— Ian Parish (@iparish) October 21, 2014
Things what I have done regularly:
Running
Rowing [erg]
Listening to podcasts
Listening to music
Playing Gran Tursimo
Watching American Football
Watching Babylon 5
Write stuff on this website
Go to the cinema regularly
New things what I do:
Write music
Play on the PC
Play on the PS4 more
Watch Hawaii Five-O
Listen to more podcasts
Learn new music
CCF
I’m not too happy. All of these new things have to be prioritised. I could do with about an extra 4 hours a day to myself. I have to work and look after my family so once that’s all done I get little time to do all the things I want to. I don’t even consider myself to be a busy person. How do you get to do things if you are VERY busy? I don’t get it.
Now, I guess I am lucky that I do get time to do these things and I should be grateful and I think I am. I get to do things that I like doing, I just have to ensure that I balance my time successfully.
I have also come to the conclusion that I need at least an hour of “brain dead time” each day, preferably once the house is nice and quiet. I can cope with less than an hour if planned and I extend the time another evening. Oddly enough some things which I really enjoy don’t count as part of that hour. Gran Turismo is great and I play it a lot [not so much recently] but it doesn’t count as part of the hour, it’s something I have to concentrate on and work at, the rewards are good. Cinema doesn’t count towards the hour but most TV shows do. I guess that means I need an hour of stuff to watch each day, to keep the brain fresh!
I probably do it all wrong. I’ve no idea what other people do. It’s not what should be done in real life.
I recently started a line of communications looking at my progress through GT6. There’s a definite pattern to my play. I have made the following conclusions:
Try to get a steady lap time recorded to ensure I have an idea of:
Control under braking
Control under power
How much under/oversteer
Corner speed
Gearing
Try to increase speed at the first few corners, normally coming off a lot.
Try to increase start speed.
Try to maximise corner speed on all corners, normally with one or two bogie corners.
Crash a lot.
This approach isn’t what should happen in the real world. No-one could afford to pay me to drive and crash as much as I do. If I was driving in real life I would need to have an innate understanding of where the limit of traction and how to improve speed around a track. I would also, I hope, have better reactions to control the car. To get such a deep understanding I would need to have been driving and undertaking purposeful practice for a long time. It’s no surprise that the world’s best racers in any of the top formats started racing and driving when they were young and so effectively know no different.
To learn to race a car as fast as possible would require a certain number of crashes and offs, but not as many as afforded me in the console game. There’s no danger to life in the game, I just press restart.
There are some of you who might be thinking that I need to change my approach and that you want to tell me I don’t do it the right way. To you I say, “maybe” and “I know”. It’s something to work on in the future.
If you sign into GT6 on or after your birthday you get a present. The car you receive is from the year you were born. I will remain grateful for the present but surely there were other cars released in 1972!
