Toys – Page 10 – Fooyah

May 23 2021May 23 2021

The Villa

I really liked my beach house that I built in the Minecraft series that is on my YouTube Channel. It was placed nicely although a little small. So, in the latest world I wanted a nice big beach house. And I’ve made it.

Now, I’m not sure I’m happy with some of the texturing and so I am going to remove and change of it. There’s too much detail in the fascia of the villa. The villa faces east and so this is a shot of the house with the sun rising.

This is a more front on view and you can see the levels. There’s an animal farm to the right rear of the villa. All the storage systems and other farms are hidden in a basement to the rear of the building.

Here you can see the side of the villa and the animal farm. In this series of screen shots I’ve got RTX turned on and it’s lovely. Absolutely lovely.

This is the view from the top balcony. There’s a bridge in the mid-distance and that has the old entrance to the mine that we started. I now have a minecart that goes from the basement to the mine and I can get there straight from the villa rather than heading into the dangerous outside.

May 22 2021May 22 2021

I Felt Productive

I recently had a long session on Minecraft, I was stuck in the house and couldn’t get out as I was waiting for someone to come and fix my boiler. I didn’t really feel like getting into a TV show so I spent some time [too long really] putting an idea I had a while back into place. Here’s an overview of part of the latest world:

The mess top right next to the bay is the MAIN Base. I’m going to see if I can get some screen shots of it, or maybe give a walk around viewing video, I’ll see what I can manage. The big grey blob in the middle of the map is a gravel topped mountain and I’ve not been there to get the gravel yet but it will be useful at some point I hope. In the bottom left of the map you can see the nearest village to the base. I wanted to create a way of getting to and from the village without having to walk over land. I could have created a minecart track but in this world I chose to dig a canal.

This cross-sectional map shows everything at level 62 – sea level [currently]. If you look closely at the top you can see a thin blue line going horizontally. That is the canal I dug and added water to. You enter the canal from top right and move directly westwards and exit in the Great Lake. From there you follow the passages and mini-canal southwards to get to the village. There could be an issue that I can’t remember whether it was this village or not that had actual live villagers in it. I didn’t bother to check before I started this infrastructure project so it could have been for nothing!

My map making software also has a measuring tool. You can see that the total canal length is about 0.85km. So that’s 850 blocks long. I’ll probably create a video soon of the base and where the canal goes but until then, I leave you in peace.

May 20 2021May 22 2021

Well, At Least I Tried

Gran Turismo has been accepted into the 2021 Digital Virtual Olympics. Anyone playing can attempt to qualify and so I have. Attempted.

The first round is a time trial around a Tokyo street circuit which makes sense given the actual games are going to be in Japan. The circuit has a good mix of slow technical corners and high speed straights and high speed esses. There are some slightly annoying things though – if you touch, and I mean just touch, a wall then your lap is discounted. I have completed around 200 miles around this circuit and I think in all those I have fewer than ten green laps. I guess it means that I am pushing it around the corners but at the same time it is very frustrating. Maybe I’m just not that good?

After my first few attempts I managed a time around 2 minutes and I knew I could improve by about two seconds. I will have another go I think but it is marginal gains and I’m already too far down the rankings. I’m also about FOUR seconds behind those in the lead. That’s quite depressing. My driver rating is around a C or B whereas those at the top are all A+ rated drivers. I know I’ve been playing this game since 1997 but perhaps I’m not that good? Ahhh, I think I’m suffering a bit with imposter syndrome. Anyway, I made it into the top 5000. I’m nowhere near that now, but given that the “local” area is made of Europe, Africa and most of Asia I’m probably doing OK. Perhaps I’ll try again tomorrow. See if I can get below 1:59.

Here’s a screen shot of my initial qualifying time:

May 3 2021May 3 2021

ILS

I’ve finally got around to reading the instructions for my T-7 plane in X-Plane. I’m playing around with the beacons and following those as I work my way around Europe coastline cities.

Porto. pic.twitter.com/yNErq7GfMY
— Ian Parish (@iparish) May 3, 2021

I’m currently in Porto, Portugal and heading south. I haven’t decided whether I am going to carry on to Africa or just do Europe. I have a suspicion I’ll try to get around Africa but I am concerned that the number of airports will decrease quite significantly and I might not want to land in awful countries like Mauritania – look it up it has a terrible record on human rights. I guess I could always land on a carrier, if I can figure out how to put one near to me.

This is the view I get on my phone. There’s an X-Plane app that connects to the PC and displays certain information. I’m trying to improve my glideslope to landing and this is the first time I’ve used this app. It looks quite good and I get more information than I was expecting. I should be able to use the ILS system within the T7 but although I’m tuning the Nav to the correct frequency it doesn’t seem to be popping up in the HUD. I’ll just have to keep trying.

March 6 2021March 6 2021

The Good, The Bad and The Whoops!

Below I have arranged some screenshots from me playing X-Plane. I’m not really going to give any commentary. I should be writing a summary of this week of lockdown here but I genuinely am not sure what I can say without breaking my own website rules.

February 4 2021February 4 2021

Into The Woods

I recently set up a virtual competition at work. The idea is that everyone tries driving the Brands Hatch GP circuit in a game and records their best time. That seems simple I guess. The only rules are that the vehicle must be closed wheel and exist in real life. It would be too hard to specify [and then check] other settings like traction control, gear ratios, engine mods, aero packages etc. So basic rules and hope everyone plays by them. Yesterday I had a go in the Porsche 919 Hybrid. I thought I was doing really well and I was aiming for a time of 1:12 ish [this was my best lap time from composite sector times] only when I decided to quit did I notice that my Audi R16 had gone faster [close wheels cars that exist irl].

I’m reasonably convinced I should be able to get somewhere in the 1:11s with either the Porsche or the Audi. I’ll have another go tonight I guess and try. I’m not really bothering with the suspension set up and I’m not upgrading the engine [yet] the only thing I have adjusted is to tune the gearing to the Brands Hatch circuit. This makes the acceleration as effective as possible for all of the not-straights that Brands has. I took a photograph of my lap times because I thought it looked quite good. I’m not sure how consistent is a good consistent but I think it’s quite good to be in the low 1:13s.

As you can see my fastest lap was on lap seven of this particular run. I do think I should be able to get it down another second though. But this requires everything to be good on a lap and Paddock Hill bend is really annoying. On lap 8 you can see I was really pushing it and went off, I think at Paddock, I then used the rest of that lap to try some corners in different gears to see if I could take them a little faster or change the acceleration profile on the exit. Quite clearly after lap 12 I rage quit and decided that I wouldn’t get any better in that session. Let’s see how I do later today.

January 15 2021January 15 2021

Not Often I Actually Manage This

While avoiding all the terrible news at the moment I have been spending some time gaming because, let’s face it, other worlds are better than this one at the moment. I’m starting to look for ancient debris in Minecraft [seems like a job for me, just keep doing the same stuff] and I’m considering my YouTube series on aircraft in X-Plane and how to improve that. I’m not sure I remember what day I last drove the car. It might have been Monday, who knows? The heating in my house is going to fail and I booked a technician but I have to wait three weeks for that person to turn up, so it could get interesting over the next while. I have heating at the moment but keeping it going requires fiddling a couple of times each day.

Mr O and I have been looking for places to do follow-the-leader low flying. Our first attempt was through the Mach Loop and it’s slightly annoying that it seems that could be the best place in the world to do that. I had a go at Star Wars Canyon in the USA and it isn’t that long and was actually quite boring from a – you can fly anywhere in the world – point of view. So I’ve been looking at the Chilean fjords. They look more remarkable than the Norwegian fjords and I wonder if Slartibartfast had any role in designing them. So, along with my search to find somewhere to retire I am also looking for decent valleys and LFAs, Low Flying Areas. Currently I’m tempted with New Caledonia and Tierra Del Fuego. One is warm and tropical and the other is most definitely not. These are dreams really as I doubt very much that I could afford or qualify to move to those places and then end up being a burden on their healthcare systems. It’s nice to dream though.

In these times we have to take enjoyment from the smaller things and do our best to keep sane. It’s not going to be easy and the fall-out from this pandemic is going to affect people for many years to come. Hopefully we will have a government willing to cough up the money to ensure the best of all. They seem quite cash-happy at the moment but I suspect that’s because of business losing money rather than an overall caring for people thing. Let’s wait and see.

1564. I mean, I thought 500 a day was bad.
— Ian Parish (@iparish) January 15, 2021

January 2 2021January 2 2021

43 x 47

New year new glasses or however the saying goes. Not a lot to say but I did think I should write something before playing some games. Let’s summarise what’s happening at the moment:

Weather – shit
Human rights – likely to be trampled
Pandemic – still really bad
Roaming charges – likely to return
Horrible people – still in charge
Scientific illiteracy – still high
Uncle Frank – still a racist

So, going well in the new year then. I think I might start another miniseries on YouTube this time flying different types of aircraft in X-Plane. I just need to find a nice place to fly a few circuits. I expect each video to be around five minutes long. I need to have a practice at some.

I don’t do resolutions but I am going to try and play a more varied selection of computer [or console] games this year. I have many games and I enjoy buying them but I rarely get through them. I have some suspicions about why this is and I will probably write about that some day. But, much like buying books, getting new games is exciting and I like owning things. I’ve solved the books buying issue by buying a Kindle and making sure that I read more things more often. I’m doing well at the moment. It helps not having loads of channels on the television because there aren’t that many things I want to watch. There will be even less once the NFL season finishes in about a month.

Anyway, we have to keep our hopes up that at some point this government will accidentally do something good and actually help people. At the moment they seem to be a bunch of art history students trying to understand that gravity exists. Which is probably what they are:

Boris Johnson – Classics Oxford, Eton
Rishi Sunak – PPE Oxford, Winchester College
Dominic Raab – Law Oxford, Dr Challanor’s Grammar [state school]
Priti Patel – Economics Keele, Westfield Technical College [state school]
Michael Gove – English Oxford, Robert Gordon’s College
Robert Buckland – Law Durham, St Michael’s School
Ben Wallace – Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, Millfield
Matt Hancock – PPE Oxford, Kings School
Alok Sharma – Applied Physics and Electronics Salford, Presentation College
Elizabeth Truss – PPE Oxford, Roundhay School [state school]
Therese Coffey – Chemistry Oxford, St Mary’s College
Gavin Williamson – Social Science Bradford, Raincliffe School [state school]
George Eustice – Truro Cathedral School
Robert Jenrick – History Cambridge, Wolverhampton Grammar School
Grant Shapps – Business HND Manchester Polytechnic, Watford Grammar School [state school]
Brandon Lewis – Law Buckingham, Forest School
Alister Jack – Glenalmond College
Simon Hart – Radley College
Natalie Evans – Social and Political Sciences Cambridge, Henrietta Barnett School [state school]
Oliver Dowden – Law Cambridge, Parmiter’s School [state school]
Amanda Milling – Economics and statistics UCL, Moreton Hall School