I looked at the gaming section of FaceBook. It occurred to me that mostly it is all violence, war, fighting, and little enlightenment or constructive entertainment. There are some. And it is a great educational tool for teaching and allows young minds to experience wonders beyond our Earth. To look back and see that down here we are all one out here among the stars.
I’ve played video games with the best of them. I started way back in the late 70’s. It has been a long journey of everything from BattleField 1-2-3-4-5-and so on, to tank battles, submarine sims and more.
I’m up to my 4th set of VR headsets. HP Reverb is my current headset. Mary has an Oculus. We have tried many things. Alta Space was fun for a while before they screwed it all up. I built some nice worlds for Alta Space. One with Stonhenge at night. Another was a lovely art gallery for Mary. But when they did their updates they destroyed them. Never again.
What I find as I get older is experiences that engage my skills and my mind. There are many photoreal experiences that range from roller coaster rides with dinosaurs to deep sea dives with whales and life in the ocean. Then there’s the journey to space into our cosmos. Wonderful.
Lately my very favorite simulation is racing. I can go online, put on my headset and get in a race. I am in the cockpit and I can look all around. Feel the wheel and the car through my force feedback devices. I can race multimillion dollar cars of the past and present. It allows me to do something I’ve always wanted to do in the safety of my own home. And it can be exhausting just like in real races. I know. I’ve done plenty of it in the past and I’m lucky to be alive.
Then there’s flying. I have always been an aviator. Today the sims are so photoreal and physics real too you can fly an airplane or jet. It’s wonderful.
Lastly if you have the talent you can create worlds and immerse yourself and your loved ones into them. I’ve done that too. But you need to know your way around 3D software to make these worlds. I’m fortunate to be one of those people.
As I age I care less about shooting people or blowing things up. I have had enough of war. I want to do the things I may never get to do in my life. VR and gaming can be like the holodeck in Star Trek. This is their better purpose in my opinion.
Here’s a couple of my favorite simulations:
The racing sim is on sale today.
Here’s a couple of my favorite simulations:
The racing sim is on sale today.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/244210/Assetto_Corsa/
And Flight Sim 2020 is excellent:
The Art of Steve Neill 
Steve, I thought about my own interaction with Facebook. I decided to delete my account. It is a threat to our democracy and I realized I was wasting a lot of time dealing with it. Time would be better spent with my wife.
Michael
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Michael. I have to be on Face Book for my livelyhood. I don’t like it much. Never have.
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One of my first Flight sim experiences was SubLogics flight simulator FS1. Since then i played many sims – mostly warplane sims from Specrtrum Holobyte or Microprose. I still love the MS X Flight sim. I also played a lot of Rallye and F1 Sims with a friend back in the late 80s /early 90s. Thanks for the steam link. I had Assetto Corsa on my radar but not on my wishlist, so i probably would have missed the sale.
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