Me and Roman spent a small portion of last weekend in a thorny corner of Wessex, chucking plastic platters at chain-draped metal baskets. We’d decided to give disc golf a try after enjoying the demo for FLEX Disc Golf. Has time with a simulation ever inspired you to try The Real Thing? If you can trace a hobby or even a career, back to a PC sim, I’d love to hear about it.
During the course of our 18-hole round, we discovered that there are several important differences between analogue disc golf and the virtual form.
Perhaps the most significant of those differences is the lack of trajectory trails and predictors. Surprisingly, real DG frisbees don’t draw hi-vis lines in the air before and after you hurl them. This design flaw – when combined with narrow ‘fairways’ hemmed by undergrowth and novice players low on skill – meant we spent a good portion of our round playing a mini-game called ‘hunt the platter’. Although ‘hunt the platter’ often involved pushing though blackthorn bushes and reaching into bramble patches, Roman reckoned it was actually more fun than the disc distributing element of the sport.
Another key difference between virtual disc golf and its inspiration, is the method with which flight-bending hyzer and anhyzer is applied.
While in FLEX Disc Golf you alter release angle with a simple/precise roll of the mouse wheel, in real life you’re expected to do it with muscles and hand-eye coordination alone – something me and Roman thought was a tad unreasonable.
On the plus side, you can lean around small obstructions in unsimulated disc golf, bend the rules during informal play, and snack on ripe blackberries during a round. You can solicit technique tips from other ‘golfers’, stumble upon other people’s lost discs, and admire butterflies and birds of prey.
And, it has to be said, until Sidewalk Game Studios animate their basket chains and figure out a way to make them produce unscripted jangles when struck, holing out on screen will never be as satisfying as it is on your local course.
If you use a suitably conductive material for your disc the hunting becomes a whole new game through use of a metal detector*.
*See also: aluminium and composite arrows when shooting field archery
Sims inspiring me to try the real thing? (And actually doing it?)
Every car racing sim out there, the non-warfare flight sims I’ve played and, erm, that’s probably it.
Love golf sims, no desire at all to play golf. Enjoy car/tank/etc mechanic sims, happy to pay engineers to do that stuff properly for me. Played many a football management sim, would be happy to take that on but only if I can go in at the top and they keep rejecting me. Sub sims are a happy pastime but nobody’s willing to lend me a diesel powered torpedo slinger. Skateboard sims are fun but I fall off all the time in the sim; the real thing would rapidly accelerate my impending physical disability.
All my other hobbies predate or aren’t catered for by sims. Professionally there are sims that cover aspects of what I do but I play at real life rather than looking for influence and inspiration in the games that loosely include elements of that.
My next new hobby will involve a class of vehicle I’ve not seen simmed yet. Hmm. Market opportunity!
Does wearing a pirate hat while driving a boat count?
Non-flexible sphere golf for me also is something I found a lot more pleasant and enjoyable on the computer than in real life. Though my wife considers the opposite to be true.
More often is when an encounter with something in real life (a truck, train, submarine, etc., often at a museum) inspires me to hunt down a sim to get a taste of “What would it be like?”
Of course my inspiration by flight sims is well documented. 😉
Playing some Japanese rail sim – I don’t remember the name of it – with my cousin a very long time ago was a gateway for me. I followed it up with a real life trip around Honshu and Kyushu, JR Pass in hand, and developed a lifelong love of train travel. Couldn’t tell you a thing about gauges and rolling stock models, but if I’m visiting a country with even a vaguely functioning passenger line, I’ll be on it.
Then there are fishing sims: I enjoyed fishing long before I gave any of those a try, but they do remind me how good the real life version is by comparison.
My guess is that this might be Tim’s way of dropping the hint that he wants a programmable LED disc for Christmas.
(I haven’t searched hard, but didn’t get any clue of what they actually look like in flight)