One Last Expensive Gift
… Before next year’s cycle starts. We celebrated our first year anniversary over the weekend (aww, yeah yeah.) and it was really nice. Simple, quiet. And expensive gifts. Hmm. Well, I’m glad it’s almost over, because I need to do some of that Patented Chinese Money Saving (according to Lawrence from the Philippines) which is to put a set amount of money aside first, then spend from the remainder—as opposed to the arguably more common save-whatever’s-left-over-from-spending method, which apparently leaves you with far less than the Legendary Chinese Miserly way.
But talking about things, where everything’s going, just in general re-learning how to friggin’ chill out, I think that was a pretty necessary break away from all the rollercoasters and madness over the Christmas/New Year festivities.
Perhaps these next few months I’ll get a chance to re-explore things I’ve missed, like good books and writing music. I was recently reminded that I’ve lost touch with them, and I think there are far better ways to spend your evenings and weekends than eating myself into a glutinous blimp on the couch. I mean, the least I could do is get some exercise by playing the Xbox or something, no? I have worked up a sweat before doing that, but thinking back, it might’ve been a cold sweat during Halo 2 with its stupid first-person myopia (I hate how first-person shooters leave you feeling like horses with blinkers on), instead of a much more desired healthy glow.
so when you wanna do dinner/drinks? :)
*geek hat on…oh wait..it’s never off*
The thing about the limited view in FPS is not so much a design choice but human/hardware limitation.
Almost all FPS have the vision arc set at 90 degrees, which, like you said, is equal to just staring straight ahead and forgoing all virtues of Peripheral vision, which of course is very useful in helping us detech moving objects to our sides.
However, if you where to extend the game vision arc to the human peripheral vision of about 120 degrees (and some FPS games actually allow you to do that), it will start to look like you have tunnel vision, and thus make the whole game mostly unplayable as our own human senses can’t fully adapt to it.
Imagine trying to play the game while looking through a door viewer, as most door viewers now use a lens to widen the field of vision to ensure no one hides to the sides of the door.
To get a proper human field of vision with Peripheral vision, you would need three monitors, one for the normal front view, and the other two to the sides to show whats going on there and thus allowing us to use our own peripheral vision to spot targets.
In other non-geek related news… congrats on 1 year of bliss! =C)
I celebrated my one MONTH over the weekend too… heh. Went to Morton’s and ate generous portions of cow. Heh…
jacq> call you later today :)
fal> well… yeah, i guess so. but it leaves me feeling so afraid, because of the way i can’t quite see. guess that’s why third person always works for me, because at least i see the character, i see what/who’s around it… and i have some planning time to react.
yeah, i have played a game that tried to incorporate a wider angle of view, and it purportedly make people throw up when running fast and ducking from side to side. fun!
spiro> congratulations! :)
congrats my fren.
when are we playin XBOX. has the Xbox 360 been bought yet? i wanna play
cy> 360?? haha. no way, not for a long time. must save up, y’know? :) but we can play the lower-tech current xbox if you want. heh.