My four year-old machine wasn’t up to the task of Half Life 2, so my Christmas present to myself was a custom built box with the works: Athlon processor, top of the line video card. It arrived today.
Oh. My. Freakin’. God.
HL2 is amazing, and this machine renders it spectacularly with all the sliders up to the max. My first thought was that we’re that much closer to having holodecks! Money well spent - I’m a happy guy.
Only problem so far is with dial-up internet. My old machine consistenly connected at 50 bps. The new one is only getting 28.8. Something funny there. But all things considered, I’m a happy guy today. And will be tomorrow too - the day is reserved for Half Life 2!!!
Now we just need another little nudge in consumer level VR tech. Hell, even piss-poor resolution DOOM was fun in 3D with the crap gear we had in the mid-nineties, before everyone decided it was a dead end.
I want a nice light head-tracking helmet with dual hi-res micro LCDs, and a blazing fast refresh rate. Tomorrow.
Of course, my teeth will probably fall out and I’ll go crazy, but damn, it’ll be fun.
JDoom with a real damn mouse look works on Win XP not on Win98, but the networking sucks.
Doom works on Win 98, but no mouse look.
We got velcro, battery power tools and remote medical sensing from Apollo, what bout this damn look and shoot from the air force?
No point in beating me up for my lunch money, because I’ve spent it all on this new rig.
It cost about 2k, which was probably slightly more than necessary. I could have built it myself for a few hundred dollars less, but I couldn’t stomach that idea. I wanted to just open a box and start playing. I purchased from one of Alienware’s competitors called Widow PC.
Today’s schedule:
10-noon: Half Life 2
Watch The Simpsons season five during lunch
1:00-2:30 Flight Simulator 2004
2:30-4:00 Half Life 2
