Reflections of the third kind.

**warchild** · August 31st, 2020, 05:16

Searching through YouTube as is my normal habit at five A.M. in the morning I came across a few very old movies from the fifties; movies that were considered to be epic and great at that time. John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, Montgomery Cliff type movies. Then I noticed their average running time was an hour and thirty minutes. AA whole hour and thirty minutes. How did people stay in their seats for so long?? Yeah, I'm being facetious. Since those days, Movies expanded to two hours, three hours, and then theres Star Wars and Lord of the rings with over twelve hours each.
In the late 1970's a little company called Convergent Technologies created a Mini-Computer that boasted of all things, a graphical user UI, and a flight simulator ( yes, there was flight before Sublogic ), and in the early 1980's the first video games began appearing on Commodore P.E.T.'s and Amiga's. They were all ( including the flight simulator ) just distractions. Things you could do for a few minutes or an hour to break the hum drum plodding of daily life.
In the early 1990s a video game called "Doom" came along and everything changed. People started spending more time playing video games than they did anything else except work. The late 1990's brought Wing Commander, Privateer, the very first "Zelda" game and Star Fox. Let us also not forget Microsoft Flight Simulator 5. People were spending more and more time in video games than could possibly be imagined, except perhaps by the video game companies. The movement to replace real life with Fantasy was on, and divorce rates skyrocketed.
Now its 2020. The year the United Stated burned. Seattle, Portland, Chicago, Washington, St. Louis, and San Francisco. Civil War is on the tip of every tongue and no one stands silently on the sidelines watching the terrifying parade of chaos unfolding in front of our eyes. We have games like Elite Dangerous, Eve Online, Elder Scrolls: Online, a Thousand games that are all, online, and now we have Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. With the advent of global lock-downs ( except for countries like Sweden and Japan ) we no longer have to worry about going to work each day. Nor do we have to ever leave our favorite fantasy, as major corporations search for a vaccine for the flu, and look for ways to track you and your health records with a chip implant. We become the computer.
The fact that MSFS2020 presents us with a world so real that it begs for VR and mods to make it more and more real till its indistinguishable from the worlds outside our doors is terrifying to me.
No one asked the world to be the way it is, but are some leveraging that world to manipulate us to become lost in our fantasies to a complete extent? I dont know.. What are your thoughts? No uncivil conversations please. lets stay who we are and keep it objective..
Pam.

***jmig*** · August 31st, 2020, 05:53

Originally Posted by warchild

Searching ...The fact that MSFS2020 presents us with a world so real that it begs for VR and mods to make it more and more real till its indistinguishable from the worlds outside our doors is terrifying to me.

No one asked the world to be the way it is, but are some leveraging that world to manipulate us to become lost in our fantasies to a complete extent? I dont know.. What are your thoughts? No uncivil conversations please. lets stay who we are and keep it objective..
Pam.

Pam, Back in the 1970s I read a ScFi book where the theme was escapism. The plot of the book revolved around buildings where people would go and lie down on beds. A skull device was attached and they would be off into a fantasy world of their choosing. In this story the world economy was collapsing because no one was working. They were all dreaming away in their fantasies.

We have always had and always will have a percent of the population who would rather escape from their lives than work to improve them. Escapism has always been with us. It used to be by drinking. Then you have the opium houses in the 1800s. The 1960s brought the introduction of widespread modern drugs. Video games are just another form of escapism. At least video games don't destroy a person's health like drugs do.

Frankly, I think that for most young people who take up this new flight sim, the addiction will be short lived. Then they will be on to the next "latest" game. It will be the sim enthusiasts who will keep MSFS 2020 going after the "gamers' move in a year or two.

**UnknownGuest12** · August 31st, 2020, 09:04

Perhaps nowadays is lacking but I call it common good-sense. FS2020 is looking extremely good for me since I just fly around, love the planes , could not care less about real flight systems. So, this is much better than P3D. Miss the planes...
Common sense. I don´t do VR but if one day I opt for it, always will have time to talk with friends, watch a good movie, read my books, help in National Museum of Archaeology when they need me (no more digging please), etc, etc. These are strange times and common sense is fading away quickly. At all levels, I´m afraid.
But please, make this game better then already is...

**warchild** · August 31st, 2020, 12:42

Welllll, What started as a bit of humor in my original post, quickly metamorphosed into something far more dangerous: The weaponization of luxuries to lull us into a sense of well being and prosperity while being led down an ivory path towards a kept existence. I hope its just the delusions of a brain thats seen too much, gone too far and paid the price, but for my part here, I must apologize. Regardless of how my post was interpreted, it still attempted to start a dialogue with regards to the disarming of our trusts, and a dropping of our personal defenses. This perhaps is not the right place to discuss such matters.
In my defense, I will say that at the time of writing this morning, I was under great duress from a tachycardia attack, and possibly having a small stroke as well as I appear to have lost some functionality of my speech center. Needless to say, there was more than one darkness on my mind. So Please accept my apology. I truly wish we could discuss the philosophical implications of what i laid out, but as I said, perhaps this is not the right place.. Love you all.
In Peace.
Pam

**warchild** · August 31st, 2020, 12:51

HeyCief!! I like ATS too. I even make custom built drive trains and engines for it. Currently I'm working on a Pacific P16 for extreme heavy haul. Let me know what you dive and what you want to use it for and I'll whip something up for you..

OH, The pacific and what I mean by extreme.. I think this sums it up.. Omega Morgan's Mighty Matt at work..

***Navy Chief*** · August 31st, 2020, 10:18

Originally Posted by jmig

Pam, Back in the 1970s I read a ScFi book where the theme was escapism. The plot of the book revolved around buildings where people would go and lie down on beds. A skull device was attached and they would be off into a fantasy world of their choosing. In this story the world economy was collapsing because no one was working. They were all dreaming away in their fantasies.

We have always had and always will have a percent of the population who would rather escape from their lives than work to improve them. Escapism has always been with us. It used to be by drinking. Then you have the opium houses in the 1800s. The 1960s brought the introduction of widespread modern drugs. Video games are just another form of escapism. At least video games don't destroy a person's health like drugs do.

Frankly, I think that for most young people who take up this new flight sim, the addiction will be short lived. Then they will be on to the next "latest" game. It will be the sim enthusiasts who will keep MSFS 2020 going after the "gamers' move in a year or two.

I guess I enjoy flight simulation (and truck simulation as well) because of the "escapism" aspect. For me, it is definitely a way to immerse myself into something that helps me ignore all the madness that seems to be engulfing our country. NC

**Ganter** · August 31st, 2020, 13:02

Originally Posted by Navy Chief

I guess I enjoy flight simulation (and truck simulation as well) because of the "escapism" aspect. For me, it is definitely a way to immerse myself into something that helps me ignore all the madness that seems to be engulfing our country. NC

It's not confined to your country NC.
It's the whole god damn world.

I feel nothing is real anymore - except my kids and my wife - and they're pretty crazy these days too.

Everything else just had the big random button pushed.

MSFS - sure is a way of getting some free time away from the asylum that the world has become.

Where we're all going to be at the end of this is anyone's guess.

Altered? yep, better? - I don't know. Just so crazy right now.