Two Years, Virtually.

Two years since the last post. At least the time between posting here has reduced - by 33% no less! 

Work-wise things are both the same and different. Most of my time is now taken up with being the CTO for a small SaaS company. It's the first time my ability to wear many 'hats' in the workplace has been a huge benefit rather than upsetting people. I'm now responsible for pretty much everything technical from things like infratructure strategy and development practices to pre-sales activity and staffing requirements. And yes, I still write code. Not as much as I used to, but I still think it's important to be able to walk the walk when it comes to technology.

The handful of people who've seen this blog before might remember seeing me post about cars and gaming quite a bit in the past. Things have changed slightly there too. I sold my BMW M3 as it wasn't getting the use it needed (it basically sat for 18 months during the pandemic). Also, it was too slow and heavy on the track whilst being too fast to enjoy on the roads. As an instructor once told me as we lapped Brands Hatch - "You know what you're doing, you just need a faster car.".

Well, a faster car wasn't really practical - the M3 was already plenty fast on the roads and anything else would need to be track specific and that gets expensive, fast (pun intended). So instead, I've turned to online sim racing. It may sound childish, but the nerves felt sitting on the grid, in full VR awaiting the start of an hours race feel pretty real. Not a million miles away from those felt driving round the Nurburgring but at a fraction of the cost. Then there's the actual racing. Despite what Top Gear tell us, getting into proper racing in the real word is expensive, both in terms of time and money. Here, I get to go wheel to wheel and battle for track position for a fraction of the cost.

Here's taste of what it looks like. But remember, I'm seeing it in full virtual reality.

At the Goodwood Festival of Speed I managed to blag my way into sitting in the real BMW GT3 car I'm driving in that video and I can tell you, the virtual version is pretty damn acurate. 

This has of course led me down the rabbit hole of sim racing hardware - steering wheels, pedals, seating, and, ahem, motion rigs. But that's for another post!