Virtual Golf: More Real Than Reality?

Culture

from the when-is-virtual-reality-too-good... dept

I’ve never been a huge golf fan, though I know many people who are quite addicted to the game. Almost all of them also spend time playing golf video games – and they insist the level of detail in those games is remarkable. Over at Wired Magazine, Steven Johnson has written an article about how people are finding that the knowledge gained in video game golf is actually helping people when they go out on the course for real. He tells the story of one guy who became a top player at virtual golf without ever playing the real game. Eventually he went out on the course, and found that he picked up the game much faster than your average player – mostly because he could better visualize the shots he wanted to take. He also talks about the level of reality associated with expensive golf simulation machines where you hit the ball into a screen (that’s projecting one of these video games) and the system very accurately picks up the ball’s trajectory.