Having a lovely time in the violent fantasy world of Half-Life 2, which I still haven’t managed to play though yet. In the snapshot you can see my recent visit to the flooded basement of what looks like a nightmarish hospital for the criminally insane.

As a result of I am finding myself in that weird headspace I haven’t experienced for a while, where my perceptions of reality are temporarily affected by the immersive gaming experience. In the real world now I walk into a room and automatically do a visual scan for explosive items… and as I walk close to objects I can’t help noticing how realistically they are rendered.

Back when I was working on 3D realism I used to think like this all the time… when I drove through the country I was constantly staggered by the level of detail in the trees and fields, trying to gauge in my mind the sort of processing power required to generate that sort of imagery in real time. Then I would think: I am such a nerd.