Can a game train you for the real thing?

[SAS]

Check the topic. I'm going to give it a shot.

Can anyone recommend any good pool sims . I've been playing for a while, but my form is very patchy and I'm sick of being 0wned on the pool tables, so maybe some practice with a pool game might do the trick?

 

[DAN200]

All a pool sim could do would be to get you used to the physics of how the ball bounces and watnot.

However, your accuracy and judgement will still be poor as clicking a mouse does not convert well to poking a large stick.

Unless of cource you go out and buy out of those "virtual pool table" perihials...

 

[Embattle]

With pool only a bit....maybe learning angles but a lot of things like how hard to hit are tottaly different.

 

[SAS]

It's the angle thing that screws me up. I can hold a cue and hit the ball where I want to hit it, but it's working out the tricky angles that I screw up on :/

 

[Testin da Cable]

aarg...I seem to remember some math that you could do if the table had the little studs on the edges. You could work out exactly where the ball would go [as long as you didn't put spin on it heh].
Phythagoras? Something like that...was simple iirc.

 

[gremlin]

I'm a fairly good pool player ( irl, not games ) and can honestly say I don't think you'll be able to learn from a computer sim.

Maybe you'll get a feel for some of the angles, but it's all about the feel when you take shots, you really need access to a real table.

Find a local pub with a cheap one and just play lots.

 

[old.frankie]

surely you can work out what directiont eh ball is gonna come off a cushion?

what ever angle it hits it, its gonna come back out with the same angle, cept mirrored

simple...

 

[Wij]

not necessarily. i find the cushions have a slight straitening effect making the ball come off slightly nearer to the right-angle to the cushion. maybe we just have shit tables round me

 

[Ono]

I play tennis a lot in real life.


Virtua Tennis on DC is just soooo good. I belive it can help in real life in terms of positioning and stroke making decisions.


Most realistic sports game ever.

 

[Summo]

Until recently I've been hanging around the Operation Flashpoint community. What's worrying is the number of utter utter cocks who are army or ex-army who obviously and just live to shoot big guns and brag about it. "Yeah, I've fired a LAW and I tell ya, if you tried that it'd fry yer fuckin face." "Yeah, I used to have a Draganov and you can take out animals on the other side of town."

I guess my point is...

... lost.

 

[Wij]

Virtua Tennis is excellent. Once I got good at the game I found I had a much better appreciation of the game. However it would not make me any better at the game cos I could never pull off any of the shots and I'd collapse after the first game

 

[Deady]

haha SAS i thought you were going to join the military or something...and wanted to use operation flashpoint to train yourself...

then i find out its about pool!

Oh well.

(im dead Jim)

 

[SAS]

I read a lot of miltary books so the op flash point guide should be interesting reading .

As for pool I can work out the angles, but not where to hit the white for the best shot. If you saw me play you'd see me miss shots very slightly.

Only once after 2 pints I had a feeling and I won 3 games in a row. Balls went in exactly where I wanted them (shocked a few of my mates at the time ).

I think it's more a problem of not playing enough as Gremlin pointed out so I'm hoping a computer simulation will help so I can have a quick knock around now and then.

 

[~Lazarus~]

Originally posted by frankie
surely you can work out what directiont eh ball is gonna come off a cushion?

what ever angle it hits it, its gonna come back out with the same angle, cept mirrored

simple...

All depends on how you strike the ball. You can "manufacture" shots by putting side/top/backspin onto the ball.

 

[granny]

I've been playing lots of StarTopia and I've found it invaluable practice for running a real space station frequented by comedy aliens with weird diseases.

 

[.cage]

How can you expect a game, even the supposedly 'realistic' ones, to translate at all well to whatever experience its trying to recreate?

 

[old.Morpheus]

They are called "Simulations". They succeed by varying degrees. Some armed forces use certain simulations to give their troops "the idea" before taking them out and showing them the ropes for real.

 

[.cage]

Yes, but I somewhat doubt they sit them infront of Counterstrike.

 

[Summo]

More likely Operation Flashpoint. CS is for Rambo-types.

 

[Wij]

I don't remember Rambo sitting on a crate under a ledge for 20 minutes :/

 

[stu]

Actually, the US Marines use a simulator based on a modified Doom engine...

(hence why they are shit, one would assume)

 

[Will]

I think I played that one - it was piss poor.

 

[Mellow-]

Originally posted by SAS
I think it's more a problem of not playing enough as Gremlin pointed out so I'm hoping a computer simulation will help so I can have a quick knock around now and then.

There is never a substitute for the real thing.

 

[Wij]

yeh, get a pool table m8

 

[old.Morpheus]

Actually, the US Marines use "The Sims". Clearly.