Hello Mexico!

Finally got the time to start playing Forza Horizon 5 today! Hello Mexico :)

Really fun game so far. Looks gorgeous in widescreen HDR. Great music too. 10/10 would recommend.

Photo of a widescreen computer display that’s showing the interior of an airplane cargo hold that contains a jeep that’s about to be parachuted out of the rear cargo door that’s open behind the vehicle. On the desk, under the display are two speakers. Directly in front of the screen is a gaming steering wheel that's attached to the desk.

Gaming PC FTW!

It’s here! Exactly five months and one day after I ordered it, my Scorptec Blackout Gaming PC is finally up and running – and it’s all that I’d hoped it would be :)

Photo of a wide desk showing a large black desktop computer tower with a Wi-Fi antenna on top of it. Next to the tower is an ultra-widescreen computer monitor. The monitor is switched on and has a cloudy, starry nebula displayed on it. Behind the monitor is a pair of desktop speakers. In front of a monitor is a split gaming keyboard and a gaming mouse lying on a mouse pad.

Upgrading my PC gaming, er, game

I’m a PC gamer and over the last few years I’ve been buying myself Gigabyte gaming laptops. But when Microsoft Flight Simulator came out last year and struggled to run on my AERO 15 laptop – which, to be fair, is now three years old – I realised it was finally time to upgrade to a full-on gaming desktop. This decision coincided really nicely with NVIDIA releasing their GeForce 30 series, their latest line of dedicated graphics cards.

So, on the day the RTX 3080 was released (which was 18 Sep 2020 in Australia), I ordered a pre-built gaming PC from Scorptec, my favourite local computer retailer.

(Much as I’d love the idea of assembling my own gaming PC, that’s not something that I want to spend time on. I have several other mini-projects to keep me occupied.)

A graphics card? In this pandemic?

Sadly the COVID-19 pandemic threw a wrench in NVIDIA’s production schedule. While, on the customer side, demand for those graphics cards far outstripped whatever NVIDIA could supply. So, from the middle of September 2020 to the middle of January 2021, my computer desk remained unoccupied.

Photo of a wide, half empty desk with several computer accessories arrayed on it: a pair of desktop speakers along the back; a gaming joystick and throttle; a gaming steering wheel; and three boxes, one each for a keyboard, mouse, and mousepad.

By November 2020 Scorptec had realised just how low the supply of the new NVIDIA graphics cards was going to be, so they created a page on their website though which customers could stay updated on how things were going. My NVIDIA graphics card was ASUS customised and co-branded. When Scorptec’s page was originally launched they’d only managed to fulfil 13% of the pre-orders on that particular card.

By January 2021 those pre-ordered had climbed into the 20% range. That’s when the curved, ultra-widescreen LG computer monitor (38GN950-B) that I’d ordered in December 2020 arrived. (Yay!)

Then, in mid-February – when that number climbed to 38% – I got a message from Scorptec to say that my gaming PC was almost ready to go. (I’d asked for an extra hard disk to be installed and that delayed the order by a couple of additional days.)

So it was on 19 February 2021 that I finally got my hands on this gorgeous machine. Now I can finally play Flight Simulator to my heart’s content. (After its 157GB data download, of course.)

Photo of a desk on which there are: a computer tower, an ultra-widescreen computer monitor, a split keyboard (with backlit keys), a gaming mouse (which a glowing logo), desktop speakers, a gaming joystick, and gaming aircraft throttle, and a large drinking mug. The computer screen shows a window with a long download progress bar.

Throttles and pedals and wheels, oh my!

Funnily enough, Flight Simulator is the game I’ve played least since I got this PC.

Instead of joystick and throttle mode, I’ve gone mostly into steering wheel and pedals mode. (Thrustmaster FTW, either way.)

Photo of a desk on which there are: a computer tower, an ultra-widescreen computer monitor, a split keyboard (with backlit keys), a gaming mouse (which a glowing logo), desktop speakers, and a gaming steering wheel. Below the desk is a set of gaming car foot pedals. Pushed to the sides are a gaming joystick, a gaming aircraft throttle, and a paper stand on which there is a printed diagram of that joystick and what its various keys are mapped to.

The games I’ve been playing most are SnowRunner, BeamNG.drive, DiRT Rally 2.0, and Never Alone – all of which are fantastic and I’d highly recommend. (That last one, of course, is narrative based side-scroller that only requires a keyboard and mouse.)

I’m also really looking forward to Forza Horizon 4 which will finally be released for PC on 10 March.

So here’s to many more hours of gaming enjoyment. If you’re a gamer of any sort too, I wish you many hours on joy on your gaming set-up as well. #GameOn