• 19 Posts
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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: August 3rd, 2023

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  • Some folks with visual impairments have enough eyesight to enjoy visual gags, but still use screen reader software, so including the digital text makes it easier for them to read captions in the image. Screen readers with optical character recognition can still fumble with handwritten fonts or poor contrast/alignment, so copying the text into the post discussion improves redundancy for readers.


















  • Porsch Unleashed was quite a bit more simulator-like, at least the steering mechanics and coefficient of friction. I always kind of enjoyed the arcade physics of the original trio, without going completely slot-car, as keeping racing lines and risking shortcuts was still heavily rewarded. They all had really good soundtracks though, with that late '90s techno and grunge. Or at least that’s what my nostalgia tells me.







  • Oh, Need for Speed! I still break out the originals like NFS III Hot Pursuit when I want to focus on a podcast or an audio book, but don’t want my mind to wonder. Letting my visual and motor cortex enter a flow state while doing timed laps pacifies my ADHD, keeping me on track to complete any audible reading, pun intended. It also helps having all the maps memorized from nostalgia.

    Emulating the PS1 and PS2 titles is an option, but there are modern patches of the PC ports that improve the ergonomics of running them on current operating systems, including Wine and Proton:

    Another racing series with a similar flow vibe could be the Track Mania titles. Forza Horizon is a little flashy, but if you create a waypoint race route and then avoid the finish line, you can then free roam without traffic making for a relaxing and scenic diving game. The Hot Wheels DLC for Forza Horizon is also rather zen once you get a grasp for the different gravity and motion model dynamics.

    Additional notable zen like titles, with less arcade driving:


  • I’d like to discover alternative sources if you know any. Most written literature I come across in searches are either technical specifications biased from the Bluetooth consortium, or watered down blog spam of the same consortium’s news releases. Very little in terms of critical analysis or observations of user adoption and real trends in the original equipment manufacturers.

    For example, all throughout the news releases of 5.X, no one would discuss if any improvements to bidirectional audio sinks for microphoned headsets were implemented or planned. It’s like the consortium is content keeping us all on phone calls with HFP from the 1990s at bitrates of 64kbps, leaving Discord audio sessions sounding like on-hold music at the DMV.