I was in Bic Camera with Tom the other day checking out mics, headphones and, er, Macs, when I saw something on a Windows PC that nearly made me fall over and behave like an armadillo – that’s how shocked I was.

The screen was showing a demo of Gran Turismo, the world’s most popular racing game. It wasn’t so much the car’s performance that I was surprised by – I don’t care much for cars – it was more the fact that MY BEDROOM WAS IN THE BACKGROUND!

I did a double-take, surely, it couldn’t be? No, it WAS! The car was on a road right outside my home of 2.5 years – the hotel Bellevue Des-Alpes of Kleine Scheidegg, Switzerland!

You can imagine how surprised I was – I mean, usually these racing games have made-up backgrounds which are loosely based on some race track somewhere, right? But this, this was something else. Examining it closely, I could see it was a perfect 3D reproduction of my old home. I mean, perfect, so detailed. The only difference between it and reality was that you couldn’t see my socks hanging out of the window to dry.

Oh, and the road the car was on – doesn’t actually exist! (I had to check the Kleine Scheidegg live webcam to make sure that they hadn’t built one whilst I’ve been away, for the cows to practice skateboarding on).

A poor-quality photo of the screen of the computer in Bic Camera, showing my ex-home in the background!

Oh, and a Wikipedia Search reveals this about the ‘new mode’ in Gran Turismo:

So far, a new track in the series has been revealed for this mode: The Eiger Nordwand, based at the real-world location of Kleine Scheidegg in the Swiss Alps. GTHD Premium will feature around 30 cars and two tracks that have been built up from scratch which will make use of PS3’s next generation gaming capabilities.

Exciting stuff. I guess I’ll just have to buy a Sony Playstation now.

(Actually, I’m allergic to computer games, being far too weak-willed to stop having played them for 45 days non-stop, without sleep. I discovered that about myself when Sonic the hedgehog came in the 18th century.) (although I did recently try 2nd Life, but found it to be even more full of dysfunctional weirdos than 1st life…)

Edit

Spooky! There I was just checking that this entry had uploaded OK, when scrolling down I noticed that the random picture – one of over 6000 in the library, was that of one of the buildings in the picture on the Gran Turismo screen shot!

It’s difficult to make out here, but the building in the random photo is the building that can be seen in the shadow of my head in the computer-screen shot!

That random photo thing has been known for throwing up such surprises in the past – Must be the pixies!