10 Daily Things

A flight over San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge on a modified Specialized mountain bike powered by a SunSPOT.

The older readers can remember the game called SimTower, released in 1995 as a gift along with SimiCity2000.

The aim of SimTower is to build a hundred story tower block filled with offices, condos, shops, restaurants,a hotel, a cinema and a party hall. Your tower will also need a medical centre, good security, adequate parking and good recycling facilities. The eventual aim is to place a cathedral on the top and win the game.

At the start of SimTower you only have the option to build offices, cafes and condos. I would advise offices as the best place to start as they bring in a weekly rent and the occupants will not be as fussy as those who move into your condos. If you do choose to build condos keep them well away from your offices as the residents will not like the noise of the workers coming and going. Once you have been upgraded to a two-star tower, a hotel is the way to advance. Where offices pay rent by the week, hotel rooms pay by the night so you will see money come in much quicker.

Remember that everyone in your tower is an individual with feelings. If you have 1200 people trying to get into 1 elevator people are going to get stressed. Fortunately, if you have the money, you can put up to 8 elevator cars in one shaft (sounds dangerous to me!) which will reduce those stress levels

Download SimTower >>>

Microsoft announced at the 2007 E3 that Project Gotham Racing 4 (PGR4) would be released in September of 2007. However, Bizarre have since said that game won’t be released “until it’s done” citing reasons that they have spent a substantial amount of money and time on the game.

In a new update to Google Earth, a free 3D map of the entire planet, several new features have been added. While the Google Sky add-on is nice enough, it’s the Google Flight Simulator which is the most interesting addition.

Once you’ve started it all up, explored Google Sky a bit, then all you have to do is hit Ctrl+Alt+A (if you’re running OS X it’s Command+Option+A; some people have reported that Ctrl+A or Ctrl+Windows+A work when the standard Ctrl+Alt+A does not).

The Google Earth Flight Simulator comes with two aircraft options, a F16 Viper and the more manageable SR22 4 seater. Players have the option of commencing the game from their current location in Google Earth or can pick from a list of pre-determined runways. Control instructions can be found here.

Overall the game play is fairly simple in terms of control, but the striking difference is flying over real pictures of locations. I took a quick flight from San Francisco International, headed North to the Golden Gate then turn back over the city before heading towards the Valley. It wasn’t perfect, but it was as good visually as the paid Microsoft Flight Simulator, and in terms of actually presenting real objects it was better.

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