Do not underestimate the power of Zazen

[Hyper Shadow]

Ever wondered how to improve your concentration levels on WipEout?

Well the answer is here zazen meditation! I have been practising this since Christmas and it has cetainly helped in the dramatic decrese of my times. How else do you think that I can actually do the zone mode now?? Its amazin' cos I actually enetered a trance like state during one play of Wip3out and it netted me a perfect lap and a top three time on rapier terminal, I'm telling you it is one of the most insane feelings ever and you just have to accept the feeling, because if you acknowledge it you lose it.

Man, I'm starting to sound all philosophical Goddamit Jim, I'm a mathmatician, not a phiosopher :lol:

_________________
http://www.hyper-shadow.cjb.net

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Hyper Shadow on 2002-02-18 11:16 ]</font>

[Lance]

around here, we call that the za-zone. :smile:

i think my driving heroes, Myima Tsarong and Songen Grey, do that sort of thing.

[Wamdue]

zero concentration , when i go for records i race long enough til i dont think thoughts anymore.. like, i just "do it". also, speaking with someone while racing really helps!

[Lance]

speaking with someone while racing really helps!

LOL. seriously though, i have found that sometimes i do best if i play for a long time and stop thinking about what i'm going to do when i get to a point further ahead in the track, or just figuring out a tactic ahead of time. as you say, one gets bored with thinking about it, and just races. i think i've mentioned this before, but being tired and drunk can put you into the zone too. :wink:

bourbon is the american equivalent of eastern philosophy


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Lance on 2002-02-18 23:10 ]</font>

[science]

zen racing is definately the way to go. all of the sudden it just starts to happen, and your nailing perfect lap after perfect lap.
however, sometimes its difficult to just allow what happens to happen and not care one way or another. in fact, if theres one game that can take me from being a mature adult(!?) back to a controller-hurling, tantrum-throwing 6 year old... it would be wip3out. my best negcon has had a minor internal repair done to it, as well as a set of bite marks (yes, bite marks...) from the two occasions where i really lost it and needed something inanimate to hurt. funny how you pick expensive things to destroy when youre really angry.:roll:

[Anastasia]

Hey, has anyone tried this: The other night I was deep in challenge-mode, going for gold on Alca Vexus and trying desperately for a perfect lap (don't do Alca Vexus too well!) and my three-and-a-half year old grabbed hold of the back of my bouncy IKEA chair and shook me vigorously 'til I crashed quite spectacularly....Talk about getting into the spirit of fast and furious AG racing... :eek:

[Status]

Interesting topic. :smile:

I've been gaming literally all my life, and I've always, always maintained that unfocusing is vital to performance. If you're thinking about the game, you're not 'one' with your game. If you play old-style shooters like Blazing Star or Raiden where you have as many as 100 individual shots / enemies / targets / inbound missiles to think about, reflex is the only thing that will do you any good. If you have to consider how you're going to dodge that spray of fifty bullets coming at you, you're already dead.

Personally, I've always found that the best way to get in to 'the zone' is music with a strong beat. I'll listen to everything from Information Society to the Ramones while I play, but I always listen to something. Music is about the easiest way for me to get in a 'trance'. Wipeout helps with that nicely. :smile:

[Lance]

i've been playing videogames less than 2 years. i was deprived!

maybe i should try playing shooters to improve my piloting.

the Ramones? so ''I wanna be sedated'' is good flying music? :smile:

Joel: when i got to the ''bite marks'' i just about fell over laffin. i get pretty frustrated on WO3 sometimes, but i've not done that yet. i have kinda sorta 'dropped' the controller a few times though.

[science]

not exactly one of my shining moments in A-G...

[Wiseman]

I think the worst I've ever done to a controller is get a screwdriver after it (and no, it wasn't to unscrew anything :lol), but that was because the controller itself was going out and it pissed me off...

I'm usually pretty cool when it comes to me losing a game, but when the controllers analog starts to go out and makes me lose a battle in Devil May Cry, for instance.... well... let's just say my attempts to open it up to take a look inside usually results in me stabbing it multiple times instead.... :lol

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Wiseman on 2002-02-19 10:02 ]</font>

[Wiseman]

Woah, hey were was I..... anyway back on topic, I usually have to separate myself from the game to do good as well...

I remembered the first time I raced double perfect laps in Wipeout XL/Phantom/Valaprasio/Pirhana, when I finally realized what I was doing and that I was going the fastest the game could go, it brought me back to what I was actually doing and I crashed straight into the long curve after the bumps in the tunnel.... sucked bigtime.

[Zebula77]

I agree with you guys. If you try too hard, you'll never get it. Do, or do not. There is no try, right?

Yesterday I struggled to do the time challenge for Auricom (Fusion). You know the one: 1:13:00 for gold. Damn, that was a hard one. I kept getting 1:15s and 16s, until I got it down to 1:13:05. I kept getting this time for about half an hour, then suddenly I stopped thinking about the game and relaxed totally. I guess I got into a meditive state of mind or something. I got 1:12:03 and the gold. I looked at my clock and realized two hours had passed trying to do this one goddamn challenge. It felt great getting that gold!:-)

[Status]

The worst thing I ever did to a control pad involves a hacksaw. It was theraputic. :smile:

Lance: More along the lines of Blitzkrieg Bop. :grin:

[science]

On 2002-02-20 23:47, Status wrote:
The worst thing I ever did to a control pad involves a hacksaw. It was theraputic. :smile:


right on.:evil:

[Confusion]

Anyone here have the ultimate racing position? I do. I have to sit about 2 foot away from my TV on a chair with my feet next to the TV beside each other.

Then behind me I have my PC on (it's only 1 foot away... I have a tiny bedroom), Winamp running and CJ Bolland blaring t me (Kung Kung Ka is especially good. I suggest you download it).

Only then will I achieve The ultimate racing state (URS for short).

[Zebula77]

URS, eh?
I have to wear a headset to get all the stereo sounds going(haven't got a surround system), sit about 1.5 meters(or aproxx. 4ft) away from the screen in me favourite chair. Also I have to be alone, with no noise or mothers telling me to do the dishes. So, preferrably at night, then.

This gets me into the Zen- or Zazen state that everyone is talking about.

[Hyper Shadow]

I prefer to listen to any music that gets the aggression flowing (Machine Head, Mad Capsule Markets, Pitchshifter, Drowning Pool etc) lie on my bed, crank up the volume and just pound the track until it bleeds!

Seems to work at the moment.

In order to relax afterwords, fifteen minutes of quiet meditation does the trick. It is all about controlling your emotions.
Goddamit, now I'm sounding like a Vulcan

[Lance]

i like to sit back on what i like to call the divan [sounds classy that way, yes?] with a cup of hot sweet tea nearby, and my tiny little tv about six or seven feet from my eyes. what i do for sound is variable. the game machines plug into my vcr which is connected to everything including the main sound system. but i often listen with nothing but the tv's own little speaker turned down low, occasionally off. i rarely crank up the sound really loud in the headphones or the speakers, but sometimes i do. most of my best times happened with tv speaker only and turned low, but that's just happenstance and convenience cos i felt like playing with the minumum possible time lost to get started. not only that , it's usually very late in the night, so i have a care for the neighbors sleep.

but the sugary tea and the leaning back are very important!

[Confusion]

Be warned! The URS has been known to give pilots Numb arse syndrome! I have suffered many a time as a result of URS!

[science]

i have to sit about 6 inches away from the headache distance from the TV (relative to its size) and i have to be looking straight at or slightly up at the screen. looking down at it messes me up. also, i have to sit with my body perfectly symmetric; no sitting cross-legged or to the side. also, whatever im sitting in/on preferably needs a back, and positively no armrests.
umm, i think thats it.

[Anastasia]

My fave position is about three feet away from the tv, sitting x-legged on a very comfy floor cushion. Medical warning: prolonged sitting on said cushion causes numb bum syndrome!!!! :smile:

[Lance]

armrests are verboten. if i'm sitting in a Qirex, blasting everything in sight, and trying desperately to get that heavyweight around an S-bend by steering it with my whole body, there's got to be nOthing to interfere with the control!

today i started trying to take a new driving attitude to improve my performance at Stanza Inter. i adopted the Songen Grey 'Slouch of Serenity'' to keep cool whilst zooming through the right split, the hard left tunnel, the esses, , the S-tunnel, the hard left..... well, you get the idea. damn, there's a lot of hard stuff on that course. but i think i'm finally going to actually like SI.

i notice that the acronym for ultimate racing position is URP. must have something to do with beer and chips.

[science]

On 2002-02-22 05:49, Lance wrote:
i notice that the acronym for ultimate racing position is URP. must have something to do with beer and chips.


:lol: good call lance! i love it!

[Task]

8 D Good topic!
Yeah, I've got an URP.
I learned it after many hours of WOXL...
Until I learned my URP, I could only play for about an hour at a time, I'd get all stiff and sore everywhere.
Sitting on a pillow on the couch (a good couch is _required_, my times suxxor from the floor or a chair), feet flat on the floor. Pillow on the knees, rest arms on pillow, slightly bent over to get a face full of wipeout. TV must be 3 or 4 feet in front of me, at about (or just a bit below) eye level.
Once I've got my setup, I can go for hours and hours. After the first hour I've either washed up (translation for the brits: all my times are pants) or I've entered my zone state and I start with the serious record making.

I had considered starting a topic on this a while back, cause I noticed how important my URP was to me when racing and I wondered if anyone else noticed the same thing, then I realized I was going to start a topic asking people how they _sat_ while they played a damn _game_ because I was _genuinely_interested_, and I decided I was "way 2 in2 it" and I forced myself to take a break. 8 D
But I'm back now. I've missed my wipeout.

Good acro, Lance.

[Confusion]

A good URP always leads to a good URS!

Maybe a new chair is in need... I can't stand a numb arse. :sad:

[BurnHead]

On 2002-02-22 05:49, Lance wrote:

armrests are verboten.


Aha! Throwing around german words eh Lance? :grin:

Halt! Stop! hehehehehe...

[Lance]

ich bin der koenig of gratuitous linguistic references.

jay: we wipeout pilots can off-topic our way onto any subject whatsoever.

i wasn't the one to invent the phrase 'ultimate racing position', that was mister Confusion up there on the first page. i will take credit for noticing its acronymic possibilities with my only sporadically keen eye for detail. thanks for the plaudits from joel and you.

all of us are way too into it to care how insane a videogame obsession might look to other fans, right? we understand the seriousness of recreational activities. hell, some people even collect furniture. i don't do it myself, but i can understand what they see in it.
and anyway, good physical mechanics are important to your general health and functioning. :wink:

fear not.