Whew. That's a walk!
A little over two miles there, plus the two miles back again, according to Google Maps - plus or minus the parts where a human can walk but Google Maps doesn't see a pathway. So, four miles total. While it's a lot in one go, it's not the farthest I've ever walked - one day back in my bachelor's I walked eight miles in one day. I used to have a photo on my phone of my pedometer from that day, because I managed to hit exactly 20,000 steps.
I figure, eventually I need to go for that distance in a single stroll. Not today though.
It was beautiful out, sunny with plenty of clouds and a little breeze the whole time, though warm and muggy as is the wont of Orlando. I played a lot of music and finished up listening to a podcast.
...These are the feelings I'd like to capture in video games. One of the most enjoyable things I can do in a game is simply to wander around the setpiece areas and enjoy the scenery. Dungeons & Dragons Online enables this reasonably well; I love it when I'm out with my girlfriend, killing kobolds or orcs, and just stopping our advance through hundreds of minions to say, "Hey, the harbor looks beautiful from up here. Hold up for a second and turn on mouselook." Or finding hidden little nooks and crannies of the outdoor areas, getting not only a nice little 'secret spot' but also getting a token amount of EXP for the effort.
But those explorer-y moments get old after the first go-through; that secret spot is no longer a reward when your second character finds it, let alone your tenth. Procedurally-generated content might fix this, but for truly realistic-ish landscapes, you can get into some heavy fractal math that requires an awareness of how that kind of math can result in uniteresting, illogical, even frightening results. Still, even an environment that's only fun to stroll through once would be an achievement.
I can't wait for the day when we have immersive vieo game environments - where you actually walk around on a little treadmill, surrounded by the fantastic scenery, maybe with a breeze coming over yonder hills... Imagine taking a walk through Hyrule Field, or Coneria, or Myst, not to mention even more fantastic environments - multiple moons hanging in the sky, or underground forests of crystal and endless, glowing night.
..."Getting there is half the fun" is easy to say, but as of yet we cannot make it entertaining gameplay. When we can, maybe we'll be closer to something important.
