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Mark Hinchliffe·
Gear/accessoriesTechnology
··7 Comments·2 min read

Virtual reality threatens motorcycles

Virtual reality oculus rift vr

Virtual reality (VR) computer games may just spell the end of motorcycles as they prevent young people from throwing a leg over a motorcycle.

Rather than playing games, true riders would prefer to be riding, cleaning their bike, maintaining it, reading about bikes in a mag or on this website, or dreaming about their next bike.

However, it must be getting more and more difficult to get kids on to bikes when computer games are now so realistic and virtual reality is now so affordable. Check out the VR PC from Fierce.

Why run the risks of falling off or being t-boned by a SMIDSY idiot when you can sit in the safety and comfort of your bedroom and get your virtual knee down?

Unrealistic and wrong

Computer games have never moved me. I just don’t get it.

Recently, I was completing a Sudoku on my iPad — it’s not a game, but a mental exercise! — when an ad appeared for some computer game where you use your finger to move things around a battlefield.

Computer games - virtual reality
This is supposed to be fun?

In what parallel universe is that any fun?

I’ve also played several motorcycle computer games, but, try as they might, the programs are just not realistic.

They are also often wrong.

For example, the screen rotating from side to side while you corner is simply wrong. You should always keep your head vertical when cornering and let your body and the bike lean!

Don’t these programmers even ride?

Virtual reality
Unrealistic racing game

Virtual reality

Anyway, that is old-style gaming. Virtual reality has virtually changed the whole game.

Now gamers can totally immerse themselves.

They can race on the world’s greatest circuits next to Valentino Rossi, ride trails through the Rockies and perform stunts greater than Robbie Maddison.

And now prices have been dropped by about a third, making them much more accessible!

Oculus Rift virtual reality
Oculus Rift virtual reality drops price

Ok, virtual reality gamers don’t cop the wind blast, the heat on their legs from the headers, the whiff of unspent fuel, the vibe from the engine, the G forces of an endo, the gut-churning feeling of hitting gravel mid-corner, or the sheer childish thrill of performing a wheelie outside the cop shop.

So how are we ever going to get these youngsters hooked on riding?

We desperately need the younger generation to become motorcyclists or the research and development for new models will dry up!

So I give thanks to the hipsters of the world.

Distinguished Gentlemen's Ride virtual reality
MBW and a hipster

They may not be into bikes for the same reasons we were at their age, but at least they are into them and not sitting in their bedrooms playing with themselves … or gaming against opponents online!

At least chopping and dicing a motorcycle into a brat street tracker or scrambler cannot be attained on a computer screen.

Or can it?

  • What motorcycle computer games do you play and are they realistic? Leave your comments below.
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Mark Hinchliffe
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7 Comments

  1. You’ve done it. You have written an article with out knowing any facts and apparently nothing about “them young kids today.”
    This blog has slowly been deteriorating but this is the article that has stopped me coming back.

  2. Personally I would love there to be a realistic motorcycle game that could take advantage of VR, add in a full functioning motorcycle input device which allows you to operate it in the same way and gives you the same physical feedback and you have yourself an excellent motorcycle training tool, and something to do on those rainy days

  3. Getting kids off their arses and out of the house is such an old issue. TV was going to ruin a whole generation, in theory at least. Detractors would accuse parents of using a TV as a surrgate pacifyer. These days, how many times have we seen a whining kid shut up when handed a mobile touch-screen device?
    The interactivity of modern distractions makes them _potentially_ much more educational than watching reruns of “Hogans Heroes”. While the eye-hand coordination required to operate a touch-screen is not particularly challenging, it is more useful than the skill required to stick a can of Coke in their face and operate a TV remote control at the same time.

    When I was a kid, my pushbikes were a way of getting out of the house and meeting up with friends. Whether we met to kick a soccer ball around or thrash our bikes around in some bushland didn’t matter. Riding the pushies was a step up in independence. Wind in the hair and sun on my face was a natural part of growing up alongside my pushies and cohorts. Maybe that is why motorbikes and my open-face helmet make me feel young(er).
    Social media means that kids don’t even have to leave their room to meet up.

    Remember the BMX craze? BMX bikes are crap to ride anywhere but a BMX track but it must have been responsible for inspiring numerous subsequent motorised trail bike riders. Maybe if there was more organised school-age bicycle sport then there would be more adult motorcyclists later on.
    I suppose the problem with children’s bicycle sport is that somebody might get hurt. And then somebody might get sued. And then the whole thing falls in a heap.

    Geez, all the most enduring and visible injuries that I have acquired over the years occured before I left school. The injury that I most notice these days was a result of playing sport and nothing to do with any kind of wheeled transport.

  4. …”for some computer game where you use your finger to move things around a battlefield. In what parallel universe is that any fun?”…

    The same universe where moving your army around a chess board is fun!

    I think you’re over-reacting Mark. After all, by the same logic the car industry would be in greater peril as there are a lot more and better car racing/driving games.

    The sky isn’t falling and young people are both riding motorbikes and playing computer games (and so are older ones as well).

    The movie industry was also going to be destroyed – first by videos, then by the internet….but it hasn’t been.

  5. I think that some people may not realise that this article was written in jest it isn’t April fools yet but nice try.
    When I was six I rode a roller coaster at the Royal Easter Show .
    The quick turns the G forces the speed all had me hooked on adrenaline in an instant. As I grew up I looked for more and better frills and the only one that would come anywhere near a motorcycle is a fighter jet or perhaps a stunt plane.
    VR is nice and can be fun but unless you’re stuck in a wheelchair and can barely move it’s no substitute for reality.

  6. Yep, i agree with Dave, though i will still keep coming back. MotorbikeWriter should stick to the main game and avoid resorting to this sort of crap.

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