I have been playing Elite Dangerous in Virtual Reality since October 2014.

Back in the 80’s we had 2 Commodore 64’s set up in the back bedroom of our two bed house on a homemade bench, my then wife made it to ELITE on hers but I only made DEADLY on mine. Many years later I was trawling around the internet and came across the ELITE DANGEROUS Kickstarter, I followed the games progress waiting for a MAC version but around BETA I couldn’t wait any longer so I bought a PC with a 680 processor in it, went straight for a DK2 and bought the game paying for a lifetime pass, so I’ve always played in VR. Over the games development I bought a gaming PC with a 980 in, then updated to a 1080 and in October 2014 bought a 2080TI which was well worth the cash, I’ve also updated my DK2 to an Oculus Quest 2 and added Voice Attack. I’ve been playing since October 2014, in VR, and do not use my PC for any other purpose than playing Elite. I’ve finally made it to ELITE (Hexa Elite) 30 years on!

I have named my Carrier after my childhood hero, Carl Sagan, as a boy I watched COSMOS and hung onto every word spoken. I particularly remember Carl saying that he had been to the library in Brooklyn and asked for ‘a book of stars’, the librarian gave him a book with pictures of Clark Gable, Vivienne Leigh and the like, he explained that this was the wrong book, she came back with the RIGHT sort of book. I had such a book as a boy with illustrated images that I would paw over imagining travelling to the stars myself. Now with Elite and my Ship of the Mind I can realise a part of that dream in the nearest way possible through VR.

My biography image is the ancient Nebra sky disk.

The Nebra sky disk is a bronze disk of around 30 centimeters diameter and a weight of 2.2 kilograms, with a blue-green patina and inlaid with gold symbols. These are interpreted generally as a sun or full moon, a lunar crescent, and stars (including a cluster interpreted as the Pleiades). Two golden arcs along the sides, marking the angle between the solstices, were added later. A final addition was another arc at the bottom surrounded with multiple strokes (of uncertain meaning, variously interpreted as a Solar Barge with numerous oars, as the Milky Way, or as a rainbow). My take is that it is Halleys Comet.

The disk is attributed to a site near Nebra, Saxony-Anhalt, in Germany, and associatively dated to c. 1600 BC. It has been associated with the Bronze Age Unetice culture.

The style in which the disk is executed was unlike any artistic style then known from the period, with the result the object was initially suspected of being a forgery, but it is now widely accepted as authentic.

The Nebra sky disk features the oldest concrete depiction of the cosmos yet known from anywhere in the world. In June 2013 it was included in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register and termed "one of the most important archaeological finds of the twentieth century."

Description courtesy of Wikipedia.