Here’s a story about some guys who set out to build a flight simulator for the Viper from Battlestar Galactica. The goal is to bring a grand project to the Maker Faire. This is a recurring challenge for the group, which has participated over the last several years. But this year they decided to go big and mounted a successful Kickstarter campaign to help with the cost.
The best place to get the build details is their progress updates page. Each week the cadre of teenagers tried to post some info about their progress, and we’ve got a big grin on our faces after reading through them. The simulator aims to provide you with as much of a space flight experience possible given the restraints which gravity imposes. The cockpit can roll and pitch a full 360 degrees in each direction. Of course safety is a concern and they were careful with their frame design and pilot restraint system. But so much more goes into this than just the physical build. There’s sound, lighting, and the virtual simulator, all of which have been complete at an impressive quality level. There’s a ton of video posted and we’ve embedded one short clip after the break showing off the cockpit’s dashboard.
via [Gizmodo]
Except it’s missing software. they need developers to make a good viper sim.
Not very hard. Just mod your space-combat game of choice. Preferably one that understands newtonian motion (example, scp.indiegames.us ).
Extra-atmospheric simulation I’d say is orders of magnitude simpler than traditional flight simulation. Drag doesn’t exist etc…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_the_Red_Line
Uh… these guys DID make it to Maker Faire.
And it was a really nice build too.
There’s a very good Battlestar Galactica conversion of Freespace 2. This motion cockpit would be great for it.
Volition released the source code some years ago and it’s been given a major (and ongoing) overhaul to update it. http://www.hard-light.net/
i work with freespace a lot. ive been modding it since the late 90s. i figured out how to use the games lua based scripting system to talk to hardware through the luasocket library. you could easily interface to an arduino with an ethernet shield, and drive a motor controller and base your simulator on that. heres (one of) my thread on the subject:
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=80737.0
Looks like fun !!!
Now if they can teach those kids that “umm” is not a word, and that “umm” will not help them is the future, I may hire one of them.
and which company would that be for?
Speech Fillers Actually Improve Listener Recall
I try to avoid them, but word whiskers aren’t the biggest problem with public speaking.
That is very interesting, and, upon further reflection, makes sense. It may be that the listener interprets the “umm”s and “uhh”s as an indicator that the speaker is delaying or pausing because he is about to state a point that is more complex to explain than the rest of the speech, thereby triggering a reflex to pay more attention to the possibly more important point…
Nice, but they’ve only covered pitch & roll.
How about a mk2 with yaw control as well?
The direction of gravity is the biggest force you’ll feel so only two axes are really necessary.
Its a good build, except it looks nothing like the Viper cockpit from either series.
To me, its an airplane motion simulator with blinkeylights ™.