Hi All,
A while back I posted a note about demoing FlightGear at my local Museum of
Flight, part of the National Museums of Scotland (
http://www.nms.ac.uk/museumofflighthomepage.aspx ).
This was part of a wider discussion that I'd been having with them over the
last year or so about using FlightGear within the museum as the basis of
interactive exhibits.
Yesterday I finished installing a system that the museum will be running
themselves. The system is very straightforward, consisting of a PC, joystick
and projector to simulate landing a Vulcan bomber at the museum. The museum
will be running it as a staffed exhibit most weekends, and using it to gauge
demand for future simulators.
While I don't think the exhibit will be of much interest to the hardened FG
fanatic on this list, I thought it worth mentioning some of the benefits that
the museum saw in FG, and some hints for others involved in similar projects.
Some of the key advantages that FG provided which made this possible were:
A) Local scenery. FG already had pretty detailed scenery for the local area,
including local landmarks, thanks to the models I'd put into the FG Scenery DB.
I then augmented this by using Terragear to generate an improved airfield
layout. This was a key requirement from the museum. Getting equivalent work
done for MSFS was quoted at tens of thousands of pounds.
B) Aircraft. I had already created a FG Vulcan, modelled after the museum's own
airframe, so visitors were flying the aircraft standing outside. Very cool. FG
also already had a large number of aircraft they had in their collection
(include less well-known models such as the Seahawk), for future simulations.
C) Tutorial System. This made it very easy to create a specific scenario for
the museum, complete with instructions.
D) Nasal. The capability this provided was immense, from being able to mute the
sound when the simulation was waiting for a new visitor, to displaying
instructions on the screen.
For those interested in doing a similar project for their local flight museum,
here are some things I've leaned over the course of the project so far:
A) Tie it to the museum. The museum were keen that the simulation should tie
into the museums collection, and the museum itself. In this instance we
simulated an actual historic event at the airfield - the delivery of the Vulcan
XM597 to the museum. This provided an opportunity to show the airfield and the
surrounding countryside from the air, and give the visitor a chance to "see"
inside the cockpit of an aircraft they couldn't normally access.
B) Make it short. The landing simulation takes about 1 minute to run. This
allows high visitor throughput and stops people from being bored.
C) Make it simple. Too many controls will confuse the visitor - target it at
Joe Public rather than a flight sim buff. For the landing simulation the
visitor only has a joystick for control - a scripted co-pilot handles
throttles, air-brakes, drogue chute etc.
D) Make it easy. We had around 70% of visitors land the Vulcan successfully
first time. This means they get a positive experience, and keeps throughput
high as they don't need to re-try!
Regards,
-Stuart
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