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 ___________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Answers - Got a question? Someone out there knows the answer. Try it now. http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now >> http://get.splunk.com/ _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel