Geeks seek cubits for Battlestar flight sim
Take the Viper for a spin
A group of students plan to build a motion-controlled flight simulator based on the Viper fighter from the TV series Battlestar Galactica, in an ambitious project to mount a real plane's fuselage on a platform capable of complete rotation.
Five high schoolers and various mentors from the US have taken to Kickstarter to raise funds needed for the project, which will also be shown off at the invention convention MakerFaire.
From this...
The idea is to mount the body of a Piper PA-28 on a motion-control platform with total 360-degree rotation on both the pitch and roll axes, creating a simulator more advanced than any commercial entertainment systems currently available.
...to these?
So far, the team has assembled a Piper fuselage found in an airplane scrap yard into a system with a six-point harness. The rest of the design has been planned with Lego and with enough financial backing, will be transposed into the real thing, converting the conventional aircraft into the futuristic space fighter.
Have a ganders at the video below for a more detailed look:
Pledge enough cash, and the team will bring the completed Viper sim to your home - provided you live within shouting distance of San Francisco, alas - to allow you to frag imaginary Cylons to your frakkin' heart's content.
For further information on The Viper simulator project, check out the team's page on Kickstarter. ®
COMMENTS
You guys are way too cynical
These are school kids, guys!
They have a dream to build something cool and it looks like they might actually achieve it.
So what if it has been done before? I wish them well.
Elite
A Viper police ship would be better, although what'd probably happen is that you launch from the space station and immediately get blasted to atoms by some cock with a Military laser.
Re: Bah
But being penniless students, I'm guessing that they are going to be building this thing for much less than the $125K SEGA were selling the R360 for back in the day.
The R360 pretty much signed the death warrant for the Arcade industry. Arcades simply couldn't recover the costs of the machines that Sega were knocking out at the time. At 25c per play, it would be 500000 plays before the arcade broke even, even at 50c per play (still realistic 20 years ago) it would be 250000 plays before the arcade started making cash from the machine. And this doesn't take into account the 3 phase electrical requirements, nor the maintenance these machines required. I remember seeing these things in arcades just sitting there rotting with 2, 3 and 5$ per go signs above them, that kids (the target market) simply couldn't afford.
As an aside, the Space Harrier game in it's full motion cabinet is still my all time favorite game, and I've been attending arcade auctions now for several years to try and pick up enough working parts to get my own. An R360 would be nice, but I just dont' have the space :)
Re: You guys are way too cynical
Perhaps so, but the first lesson they need to learn is where to start, and they started at the wrong place. They built a huge whopping rig before having a working prototype -- they said that they've still to develop the Arduino code, but they should have got that up and running with a Lego or plywood prototype before getting the welding equipment out. I can't see how they're going to manage to retrofit the actuators into the bearings -- they might have to dismantle it and start again.
