Hi All, As I mentioned in a previous post, I demonstrated FlightGear at our local Museum of Flight near Edinburgh, Scotland, as part of their events for the 25th anniversary of the Falklands Conflict. For those who might be interested in doing something similar, here's my report.
The event was held over two days in various locations in the museum. I was in one of the hangar annexes - an old Nissen hut that had been renovated to an education centre. Each day consisted of two, two hour sessions during which visitors could try out the interactive demonstrations I had set up. The museum very kindly provided two projectors, two laptops and some helpers, which was very useful when things got busy. We had two interactive demo's running in parallel, displaying on opposite walls. The demos were written using the tutorial system, and made use of pre-recorded audio for instructions. I can provide the source .xml on request, but doubt it is of enough use to be worth checking into CVS. The demos were: 1) A simulation of landing a Vulcan at the museum. The museum has one of the Black Buck Vulcan B2's in the collection, on which the FG vulcanb2 is modelled. It landed at the museum, so this accurately modelled an actual event that visitors could relate to. The simulation was of a long final approach, with an AI co-pilot providing guidance and handling throttle, airbrakes, drag chute etc. The user had control of the roll and pitch axes using a joystick. 2) A simulation of the Black Buck mission against Port Stanley airfield, viewed from a modified heli-copter view. Again, a co-pilot provided guidance and controlled the bomb bay doors, bomb release etc. In this simulation the user had control of the roll-axis only, using a mouse. For marketting collateral, I had some small flyers with a single-sentence description of FlightGear along with the URL which I handed out. Unfortunately, the laptops provided by the museum weren't powerful enough to run FlightGear with the normal level of bells-and-whistles, so I used my own PC to drive the landing simulation, while using a laptop running a very cut-down version of the vulcan (with no cockpit) for the bombing mission. Over the course of the weekend, about 100 people tried the simulations, most of which were in the afternoons, which made things very busy at times. Everyone seemed to enjoy it immensly, particularly children who all seemed to be naturally good at it once they stopped exploring the full X and Y travel of the joystick! The landing simulation was very successful. Most people were able to land after a couple of attempts, and because the demo lasted about 60 seconds, visitors weren't having to wait more than a couple of minutes to have a go. The difficulty level was just about right, though one child asked me very solemnly if the landing gear was down - obviously someone who knew their pre-landing checklist! The Black Buck demo was not so successful. While the younger children enjoyed watching the aircraft go into spins and crash, the scenario was too hard, and mouse control too difficult. By the end of the second day, I had all but stopped running it. If I had some network capability I would have slaved it to the other computer. For future reference, I've update the Expo Checklist on the wiki with my conclusions based on the weekend: http://wiki.flightgear.org/flightgear_wiki/index.php?title=FlightGear_Expo_Checklist For those thinking of doing something similar, I'd highly recommend it. I really enjoyed demonstrating FG and it is a nice way to help out a local museum. -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 DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
