[simpits-tech] Returned from I/ITSEC and why not go mechanical?

[KD]

First for the circuit thing. Why not mount one LED in a slider so that 
the LED moves and illuminates the letter that you want (PRNDL)? Meh, 
just a thought. I'm lazy when it comes to building circuits. I'd rather 
play on the mill and lathe :)

OK, the trip to I/ITSEC
    Oh....MY...GAWD.... You guys would be so cooled out you would freeze 
to death right there in the OC convention center parking lot. I need to 
get Falcon 4 or LockOn running on something so that I don't feel like 
I'm going to make an ass out of myself flying someone's sim. As soon as 
anyone heard where I'm from and what we have contracts for, they all 
wanted me to fly their sims. And I wasn't even in a flight suit :D Be 
kind, it was my first trip.
    I looked around once and there was this Army Colonel pointing an M16 
right at me. It's a good thing it had a red cap on the end of the 
barrel, or I would have hit the deck. It fired a blank (no guns in the 
house Mom said!) and there was a target that lit up between him and me. 
I got to talk to a few of the guys cutting LCD glass for MFDs and 
things, but they didn't want to discuss the Tannas process aside from 
what a pain it is to set up a clean room. So, no DIY LCD resizing as yet.
    There were a couple of setups for using multiple low-cost projectors 
that align the projectors for seamless large size images. Pretty neat. 
The guy would move the projectors around on the table, then run the 
autosetup, and the thing would take pictures from a camera, grids and 
things would show up, then the image came back up looking like one image 
from 4 projectors. Had a meeting after hours with Barco to see a new 
projector, but can't talk about it on account of the NDA :( Although I 
can say that it was NICE!)
    Tried out a head mount display set that was pretty cool until I 
turned my head and the lag came into play. Even without the vehicle I 
was virtually in, moving, I got a little woozy. Another HMD from a 
company called DEI was see-through, and the image only displayed on a 
reflective surface inside the sim room. The image was dim and FOV was 
too narrow though. Interesting concept.
    More along the Commercial lines, there was a guy had a 3 Plasma 
screen display that used a screen on either side viewed directly through 
a filter of some kind (maybe a polarizer) and the center one suspended 
above, horizontally and viewed through a mirror. You could move 3 or 4 
feet to either side and not see the edges of the center screen. It just 
looked like one 80" wide image. THAT was cool. Ill look through my 
flyers and see if I can find a link. It might be something someone could 
do at least a makeshift version of without too much trouble if the 
center mirror wasn't curved. Some of the new F-35 and F-22 stuff was 
pretty neat.
    I did run into one guy when I was hanging out at the PhotoEtch booth 
that was wearing a flight suit without patches on it. He was asking 
questions about knobs and what they look like below the panel. It made 
me think of you guys.
    I also got to meet Chris Woodul of the giant collection of ejection 
seats. Pretty cool guy. He was telling us about flying some Saudi 
businessman's 747-400 that the guy spent $250Mil on jsut the refit after 
he got the thing.
    There was lots of cool stuff, too much to really pay attention to 
all of. Next year should be better, since I won't be so overwhelmed, and 
maybe I'll have some more jet sim experience to show off with. I'm 
pretty good in a Yak-3, but the jets have too much crap in them that I 
have yet to learn. Great show.

KeithD