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

[David C. Allen]

Did you see Microsoft's ESP at I/ITSEC ?

http://www.designtaxi.com/news.jsp?id=13642

Looks like they have jumped into the simulation business

David
www.737FlightSim.com

At 10:37 PM 12/3/2007 -0500, you wrote:
>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
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