#Dyalog16 – Vibeke Ulmann
As announced earlier – and iterated many times by yours truly, to media and other interested parties, because it is SOOOOOOO exciting – this year, the Viking Challenge is to drive a speed boat in the Stormwind Simulator sitting in a 6DOF (6 degree of freedom) motion platform from Simotion in Dublin, Ireland.
The integration is done, the platform is mounted in the Reception area of the Dyalog’16 venue in Glasgow, and I am slightly tempted to say…bring it on!!!
Get Set – Ready – RACE!!!
However, due caution to health and safety rules have to be observed. So anyone signing up to join in the fun, have to be strapped in with safety belts, and have to adhere to the operator instructions.
The platform is mounted with dual seats, one for the navigator and one for the driver.
Tomas told us that some nasty little surprises (no NOT ANGRY BIRDS) – have been built into the Viking contest – the nature of which the delegates will discover when they’re in the actual competition Tuesday evening.
Tomas then took the opportunity to give us some insight into where the Simulator is right now and what the next level of development will cover.
Status:
- 694 functions
- 651,447 bytes of Code
- 22,335 lines of Code
And a multitude of data (Gigabytes galore) to create the ‘real life’ 3D feeling in Stormwind.
Market and customers:
Currently the Simulator have a few hundred customers in Finland – and these include;
- The Finnish Naval Academy
- The Finnish Marine
- The Naval Reserve
- The Lifeboat Associations
- Boating organisations
- Science Centres (one coming up in Estonia shortly)
- Household users – which is currently the largest segment of users.
It is intentional that the sales and marketing effort has not yet gone much outside Finland, as Tomas and his team, want to add a few more ‘perfection’ touches to the Simulator.
However, as it stands, Stormwind really is the ideal gift for the man who’s got everything, and with a price tag that makes it affordable for a woman to spoil her spouse/partner for Christmas or Birthday.
Sailing onwards:
But the journey of Stormwind obviously does not stop here. The next goal is to make it a multiplayer application, which will facilitate that it can be played by multiple simultaneous users online.
The technical infrastructure is almost in place with one Root Server, a number of Game Servers (with ‘listening’ capability) and ”then we’re ready for clients everywhere to start playing’ Tomas said. He estimates that the multiplayer capability gives Stormwind the possibility of making it BIG TIME.
Thomas showed us the built in radar simulator – and told us that some of the world’s leading suppliers of Radar technology for shipping had been spotted, taking sneak views at various shows – presumably to try and find out how the team has solved this ‘little simulation riddle’.
The maps which the simulator contains are broken down into segments of 400 sq km, and the scenarios have a multitude of settings, from dawn to dusk, from sunshine to gale, from fog to hurricane, from smooth sailing water to huge waves, summer or winter, snow, ice, you name it ….it’s in there.
All I can say is – sorry, I have to cut this blog short – I have an appointment to go and drive a speedboat in the Finnish archipelago … so byyyeee for now.
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