New Cockpit arcade game idea

[kahlid74]

I just finished a bartop arcade machine, and now I'm going to start working on a cockpit design.

[ericball]

I was at the Chuck E Cheese's at the Great Northern Mall in west Cleveland over the weekend.  They had an TsuMo
motion simulator game which played Crimson Skies and Mechwarrior 4.

[ChadTower]

I've played those.  The flying game is nearly uncontrollable and the mech game is dumb.  The hydraulics are kind of cool, but you can't play it without 3 unsupervised kids trying to climb into the pod with you, usually with messy pants.

[kahlid74]

Yeah, i've played those before, and they are tough to control.  If you look at the link in my original post, I'm going for the enclosed cockpit design.  There will be a closeable door that will seal off the entire thing, giving it a similar feel to being inside a mech.

I'm talking to some people that have them and I may be able to get specs and dimensions for them.  Then it will just be desining the button placement, rotators, Sound system and multiple LCD controls.  I plan to build it in a style between versions 2.5/3 and the new Pods.  I also plan to incorporate a steering wheel that is modular so racing games can be played.

[ChadTower]

Very interesting... I have been, in my SO PLENTIFUL spare time, designing a vector game I will likely code up in the next couple of years.  I was wondering about that type of mechanical pod and how viable building one from scratch would be... do you have more resources I may read to learn about these pods your page refers to?

[Flinkly]

do these things have any sort of hydralics to create a sense of reality?  i read most of the attached pages, but didn't read any difinitive data.  it's a cool idea for a cab, to be enclosed and to have so much at your fingertips, but cost comes to mind...

[ChadTower]

The one from Chuck E Cheese mentioned did have hydraulics, but I haven't seen any evidence that the Mech pods described at this guy's page have hydraulics.  In fact, it very much appears they do not.

[ErikRuud]

The VrirtualWorld pods (AKA Tesla Pods) do not have motion.

[ChadTower]

Cool.  I will read it all.  That's just what I do.   

[Avery]

Have you looked at the Real Virtual Car Project that was up in the what's new section a couple weeks ago?

http://realvirtualcar.blogspot.com/

While you probably don't want to go buy an old dead Ford Escort, there are a lot of things that they are doing that would look really good in the cockpit you're describing.

[ericball]

I've played those.

[kahlid74]

There are really two essential families of Mech/battletech pods.

[ChadTower]

Any listing of locations where folks could see such things in person?

[ErikRuud]

Virtual World Entertainment

Virtual World Locations

The very first generation of pods actually used Amiga 2000s to drive the graphics displays.  I used to know a guy that was a tech for commodore and he was involved in developing the networking among the Amigas 2000s.

The last time I was they were using Mac's for the administration of the games.  I don't know if the software was Mac based or not.

[ChadTower]

None within several hours of me... 

[Kremmit]

Very interesting... I have been, in my SO PLENTIFUL spare time, designing a vector game I will likely code up in the next couple of years.

Quit teasing me, Chad.

[ChadTower]

Very interesting... I have been, in my SO PLENTIFUL spare time, designing a vector game I will likely code up in the next couple of years.

Quit teasing me, Chad.

Which, the game or the spare time?  The spare time thing is a joke, I have almost none.