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Oberon · 06-13-09, 04:52 PM

I'm going to drag out another story from Chris Bains 'Cold War, Hot Wings' here, because it involves flight 'sims' and is rather funny.

During the late 70s, early 80s I think, Mr Bain was involved with the Harrier simulator. Since it was before the days of modern computer graphics, they used a camera and a big old model landscape and projected the view from the camera up 200x onto a tv screen by the sim-cockpit.
Anyway, the boards on this landscape were about four foot by four foot, and they weren't quite put together flush, so you could fly the camera down the section between the boards if you were clever enough and it would be like flying down a huge Grand Canyon.
After a few times doing this, during his lunch break one of the technicians dropped a dead spider down the 'canyon', and so on his next run, Bain encountered the spider which, zoomed up at 200x on the viewer looked like some hideous alien monster, which he then promptly crashed into at a simulated 640 knots.

It's a good book if you ever get a chance to read it, covers a lot of post-Second World War British foreign policy regarding Africa and the former colonies from the viewpoint of those at the sharp end.

06-13-09, 04:52 PM	#9
Oberon Lucky Jack Join Date: Jul 2002 Posts: 25,976 Downloads: 61 Uploads: 20	I'm going to drag out another story from Chris Bains 'Cold War, Hot Wings' here, because it involves flight 'sims' and is rather funny. During the late 70s, early 80s I think, Mr Bain was involved with the Harrier simulator. Since it was before the days of modern computer graphics, they used a camera and a big old model landscape and projected the view from the camera up 200x onto a tv screen by the sim-cockpit. Anyway, the boards on this landscape were about four foot by four foot, and they weren't quite put together flush, so you could fly the camera down the section between the boards if you were clever enough and it would be like flying down a huge Grand Canyon. After a few times doing this, during his lunch break one of the technicians dropped a dead spider down the 'canyon', and so on his next run, Bain encountered the spider which, zoomed up at 200x on the viewer looked like some hideous alien monster, which he then promptly crashed into at a simulated 640 knots. It's a good book if you ever get a chance to read it, covers a lot of post-Second World War British foreign policy regarding Africa and the former colonies from the viewpoint of those at the sharp end.