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August 30, 2005
Swimming a Fish
The idea I had for "swimming a fish" was inspired by a memory I had of a Pterodactyl flying simulator installed at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. I tried my darndest to find a picture of this thing on the net, but it looks like my memory and poor drawing skills are going to be the things here.
Basically, the proportions were very similar to your standard arcade machine, except the monitor was very small (perhaps about 12-14 inches) and the control panel consisted of a very thin isoceles triangle that rotated around its base: from the pointing up position, it could be turned smoothly about 45 degrees in either direction.
The screen showed only two things: a view of the virtual pterodactyl from above in the bottom half and the direction of the wind in the top half.
What we had to do was constantly move the triangle so that the on-screen pterodactyl's head would constantly be aligned with the wind. The wind was always changing directions, so to keep balance one would be turning the triangle left to right and back smoothly in about a two second interval. A slight goof and the pterodactyl would quickly fall below the screen's border, only to be replaced by a new one.
So...here, there are a bunch of things we could improve on: the content, the interface, the feedback, and the environment. The regularity of the wind pattern made it a one-minute kiosk. The interface was intuitive to a certain extent, but entirely unexciting. The feedback was limited strongly by the technology of the mid-80s. It was also just one of nearly 2 dozen little kiosks jammed into this "simulated flight" area, making the experience very lonely within the individual activities.
I'll talk about ideas building on this particular inspiration for "swimming a fish" tomorrow. For now: crappy drawing above! Time to break out the tablet.
Posted by diamante at August 30, 2005 12:12 AM
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