Pterodaktyl…

http://www.justflight.com/product.asp?pid=210

I created the models for the C17 Globemaster, Su27 Flanker and Eurofighter Typhoon.

We’ve just been away for the weekend - Lil wanted to go home for a friend’s birthday party, and there were a couple of events at the NEC that I wanted to visit (strictly for business purposes of course…).

My dad drove us up country Friday night after Lil finished work (her new TomTom proved very handy for finding her office in the middle of rush hour) and stayed overnight with my aunt and uncle near Gloucester. Saturday morning we headed up to the NEC, dropping Lil off at her parent’s house on the way.

The first event we visited was the Warley MRC show. It’s years since I touched a model railway, but in today’s digital world the simulation companies have a presence at these events, and as several stands were selling our stuff it seemed worth going along. We arrived at 10:00, not long after the show opened, and the exhibition hall was already busy. Within an hour or so some parts of the floor were pretty much packed solid. According to the organisers over 18,500 people visited during the two days of the exhibition. It’s interesting to see how the hobby has changed. The model railway I had as a child had a simple controller with a dial for speed and a switch for direction. If you wanted to run more than one train at once you had to do very complicated wiring to isolate sections of the track. Now a lot of the controllers are digital, and can control dozens of trains at once - they can even be programmed to replay pre-recorded commands, so you can set a whole layout up to run automatically - although I can’t help feeling that’s rather missing the point about what makes a model railway fun in the first place!

The second hall we visited was housing the International Flightsim Convention. Although flight sims are more of a personal hobby than our main business, we have worked on a flight sim project in the past, and it’s a very interesting, highly competitive field. It’s interesting to note that the attendance for the IFC was 2,600 - so the people who complain that computers are killing off traditional hobbies such as model railways should maybe think again.

It was very interesting to see some of the evolving hardware products that are appearing on the flight sim market. While they’re still a long way out of my price range, full-scale instrument simulators which can be hooked up to a computer flight simulator are now available as off-the-shelf products. I had a chance to try a few of these, and the level of immersion they give is quite incredible. This was probably the largest one on display:

Using real switches and buttons is far more fun that clicking on a computer screen! I also drooled over this, but sadly it won’t be out until after Christmas, so Santa won’t be bringing one.

On Saturday night we headed over to Lil’s friends house for the party, which was a lot of fun - I have videos, but I’d like to be invited to another one sometime so I won’t make them public!

On Sunday Lil’s parents drove us back to Gloucester, and then after a good lunch we headed home - all in all, a good weekend!

This arrived in our mailbox this morning - I’ve been somewhat distracted all day!