Ah yes, the thing going on in the minds most of 3rd year students in SP have to be the Final Year Projects, aka FYP. While most had already started theirs since last semester, mine will officially start the next being a full-time 1 semester dedicated to FYP itself. Had been doing some team planning, administration and stuffs. My project initially started as plans to design and build an air-powered car, allowing the 2 seater to reach top speeds of about 70km/h with a mileage of 10 times of that of normal cars with with half the emissions (if we are using a petrol air compressor) and zero emissions for an electrical one.
But if we want to save the world from consuming itself from global warming we have to do it another day- we scrapped the air-car project after being told to do the SP projects (SP meaning “special projects”) allocated to my team of 3. The project was namely stated as a “Force displacement gaming simulator”. So after some planning and research, here are the preliminary designs for our project:
Little technical gragon. It generally works using electrical linear actuators connected to a light steel/aluminum frame at 3 points using articulated C-brackets, providing pitch and roll motions on 2 axis. It will be hooked up to a workstation linked to servo motor controls to drive the 3-4 horsepower linear actuators with about 500mm of travel each. Tentative for games, we have Microsoft Flight Simulator X, EA’s Formula 1 Season, together with few SEGA arcade and Need For Speed Series for exhibition purposes. Flaunting the displays are 3×20″ 4:3 monitors juiced by a Matrox Triple HeadToGo and Creative 5.1 surround speakers for sound.
Prototyping Hiccups
I actually wanted to send it for prototyping in the SP Rapid Prototyping Center (RPC) last week, but the name “Rapid” can be deceiving- With 3 of 4 of the FDM machines down, it takes 1 week to get 2 of the 16 model pieces done on the Stratasys machine. The arrogant technician there, given “higher order” and “more reputable” externally paid projects to do even wanted to BILL us for our job based on man hours! It’s like almost saying that we are wasting his time on us just because FYP don’t have much value. As absurd as that sounds, what do we pay school fees in the thousands for?
We highlighted that to our supervisor who only placed the prototyping on hold and pushed forward into more result-orientated moves like getting a $199 Saitek Joystick and Racing wheel so that we can do game testing for the platform on the school’s Quadro-based Dual Core Xeon workstations. And who says you can’t play games in school?