A Flying Career?

On Wednesday 11^th January I went to a flight simulation talk and have been meaning to write about it (as it is another future career option for people doing our course, other than going into the games industry). The talk was presented by ex-pilot Ian Strachan and was primarily aimed at Engineering students with good mathematical knowledge; this meant that I didn't really understand a lot of the talk, but if I did know about engineering I think I would have found it quite interesting. I wrote down 4 pages of notes whilst listening to the talk, so I will try and shorten them down a bit to show what I have learnt.

Firstly a flight simulator is a model used for pilot training and virtually simulates flying different types of aircraft in different conditions and situations. For example, one trainee pilot could be flying an army helicopter over Russia in the middle of a snow storm, and another trainee pilot could be bringing hundreds of virtual passengers back home to Japan on a normal sunny day. 

Each flight simulator should be as realistic as possible and should simulate the lift, drag, thrust and overall weight of the aircraft and although funds are always in favour of simulators (there has been a lot less accidents since they have been used for training) the amount of features each simulator has varies depending on the budget, one simulator can include any or all of the following:

1. Replica crew station
2. Image generation system
3. Visual Display
4. Motion Systems
5. Computing (Vehicle model and systems integration)
6. Instructor operating system
7. Outside communication system (Networks/LAN/WAN)
   
   

A lot of flight simulators use 3D panoramic views and very big databases to store all of the information about scenarios. Similar techniques to games are used such as Mipmapping or just changing the level of detail as the aircraft gets closer to an object. This can be seen in a lot of highly detailed, free roaming games such as Skyrim. 

For example the mountains and trees in the background are very pale and not very detailed, yet the grass and the 

characters in the foreground are very detailed, once you move closer to the mountains in the background they will be as detailed as the things in the foreground. (if that makes any sense!) This technique saves on texture space and creates a more realistic look. I also noted that low poly-counts were used for vehicles, so the similarities between flight simulators and what I am currently learning in my game production lessons are growing.

One of the most interesting parts of the talk was the description of how just the visuals can affect the brain activity of the pilot into thinking that they are actually moving. This was described by just a few simple diagrams, which I personally thought were very descriptive in themselves. 

I copied the diagrams to show how the way the the aircraft is flown in the simulator changes how the visuals are displayed, to again make it look a lot more realistic. Tests have shown that from just changing the perspective of the visuals, tricks the brain into slightly feeling the yaw, pitch and roll of the flight.

So from going to the talk I learnt quite a lot about something I didn't really know about before, and made me realise that flight simulators are another option for those with the same skills as in the games industry. Also as fight simulators are selling for over £15000 each, I think it would be a worthy career option or a good side project for game artists!

Semester 1 Update

I recently had to create a CD with all of my up to date Visual Design work on, so that pushed me to get it all scanned! Unfortunately I only have an A4 scanner so there is a line in the middle of some of the work, but it doesn't seem very visible on the final pieces as they fill the whole page. 

Here is a quick update of my work up to today: 

Ok I think the last project I posted about was the car project, so after that we went as a class to The Newarke Museum to study the dinosaur bones which I really enjoyed (as it was a nice change from the car project). I decided to do my final piece as a digital painting as I hadn't tried this media for my past projects; using some photographs that I took for reference, I tested out how digital painting would look on bone structures by first drawing a dog-like skeleton that was at the museum. I feel that the end result was quite successful so I painted my chosen dinosaur skeleton digitally for my final.

A trip to Bradgate Park was the next project, unfortunately on the day that we went to the park, the weather decided to be the worst it had been all term and most of the class ended up with colds the next day! I didn't get any drawings done that day as it was constantly raining, so I just took reference photos instead. I wanted to use a water based medium for this final piece to signify that it was very wet, I ended up using Indian ink, as I also thought that the different shades of grey would look gloomy - reflecting on the weather.

The week after Bradgate park we had a mini test where we were set an hour to draw as much as we could of a still life scene, I spent a bit too much time drawing everything out and had just started shading when the hour was up, my tutor came to the conclusion that I needed to be more confident with shading as there was a lack of it, but I know that it was because I had spent too long on the proportions. From this I realised that I was out of practice with drawing still life scenes in a given amount of time, so I set up a still life in my flat which was a lot more successful – this may be because I was in my own environment or because I had given myself 2 hours instead of 1. Either way I'm sure if you compared them, then you would agree that the second shows off my talent a bit more.

The last project I was set before the Christmas holiday was visiting the National Space Centre. I really enjoyed this day, as growing up with a dad that is really interested in space means that I also have a slight interest in it. There was a lot of interactive things to do at the museum, including a very interesting film projected in an observatory style room, I would definitely go again for a day out. There were lots of different things to look at and draw like model rockets and spacesuits, but I was quite interested by the overall décor of the place; the majority of the doors in the museum looked like airlocks and there were different spaceships, satellites and planets suspended from the ceiling. I guessed that a lot of my peers would choose to draw a ship or a spacesuit for their final, so I thought to be different, I would draw an entrance to one of the exhibits. I chose to draw mine digitally so that I could experiment with different shades and techniques, I was really pleased with my final outcome as I haven't really had chance to experiment with digitally painting a whole scene.

Here are some updated pictures of my other projects that I have talked about previously - scanned pictures look so much better than photographs! 

Christmas Project Ideas

I was a bit stuck on how to start this project so I thought writing my ideas down here would help. Ok, so I have to create a vehicle that can go on land, air and water, there isn't anything currently that exists with these properties other than a hovercraft (but that doesn't really travel very high in the air or go underwater). 

I looked on Google Images to find other people's ideas of what future cars would look like and I was pretty much put off by all of the hideous blobby shapes that people had come up with, I personally thought they all looked like computer mice and didn't really look like much thought had gone into the workings of the vehicle.

I gave this a bit more thought which resulted in me feeling disappointed that there isn't a submarine car that can fly through the clouds in today's existence, which then reminded me of the 1950s era. Back in the 50's there was a lot of technological advances (like video games!) and the people of that time thought that by the 2000's the human race would all have flying cars and robot house butlers (if only!) 

I think that by basing my vehicle on the 50's ideal future then it will be a more enjoyable project and hopefully a different response to the brief. Some of the most iconic cars of the 50s were the Pontiac, Chrysler and Volkswagen Beetle, I think that these are beautiful cars but not really the most aerodynamic looking. 

I would like to design something like from the old cheesy sci-fi films / t.v series from between the 50's and 70's which look more like spaceships than cars. I think I would like my vehicle to look more like a car but still have the features of the spaceship-like vehicles. To fix the problem of the older cars not being aerodynamic, I've looked into the sports cars of the age, which were quite narrow and had long fronts.

Personal Gaming History

The first game that I remember playing was a castle game on the Commodore VIC 20 when I was VERY little, I can’t remember what it was called though! 

The earliest game I remember the title of is Hugo’s House of Horrors that was on floppy disk, I must have been very young as this game was released in the early 90s. 

I recently reintroduced myself to this game when I found it online as a Flash game, it was a text based game and after a while I got so fed up of it not understanding what I was typing, that I gave up – how did I ever finish that when I was younger? O__o' 

The next game that I remember was in a set of “Girls Club” CD-ROMs, called Stay Tooned!. This was by far the best game that I played when I was younger, it had a great storyline with lots of different things to do and surprisingly good graphics for a Windows 95 game. Eventually I found the wonders of the Nintendo 64 where I first played Banjo Kazooe, Poke’mon Snap/Stadium and Zelda. I then received a Playstation 2 for Christmas 2000 where I mainly played games like Spyro and a game called Dark Cloud (which was a lot like Zelda), I was too innocent for Grand Theft Auto! I played a lot more games on PS2, like Sims 1 and 2, and The Nightmare Before Christmas game, but some I won't really admit to *cough*HelloKitty'sRollerRescue*cough* … After years of playing my PS2 and the Warcraft trilogy on PC (World of Warcraft can go and die – it is NOT Warcraft). 

I then got converted into getting an Xbox 360 where I played Halo, Lego games and *cough*VivaPinata*cough*. Now I mainly play games with a good story-line such as Elder Scrolls 4 and 5, Fable 2 (Fable 3 was not good) and the Gears of War trilogy etc etc ^__^ I would say overall my favourite game would be Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, mainly because I only played on it as a fluke and I ended up loving it! My boyfriend got a copy off eBay for £4 unboxed (probably stolen haha) he played it for about 30 minutes and said it was boring and I could have it, I agreed with him that the first quest was boring – escaping some sewers with giant rats and goblins attacking you while you have nothing to defend yourself with. 

But the rest of the game was really interesting and I hadn't played a game like it before, the graphics (at the time) were breathtaking, and even though it was full of glitches I didn't mind because it added a humorous edge to the game! I will admit that I prefer Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion over Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim at the moment, as although the graphics are AMAZING, I don't really like the menus on Skyrim, I am too used to Oblivion, so the fact that there are separate buttons to open up the Save/Quest menu and the Items/Map menu confuses me a bit. For example, I might accidentally open the quest menu when in the middle of a battle because I wanted to drink a health potion, but because I opened the wrong menu and got hit before I could open the correct menu, I have been killed. How annoying! >:( On Oblivion the Quest menu and the Items menu was on the same button, so it was ok. Skyrim in itself is a beautifully put together game and I am happy that there a marriage option on it, I kept saying that the only thing that Oblivion was missing was the option to marry – you could get a house and fill it full of items but it was still empty. I think in a few weeks / months / whenever I have the time to play on games D: Skyrim will probably become my favourite, once I become more used to it.

Pretty *_______*

Film Review: The Mist

This is my first film review, so it is a shame that I am doing it on such a ridiculously tedious film. The story starts when you are introduced to a family that is forced to stay in their basement overnight because of a storm. The next morning they emerge to find that most of the surrounding trees have been knocked down, destroying half of their house, and there is a strange mist creeping over a nearby lake. Ignoring this, they decide to go to their local supermarket, whilst the mist spreads trapping everyone inside the shop. Most of the movie is filmed inside of the shop, so the location becomes a bit boring for the viewer after a while. Eventually we learn that there are monsters inside of the mist that obviously want to kill and eat all of the people in the shop (I mean, come on, why wouldn't they?) A few days pass and the majority of the people become brainwashed by an irritating Christian woman and decide that they would be a lot happier if they sacrificed the little boy from the family at the start. Learning this, the family escape unharmed with the only two remaining sane people (and just happen to have originally driven to the supermarket in a big off-road vehicle with lots of fog lights) so escape was easy of course, although everyone else that had attempted escape got ripped to shreds! In the end they run out of petrol and decide that instead of trying to kill some of the monsters to aid their escape, they would just kill themselves. 

Unfortunately there is only 4 bullets left in their gun and 5 people in the car, so the dad of the family shoots everyone and gets out of the car (expecting to be killed by the monsters) only to be greeted by the army that have cleared up all of the mist and destroyed the monsters. What a stupid ending. As you can probably tell, I didn't really enjoy this film as the storyline was silly and filled with really obvious things (see MS-Paint image) the music and graphics also didn't do it any justice. The monsters themselves weren’t very scary at all, some just looked like giant flies and spiders, but the main big monster looked like a cross between a gazelle and a tortoise with tentacles on its body. (If you can't imagine this, I have drawn you a picture. :D)

However there is one good thing about this film that I will admit: I tend to try and find continuity errors when watching films, so I counted the bullets after the man said “only ten bullets left” and they kept it to the right amount, they shot 6 bullets leaving them with only 4 in the end. It's nice to see a pistol that doesn't have over a hundred rounds of ammo!

The History of Games 90's to Current

The indication of a new decade is the fashion and music scene, here we are introduced to well-known bands such as Nirvana, Public Enemy and The Prodigy, and the Goth fashion begins.

In 1991 there was the collapse of the Soviet Union and the first Gulf war, and consoles such as the Commodore CDTV, Phillips CDI and the Super Nintendo were introduced. Sonic the Hedgehog was brought out into the gaming world and most importantly, I was born! Hahaha! ^__^ The 90's finished off the arcade scene as people could now play their favourite arcade games, like Street Fighter, at home. A few more consoles around in the early 90's were the Atari Lynx, Sega Game Gear and the Atari Jaguar. In 1994 the Channel Tunnel was opened connecting England to France underwater, Nelson Mandela became President of South Africa, and the first PlayStation was released to the public. The overall quality of games increased dramatically after this time, to the point where it became uncommon to be playing a pixelated, non-3D game. The Nintendo 64 was the next big console to be released along with still familiar games such as Resident Evil, Golden Eye and Zelda (which changed the whole Game Art scene, creating popularity for disproportioned characters with big eyes and pointy ears!) The next big console was the PlayStation 2, released in the year 2000, which brought on the rise of multiplayer games. In 2001 Microsoft finally realises the potential in the gaming market and releases the first Xbox with the first Halo game which boosted sales of Xbox's and created the top 3 consoles = Microsoft's Xbox, Sony's Playstation and Nintendo needed to respond. The Nintendo Game Cube was released, personally I never liked the Game Cube, it was really boxy and ugly and the games just seemed like the ones you could get on N64 just with slightly better graphics, but after all I was biased - I had a Playstation 2 :) By 2006 all three of these competing companies had released another console, the PlayStation 3 offered a built in blu-ray player, monthly film streaming, and a lot of memory to store games on. 

The Xbox 360 offered a larger range of games (as Microsoft bought out the rights to a lot of them), all profiles require an “avatar” that can be dressed up however you want (mine has a Gears of War 3 Locust head ^^) and the graphics are as good quality as the PlayStation 3. The Nintendo Wii introduces wireless motion sensor technology at the expense of good graphics, when you move the controller to the left, your character moves to the left, the Wii offered a range of it's own games that were aimed at families and that are not really recognised as “real” games by “real” gamers, but the technology that was introduced to the gaming market cannot be ignored. In 2010 Microsoft responded to the Wii by bringing out Kinect which was the same sort of concept but no controller was required, just a camera. I would be surprised if all three consoles don't merge together some time in the future to create one master console called the Playtendo 360 or something like that, they could all put their good ideas together and there would be no competition!

Batman: Arkham City Review

I know that it may be two and a half weeks later than the release date but I would like to share my views on Batman Arkham City (wasn't sure if we could review games on here or not!) Ok, well the gameplay has been improved tremendously from Arkham Asylum, as I will admit I didn't really get into that game as I felt that I was being forced into following a set path to complete the levels, it might as well of been a film rather than a game as there wasn't a lot of choice with what you could do. However Arkham City feels more like a free-roaming game with lots of side quests, so lots of things to do!

I was really impressed by the graphics, the whole game has a really dark feel to it so it mirrors the style of the Dark Knight film quite well, and some of the bad guys look really quite scary! For example, Penguin has the bottom end of a glass bottle wedged in his eye socket for a monocle, creepy stuff! The characters themselves are also quite realistic compared to most games (of course characters like the Joker still look a bit weird, but I think that is acceptable) 

I like that the female characters have almost believable shaped bodies, although they don't have an ounce of fat on them except for in their breasts! (But nowhere near as bad as Lara Croft or most Japanese games!) and apart from Batman and Robin, the male characters aren't unbelievably muscular. The buildings are extremely texture heavy and there is a lot of detail all over. Obviously you play as Batman most of the time so you can just glide up onto a roof, and on that roof you will find some grimy mould, cracked cement or some bird poo splattered on some gravel, I love the amount of detail!

It has become quite annoying with most games that I play lately, as I keep seeing how things have been put together now that I have started using 3DS Max! Batman however is an exception, it's one of those games where it is quite difficult to spot whether “that wrinkle in that guys t-shirt” is just texture or part of the 3D model for example, I am guessing it is texture so I think a big round of applause goes to the texture artists! (I would still like to know the triangle count for some of the things though! :P) 

Nevertheless I would say that there is one quite annoying feature of this game, and that is that you can't just run/glide/stand around the city without getting attacked by someone/something! You could just be stood there trying to figure out how to get one of the Riddler's trophies and all of a sudden you hear “It's the Bat, get him!” ...for goodness sake, let me figure out the riddle!! D': But other than that, the storyline is good, the graphics are great and I haven't found any glitches yet, so it is a well built game! I give it a 4 out of 5 :)