Hydraulic Motion Platform

Hi All... I hope that this is a proper place to post this... so here goes! I have recently finished developing a prototype of a two degree of freedom hydraulic motion platform (PITCH and ROLL). About 10degrees in Pitch and 60degrees in roll. It can be driven either from a joystick or directly from a PC compatible (via a board that I've also designed). It takes up a reasonable amount of space (about 4ft x 6ft), and currently I have it set up to run with a Head Mounted Display for the monitor (Virtual I/O Glasses) The response time and total angular movement are REALLY quite enuf to completely convey a sense of IMMERSION and more to the point... ITS A BLAST! My partner has also written some WTK s/w using the Alphatron (Crystal River Engineering) 3D sound card, and between that, the I-Glasses and the platform, you REALLY feel immersed... What I am wondering is this... is there any interest out there for such a product? I'm figuring that the initial price point will be in the neighborhood of $10K (computer included)... about $5K or so w/o computer. Thanks in advance, Tim Clark VP - Engineering Antares Virtual Reality Systems 797 19th Ave San Francisco, CA 94121 (415) 843-6880 or (415) 931-2246 for voice mail...

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> Hi All... > I hope that this is a proper place to post this... so here goes! > I have recently finished developing a prototype of a two degree of > freedom hydraulic motion platform (PITCH and ROLL). About 10degrees > in Pitch and 60degrees in roll. It can be driven > either from a joystick or directly from a PC compatible (via a board > that I've also designed). It takes up a reasonable amount of space > (about 4ft x 6ft), and currently I have it set up to run with a Head > Mounted Display for the monitor (Virtual I/O Glasses) The response > time and total angular movement are REALLY quite enuf to completely > convey a sense of IMMERSION and more to the point... ITS A BLAST! My > partner has also written some WTK s/w using the Alphatron (Crystal > River Engineering) 3D sound card, and between that, the I-Glasses and > the platform, you REALLY feel immersed... > What I am wondering is this... is there any interest out there for > such a product? I'm figuring that the initial price point will be in > the neighborhood of $10K (computer included)... about $5K or so w/o computer.

Interest?.. interest! I'm drooling already..... however (you guessed it) get the price down a bit.. I understand that you're not selling a toy, but $5k is quite a load of cash... say, was that soundcard & stuff included or only the platform... A piece of advice: make a workin copy of it and send it to some well known, serious PC *** magazine for testing... that way you'll get needed publicity... Tommi Pajari