The flight simulator has always seemed to be the ultimate video game, and Crawley, Sussex-based Rediffusion Simulation Ltd, a subsidiary of General Motors Corp’s Hughes Aircraft Co in Los Angeles, California, has announced the launch of Commander, which the company is heralding as the world’s first interactive public entertainment simulator. A futuristically-styled two-seat capsule based on Rediffusion’s flight simulator technology, and employing the concept of virtual reality – using a 22 television set though, and not full physical immersion Commander is aimed at the leisure and entertainment markets, costing a mere UKP45,000 to UKP50,000. The base hardware making up the Commander simulator is a 33MHz 80286-based AT-bus personal computer with 40Mb hard disk, on which the games software is run; a graphics board made by Rediffusion based on the Advanced RISC Machines Ltd’s ARM 3 RISC processor; a motion board built on Hitachi chips; and a Sage Group Plc network board for external communications. Rediffusion says its system doesn’t actually require an operating system, although the firm does use MS-DOS as a back-up. The company writes the Commander capsule control software, but will be handing over the development of games software to San Rafael, California-based LucasArts Entertainment Co, under an exclusive agreement just signed. Stuart Anderson, general manager of Rediffusion’s Leisure Products division, says Commander is a logical application of the company’s real-time computer graphics and dynamic motion capabilities. The UKP200m-a-year company has been involved in flight simulation since the early 1950s, accounting for 40% of the world market for airline flight training systems last year. In November 1990, it acquired entertainment simulator company Super X Ltd, based in Bournemouth, which opened a major door into the video arcade market. Super X was actually the developer of the original Commander prototype, Bandit. Rediffusion, meanwhile, had already been supplying products to the theme park market, including motion theatre systems – which immerse you in a disorienting environment and make you feel generally quite ill. Last year, Rediffusion announced that it would market and develop these large scale systems itself – previously they had been marketed through Interactive Entertainment Inc in Toronto.
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