In the Baden Children's Museum like the eagles flying over the Dolomites

Visitors sit on a metal platform, strapped into a sledge like those used on summer toboggan runs. While bystanders can follow what is happening in VR on the screen, the users experience a fantastic adventure.

The goggles provide a 360-degree all-round view and from head to toe you feel like you are travelling in a propeller plane on a flight over Rapperswil, including looping and landing on the lake. The platform jerks and jerks and a breeze blows in your face from a wind machine. This must be what freedom feels like.

Simulator also converts films one-to-one

Virtual reality has been combined with a motion simulator at the University of Applied Sciences Rapperswil (HSR) to create a completely new type of flight simulator. Thanks to six electric motors, the platform moves in all directions to suit the chosen flight path. When looping with the glider, it gently pushes you into the seat. It gets even more extreme when the simulator recreates any film from the Internet one-to-one.

This is made possible by elaborately programmed software. While the controls themselves can be used to influence the flight, the passenger in the seat is completely at the mercy of the software. The software calculates how the camera was moved and then transfers this to the movement of the seat in real time. "Any YouTube film can be animated automatically. The seat is then moved in exactly the same way as the camera moved during the recording," explains Guido Schuster, electrical engineering professor for digital signal and image processing at the Institute of Communication Systems, who, together with his team, is clearly very enthusiastic about the project.

The dream of flying becomes too much for some

As part of the special exhibition "The Dream of Flying", which runs until the end of the year, the VR Experience is a guest at the Baden Children's Museum this week.

"So I hoisted myself into the toboggan, strapped myself in, had the installations put on my head and made myself comfortable full of anticipation. A minute later, shaky, with stomach cramps and the certainty that I was not an eagle, I was back on solid ground, thank God," reports Rosmarie Mehlin, journalist at the Badner Tagblatt, and continues: "Pointed cries for help from me prompted HSR graduates Jeffrey San Diego and Simon Locher to take pity on me and decide to abandon the exercise. My fear of flying is minimal - but my lack of vertigo is enormous. And when I began to fly past steep cliffs over infinite abysses in eagle calm, my pulse shot up to immeasurable heights."

Due to the weight of the special glasses and headphones, the minimum age for children is 10 years. There is no upper age limit for adults. However, it seems that the kids can take more than certain adults, because I would certainly feel the same way as the tester.

Source: Badner Tagblatt / ZSZ