Being a traffic cop is by no means cool. Working as an air traffic cop, based on what I’ve seen in movies, is hardly any more glamorous. Lufthansa’s Real-Time 3D Airtraffic Network Simulation, however, makes me want to change my mind.
Installed at the flight control tower of the Lufthansa Brand Academy in Frankfurt-Seeheim, the display is a real-time 3D visualization of all 16,000 daily flights taken by Lufthansa and Star Alliance planes. Instead of just watching the whole thing on a single widescreen LCD, though, visitors get to enjoy the visual feast on a 14-meter long wide projection display, spanning a 180-degree periphery.
Not content with showing off flights from a single angle, the Real-Time 3D Airtraffic system is fully navigable, allowing visitors to see the activity from numerous perspectives. You can observe operations on a single hub as well as watch entire air traffic routes on a global view. All visuals come complete with spatial sounds from a generative, six-channel 3D audio system.
As cool as this is, though, I’m pretty sure the novelty will wear off pretty quickly. Install some modern wargames-style title on this thing, however, and you make it immensely entertaining. Can somebody please set up a couple of these things at the mall and rent it out for nuclear war simulations or something? I’d gladly give my entire month’s income to play.
There’s a movie on designer White Void’s site, by the way, in case you want to see the whole thing in action.
[White Void via Infosthetics]