FlightBoard - a "full-body" joystick. A research project to test the plausability of a computer input device which would enable a user to "fly" a computer flight simulator by shifting his/her center of balance. It worked! The FlightBoard platform is built atop a mechanical gimbal mechanism; movement along 2 axes is detected by potentiometers. The primary flight simulator used was F/A-18 Hornet by Graphic Simulations Corp. This project was designed and constructed as part of Dan O'Sullivan's "Physical Computing" course, Fall 1997. Flightboard was mentioned in Angela Dunn's March 1998 Dot.Dot.Dot.Com column in Yahoo! Internet Life magazine. Special thanks to the Thrustmaster Corporation of Hillsboro, Oregon for their donation to this project.

© 1998 Bill Swersey