Tiller Design

iCinema

Challenge
ICinema engaged Tiller Design to help develop the user interface and best practice for simulations and interactive control systems for training miners. A key challenge was to produce a high quality product within the frame of low quantity production runs.

iCinema

Solution
To ensure a balance between technical detail, interactive content and photo-realistic animated visual environments, a plan of the simulation was developed in consultation with the client. 3D artists created a model of the environment matching part of a real mine schematic. Equipment, vehicles and other objects were modelled from photographs and plans.

Computer programmers wrote the simulation and the code for the many interactive choices that the trainee will be presented with. Complex atmospheric effects, physics simulations and animated human characters are programmed, while the models and hazards and sound effects are placed within the simulation.

iCinema facilitates training in a safe environment. Users are immersed in virtual environments, where they visualise and experience complex situations to build skill and procedural knowledge.. The simulations, based on core competencies, confront miners with high-fidelity representations of the real-world problems and dangers of a dynamic, hostile mine site.

iCinema CAD Illustration

Result
The final design was a joint achievement between iCinema and the Tiller Design team that resulted in the development of a medium in which three-dimensional audio-visual experiences are created, by a combination of multiple projectors and multiple sound sources to achieve true immersion.

The ergonomics of the user console and wand have been carefully considered. The console and wand are intuitive, immediately accessible but importantly do not distract from the virtual environment experience.

The console gently removes itself from the environment by lowering the lighting and brightness of controls depending on the status of the training program. It has to fade in and out of the environment during use to maximize interaction and experience. Controlling the content and virtual environment is done via a central control console and a 3D inertia hand held wand. This combination allows the user to navigate and travel through virtual environments as well as control physical environmental attributes.

User interface, control surface