After visiting an air museum with a few turrets from a B17. I am curious, would you guys be interested in an arcade game where you or a team of people would get into different turrets on a BI7 and they would all be linked along with the video so it would feel like you are all on the same B17 fighting the enemy in the air. You could be a tail gunner, nose gunner, or any other gunner on the B17. Just not the pilot and copilot. The guns would be not loaded but basically a giant blue ray equipped arcade gun firing onto the screen and at the enemy. As the enemy flies by one turret and into the field of another turret you could fire away and whatever the other guy fired into you could add to it till its going down. The turrets would be an exact replica except for the guns of course but you would get the feeling of being in a B17 turret including the belly gunner.
Those are computer games without the benefit of being in a turret. You would physically be in the turret shooting at the screen. You could feel what its like to have to squeeze into the belly turret. You could know what its like to see out of the nose of the plane and shoot the planes coming out at you.
Do you also get to feel the impact of the 13mm MG131 rounds from a Bf109 Messerschmitt as they perforated your cockpit and your lungs? How powerful is this diabolical need to kill that you want to experience the primal fear of being sandwiched in a perspex sphere with no protection save your faith (so, no protection), on the off chance you could either outright kill someone on a direct hit or cause their crippled plane to plummet thousands of meters to the ground, possibly with them still in it?
Because your everyday video arcade can afford an airplane hangar to put this all up in... Perhaps you could lend them some money, beez.
Sounds like it'd be hella expensive to make. You'd have to build a model of the B-17 fuselage, then surround it with huge screens, etc. Also, from a historical accuracy perspective, B-17 gunners were really ineffective at shooting down attacking fighter planes.
If you had to squeeze into a tiny turret to play, would you not be denying a big proportion of you typical gaming audience?
You don't have to build the entire plane. Just bits and pieces of it. For example the tail gunner turret would just be a small section of the tail. The top turret same thing. The side turrets aren't really turrets at all but just a gun mounted on a swivel. You stand up and fire. Ok, so the belly turret might be too hard to replicate. The nose of the plane is easy. its just a large plexi glass curved window with two guns on swivels. With the price of tvs now adays a few big screen tvs to use as a guide would work. Hell you don't even have to use a tv. You can use a projection for one or all the screens but have them linked up. The computing power and design is easy. The hard part is getting the feel of the guns firing. Perhaps some sort of air injection system into the barrels to make it feel like you are shooting. Combine that with the actual sound of the guns firing in a set of head phones or nearby speakers and it could work. Who know a radio to communicate with everyone designed like the old ones. You could charge ten or fifteen bucks for ten minutes.
Are you the kind of person who'd do airsoft instead of paintball because the weapons look more realistic and therefore get you closer to the act of killing people? Doesn't the C130 have a tail gun? there you go beezel. Join the USAF.
C-130 does not have a tail gun. AC-130 gunship can have up to five guns firing from the left side, but no tail gun.
Desiring to play a game like this is no different from being interested in playing any other game. It's all role-playing in some way. I could see this or a similar set up (space shuttle crew) as an attraction at a museum or theme park..