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Event: Oz Flight Sim Expo 2009

Once every two years, Australia is home to the Oz Flight Sim Expo, where flight sim junkies from all over the country gather.  Fresh from the success of the 2007 event at the Gold Coast, the 2009 Expo was held in Brisbane on the weekend of 10/11 October, and PitBuilderMag was right there in the thick of it.  For a full report, read on!

The Man with the Plan

The man... the legend!

The Oz Flight Sim Expo is the brainchild of Ross Farquharson, a 737 simulator instructor at the Brisbane-based FlyAJet.  After being involved in similar events in Sydney and Melbourne, he saw the need to jazz it up a little, and give the "banana benders" (Australian slang for residents of Queensland) a chance at hosting the event.  Planning started in 2006 for the 2007 show.

2007 - Where it all Started

Nothing this large and complex happens without significant effort on the part of the organisers, and Rossco was run off his feet in the leadup to the 2007 event.  Various issues with the venues had the location change a couple of times, but it settled into Jupiter's Casino on the Gold Coast.

It was a huge space, with dozens of exhibitors from community sim groups (VAAF, 62nd Fighting Falcons, 169th Panthers, Noble Air and others) to big commercial names like Simkits, Orbx and Iris.

The Viper's Nest setting up for Expo 2007

In the end it was a hugely successful weekend, with well over a thousand satisfied sim enthusiasts through the door.  The commercial vendors also reported huge success, with expo sales and followup business running well into seven figures.  The concept was proven and the stage was set for Expo 2009. (Some more reading on the 2007 event on Thommo's blog - Ed)

Expo 2007 - a huge success

2009 - A New Location and Other Big Changes

Planning started for the 2009 show almost immediately after 2007.  Again a number of locations were mooted, including a co-location with GENCON in Brisbane.  In the end, the Queensland University of Technology Creative Precinct was chosen due to its excellent facilities, central Brisbane location, and fair pricing.

As one of the organisers of the community "Viper's Nest" display, I had the opportunity to attend the early recce in early September where we planned out the space, the elevated platforms, the audiovisuals and the program.  I'm sure Rossco will echo my huge admiration of the QUT staff, for whom nothing was too much trouble.

Paul Colmer - Musical Genius

In an inspired move, Rossco engaged the hugely talented Paul Colmer from Music4Film as the musical director of the Expo.  Paul has studied at both the London College of Music and the University of Wales, and went as far as to compose various scores specifically for the Expo.  The venue rocked to the beats of Paul's original industro-funk throughout the weekend, and Paul did an absolutely sterling job of managing the audiovisual interface to the venue from his Star Trek-like console - not a mean feat considering he had six projection screens to manage and sound inputs from sources as varied as roving wireless mics, laptops, iPods, computer headsets and professional mixers, and was playing his original compositions live!  After all that, we only peaked his desk once (sorry bout that Paul - Ed)

Major sponsors were on board, with FlyAJet and Logitech taking pride of place on the bill.  Logitech donated the major prize for the lucky draw, the G940 HOTAS and pedals!

Mike G, MC Extraordinaire

Last but not least, the Expo booked the irrepressible Mike Goldman, of Big Brother and Gorilla Radio fame, to be the MC for the weekend.  Nobody knew what to expect with Mike in the house!

Day 0 - Friday Bump In

After months of stressful preparation, Friday dawned bright and clear - something of a relief to those of us carting our cockpits from home.  Rossco bounded out of bed early to do a radio interview with the local Nova station to big-up the Expo, and the exhibitors started converging on The Block to bump in.

I know many of the readers won't ever have done anything like this, but if you ever get the chance, it's a unique experience.  The venue had a real buzz - commercial exhibitors moving their kit in, people setting up cockpits, music and video testing, people catching up with others that they previously only knew from forums and IRC.  For any PitBuilder, the opportunity to show off your hard work to firstly a room full of people just as obsessive as you, and later to a gobsmacked public, is a real reward for all the hard work and late nights hunched over a soldering iron.

Before the storm. (courtesy of Airborn Computers)

I got the chance to meet with many of the exhibitors, including the crew from Airborn Computers, The FlightSim Store and the guys from PC Aviator that I met in 2007.  Mike Speekman, formerly of Melbourne Flight Simulators and now of CKAS Mechatronics, was also there and we caught up on 2007 where I purchased the Simkits USB kit that to this day sits built but not yet integrated with the cockpit.  He listened politely to my relatively tame rant about SDK support from Simkits   (Sorry Mike! - Ed)

All the exhibitors were keyed up for a big weekend, and had some great kit on display.  Very tempting for a weak-willed hardware junkie like the author!  From the Matrox TripleHead2Go to various HOTASes to the ButtKicker (more on that later ) to custom-built rigs, motion platforms and high-performance components, it was all there, a PitBuilder's wet dream.

starting to take shape... (courtesy of Airborn Computers)

The 62nd Fighting Falcons lads got straight into it, practicing their dogfight and mud moving sorties as soon as they had power.  These guys really have a very slick show, with Michael Barnes on the mic talking the crowd through what's happening, and even the warmup was great to watch.  The huge projection screens made for an awesome spectacle, and more than one observer stood glued to the screens making Top Gun references, fighting air to air engagements with their hands and muttering things like "Extend!" and "Splash!" as commentary on the action.

... and some more gear (courtesy of Airborn Computers)

In between the setting up, many of us got to play with the gear that was on display.  Rossco had a borrowed ABC fitted with the new Logitech G940 which got a workout, as did my own G25/Need For Speed:Shift setup.

Paul Colmer and the tech wizards from QUT were busy wiring the place for sound and there were cables everywhere.  The QUT staff, seemingly armed with little more than hammers and huge rolls of gaffer tape, made the infrastructure melt into the background and all of a sudden we were standing in the middle of a fully prepared venue.  The lighting grid was set, the audiovisual feeds were tested and the partitions were up.  Sound check, lock up, home for a good sleep before the big day.

Day 1 - Saturday

Men in... nomex

Most of the exhibitors turned up early on saturday morning to fine tune the stands.  The Viper's Nest went through full dress rehearsals, both successfully, and those of us who were so inclined jumped into our flight suits.  Rossco was resplendent in his black suit, with me in my desert tan (a little tighter round the tum than I remember) and Hoff of the VAAF plus the RAAFVirtual lads in their sage nomex.  We hoped that the airconditioning, which had been comfortable on Friday, would hold up to the crowds and the sweaty action that was to come.

The venue was set up with commercial exhibitors around the outside edge, with The FlightSim Store, Airborn, CKAS Mechatronics, FlyAJet, Holdsworth Airline Collectibles, PC Aviator and Music4Film forming the business contingent.  Community and nonprofit exhibits were the 62nd Fighting Falcons showing off Falcon 4: Allied Force, the VAAF showing off DCS: Black Shark, Rossco and the USNVA (via intertube link to the USA) giving the VR Simulations SuperBug a workout on his G940 rig, a very cool exhibit of old school flight sims and consoles (including a Commodore 64 and Amiga) and RAAFVirtual throwing their PC9's and F-111's around.  Also, let's not forget the Royal Flying Doctor Service, whose tin I have been feeling guilty about not dropping some money in ever since.  Must donate online after I'm done writing this.

Mike Goldman turned up and, after picking his jaw up off the floor, started getting to know the exhibitors.  He was genuinely flabbergasted at the technology on display and got right to work learning what was what.  I'm sure he came in with some preconceptions about us (and he couldn't resist a couple of jokes about living in our mums' basements later) and most of us had some preconceptions about him from his TV work as well.  I think by the end of the weekend, we'd all learned different!

All that was left to do at this stage was to open the doors and see how many people were outside...

launch!

Well, they poured in.  One minute I was checking switches and audiovisual settings in an empty venue, the next I was surrounded by hundreds of people milling about and poking into every exhibit.  Young, old, male and (the occasional) female, all were excited, full of questions and itching to grab the latest in flight sim gear.

Ed's jumble of wires and bits

Mike gave a rousing welcome and the scheduled events kicked off.  The Viper's Nest had hoped to get in a bit of a mini-LAN event, just kicking back and flying, but that was soon recognised as being off the cards!  We spent all day talking and talking to the punters about everything from how we built our pits to what sims we were using, right down to advice on multimonitor configs for DCS:Black Shark (hint: here!).  The kids loved it, climbing over everything and pulling on their dad's arm to buy them some shiny new kit.  I was roped into purchasing advice and did my best to fairly represent all the vendors; I must have pointed a couple of dozen people at The FlightSim Store for copies of Black Shark, and similar numbers for HOTASes, TrackIRs, pedals, you name it.

Time flew.  Before I knew it, it was time for our first demo, and the first live test of the audiovisuals.  We had two pits demoing Black Shark, along with a laptop (by my right hand) as the external views to the projectors and the player for our intro movie.

VAAF mission intro video - courtesy of the amazing Nelion

We had a full script for the entire mission, which I had recorded on Friday night to my iPod.  Unfortunately, my late night editing had let me down on one of the clips, as I repeated a whole paragraph that I had intended to edit out!  This caused me no end of amusement and embarassment during the demo, though I'm not sure if anyone else noticed.

Apart from the sound levels being a bit sketchy off my iPod, the demo and mission went well.  We ingressed, prosecuted the target, nobody lawn darted due to vortex ring, and we handed back to Rossco as we RTB'd.

After thankfully pulling off an unnecessarily showy quickstop, I clambered, sweaty and stinking, out of the pit to be greeted with the sight of the entire audience clustered around the back of the VAAF display.  What a rush!  I hadn't even noticed they were there, what with flying, controlling the external views on the laptop, leaning right to speak into the mic, fiddling with audio levels and cueing the audio scripts on the iPod.  Longing for a coffee and a nice sit down, I instead ploughed into the wall of questions, and three hours later finally got a sandwich when Rossco's mum forced me to eat

Mike and FlyAJet. And lasers.

Mike was doing a great job on the wireless mic, wandering around and interviewing all of the exhibitors.  He did I noticed spend more than his fair share of time at the FlyAJet stand, though whether than was because they were the major sponsor, or because they had two lovely ladies staffing it I'll leave up to you to decide!  The TrackIR absolutely blew his mind, and he got several of us to demo it on the projectors so that the crowd - some equally amazed, some smiling knowingly - could see the "awesome head tracking technology".  I spotted quite a few people carrying them though, so I'm sure the commercial vendors were appreciative.

vrsimulations.com SuperHornet

Later in the day, Rossco linked up with the USNVA boys for some virtual carrier operations in the amazing VRSims SuperHornet.  The internet hookup worked perfectly, and they demonstrated both mud moving and air intercept roles for the benefit of the growing crowds.

World first!

I was stoked to catch up with Scott Hendry, who was my co-conspirator on the sim HSI project over at MyCockpit.  He brought the HSI with him and it is nothing short of a work of art.  This is an instrument widely regarded as too complex for a home hobbyist to build, with four coaxial rotating elements plus a number of other mechanical devices.  You can read all about it on the MyCockpits thread here, and I hope to do a feature with Scott in the near future so you can see some more on the amazing work he's doing to realise our initial designs.

The remainder of the day was much of the same.  Flying, talking, lifting kids into and out of the cockpits and generally being absorbed in the flight simming world.  We finished the day with exhibitors' drinks in the cafe, and it was home for an exhausted sleep.

Day 2 - Sunday

Having half starved myself to death on Saturday with a combination of no breakfast and conversation-induced abstinence until late afternoon, I decided that two McMuffins were a sensible precaution on Sunday morning.  Lucky I did, for although the crowds were somewhat diminished from Saturday, the interest was not!  The Bathurst 1000 at Mount Panorama probably caused quite a few sim junkies to make the difficult decision to stay at home in front of the plasma instead, but those who came along got to see some great demos.

Loophole in the Vipers Nest

The DCS demo on Sunday morning was the best of the three VAAF sessions.  I was using Paul's shiny new radio earbud, and was able to talk live, in a back and forth conversation with Mike Goldman, over the PA to the crowd during the whole session.  External views had been moved to Hoff's cockpit so the punters could see what he was seeing, so we were both able to focus on some interesting flying, engagements and voiceover.  I decided to give the crowd a little look at some tracer fire at the end, as up till then we'd been exemplary standoff assassins!  The T55 in the village lit me up proper like, and I got right down into the weeds as Hoff finished him off.  A good example of teamwork flushing the enemy out, and a bit of a show for the watching crowd.

Note carefully the middle pedal.

With the venue starting to empty out in the afternoon, we had more of a chance to let selected folks try out the cockpits.  Mike carefully clambered in (his slightly longer legs conflicting somewhat with my ABRIS, much to my consternation!) and had a surprisingly talented crack at poleing around the sky.  Within five minutes he'd figured out the primary flight controls and was searching for the rocket button, and climbed out to hand over to a couple of his mates, who did just as well.  One in fact even claimed that he'd be straight off to buy DCS, a HOTAS and pedals and a new gaming rig!

The racing setup was easily the most attractive display to the under-15's, and a contingent of them decided to set up a rotation to see who could ping pong the fastest around London City in Need for Speed: Shift.  Apparently Generation Z have never heard of a brake pedal!

VERY lucky door prize

The day started to wind up around 3pm, and many of the exhibitors (myself included) decided that an early start at packing up was a good idea.  We continued to chat to all and sundry as we dismantled the exhibits, and Mike and Rossco finished the weekend off with the lucky prize draw, which went to a Mr Brian Hamilton.  Congrats Brian, enjoy your new G940!

Wrapup and 2011 Plans

So that was the Oz Flight Sim Expo 2009.  Some great flying, some great mates, a lot of great chats to a load of great people.  I walked away with a relatively conservative haul - an almost criminal deal on a demo Buttkicker Gamer (which is slated for my upcoming RaceBase racing pit) and a new AudioFX Pro 5+1 force feedback surround sound headset.

All the commercial exhibitors I spoke to reported good sales, and regarded the weekend as well worthwhile.

Huge thanks must go out to the major sponsors FlyAJet and Logitech, and to QUT for their outstanding support over the weekend.  It was really a tremendous venue, with very impressive audiovisuals and facilities.  Paul Colmer also did an absolutely splendid job as musical director.  And of course, the biggest round of applause must go to Rossco, who organised the whole deal from scratch and wouldn't rest until every fine detail was sorted.

So, what's planned for next time in 2011?  Early conversations with Ross indicate that he's going to give Sydney a try, and expand the event to cover a number of areas of "extreme gaming" including an equal focus on racing.  PitBuilderMag.com will be there throughout the leadup, and after such an awesome experience this time, I can't wait for Sydney!

- Ed

PS: I'm still working on the video from the event and hope to compile the authoritative video coverage.  If you have any footage from the event that you'd be happy to have included in the video, please let me know.  Thanks!

Oz Flight Sim Expo 2009 Blogroll

• Photos at Airborn Computers
• Thommo's Blog

About Ed

Dad to two tremendous kids, cockpit builder, amateur electronics hobbyist, moviemaker and pilot. Founder and editor of pitbuildermag.com.