The best way to document vehicle history is....creation of digital models?

[shin_getter]

I've just been thinking about how I learned about the operation of various vehicles. After thinking about it a bit, a lot of it comes from video games. Kinda of embarrassing but all other mediums just transfer almost no information in comparison as adjectives is just limiting. This is probably simply reality for young people today.

With this in mind, it seems like preservation of history and a lot of education should be about building digital models. Stuff like museums funding should go into collecting information for these models, which can in turn be utilized by others. There can also be other open source efforts at this.

There is a number of things I'm thinking about:
1. What is there a natural community for this sort of thing? Sim gamers is one but it seems to me that a greater circle is possible, for history interested persons to wargamers.
2. How should data be collected, formatted and shared? Standardization enabling easy generation and usage by different software should be helpful. There is huge amount of duplicate effort today.
3. How does the economics of the entire thing work out....

And so on. This is really half baked idea but I don't think people should be learning about any of this stuff with books, and games designed with competitive, low entry gameplay in mind just work poorly as well.

 

[Foo Fighter]

There is a certain amount of benefit from creating 'virtual reality' data on vehicles, buildings etc. With museums more and more bacoming tech savvy, simulations with VR can be used as a teaching aid and immersive experiences.

Vehicles and museums could be more easily maintained if we had ready access to files enabling 3d priniting of parts, in time perhaps even armour panels. Who nose?

If we want the vintage and veteran warbirds to continue, perhaps we should be using the data to create copies and fly those rather than the Ray Hannah Spitfire ending up a flaming wreck etc etc. Could we for example, 3d print a Rolls Royce Peregrine or any other lost engine?

No idea but tech can certainly give up more options to kep history alive.

As far as wargaming goes, it has limited voracity. You COULD create similations with the actual tactics used by historical characters to demonstrate a POSSIBLE insight into what folk were thinking when they did what they did. A bit like a chess program I suppose.

It is Monday morning though, I could be a simulation myself.

 

[Apophenia]

This one is interesting as it gets to the core of a generational divided. shin_getter's approach would certainly dovetail with current trends amongst museum planners - eg: VR/AR, haptics, and even gamification (horrid word!). But I would not look to fund this from the budget of skint museums. The funding would need to come from elsewhere.

Assuming that we don't want even more culture under the whims of tech billionaires, I would say that national archive budgets may be the way to go. (And, yes, I understand that getting politicians to fund archives is even harder than finding funds for the museums themselves.) The advantage is that central authorities like archives can have such projects funded under a strict mandate (including addressing lostcosmonauts' concerns about updating formats, cross-compatibility, etc.).

Museum administrators, on the other hand, focus on 'user-experience' ... usually as dictated by the lowest common denominator. Anecdotally, while on contract with my provincial museum, a curator explained that punters simply won't accept simulations (the issue in that case being actual fossilised skeletons vs accurately moulded relica 'bones' arranged in life-like poses). Perhaps that is less true now than it was in the early 2000s?

Foo Fighter's example of the Rolls-Royce Peregrine is a good one. If one happened to be in the UK, would you drive to Hawkinge to view battered Peregrine remains at the Kent BoB Museum? Or would you rather see a virtual 'intact and functional' 3D model online? Those of us outside of Britain would doubtless prefer the 3D option. But then again, we're not the ones funding that Kent museum or the creation of a 3D display ...

 

[Foo Fighter]

whirlwind

whirlwind fighter project aircraft restoration WWII airplane

www.whirlwindfp.org

Why look at a 3d 'model' of the Peregrine when you can see them in a flying Whirlwind? Who would NOT go to air displays if the minor types we never see now were present?

 

[riggerrob]

May I suggest that the best way to preserve historical artifacts is to diversify storage methods?
Sure, the original artifacts are valuable while on display in museums. For example, when I walked my nephews through the aviation museum at Rockcliffe, Ontario, I pointed out which airplanes had been flown by our ancestors, which aircraft I have “wrenched” on and which aircraft I have jumped from.
Since then I have been writing a book about “Fliers in our Family.” This book will be shared on paper and electronically. I am also slowly building 1/72 scale models of all the aircraft mentioned above.
People unable to travel to visit museums should have access to e-files, videos and maybe even video games. Museums publishing 3D print files is even better. Overlapping different storage media helps protect against those storage media becoming obsolete.
Whether curious youngsters access history via books, video games or 3D printed models is irrelevant as long as their curiosity is satisfied.

 

[Foo Fighter]

The growing trnd for virtual tours cannot be overhyped, begining in the Covid lockdown, I think this trend would give a boost to income while not overtaxing families.

More income is fine but spread over more visitors both physical and over the interweb is better.

 

[DE1083]

What format would be best for long term (decades or more) for storing historical data, both graphic and print? It seems every format undergoes some sort of upgrade or replacement.

 

[publiusr]

I say bring back microfiche
Hack THAT Mitnick