91-04/Battletech.info

    There was a description of the Chicago Battletech Center in the
    March 18 1991 issue of ComputerWorld (Vol XXV  No. 11). (p.20)

Battletech is a trademark of the FASA Corporation, and refers to both a 
science-fiction wargame/roleplaying system and a "virtual reality" game 
based on the wargame.  This article refers to the latter.

At the present, there is only one Battletech installation in operation
(although they may be interested in opening other franchises).

The Battletech Center is located in the North Pier shopping center in downtown
Chicago, near the Navy Pier.  While hardly a "building-sized getup," it is not
just a few machines set up in an arcade with other games either; they have a
trained staff on hand to make reservations, answer questions, maintain the
simulators, etc.  The Center consists of a large room containing sixteen
simulators (each slightly larger than the average arcade cockpit-style game)
and the staff-used computers which set up 'mech assignments, simulator
conditions, etc., as well as waiting and observation areas and the reservation/
merchandise counter.

Each simulator unit is a cockpit of a thirty-foot-tall walking tank called
a battlemech ('mech for short).  The cockpit contains two screens (one for
front view and a secondary screen usually used for radar), a throttle and two
foot pedals to control movement (DO NOT attempt to steer with the joystick),
a joystick with three buttons used to aim and fire weapons, and a lot of 
buttons and rocker switches to control various options (which trigger fires 
which button, infrared on/off, etc.).  The displays are controlled by Amiga 
graphics chips.  

The simulators are divided into two groups (Alpha and Omega) of eight
cockpits each, with a different game in each group.  The simulation for each
group is controlled by a main computer.  The staff can set different options
for each game: which 'mechs the players are using, starting locations, whether
the game is played in teams or free-for-all, whether firing weapons builds up
heat (not overheating is important), and various environmental conditions
(rain, darkness, visibility, etc.).

=====

They have 12 'sit-down' style arcade machines running on
TMS 32016 graphics processors strung up with Amigas and an IBM to do the
networking. It was interesting but had some problems. The worst problem
is that the targetting was done via a SWITCH joystick, so it took forever
to get a shot lined up. Most of the time, you were better off steering
via analog foot pedals (think in terms of tanks. It really doesn't use
the differences inherent in mechs at all) to aim the guns. They pre-rendeered
the graphics, but they were still only updating about 6-8 frames per second,
so the movement was very choppy. For paying $6/12 minutes of play, I was
not very pleased with the results (it's a do it once sort of thing) when
I know very well they could have done better. It also seemed to crash
often for various unknown reasons. I later found out that this is because
they didn't eradicate AmigaDOS before they started the project. They also
weren't even beginning to tap the potential of the 32016 processors.
Beyond that, it was a lot of fun, but because of the controls, very
frustrating.
