Indiana Jones Ride Prototype

Indiana Jones Ride Prototype for Disney Imagineering

This project used a Macintosh to control the Indiana Jones Ride prototype which was demonstrated to Michael Eisner about 12 years ago. Imagineering needed the go ahead from him to develop the full attraction so we were under pressure to put on a good show. My task was the ride control software. Very little C was used on this project because most of the control software was developed in the LabView data acquisition GUI. More details can be found in my resumé.

There were two parts to the IJ ride control software. One was a record module and the other was a playback module. The record module gathered platform placement information from a joystick and from various mathematical functions and logged this information as it outputted it in real-time to the ride control mechanism

The mathematical functions were used to simulate things like a bumpy ride or a high speed turn that were difficult to manually input via the joystick. The recorder also provided the ability to do crude editing & incorporated safety limit checks

Once a good ride performance was recorded, it could be played back via the playback module. Sound effects and lighting were also triggered on a separate FX track. I was also tasked to produced the sound effects for the demo which consisted of things like car screeches and engine rev sounds