English Electric Lightning F.53 Interactive Cockpit Panorama

[HaraldJoergens]

For a client, the highly recommended Tangmere Military Aviation Museum near Chichester, I have created a high resolution interactive cockpit panorama of their English Electric Lightning F.53, ZF578.

The panorama has two parts - a daylight view, and a night view, with the cockpit light for the instruments switched on. Please use the "virtual switch" on the top left to toggle daylight!

In the daylight panorama, all controls, instruments, and switches are explained. Unfortunately, this does not work on touchscreen devices.

The panorama was shot inside a museum's hangar, using only available light.

Click on the photo below to open the panorama, and switch to full screen mode!



Night view:

If you are interested in future aircraft panoramas, please sign up to my mailing list!

A bit more about the panorama can be found here.

More aircraft are lined up for 2015. If you can think of an aircraft that could benefit from such work, please let me know!

 

[ea6bflyr]

Harald, these are very cool panoramas, but shouldn't the view be from eye level when someone is sitting in the jet vice middle of the seat?

 

[HaraldJoergens]

Harald, these are very cool panoramas, but shouldn't the view be from eye level when someone is sitting in the jet vice middle of the seat?

That's a very good point!
There are several issues:
- You have to find a very solid position for a tripod, without causing any damage.
- The minimum distance to the nearest "thing" in the cockpit should be not less than the minimum focussing distance of the lens used, otherwise that "thing" will be unsharp.
- The panorama should show as much of the cockput instruments as possible. In a wide cockpit, like the Catalina, a pilot's view perspective would have a lot of items on the right hand side out of view.
The height of the lens is another issue - it may be more realistic to have a higher camera position, so you would see more of the outside world. Often that implies that you have a lot of items inside the cockpiyt out of view.
In short - the camera poition is always a compromise, and it can take a considerable amount of time and work to find the best compromise.

 

[ea6bflyr]

I understand what you are saying, but from an aviator's perspective, it's just off a bit.