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Galactica: General Discussion
Katy
TS Member
Pretty useless, he's got "the keys to the park" (which probably don't unlock anything at the park) and even if they did, and he could turn up at 3am there would be no ride ops anyway. Maybe he's allowed to turn up very early and camp at the front of the queue...
Very surprised however to see a Mirror "article" about Towers which isn't 75% Smiler crash photos and "....at Smiler horror crash park Alton Towers....." throughout the text.
Very surprised however to see a Mirror "article" about Towers which isn't 75% Smiler crash photos and "....at Smiler horror crash park Alton Towers....." throughout the text.
Sm1lingAdvocate
TS Member
journey on Galactica is the next best thing to real space travel and has been
disappointing thousands since we opened the ride in March.
Fixed.
disappointing thousands since we opened the ride in March.
Fixed.
Ian
TS Team
So I've now ridden Galactica twice - once for the previews, and again a couple of weeks ago.
Overall I think I actually quite like it. Certainly more-so than I expected.
The station has certainly been improved by closing it in (at least during the colder months. Summer could be a totally different matter...). Each side feels a lot bigger than it used to! It feels a lot more complete now, and I have to say I'm pretty impressed with the quality of the boarding video.
There's no denying that the boarding process is incredibly tedious. The cleaning and fitting process drastically slows things down. I get that the ride is essentially just using Gear VR, but if you ask me I think they'd have been better have some custom foam/sponge style inserts which snap into the visor. You could have a tub full of these which people take as they are batched into the bays, and then another disposal tub at the back of the offload side. These could then be cleaned before being returned back to the boarding side, just like the plastic glasses used in some 3/4D cinemas. Yes, there would have probably been an increased cost to implement then, but I'm sure it would have made things a lot faster and more comfortable.
The headsets themselves aren't great, I'll be honest. I find them really quite uncomfortable. I don't wear glasses, and my eyesight isn't that bad, but I can't get the display to focus with the wheel for love nor money. It always looks blurry. The only way I can get a sharp image is to pull the visor down the bridge of my nose. However, it then digs in, which is quite painful, and also causes a lot of light to leak in from the edges, a complaint which I've heard a few others make.
It also causes me other problems, as it pulls the headphones down very low on my ears and completely off of my hearing aids. As a result, I can't really hear any of the on-ride audio. It's a shame that the headphones can't have a little more freedom of movement from the headstrap, as it'd probably solve this issue (I appreciate that I'm a small minority in this though).
Of course, the ride does offer both subtitles and audio description, which I'm very pleased to see them taking into consideration. The subtitles are well done in that they track you around the video. However, the phones are so sensitive that every last vibration is picked up from the craft. Whilst your eyes naturally compensate and balance this, the phones cannot. As a result, I spent much of the ride squinting, trying to read text which was shaking about all over the place. I get that the phones rely on their sensors to create the VR effect, but they're certainly a bit overly sensitive in this case.
Dwelling again on the phones, I also think that the screens on them are very poor. The lenses in the Gear magnify them to the point that you can pick out pretty much every pixel on the screen, particularly on text and the boarding screen. It makes things look very low res.
The video itself isn't too bad in my opinion. It's a lot better done than I expected. I do think that it rushes through the story a bit much at present. I'd much sooner it had taken the Star Tours approach of picking a single destination and making an eventful journey of it, than trying to show you everything in the space of a minute. Compared to the preview ride I did, the footage did seem a lot more in sync the second time around, but it does seem to be the final roll which really throws it off balance. On my first ride the video went completely awry at this point, and almost 'drifted' around corners. It was only for the final 15 seconds or so of the ride, but it was enough to make me feel very nauseous. There has certainly been an improvement since I first rode.
Overall, I do have a bit of a soft spot for the ride. It does have its share of issues, but it also has some good parts. If nothing else, it's tidied Air up a fair bit. Will 'Galactica' last? I doubt it very much. However, it's an interesting foray into a relatively new field, and it does set an interesting foundation for the future of this tech
Overall I think I actually quite like it. Certainly more-so than I expected.
The station has certainly been improved by closing it in (at least during the colder months. Summer could be a totally different matter...). Each side feels a lot bigger than it used to! It feels a lot more complete now, and I have to say I'm pretty impressed with the quality of the boarding video.
There's no denying that the boarding process is incredibly tedious. The cleaning and fitting process drastically slows things down. I get that the ride is essentially just using Gear VR, but if you ask me I think they'd have been better have some custom foam/sponge style inserts which snap into the visor. You could have a tub full of these which people take as they are batched into the bays, and then another disposal tub at the back of the offload side. These could then be cleaned before being returned back to the boarding side, just like the plastic glasses used in some 3/4D cinemas. Yes, there would have probably been an increased cost to implement then, but I'm sure it would have made things a lot faster and more comfortable.
The headsets themselves aren't great, I'll be honest. I find them really quite uncomfortable. I don't wear glasses, and my eyesight isn't that bad, but I can't get the display to focus with the wheel for love nor money. It always looks blurry. The only way I can get a sharp image is to pull the visor down the bridge of my nose. However, it then digs in, which is quite painful, and also causes a lot of light to leak in from the edges, a complaint which I've heard a few others make.
It also causes me other problems, as it pulls the headphones down very low on my ears and completely off of my hearing aids. As a result, I can't really hear any of the on-ride audio. It's a shame that the headphones can't have a little more freedom of movement from the headstrap, as it'd probably solve this issue (I appreciate that I'm a small minority in this though).
Of course, the ride does offer both subtitles and audio description, which I'm very pleased to see them taking into consideration. The subtitles are well done in that they track you around the video. However, the phones are so sensitive that every last vibration is picked up from the craft. Whilst your eyes naturally compensate and balance this, the phones cannot. As a result, I spent much of the ride squinting, trying to read text which was shaking about all over the place. I get that the phones rely on their sensors to create the VR effect, but they're certainly a bit overly sensitive in this case.
Dwelling again on the phones, I also think that the screens on them are very poor. The lenses in the Gear magnify them to the point that you can pick out pretty much every pixel on the screen, particularly on text and the boarding screen. It makes things look very low res.
The video itself isn't too bad in my opinion. It's a lot better done than I expected. I do think that it rushes through the story a bit much at present. I'd much sooner it had taken the Star Tours approach of picking a single destination and making an eventful journey of it, than trying to show you everything in the space of a minute. Compared to the preview ride I did, the footage did seem a lot more in sync the second time around, but it does seem to be the final roll which really throws it off balance. On my first ride the video went completely awry at this point, and almost 'drifted' around corners. It was only for the final 15 seconds or so of the ride, but it was enough to make me feel very nauseous. There has certainly been an improvement since I first rode.
Overall, I do have a bit of a soft spot for the ride. It does have its share of issues, but it also has some good parts. If nothing else, it's tidied Air up a fair bit. Will 'Galactica' last? I doubt it very much. However, it's an interesting foray into a relatively new field, and it does set an interesting foundation for the future of this tech
bluesonichd
TS Member
I always tend to find all the headsets are working in the morning, but by end of day at least a third are kerput!
Matt.GC
TS Member
I've heard it all now! I mentioned to a despatch team member (when she asked how my ride was) about the black boxes taking over the side of the screen (probably due to the calibration). I was told that these "were supposed to be the side of a spaceship but they are aware they need to fix it and take it out".
Hmm.....
Hmm.....
Spike
TS Contributor
Matt.GC
TS Member
I'm no technical expert, but it's surely a lot of work for them? I would imagine that due to the already dire despatch times (although it seemed noticeably quicker this weekend gone) that when head sets go down, it's quicker to deal with the lower throughput for the rest of the day and take them out of action that to hold crafts back and sort them out.
Skyscraper
TS Member
or for people who don't want to/can't ride with the VR.