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Stormwind Simulator – Navigating the Finnish Archipelago with Dyalog APL


Considered to be the world's most complex waterway, boats are the main means of transport in the Finnish Archipelago, with its many small islands. Navigating the area is extremely complex - and can be dangerous and challenging, due to traffic density and rapidly changing weather conditions. Further, when planning your boat trip, due attention to regular ships traffic, such as large transport and container ships and regular ferry routes, also have to be taken into consideration.

The Archipelago actually has an entire traffic system embedded, just as airplanes have one in the air - although 'air is just air'. The Archipelago gives slightly less freedom to move around, since you also need to consider islands and water depth. This was the basis for Finnish APL Developer Tomas Gustafsson's idea for developing the Stormwind Simulator.

Thomas says, "We had a vision. We wanted to draw an experience to the computer screen and strengthen that experience by using sound effects. Everyone knows that being outdoors under varying conditions implies something; you experience, learn and you feel. Together this forms a part of your instinctive life. For example, being out in a forest after a shower of rain projects a certain feeling, as does spooky moonlight at midnight. We already knew what it feels like to drive a boat in the archipelago, and we wanted to let those feelings flood out from the computer screen together with a technological correctness, carried by wave physics, outdoors light management, boat movement, navigation instruments etc. The eventual purpose was to let the user train, because driving a potentially fast boat is not at all an easy task, and each year there are dozens of hazardous or deadly boating accidents!"

The Stormwind Simulator won the Open Data Innovation Contest Apps4Finland in 2013 and winning the Apps4Finland award is no small feat – given Finland is the country that also gave the world the game of Angry Birds!

This is the amazing story on how Stormwind uses Dyalog APL. It is truly a matter of APL forcing the hardware into hard work; the total data throughput is counted in terabytes!

If you'd like to read more, the full case study is available here.

If you would like to review the Stormwind simulator, go to the two YouTube demonstrations here:

AND PREPARE YOURSELF FOR A LIVELY BOAT RIDE!

 

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