Forum Discussion

MengqiaoXu-eb98's avatar
MengqiaoXu-eb98
Community Member
8 months ago

Simulation Software Apps, and Development Time?

Hello All - Looking for input from our amazing community. Our team would like to build simulations to add to our Storyline courses. An example would be to show liquid sloshing and surging within a tank depending on how its hauling vehicle is moving (speeding up, sudden brake, taking a turn, etc.). Having some scenery settings such as on a highway, at railroad crossing, would be super helpful too.

(1) Any suggestions on what software/apps to use to build such simulation?
(2) Would it add substantial amount of development time to accomplish this?

Any creative idea of using Storyline to produce these would be much appreciated as well.
Thank you in advance!

General E-Learning
  • BWoods's avatar
    BWoods
    Former Staff
    8 months ago

    Hi Mengqiao and welcome to the community!

    While I don't have an exact example I can link to that might be able to solve this interaction design challenge, I have a few ideas for articles and functionality that may help you design something like this in Storyline 360.

    • The easiest way to have user inputs impact what's happening on the slide is to combine triggers and variables. Triggers tell your course what actions to perform at specific times. And variables allow your course to store, change, and recall information. So the two paired together can create all sorts of exciting interactions—including having liquid in a tank move differently based on how a truck is driving.
    • You can build animations in Storyline. But for something as detailed as liquid sloshing, using GIFs or videos may feel even more realistic. And you could use triggers and variables to automatically change the on-screen video/GIF to reflect the current driving conditions in the interaction.
    • As for the scenery, this article on building a parallax interaction provides one way to make a moving background in Storyline 360.

    Of course, that's only one way to look at this course development challenge. For other ideas, be sure to browse through the E-Learning Examples and E-Learning Challenges here in the community. There are lots of creative ideas to be found in those projects.

    And if you do land on an approach you like, be sure to share the final project here when you're done. I'm sure we'd all love to see what you end up creating!

Related Content