I'm off script.
Normally at this point,
I am reading something that I've written well in advance.
When I get to a place to film, there should be no surprises.
But this was so far ahead
of anything that I imagined before coming here
that I've had to throw out every word I've written.
So this is just me, uh, vlogging, I guess?
It's going to get edited together.
I'm going to tell you the story
of what may be the most impressive home project
I've ever seen in my life.
So I put a call out last year asking for interesting things
in the world that people were affiliated with
that might show on this channel.
And got a lot of suggestions in.
And one of them was from a couple of folks in Italy
who had built a submarine simulator.
Now, I've previously filmed in a tank simulator
from the 1970s in Germany.
It's wonderfully analog.
There's this big box that bounces along
and this little model world that this tank goes through.
And it turns out they had something similar
for submarines, only with a real, tiny submarine in a little tank.
I'm like, that is great.
That's going to make a brilliant story. I'll go out.
And I thought I knew what I was getting myself into.
Because it's going to be this little remote operated vehicle,
this little sub, that goes around a pond.
And then they're going to send video from that back
to, like, a little controller on a screen in a room.
And, great. Lovely little video.
So I get here and I'm met by Marco and Danilo
who are the two main people behind it.
There's a whole team who've done all sorts of things on this, but they take me in.
And my first clue that this is more
than I thought it was is the startup sequence.
This is built like it's some sort of fancy escape room
or maybe even a theme park attraction.
But there is a whole unlocking sequence
where they boot up the submarine that we're going to walk into,
and there's a big wheel that, clunk, unlocks.
You pull open the pressure door, you walk in,
and I'll show you my reaction.
It's a lot.
- The badge on your left.
- Oh, badge on my left.
Slide.
[computer voice] "Welcome!"
- Oh, wow!
This is incredible!
- Close the door.
"Closing control room sector."
"Mission confirm. Explorer."
"Preliminary checklist."
- So right away, this is not some little thing
in the corner of a room.
This is what set designers would call a 360 experience?
It doesn't matter where you look, this is a submarine,
as far as the people in there are concerned.
I sat in the wrong chair.
The one at the front is for the captain,
which is normally one of the team here,
and the actual controls are in the back.
So while I'm being blown away by the startup sequence
that they're going through, that they know off by heart
'cause they designed it.
Turns out, I should've actually have been in the back there.
So we swap seats, and we go through the startup sequence.
And it is this pre-rendered computer graphic sequence
where the submarine is miniaturized
as if we were actually going to be put into the real pond.
Brilliant. And then I realize something.
The room is moving.
- We are simulating something very slow,
so we don't need the shaking power
of the modern platform you can find.
So we built our own with that objective in mind.
- So at this point,
I've just got this smile of joy on my face.
'Cause I'm just overwhelmed at the scale of this,
of something that feels like a theme park attraction
just sitting in an old 19th century mill in rural Italy.
And then the camera feed turns on.
We are dropped into the pond.
It's not like there's a drop.
There's like a 'clunk' from the hydraulics.
The camera feed turns on,
and there is the world in front of us.
- Sure.
- This is actually in the lake?
- We are in.
Definitely.
This is the... - Oh!
- Left lateral.
Right lateral.
- But we're actually- - Sliding.
- There's actual movement here!
So it starts out with Marco and Danilo on the controls
just showing me what to do, and showing me
a couple of interesting things in the pond.
But I start to pick up what's going on.
I start to pick up how to use things.
I go from just doing the rudder
to actually starting to control the depth a little bit
and starting to control the tilt.
It's got five degrees of freedom.
So it will do tilt, it will do yaw,
it will go forwards, backwards, left, right,
and it'll go up and down. Five degrees.
And all of these are controlled by separate things.
And yes, the picture quality is not spectacular.
This is not a perfectly lit 4K HD camera on the front.
But it's an actual camera.
For a moment, I feel like I'm controlling a submarine.
It works. Because of this gentle motion as we go.
When it gets put into full throttle,
we get pushed back in our seats a little.
When we stop, we rock forward.
And it's just... it's really clever.
It's really, really clever.
So my plan is we'll have a mosey round the pond.
It'll be nice and gentle.
And while that happens, I'll ask them the questions
about how, why.
Yeah, I completely forgot. Had to do that later.
- You're seeing this in complete the wrong order, by the way.
I'm just telling the story as best I can.
We continue exploring the pond and we go hunting for life.
But before we can do that, there is an emergency on board.
And look, I didn't know this was going to happen!
- "Emergency!" - What I should have done
is hired a local production team
and sent them into recce in advance
so I could be surprised by this,
but the cameras would be in the right position.
I didn't know there was going to be an emergency
in the submarine and there was going to be a whole
other room that I would have to go into
in order to try and fix the reactor core.
But there was, I mean, spoilers, if you're ever going to do this.
But the scale of this, the little detailed touches,
the things that lit up, just absolutely incredible.
So finally, we go searching for life
and there are a couple of newts at the bottom of the pond.
Because this is a natural pond.
And they were very clear
that they did not introduce the newts.
You're not allowed to introduce the newts.
They just built a very good pond,
and the newts arrived on their own.
This is real.
This is not some Floridian theme park adventure.
This is an actual real little submarine going round a pond.
But that was the last surprise.
Then they go and show me what the actual submarine is.
I was absolutely convinced that it was a real submarine.
And it's on...
- It is. - That's so clever.
That's so clever.
Because, of course, I assumed it was going to be a little ROV.
It was going to be a little floating submarine
like the one they showed me the model of inside.
It was going to be just a miniaturized version of that
with a camera on it and a cable.
No, of course it wasn't.
It's a big home-built X-Y-Z plotter,
like a thing from a 3D printer.
I don't know what the technical term is,
but it's a huge rig they've built
with a pan tilt zoom camera and a Logitech webcam on it.
This is all home brew.
This is all made by them. - Yeah.
- This is a proof of concept,
that the limited number of people that could see this is
because we are not always here for showing that.
- So if there's some science outreach fund
in Italy out there who would like
to build a version of this, you are the people to talk to?
- Yeah, sure.
- This is never going to be some mass-market public thing,
not here.
If you are hoping to have a go,
you will probably be disappointed.
Maybe if you're a local
and you happen to be on their website on the day
when they say there's some dates available, good luck.
But this is not a thing meant
for huge amounts of people and the public.
This is a proof of concept.
This is a passion project.
This is something that was built
because they wanted to build it.
And maybe, maybe there's a version 2.0 that'll come in
with some science foundation funding or something like that.
I don't know. I kind of hope so.
I would love loads of people to experience this.
But at the same time, there is something so charming
about this wonderful thing
that's just in the back of an old mill in Italy.
- "Oxygen level low."
"Return to base."
- Okay, okay, okay.
- Go, go, go, go.
Okay, now.