My team has talked about but never implemented a motion simulator. The programming team prototyped the game->cRio interface (it's really easy), and we prototyped a very small scale motion machine.
What I'm talking about
:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5E_Hv3jSuc4
The racing sim Live For Speed outputs all of its physics data (car accelerations, positions, etc) as a series of data packets over the network, which can be directed to and read by your cRio. Build a robot that moves a seat like the YouTube video shows, and you've got yourself an excellent recruiting tool. You could probably also use it for flight sims, etc.
Short version:
CAD Practice: Design a a seat/monitor combo with at least 2 degrees of angular freedom, that will have enough angular acceleration to quickly respond to inputs from the computer game. For bonus points, design it so it can easily be packed/unpacked into a vehicle available to your team to take to demo events.
Programming practice: Design a program on the cRio that could tilt/pitch the machine so to trick the driver into thinking he's actually driving. There's actually a bunch of psychology involved:
link
Business practice: Market a "motion simulator" kit.
Got lots of money? Build this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aG28c1aQNk
If anyone is really interested, I can hook them up with the code needed for the game->cRio interface.