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Home-built 747 Simulator
James Morris writes: "This is a cool hack: some guy is building a 747 simulator in his backyard." This is one of the most impressive even while in progress, but the other projects linked from this site set a tough standard.
Oh yeah, this guy can expect a visit from the FBI any day now!
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What's with all the comments so far about this being used for terrorist training?? Geeze.. that's like saying "Hey I'm building a computer! The FBI better watch out, I might hack into the DOD mainframe!!"
- This isn't the sig you're looking for. Move along, move along..
Google/DMOZ has a whole category for this guy and his peers. I especially liked Kev's cockpit, a little How To guide.
If he ever wanted to build a web server stress simulator, he's got one...
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No use blowing some small Aussie ISP out of the water.
mirror will be here for a few days
The guy at http://www.737simguy.com/ (linked off the site in the article) actually built his sim in the severed nose of a real airliner. Now that's dedication to realism.
Must be expensive though...
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Not that I don't find the running joke here amusing, but the truth is, the terrorists won't bother trying that again. It was a one shot (successful) deal. Only the FBI is stupid enough to waste alot of effort "preventing" that sort of thing.
Likely, the terrorists will resort to something else, perhaps derailing an Amtrak (like it needs alot of help *LOL*).
My brother was visiting British Aerospace some years back and they had a bunch of Lightnings (old British supersonic fighters -- yes, such things existed :-) sat on an apron. He asked what they were for and was told that they were trade-ins from a sale of Tornadoes (European supersonic fighterish bombers) to Saudi Arabia.
He asked what was going to happen to them, and was told that they were for sale... for one pound each. The condition was that you had to take it away within a week if you bought one. Did they fly? "Well they flew them in here, but they've had the weapons deactivated and they've been sat there rotting a few years." Apparently an ex-BAe fitter who had worked on Lightnings was among the purchasers of the one-pound fighters, and had reworked it so he could, if so inclined, start the engine.
And one other point: this 747 sim is acool story. It's not "Microsoft is shit", nor about software patents or geeks in society. Just some cool borderline-crazy stuff some guy is getting up to. Reminds me of Slashdot in 1997. When I was a lad.
It seems the Aerowinx software he's planning to use is based on empirical data from thousands of 747 flights.
Perhaps he should consider X-Plane instead. It derives it's aerodynamics from first principles, and is quite accurate in simulating things that haven't been actually done. You can even get FAA certification from using X-Plane. It's already got the software hooks to drive a motion platform.
Plus you can hack the hell out of it. There's a large community of users with interesting mods.
Why limit yourself to an 747 simulator when you could build your own X-Wing cockpit, load up an old copy of LucasArt's X-Wing or the more recent X-Wing Alliance and experience the closest thing to destroying the Death Star. For the complete experience you could even dress up as an X-Wing pilot.
Surprisingly no one seems to have done this already, at least according to a quick Google search I did beforehand. You could also do something similiar in terms of a Pod Racer like the arcade game by Sega that was around a few years ago, as there is that Pod Racing game which Lucas Arts put out.
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Flight Sim Cockpits are becoming a popular thing among FS junkies. I admit, I'm one of "them".
Most of the sim cockpits are of large jets. Many flight simmers fly these things, including military jets, because they're fun and they'll never have the opportunity to fly one in real life. With today's computing power, one can build an incredibly realistic simulation.
I recently started thinking about building a full scale 737 cockpit after purchasing the Dreamfleet 737-400 for simulation. (www.dreamfleet2000.com). The DF737 is the most realistic 737 simulation available for flight sim. I located some good cockpit building information, and even a source of replica panels.
www.a-g-t.com has replica panels of an F-16, F-18, Airbus A320, Airbus A340, Boeing 737, Boeing 747, Boeing 777.
A good source of information is www.projectmagenta.com. Project Magenta was started in the interest of making "Glass Cockpits". In a modern big jet, there aren't likely to be guages for the primary flight instruments. These have been replaced with computer screens. Because glass cockpits are real, and computer screens are easily available to simmers, new modern jets become easy to simulate with 3 or 4 computer monitors embedded beneath the simulated flightdeck. Projectmagenta.com has pics illustrating what I'm talking about.
The only thing keeping me from building my 737 cockpit is money. I'm about to dump a bunch of money into a kit plane and go flying for real. Perhaps the 737 simulator will come afterward.
Even with real flight, I'll stick around in flight sim (as many pilots do) because I love the big jets!
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Does this make anyone else think of September 11th and training to fly a commercial airliner? If he actually manages to get it working, the current administration may well send some goons over to check out the situation. This is also probably a pretty good way to get a really big FBI file on yourself.
That's not to say that I don't think he should be allowed to do this, in fact I wish I had one of these things.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
All I could seem to find was a 404 simulator...
AH-HAHAHAHAHA! (Laughs since nobody else should)