Slashdot Mirror
X-Plane - An Obsession For Realism
caseih writes "Popular Science is running an article on Austin Meyer, the creator of the popular X-Plane flight simulator. Although not an open source project, X-Plane has a devoted community of flight enthusiasts and developers who are striving to make it the most realistic flight simulator ever. In fact, flight characteristics are calculated in real time from aircraft design data, not static tables like MS Flight Simulator. PopSci has a neat picture showing X-Plane calculating the lift-drag vectors in real-time across an aircraft. Meyer's quest for realism in his simulations dominates the development and use of X-Plane."
you whores.
(first post)
The open source community should band together and purchase the source from the author, and then release it to the community. Flightgear is cool, but X-Plane is much better. It's a shame the author is a fucking code hoarder, and once he dies and his corpse is pushing up tulips, his code base will stagnate and fester, lost to the world forever.
Anyone here have experience with the X-plane?
I would imagine that static tables are much less realistic, unless this new method of simulation is so slow the computers start lagging when processing it.
-- Funksaw
As any animal becomes used to something, it inevitably ecomes less affected by it. By providing people with simulations closer imitating reality, you raise expectation for future simulations.
I'm just waiting for the cybernetic implants which allow simulations indistinguishable from reality. They already have brain cells growing on silicon (not made out of), it will just probably take a while for science to catch up with years and years of evolution.
Contact Me (got tired of viruses emailing me).
Alot of other flight sims are games, X-Plane is not. This is a serious piece of software used by alot of professionals to model and simulate prospective aerospace designs. I can't count the times it has been emphasized to me that this is not a game. ...that said, it's damn fun sometimes.
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
I can already imagine all the "great, now terrorists won't even have to go to flight school!" comments.
My advice: forget about it. If we want to prevent a repeat of 9/11, the solution is common sense initiatives such as locked cockpit doors and military quick response procedures... NOT by restricting basic technical information.
Hi, I'm Troll McClure Jr. You may remember me from such trolls as "ERIC MASSON IS A LYING SACK OF SHIT" and "John Carmack: The real Columbine killer".
Tonight I was going to write a tutorial on trolling, but got drunk, and forgot it.
So here's some GOATSE!
G to teh OATSE!
C to teh IZEX
fo shizle mah nizzle, goatse in yo hizzle.
werd
Under the DMCA and Patriot Act, we *must* not release this game for fear of evil-doers wearing out their Thrustmaster joysticks..
much as i respect x-plane (deservedly so), i must
take this opportunity to post a hearty "fuck you"
to slashdot for just being slashdot, and useless,
and not noticing this amazing project years ago
while still keeping us abreast of every development
in buffy the assramming batfly slayer or whatever
the fuck
assholes
I love X-Plane, precisely for the reasons posted: it's very cool that the simulation strives to be as accurate as possible, and gets better with each release. On the other hand, at least one journalist disagrees...
Yesterday, Salon had a ridiculous article(might be restricted to subscribers only, sorry) that claims that modern consumer flight simulators are too realistic, and implies that they should be banned or restricted somehow. And of course, as the headline promises, the article does indeed place some of the blame for 9/11 on such flight simlulators!
Bad Salon, bad. What is it with the media hating video games, anyways?
can't the whole lot of you just Shut Up? so far .. can't you all just stop? just stop!
i see ten posts from ten brainless drooling
baboons
quit talking! for fucks sake! Just Shut UP!
if I laughed at "John Carmack: The real Columbine killer"?
It's on salon.com. You'll need to get a day pass to read the article if you're not a subscriber.
Remember the days when Republicans were the party of fiscal responsibility?
I am not familiar with X plane , but I wonder how it compares to the Flightgear project. One of the advantages of that project being open source was extensibilty. The project has all sorts of modding potential.
apt-get install flightgear for all you deb heads.
runs on win32 also
For a moment there, I thought this was a story on Mike Meyers and his next Austin Powers movie, featuring a futuristic X-Plane thingy that spoofs Moonraker.
I'm honestly not sure whether to be disappointed or not...
This may seem like a dumb question, but isn't he using Open Gl. And isn't Open Gl Gpl'd
There must be a gazillion flight simulators out by now. The only space simulator I can think of was "Microsoft Space Simulator", which was very good for its time (I'm still baffled how they managed to fit that much on a couple of floppy discs). It'd be great to have a multiplayer, highly realistic space simulator, where you can fly the space shuttle and man the space station and so forth. Is anybody doing this? It could make a great open source project. No matter how good a flight simulator is, it still is a very tired genre.
At the end of page one:
"I have a moral duty to make it fly as realistically as I can."
Now consider: if every programmer was able and willing to make a similar statement about their code, what would our software "ecosystem" (as MS likes to phrase it) look like?
Someone break into his house and steal the code.
I've been wondering is there a realistic version for surface bound vehicles, such as boats, and cars?
I played it alongside FS2002, if I remember correctly, about 18 months ago.
It was not too bad, but it had some serious physics problems. There was a lot of incorrect behavior at extremes. It may have been technically more realistic in terms of calculation, but it was also incorrect in enough cases to make it not fun for me.
FS behaved more consistently, and close enough to correct to make it superior, in my opinion.
I'd love to give some detail about the problems I encountered, but I really don't remember anymore. I just remember buying it, giving it some good play, and deciding it had fundamental problems.
Now thinking back, the best flight sim I recall playing was the one by the guys who made System Shock. It was an aerobatics focused sim, and the physics seemed very accurate.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
very cool but can I make my own plane and then play with the wingfoil design (and see how quickly I crash)?
Anyone know the format or what is used to create the 'aircraft design data' that gets processed real-time? I'm assuming it requires a high-res model of the plane and a fancy windtunnel simulator.
A motion has been filed to ban "The Sims" because it is "too realistic and offers insight on human life and behavior that can be misused in various different ways"
Sigs for Nerds. Sigs that Matter.
Leave him a new keyboard while you're at it. His is obviously broken.
"Aren't all the data known in advance?"
Short answer - no.
Medium answer - a lot of pre-computing
Long answer is a course in fluid dynamics.
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
Under Mac OS 9, cross-platform development was a bear. At least now it's more like a marmot with really sharp claws and a penchant for beef jerky or Trident in your pack.
In relation to FS games, This guy here has got da bomb setup 9 PCs, 13 monitors, one plane. Since some idiot mod put me to -1 me down as troll for replying to an AC with the subject line of "eat shit and die", I'll try this again and wish a speedy death to the mod in question.
Eat recycled food - it's good for the environment, and OK for you.
"Hey baby, that is a nice vector you have there. What is your sign, Tan? Cot? Sin? Cos?. Ah, Cos! You look like you have the flare of a cosine"
"Hey baby, you have a nice derivative on your slope, what is the rate of change on those curves?"
"Hey baby, can I integrate your function?"
"Now consider: if every programmer was able and willing to make a similar statement about their code, what would our software "ecosystem" (as MS likes to phrase it) look like?"
Bleak.
I agree that real time calculations of forces and stuff is really cool, but can you really tell a difference from that and pre-calculated data?
Martin
It was almost open source
"But there are disadvantages to being a one-man show. It's hard to imagine Microsoft coming home drunk one night from a party and accidentally uploading its entire source code, as Meyer did a few years back. "I woke up the next morning and found an e-mail from a friend alerting me to what I'd done. My heart stopped. I had basically given away 12 years of work. I thought my life was over." He was able to remove the files before anyone could spread them around, but to this day he feels like he dodged a bullet. "I don't drink anymore," he says."
Those of you who have visited the X-Plane site have no doubt found the article, but here's a quick bit for everyone else...
So what sort of planes can fly on Mars? Not anything from Earth, that's for sure. Not enough lift or thrust. A Cessna or Boeing will just sit there on the ground without even moving. Put them in the air and they drop like beveled bricks with no wings. Both of my Mars-plane concepts are much like the U-2 Spyplane (designed to operate at around 100,000 ft, in simlar density air) one with a HUGE high-bypass jet engine built AROUND THE FUSELAGE, and another with a smaller rocket engine in the tail, like the X-15. The rocket plane has a lower-thrust engine, with plenty of fuel, for about 30 minutes of flight or so... the JET plane can fly for hours!
Article link (you'll have to try to ignore the excessive use of ALL CAPS)
I've always thought X-Plane was cool, but after reading this article I was convinced... and that's when I read the article well over a year ago!
FlightGear Flight Simulator is free and multiplatform also. Those who have the knowledge can help them out: http://flightgear.org/
I believe you are talking about Flight Unlimited... The company was named Looking Glass Studios.
The screenshots are unbelievable! Look at the little people!
http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
The first rants full of CAPS I have read that I didn't notice the CAPS. It just reeks of excitement.
MARS! FRIGGIN MARS!
The SPACE SHUTTLE! It's a FRIGGIN GLIDER!
http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
Now they dont even have to pay for the Plane training. A terrorists dream
i have spend many hours with this simulator. It's hard for me to comment on it's realism, since I have never flown a 737 or an A320 myself. But I trust the flight model is more complex than the one of MS Flightsim, and, after all, you can create "crazy things that fly". That's why companies that actually build aircraft rely on X-Plane before prototyping.
Also X-Plane can be used to log hours towards your Airline Transport Cert -- nice! Of course, you need the 150.000$ motion platform... Still cheaper than a standard simulator.
I'm quite annoyed by the parent argument. I know of more than one aviation lab that has approached Meyer and said "we would like this change or alteration made. how much?" and they have recieved by return of email, absolutely for free, modified versions of the software. He could of made thousands each time. Meyer is thought of very highly in these circles. Its an almost unique attitude towards customers that I find incredibly impressive. Puts a different spin on it huh. You can't argue the guy is some sort of profiteer; he's doing *free* bespoke programming for no reward. Why begrudge him the means to earn a living?
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
Yes, dynamic modelling is better than static tables. Not only is the performance more in line with reality, but it allows people to design airfoils and aircraft with the included software, and test their performance before any parts are fabricated. No guess work. Real engineering.
:)
It's a hackers dream, because ALL of the flight controls and flight data can be imported/exported over a network. It also has a very sensible plugin system, and the author encourages people to come up with new and cool tools without any licensing restrictions. It might not be open source, but the architecture is very open.
X-Plane is the flight simulator of choice for many companies, including Scaled Composites, the builders of Spaceship One. It's also FAA approved for training towards commercial, transport, and instrument certificates.
Not only is the flight model incredibly accurate, but you also have to deal with differences in traction between tires on a wet runway, damaged windscreens from hail, and more equipment failures than you can shake a stick at.
It's amazingly beautiful with a reasonable graphics card and the latest scenery plugins, and it can use real-time weather information from NOAA.
It's not a toy or a game, even though it may be fun. It's as close to flying as you can get on your PC. I could go on and on, but it's probably better that you head to the web site.
http://www.x-plane.com/
I have been using X-Plane for a few years and I and my pilot friends use it. My only real dissappointment was when Austin canceled the Linux port, but 6.x will run under wine now, haven't tried 7.x betas.
X-Plane is the only FAA training approved consumer package available. Read the front page on the web site, people have been using this flight program for a couple of years now to model aircraft behaviour during development.
I think you may be confusing ease of flight or level of fun with realistic physics. I had a couple of programs for my bro-in-law to practice with while he was taking flight lessons and he too latched onto X-Plane.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
It's absolutly amazing that Austin could achieve this, but the project is getting at it's limits. Why?
Even the 4th release candidate still has quality issues, or, with a less friendly word: bugs. The user interface is really, really bad. Not only does it use custom widgets, but the widgets do not follow the usual expectations. The dialogs behave strangely (exit buttons), and, for example, if you increase the rendering quality, the system drops you down to the nearest airport, which comes handy if you're flying a 747 and you end up on a helipad.
People also develop flight models and (photo)realistic landscapes (e.g. the Global Scenery Project or, e.g., Cormac Shaw's high-detail scenery for Ireland and his Aer Lingus Jets at the Irish Hub.) Stuff like that generally works much better, and there is a great variety to choose from!
I also tried to evaluate FlightGear. This project is not anywhere near X-Plane. If I'm not mistaken, they only accurately simulate piston engines (other engines are a weak approximation). Besides, FlightGear doesn't compile if you don't have certain libraries installed, which turned out to be a pain on OS X...
That said, I believe that FlightGear may outperform X-Plane in a couple of years. Until then, I'll stick with X-Plane...
Just for the record, I've had good luck running X-plane under wine - opengl support, sound, joystick, the works. (latest winehq build, you may have to turn sound hw accel off depending on your card) This is using nvidia cards and the nvidia drivers. One might argue that a linux port isn't strictly necessary...
Every time I hear someone say that I just stop to wonder how much the world will change in only a couple short decades once no one has to worry about slaving away at a dayjob just for the basics of life. When the necessities - and many of the luxuries - are no longer scarce, there will be a LOT less selfishness out there, and open source, in its many forms, will be the norm.
Molecular manufacturing is "just around the corner", and this ability to "grow" anything given energy (sunlight) + molecular feedstock, will be more liberating than even the information age.
When everyone's living like Kings, it'll be those who GIVE the most (instead of TAKE and HOARD) who will earn the real wealth/respect.
And as for the existing rent-seeking landlords who won't give an inch ... well, the cities won't be the meccas they used to be, and 70% of the Earth's surface area is water - perfect for floating communities... and then there's outer space, and then finally innerspace. Now living space ain't so scarce anymore either.
End of OT mini-rant.
--
Power to the Peaceful
According to the article, the physics engine is good enough to test new aircraft design, and use for traning. What exactly was so bad about the physics engine?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I spent perhaps half my life playing flight simulators of all kinds. I loved it. About 2 years ago I started playing X-plane, investing in the CH sim yoke and everything. I flew Cessnas all the time.
Finally, about a year ago, I decided that 15 years of simulators was quite enough, and I started to take flying lessons in real airplanes. The same aircraft - Cessna 172. I was expecting that with my many years of simulator experience, including 2 years with mega-realistic X-plane, I'd be able to waltz right in and fly the plane as if I was an expert.
Guess what? The plane kicked my ass. Flying it felt *nothing* like the simulator. Although x-plane may accurately simulate how the aircraft moves through the air, the air itself is in motion in very complex ways that aren't simulated. The plane moves around in ways the simulator never prepared me for. I couldn't land for shit until I'd done it in the real plane maybe 100 times, and I didn't get really good at it until about 300 times. I've taken some of my other X-plane addict friends up flying with me and let them take the controls, and they always say "It doesn't feel anything like the simulator".
And, completey separately from the actual aircraft control feeling unrealistic, no simulator I've ever played has done a good job of simulating the stress of a real flight. X-Plane does nothing to prepare you for trying to fly the plane while a controller is continuously talking in your ear to you and the other 10 airplanes in his airspace. X-Plane does not put you in a panic that you just intruded on a class B airspace boundary. X-plane does not wait until you're on short final, then tell you to start a climb, do a 360 and then reestablish yourself on final because a jet just got his IFR release. X-plane does not ask you to keep 3 other targets in the pattern in sight while landing. X-plane does not make you try to listen to the ATIS recorded weather information and controller simultaneously while also trying to fly through clouds on instruments. All of these things happen to me regularly in real planes.
(Admittedly, I do fly in the most complex airspace in the world - the LA basin - so maybe this is an extreme example.)
On the positive side, simulators do an excellent job of giving you an understanding about how navigation works (e.g. how to track VORs, when they're reversed, how to form a mental picture of where you are based on navaid information, etc.)
I think the answer is electromagnetics with some chemical helpers to let you ingore the real world. If there's a way of targeting a small electromagnetic pulse at a neuronal level (eg external to the body, and in 3D), that might work and would be far less invasive than implants. It would of course involve different targets for everyone and be a bitch to train for each person.
On a completely unrelated AI topic, if someone successfully modelled the human brain in software, then downloaded a map of an existing person's brain, how would you really know it worked, unless you also modelled the expected IO interfaces such as eyes, ears, nerves, and muscles and voice?
"It's using all the CPU but it's not *doing* anything!"
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Like I said, I forget specific details, but it was something like erratic behavior at certain limits. Perhaps it was rounding problems, or perhaps something else.
For example, and I think this is one of the specific problems I encountered, if you pulled into a vertical, cut power, stalled, and played with the controls, you could cause the plane to spin wildly (pitch) at the center of gravity. The rate at which the aircraft was doing endover spins was impossible, assuming even such a flipping motion would have occurred.
This was not a flat spin. This was something physically impossible. Assuming the aircraft would begin such a flipping motion, there would be no force to cause it to continue along that axis, much less at that very high rate.
There were two or three different situations that could cause impossible behavior. I may not have my details right, as I stated, because my recollection is fuzzy.
I'm not making this stuff up. I was very interested in trying that sim from what I had read.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
I had a run-in with the X-plane people (Basically Austin and his buddy Mike Brown on sales) over their "guaranteed upgrades for life." In a word, they lied. Furthermore, they continue to lie, and are absolute ASSHOLES about it.
To be specific here, they will always make the latest patch available for the current version. That is, if they're developing X-P 6.x, then the latest 6.x patch is available. However...
1) You cannot get any older patches. This is a problem because several times the current versions has been buggy, unstable, or broken.
2) Once the initial 7.x release is out, you are absolutely SOL on downloading the final 6.x patch. He will NOT provide it under any circumstances, once he's decided to get rid of 'free support for life' on a previous version.
I'm sorry to have to post this. I think that X-P is a really cool program. I'm utterly amazed at how far he's gotten with it. However, his code review (poor), attitude ("fuck you!"), and flat out lying on support all lead to something that I'll never drop money on again.
Pity, really. If he lost his ego, he'd write better software.
You can read more about it here.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Any one know if he uses panel method to compute aeronautical forces?
With Popular Sci running an atricle and a /.ing, I'm sure Austin will be glad to get the attention. I've played with the demos over a number of years but never bought it until today.
X-plane now runs under os-x, I expect most of the hard work to get it to work well under linux will need to be done for the os-x port as well. If enough paying customers let austin know they still want a linux port, there is a chance it might happen but only if its not too much work.
It appears that the new UDP network system will allow x-plane to segment from the calculation engine from the display and all the instrments can already be done on an external computer.
I'm a 2-year user of X-Plane, although I confess I've not been following the v7 beta stuff (I've stuck with 6.60 for now). I've logged hundreds of hours on the sim, and tinkered with the other tools available (e.g. I've modified aircraft etc).
X-Plane is a fantastic piece of work for a single person to have to his name. Probably the highest praise I can think to give it, is that it's not only the best at what it tries to do - simulate flight of all kinds - but it's also usable.
Having said all that, usable is about as far as it goes. It's not, and has never set out to be, a polished application with a glitzy UI. The interface for the sim and the tools is good enough and no better. If you need to get out and see what'll happen to an NF-104 at 100K feet when the control surfaces fail on you, then X-Plane is for you. But be prepared to adapt to it's interface, rather than have it teach you.
I've been looking at FlightGear recently too. And about all I can say about this right now is that it's clearly got promise, it looks good, but there's a looonnggg way to go. At least X-Plane lets me choose aircraft from a file selector dialog; I have to shut down FlightGear and use a different command line switch to load a new aircraft. It's clearly still very much for the Geeks for now, wheras I know there are professional pilots using X-plane.
--
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
If you know what you are doing, which specific features do you want to add to X-Plane that the SDK [http://www.xsquawkbox.net/xpsdk/] doesn't allow you to already?
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
IIRC, X-Plane has only been available from X-Plane.com and X-Plane.org for the year or so.
I haven't seen it in the games section anywhere for quite some time.
This is not a troll, but considering the fact that Austin Meyer is a hardcore Mac user, I find it surprising that he does not focus that much on GUI issues.
FlightGear is designed to simulate more than just piston aircraft "accurately", though accuracy is infinitely arguable. FlightGear supports multiple types of aerodynamics models, including LaRCsim (developed at the NASA Langley Research Center), JSBSim, and YASim, the latter of which simulates performance based on aircraft 3d geometry, much like X-Plane's flight model.
A flight model developed by UIUC is also supported which is capable of modeling nonlinear aerodynamics.
And no, Im not talking about cavitation...
Working in the simulation industry I'm always interested in any new simulators/games that come along. Having designed and built many stand alone dynamics models that need to recreate real performance it is always important to get a balance between what can be calculated and what needs to be included in a look up table.
Despite unexhaustable effort in developing a calculated dynamics model there will always be unforseen relationships between different aspects of a vehicle. In addition when a new capability or feature is added to a vehicle the calculated dynamics model almost invariably cannot cope.
I would love to see an open source dynamics simulator that uses a combination of configurable lookup tables and configurable caclulable dynamics. Given my limited knowledge of the internals of MS Flight, X-Plane, Flight Gear I'm not too sure whether any of these solutions could support such functionality. Anyone got any insights?
As a pilot, I can tell you that Microsoft Flight Simulator has several problems. I've noticed that their Cessna 172-SP model has several issues in particular.
1) The yaw caused by rudder. This is so unrealistic. The yaw just doesn't seem right. It really prevents you from doing proper slips (both forward and slide varieties).
2) The engine sounds. In a real Cessna, when you pitch the nose up for a full-power stall, the prop is working harder than in cruise flight because the prop is beating against air that is almost still relative to the plane (as oppossed to cruise where the prop is simpy maintaining momentum). In the real world, the engine noise increases. In flight simulator, it decreases a bit. This may have been fixed with a patch on fs2002, but I have seen NO patches.
3) Ground effect. Ground effect occurs when the plane is flying near the ground. The area of low pressure on top of the wing tries to trade places with the area of relatively higher pressure on the bottom of the wing. Some of this air exchanges over the wing tip. The ground disrupts the smooth flow of air around the wing tip so the plane actually flies better near the ground. Ground effect is why in airliners you often see the swirling air in the exhaust fumes at the end of wings. In the real world, most planes, including the Cessna, fly much differently in ground effect than out of ground effect. For example, in a Cessna, when taking off, if you are too slow you can still apply back pressure on the controls and the plane will lift off the ground. However, if the plane is still not ready to fly (too slow) it will never get above 10 feet off the ground because ground effect is providing the more efficient lift to make it fly. In flight simulator, this never occurs.
4) Spins. In flight simulator, it's almost impossible to induce a spin. It's must easier in real life when using spin-positive control inputs.
If you're not american and want to buy the software, be careful.
x-plane.com charges US$25 international shipping. For a $60 product? Yeah, right. Getting better, though, it used to be $30.
x-plane.org also sells the software. They have recently increased their shipping rates to Canada - to $16.25 (up from $10).
Dammit, I have a 2Mbps DSL line! Why can't I PayPal the $60 and download the thing, like I do with FreeBSD? Paying $25 to ship a CD is atrocious.
I own a motorcycle. A fast motorcycle (a Suzuki Hayabusa).
Anybody telling me that piloting a fast sports bike in whatever simulation comes anywhere near the real thing with wind, rush and G-forces tickling your fear and adrenaline buttons as you push the bike to the tarmac in sharp curves at 300 km/h (175 mph) have probably never been on two wheels, just in their little safe steel cage on four.
Saying that it's even close to the same thing to be on one of those arcade-style simulators, even one where you lean the bike (which is about as close as you can get in bike sim), is a ridiculous statement.
That's my first point: a sim is nowhere close to the real thing. You can get useful lessons for the real thing from a sim if you are actively doing both, but otherwise, forget it.
Now for my second point: An aggressive low-flying sportsbike has 2 (two) important gauges. Speed and RPM. You can ignore the speedometer. Most of the time, you can ignore the RPM gauge too (you get that info from the engine noise anyway).
How many gauges are there on a 747, and how many of these can you routinely ignore?
As an ATP-rated pilot, what I like seeing in a simulator to make it "realistic" are plausible flight models in normal regimes yes, but more so accurate avionics and systems, believable clouds and weather, a realistic "environment" including other traffic and ATC, and a nice looking terrain.
MSFS has X-Plane beaten by a mile in those departments. X-Plane is a nice sim, but it seems to be pretty much the domain of a few people who bleat about flight model being everything just like several years ago on slashdot you'd find people bleating about how stability was everything for an operating system, usability be damned.
If we could somehow get Austin Meyer and Sid Meyer to work on it together, we'd have the world's finest airport management simulator ever.
Then if we also enlisted the help of Oscar Meyer, we'd have winged weenies waging war.
Well, that one's easy. Most Americans don't read anything except the TV guide.
./. Nerds ought to be more educated than average people from same country.
But this is
I consider Hailey very nerdish author. He pays much attention on how things work in modern civilization.
Just wondering why all the "cool" popular science articles are always mentioned on slashdot two weeks after I get my copy, have read it, and filed it somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind...
Jainith
I've played X-Plane several times on my roommate's computer (he's a flight sim freak), and I've come to the conclusion that it is an amazing simulation of flight, but a very poor simulation of fun.
For real flight sim fun with accurate physics models, might I recommend Starfox for SNES?
If I could make this sig kill you, I would.
The X-15/B-52 drop scenereo actually allows you to drop *anything* from around 40-50K feet at about 500 MPH (I can't remember the exact numbers, I'm normally too busy to look at those gauges at the time).
That is so much fun! Especially when you turn off the sim's realism for in-flight airframe damage. Gliders do huge loops at that speed. Not much lift for helos though. I see that someone has built a grand piano model, that's going to be my next drop...
Even with airframe damage turned on you can drop a helocopter and see how long you can go before the rotors fall off. Then watch with the third-person camera as you fall on Burbank, or whatever.
What they need is a cruise missle model, then you could play not-so-smart bomb...
-- I browse at +5 with stripped sigs
I think not.
btw im writing this on a pda, on couch wifi
id like to see a real true car driving learning sim gta3 quality but road rules accurate .
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
you actually expected the plane to fly the same way in real life as it did in the computer?
i have this bridge up for sale, its in brooklyn, so itd be a bit of a drive for you...but its a great deal!
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
Moreover, FlightGear, because it is open source, can be tweaked, modified, optimized. .
This sig is a test. If this had been an actual sig, you would be reading something quite a bit wittier than this now.
A genetic algorithm orinthopter designing program.
Eat at Joe's.
I've been playing that simulator for quite a while; it's very realistic & fun. You can do stuff like..fly into realtime naviational weather..construct your own plane & it attempts to apply realistic pressures on it (stress on components etc). They give you a wide variety of craft to fly by default..helicopters..fighter planes..big commercial airliners, even gliders and crap.
:-)
Nothing is as fun as climbing as high as you can force a plane to go, taking a dive straight to the ground..seeing if you can recover from it without ripping the plane apart/crashing. Then flying mach 2 like 150' off the ground over hilly terrain..that keeps me engrossed for hours.
They state on their site that it runs under WINE - it does pretty well under it too, the time that I tested it..
Anyway if you have any interest at all in flight simulators / well written programs..I would buy it. The only thing I haven't been able to do well is land
A long long time ago a flight simulator called ACM was available. What ever happened to it? Was it renamed? Does anybody still have the source?
With it you could define aircraft characteristics and the like.
It had a server and multiple client machines could connect and play utilizing X11. It was quite fun battling my co-workers although I was always pathetic.
For 1994 standards the 3d graphics weren't too bad, especially since we were running it on 40mhz machines.
Caution: Contents under pressure
X-Pilot is not just a game.
You can create your own planes
and maps, in ASCII no less.
It's the flatland of all flight sims!!!
ok. I'll go home now...
Terrorists are crazy, not stupid. They know that they will be rushed the next time they hijack a plane. A determined, practiced, and equipped group of men can absolutely defeat an unprepared, unarmed crowd. Especially a crowd that is approaching one at a time. Remember the battle at Thermopylae. This is the end of boxcutter and soap bar bomb hijackings, and the beginning of machette and .357 magnum hijackings
"All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
FWIW, WW2OL (World War 2 Online) is a MMOG that ALSO uses dynamic flight modelling, rather than static tables.
Plus, it's a lot more interesting seeing the dynamic model in action when there's a D.520 behind you being held off by your (human player) tailgunner, while you thread your way through (human controlled) AAA fire, dropping bombs in support of your (human player) buddies on the ground as infantry and tanks.
OK, there is some AI in the AAA, but everything else is played by real people.
And you think a short-approach to EGE (Vail, CO) is stressful? Ha!
-Styopa
Hi, does anyone know of any good semi trucking simulators? I think i've heard of a couple but can't remember the titles. Preferably it should have a nice selection of tractors, trailers
and semi-trailers, such as Renault, Scania, and Volvo. Have most of the main US interstates mapped into software complete with weigh stations and truckstops. I'd like to be able to log my driving hours too.
Thanks for any information!
The current X-Plane 7 beta runs rather nicely on my 450MHz PowerMac G4 with GeForce 2MX. I can't use the super-high resolution textures but it still looks pretty good at the normal high resolution. It runs similarly well on my Pentium III 500 which also has a GeForce 2MX. Unfortunately its about a 5.5G install with full world scenery. It must come to something like 8G with Mars scenery too!
"I'm fully certified for Microsoft Flight Simulator."
...
"You killed the Hubble!"
"Sufferin' succotash."
Every so often, salon publishes an article that can only be described as "slashdot bait." Mildly interesting-- but tarted up to the point where they're practically begging to get a slashdotting, and all the ad revenue that presumably comes with such a distributed denial of service.
The basic theme of that salon article was that a skyjacker of today would have an easier time learnng the ins and outs of a modern jet instrument panel with a computer program then he would four or five years ago. Apparently, earlier flight simulators took certain liberties with instrument layout. Additionally, many of the modern simulators also simulate the flight management sytems fairly well, so if a terrorist wanted to automate portions of his flight plan, he would be more prepared to do so.
It's slightly more sophisticated than the "Doom trains students to kill" articles of a few years ago, but not by much. (And I say this as a loyal subscriber of Salon.) It might well get debunked by salon's "Ask the Pilot" column.
Should've been -1 redundant
You then suggest it took 100 tries before you could land "for shit". Now you suggest that you mean "make a very nice landing".
Perhaps you can see why I misunderstood.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
Odd, then, that the last mention of "Austin Myers" in rec.aviation.* was last August. There are no matches at all for myers+shithead, and whining+shithead turns up nothing relevant.
This guy has an um.. interesting setup.
Anybody know of a Bittorrent link to download the demo?
consider the following senario:
you're part of group of passengers that successfully over powered a group of terrorists that killed the flight crew in a jumbo, flying heavy.
congratulations.
with the aircraft fully on manual, terrorists would do that, you are now in the left seat.
again, congratulations.
you do not have access to any manuals, or notes; the terrorists handled that for you. and there are only screaming voices behind you.
you will need to:
1. turn on the radio
2. you must now communicate to anyone who might be listening. try saying the following phrase, "mayday, mayday, flight crew down, help us, PLEASE".
3. if #1 is not completed in a timely mannor, (15 minutes), you must communicate to the approaching fighter jets that you're a 'friendly'.
4. you have 3 minutes to complete #3.
"sidewinder" means never having to say, "you're sorry" --t.clancy
All right why was I modded down? I wasn't bashing Macs, and I wasn't insulting Mr. Meyer. Macs have great GUI's and usually Mac users care about efficient interface design a lot. If you've ever tried X-Plane you'd notice that the interface is very un-Mac like, not only because it doesn't use Aqua but also because it doesn't follow Apple user interface guidelines. I'm not saying Apple's way of UI design is the only way either- all I'm saying is that Austin Meyer doesn't seem to be a typical diehard Mac user- not that there's anything wrong with that.
It's simple. Media is populated by a generation that didn't have video games (or at least realistic video gamse) when they were growing up. They don't really know video games, and what they don't know they fear. Like some people considered Rock n' Roll an abomination and a cause of all kind of problems, way back in the day.
Um, it's JSBSim, rather, and the website is here.
Bill Gates flight simulator, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2000, which was on the shelves at the time of the 9/11 attacks, included a scenario called "A Walk in the Park". With the push of a button, a pilot could load a low-flying Cessna pointed toward Central Park, headed south. Flyers were invited to enjoy "A leisurely stroll down museum row" before they felt their "pulse rise as (they) weave through the buildings of downtown Manhattan."
A prospective suicide flyer could load MicroSofts' simulator, use the preset scenario to make suicide-attack training more efficient, replace the Cessna with a 757, then spend his last months training at home, thanks to Bill Gates.
In X-Plane a terrorist would need to download scenery, or build accurate scenery for New York City, then take off from an airport before each practice attack. For terrorist or insurgency training, Microsoft probably makes the better product.
Using Microsofts simulator to recreate the attacks, we can speculate why the squad choose the flight paths they selected, and even explore clues why the second pilot might have lowered a wing on the way in. The north side of the north tower is not visible from the south tower, so occupants of the south building had little way of knowing what had happened to the north building. It worked. After some initial concern, most remained in the building, unaware they were the target of an attack in progress. Of course, everyone along Museum row and all of Manhattan north of the towers new, because the attack was apparently planned (in MSFS?) for maximum visibility downtown with minimum visibility from the south tower.
As the second plane approached from the west, the pilot apparently choose a flight path that was least likely to be interupted by an unexpected bump against the already-burning north tower. From the slightly more southerly route, dropping the left wing and banking into the tower avoided any possible contact with the other tower, which could have crashed the plane outside the building and blunted the force of the attack.
As for X-Plane, Austin Myers after the attacks backed off of plans to inclue guided missles in his very accurate simulator. His concern, reportedly, was that someone could hack the source code and use the algorithm to create real guided missles.
u re a fukck
I'm baffled as to why I was labelled flamebait here. Unless I'm mistaken (and if so, please correct me), roughly 1/3 of the world is Muslim. I was simply trying to explain that I feel the Bush administration is doing nothing to make friends with this sizeable segment of the global population.
--------
If I can own an idea, does that mean I can legally claim some portion of your soul once I tell you that idea? Or even if you just come up with it on your own? Heck, who needs contracts written in blood...
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Professor Jack Schlein, at York College, Jamaica, NY
(The City University of New York)
(not the York College in Nebraska, nor the York College in Pennsylvania)
uses X-PLANE in the SEMAA Program.
Using a Vision Dome Flight Simulator, X-Plane is used in the AeroSpace Education Laboratory, as well as by Students in York's New Aviation Institute.
See some images at:
http://www.york.cuny.edu/aerolab
See ya
Now thinking back, the best flight sim I recall playing was the one by the guys who made System Shock. It was an aerobatics focused sim, and the physics seemed very accurate.
Flight Unlimited III by Looking Glass Technologies (1999). Review.