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Swedish Flight Simulator Adds G Forces
jonerik writes "According to this article in Aviation Week and Space Technology, Sweden's Dynamic Flight Simulator (DFS) is believed to be the first flight simulator which actually allows fighter pilots to experience G forces under simulated conditions. Designed and built by California-based Wyle Laboratories, the DFS is essentially a flight simulator capsule (in this case for Sweden's JAS 39 Gripen fighter) located at the end of a 30-foot centrifuge arm. 'We wanted to give pilots the ability to "fly" and interact with the environment rather than just be a passive [centrifuge] rider,' said Will Roberts, program manager for Wyle Laboratories' DFS programs. 'We've come a long way in being able to translate the six degrees-of-freedom you get in an aircraft into the three degrees-of-freedom that we can control in a centrifuge. It's not perfect, but we think it's pretty good. There's room for more research to make it even better.'"
....simulates usability!
...the use of a smaller drive motor. Wyle chose a 1,900-kw. Westinghouse DC motor originally designed for steel mill applications, connected directly to the centrifuge-arm drive system. It delivers about 7 megawatts of peak power in approximately 100 millisec
If that's smaller, what was the bigger one??
They should give this thing a try. Looks fun. They brought it to Detroit once and I was going to ride on it until someone puked all over.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
That's a real step forward in a technological sort of a way, but why? Have we had a problem with poor standards in fighter pilot training in recent years? I have to admit that if either the US or anywhere else, including my beloved UK has had this problem I had not heard.
Seems like a lot of effort for not too much reward to me but what do I know?
Sign the FSF's Anti-DMCA petit
How long before we get an arcade version?
Ok, I'm waiting the home version of this capsule, I want to test Flight Simulator with it.
ajf
Any chance they'll make a sex simulator with a simulated G-spot?
Finally I can die in plain accident without having to buy a plane!
I thought that Gripen was the name for one of those fancy IKEA entertainment centers.
I always thought that NASA, the Air Force, and other organizations used hydrulic rams to achieve the same effect similar to a motion simulator. I guess this just give more G forces. Anyone that has RTFA know if I am right.
http://www.users.muohio.edu/reamsjp/donate.html
What is it exactly that the Swedish use these fighters for? Don't get me wrong... I think every country should be entitled to a proper defence force, but are these planes simply sitting on the ground, or are they getting some use? It's some pretty impressive technology the Sweeds have, so one would hope they're actually putting it to use. I'm just thinking that I can't recall hearing in recent memory of a Swedish border conflict, or a Swedish peace-keeping force. Is there anyone out there more familiar with Swedish military history that could enlighten us /.'ers?
Wow, let me see if I can be even more pointlessly pedantic.
*ahem*
Wouldn't ACTUAL G-forces be the ones that are the result of the earth's pull and forces felt as a consequence of acceleration would be ARTIFICIAL G-Forces?
I don't care what the answer is either.
Great news, but I hope they have a realistic simulation for ejecting and crashing too. If I remember correctly, the plane was crashed twice by the same pilot while testing it in the '90s. Some things would just be cheaper to simulate. :)
I was building one of these simulators in my garage... I was actually aiming to simulate the g-forces of a race car, not a flight sim... but still... I knew I should have patented my prototype... damn it..
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Sounds like they took what Disney created for its new ride at Epcot and made it interactive.
I used to work for Wyle in San Antonio where they had a forerunner to the DFS called the ASDD (Advanced Spatial Disorientation Demonstrator). It was basically a cockpit the could rotate like a gryoscope and was mounted on a large, rotating motion base arm.
a rm ag97/mar15.htm
a rm ag97/mar1005.htm
You can see the cockpit here:
http://safety.kirtland.af.mil/magazine/htdocs/m
Look behind the visible screens (which make up the simulated flight control tower). The fun part is inside the round cockpit behind the glass. That part spins around to produce up to about 3 G's. You can't see in this picture but the cockpit rotates around like a 30 foot circle once it gets going, plus it spins around it's own center.
See also:
http://safety.kirtland.af.mil/magazine/htdocs/m
Older technology, but still cool. In that lab we used to study how different kinds of motion would fool the inner ear. Such as, a pilot who is taking off and who looks over his shoulder at the ground will experience a balance illusion that will throw off his perception of "down". If he is not trained to compensate, and is distracted by other circumstances, this illusion can easy cause him to bank the plane into a crash.
-- laws are the opinions of politicians --
From the link about the plane.. scroll down
is it just me or is that not a house in the background
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Has anyone else tried the new Mission to Space ride at Disney World? It's also an articulated cetrifuge ride.
It was the most incredible ride I've ever been on. It will definately make your inner ears confused and it seems to mess with your brain in other ways. It made me feel sick for the rest of the day.
People seem revere pilots and astronauts for their bravery and reflexes. I'm most impressed by their ability to tolerate motion sickness.
.. how do they turn right? AS long as they fly LEFT turns theyre ok :D other wise that would blow the realism.
I know there is something to do with Coriolis Force (or was it Centripetal effect?) and moving your head to one side in a centrifuge - the force uloads if you move your head inwards (towards the centre of rotation) and loads up if you move it outwards. BTW: I didn't take Physics ;)
This tends to have the wierd effect of the 'pilot' being able to lighten or increase the percieved load of his head upon his shoulders.
They do mention tilting the seat to avoid disorientation when the arm accelerates but nothing about the pilot's head going off-centre.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
It's cheaper and safer to train a pilot to handle G-induced stresses than in a real plane. Plus, you're saving the aircraft from stress, which extends the lifetime. Finally, it's cheaper to clean up afterwards if there's a problem--much less cash involved in replacing the centrifuge's motor than in replacing a jet, even if it's only a trainer.
Of course, this is only a suppliment. The pilot will still require in-air training. Just not as much to keep in top shape.
Well, the impressive tech, plus drilling with the equipment, keeps the Swedish military in pretty good condition. Which is why it doesn't see much real use. Looks fierce enough that it doesn't actually have to fight.
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http://www.simlabs.arc.nasa.gov/vms/vms.html
Is that anything like the six degrees of seperation between anyone & Kevin Bacon?
Enough about flight. What about the Swedish Chef Simulator?
If you produced the same G forces that a real pilot experienced, you would produce the same acceleration, and your simulator would soon be hundreds of miles away...
Sounds like a Nascar simulator to me. All left turns.
Is it just me or does this JAS 39 Gripen fighter look a lot like an F-16? It appears to play the same role as the F-16 (a light fighter/ground attack aircraft). I know that many countries (especially NATO members) use F-16s. Does anyone know if that's what this plane actually is?
Its about time they stopped constraining fighter craft with people.. they should work on making them remote control so they can take 50 Gs, and a 12 year old computer gamer could fly them with a mouse and keyboard. Hmm somehow that sounds like a movie plot (cough Toys)
... cranks it up to 200G..
Ouch!
An unamed hi-tech company in Asia today announced a 1/4 newton inertial dampener device suitable for fighter plane use.
The specs list an ability to counteract up to 8 g's for a human body weighing up to 100 kilos.
The company has also recently been awarded contracts for their pilotless drone attack fighters. Film at eleven.
no, even then, the g-forces ARE associated with the "plane's" movement. the only truly simluated portion is the illusion that it is an actual plane flying through the air..
Those who can, do. Those who can't, go into business for themselves.
Sorry, I was so tired I missed that bit :)
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
Acceleration is not a force, nor does its name begin with the letter G.
The force whose name begins with the letter G is, er, gravity.
I hope they add some kind of an ejector seat arrangement.
Antti S. Brax - Old school - http://www.iki.fi/asb/
snuggle, you just strap in and feel the G's!!"
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no she admitted long ago to having sex with Justin T.
Simulated barf bag anyone?
Here.
USAF Tech Report
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Here is another highly advanced simulator currently being built in the Netherlands. Look at DESDEMONA:
http://www.tm.tno.nl/product/res_wo_15.html http://www.amst.co.at/publics/desdemona_pub.htmIt is a combination of a common synergistic motion system (like a hexapod) and centrifuge. The principle by which it works is that the subject is slowly rotated, while located at the center of the main rotation axis, such that the rotational perception of the subject is saturated (he does not notice that he is being rotated). When the simulation starts, the cabin is moved off-center such that a continuous-g-load is acting on the subject.
The problem with this simulator is that the head of the subject has to be more or less fixed, otherwise so-called coriolis forces will give him a disorenting cue.
Many years ago a traveling VR "arcade" visited my city. (This was easily 10 years ago, but I can't recall the exact date.) One of the rides that stood out in my mind was a fighter plane sim with G-forces. The player sat in a spherical pod at the end of a centrifuge arm. The game screen remained black while the carousel built up to speed. The default orientation of the pod kept the G-forces "eyes down" through the seat of the pants. In other words, the player would feel a bit heavier than normal as the game built up to speed.
Once at speed, the game started. Moving the joystick re-oriented the pod. For example, a "climb" rolled the pod downward so that the player felt the G-forces "eyes out" against his back. Similar shifts applied to other maneuvers, thus giving realtime feedback. It was not exactly like being in a plane (I've been in aerobatic planes), but the suggestion of maneuver accelerations was deceptively good. (Sorry, no inverted flight. The harness wasn't up to it.)
I'm sure the military grade simulator in the article is much fancier than the VR ride. (I could not hit the site -- it has been Slashdotted.) But to put it bluntly, "been there, done that."
I'll hold out for the Swedish Fight attendant simulator with real G-string. That'll be a ride.
History of dispersed basing in the Swedish airforce
A company not too far from my home in Southampton, PA, USA, Environmental Tectonics Corp builds a centrifuge-base flight training system. Here is a link to their press release back in October of last year.
The Swedes are not alone, obviously. And this company is pretty cool. When they aren't training astronoauts and pilots, they also help build state of the art amusement park rides!
My user name was a mistake. Input wasn't restricted, my bad.
> We wanted to give pilots the ability to "fly" and interact with the environment
> rather than just be a passive [centrifuge] rider
He/she didn't mean centrifuge there. The sentence was correct as it was spoken/written/whatever.
I'd like to preface this post by saying that I know very little about the mechanics of simulators such as these. I do however know quite a lot about sensory and perception in regards to flight studies. The problem with attempting to simulate motion, let alone G-forces, is that humans are very good at detecting aberrations from realistic movement. The "detection" usually results in headaches or blowing bannana chunks all over the cockpit, but it's a detection nonetheless. [1] In short, if the simulator display indicates a slight oscilation or elevation due to a thermal, and the force feedback doesn't mimic it just right, and then that happens repeatedly inbetween bouts of actually successfully fooling your sensory and perception system, we get the aforementioned chunks being blown. Millions of dollars of research have been thrown at this problem, only to find one very clear thing. By the time you can get the system finely tuned enough that you can always fool the human, it's cost prohibitive. The benefit and coolness factor of feeling the actual motion isn't significant enough of a boost to the learning process to justify the cost. [1] Bannanas are the #1 meal suggestion before FAM (familiarization) flights in new figthers, since they taste roughly the same coming up as they do going down.
It was a simple buffer overflow bug in the steering system. The system buffered all the pilots movements and performed them one at a time, but the buffer was too small and could actually overflow and crash the system.
Amazingly, this flaw was known by the american company that manufactured the component and the pilots where instructed not to use the "joystick" too much.
The steering system has since been replaced.
IIRC, even though this is not classified in any way, the true cause for the crashes was never properly reported. I know because I am related to one of the guys who did the error investigation. Perhaps the swedish airforce thought that a simple buffer overflow error was too embarassing to admit...
Opinions stated are mine and do not reflect those of the Illuminati
Oh man, how I hate these trolls - you made me fire up news.google.com to see for myself and there was nothing to see. See for yourself
Stop fooling the audience. Go back to posting penises, anuses and swastikas you bastards...
Agreed.... First thing I thought of too.
I rode mission space about 4 months ago... pretty cool simulation. You have to keep your eyes on the screen though or you can sense that you're actually spinning...almost made me sick.
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Maybe I'm half remembering the facts. Any slashdotters out there who worked in the G-LOC (Gravity-induced Loss of Conciousness) research program know better? (I'm not sure if the work continues there, most of the NAWC was closed and the work shipped to Maryland.)
The motor was huge. That much I do remember. The recordings they played back of pilots blacking out also sticks in my mind.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Many have suggested that it means a certain duck (in swedish, dykand). However, if they actually knew something, and didn't just google for kharma, they would know that it also means lightning. It's not a word that is used in contemporary swedish, but rather in older mythological texts (e.g., Thor could summon these lightnings with his hammer).
:) Just my 0.02
So, which is more likely, a retarded duck that dives, or a lightning of fearsome power?
from what i know about centrifuges, which isn't much, but should be enough in this case, wouldn't this thing be like a car that can only turn left?
there's an outside edge to a centrifuge and that would only imitate the force of a certain manoeuver in only one direction, but be completely unable to imitate it in the other direction
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I mean, they can do it on Star Trek, right? Artificial gravity would be the perfect tech for this purpose... putting a simulator capsule on a centrifuge is so, like, stone age. ;)
Read my keyboard review.
They already made the Swedish penis enlarger pump Austin Powers had so a sex simulator can't be far behind.. baby.
In the NADC centrifuge, as in the Swedish model, the pilot controls the g-forces by maneuvering the "airplane" with a typical set of fighter jet controls, and watches the various instruments in front of him respond appropriately. I don't know whether there are currently graphics capabilities, but as an aircraft simulator test engineer, I can tell you with authority that visuals are NOT required for a good simulation, depending on the goal of the simulator.
So, this has basically been done for at LEAST 13 years if not quite a bit longer (the NADC centrifuge first opened in 1952). And oh, by the way, this centrifuge also does at least 9g. So unless someone else has some explanation of what's different about this new Swedish device, the only difference I can see is that it's been built by a commercial entity, instead of the US Government.
Here are a couple links, in case you'd like to read about this specific simulator/centrifuge (the first link is an excellent discussion of G-LOC effects in general; the second shows no less than four sites where such training is conducted for the US Government):
http://www.codeonemagazine.com/archives/1990/artic les/april_90/apra_90.html
h tm
http://www.nomi.med.navy.mil/STD/ASTCPax/initial.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
I'm building one, but you need to bring 100,000 quarters to ride in it.
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
Why does it take nearly infinite power to accelerate from rest at 9g and "only" 1.9 MW from 1.5 G to 9 G, since the rate is limited to 90g/sec ? surely since the torque required at a fixed rate is constant, the power is still finite ?
Steve
"Initially, the centrifuge arm turned at a slow, steady speed, producing a 1.5g "steady state" or baseline. Inertial restrictions require that the arm be in motion before a pilot starts pulling high-onset gs. Rapid g-onset would demand almost infinite power to go from a dead stop to a 10g/sec. rate the system is specified to deliver.
Royal Swedish Air Force? No. The only thing that is royal in the swedish defence forces is the royal navy.
I already experience a GeForce in my comp... Oh, wait..
The newest ride at Walt Disney, Orlando is built on this technology- It is a simulator that is built into a centrifuge. When the rocket to Mars launches, you actually do pull G forces..
a ct ionDetail?id=MissionSPACEAttractionPage
It is quite cool, as long as you aren't claustrophobic..
Here is the link
http://disneyworld.disney.go.com/wdw/parks/attr
Sweden is bigger than Germany (though smaller than France) but with only a tenth of the population. The country is also long and narrow. This makes the defense difficult and relatively expensive. To cope with this, I think the military is trying to focus on a high-tech defence instead of many soldiers.
A NATO membership would help, I guess.
Besides, Gripen is pretty cool (and means more money for Saab and Ericsson). It will probably be the last "swedish" fighter though.
You're right, the last armed conflict Sweden took part in was back in 1814.
Had they known this back then, an enormus amount of money could have been saved in military expenses, but instead they opted for keeping military in case something happened and as a deterrent.
IMHO, the primary use for a weapon is deterrent, and if you never get to actually fire it that doesn't mean it was wasted money to buy it, but that it has been used perfectly.
In the words of the Tootsie Pop Commercial. "The world may never know!"
I have no idea what the ride was called, but it was far too big to have in a normal mall-size arcade. The centrifuge had a boom about 7 or 8 meters in diameter with a pod on each end. (Two players, two separate games.) The pods were ugly on the outside, totally enclosed, and you didn't want to be standing anywhere near this thing when it was whirling. (Serious RPMs.) It generated enough "Gs" to pin you to the pod wall if you got into a flat spin. The traveling VR show had the rig roped off like an amusement park ride.
is here. that's where the mainpage link should have gone.
Yes I remember being in Stockholm during their Water Festival in 1993 (beautiful city), when they did a bit of a air show over the city, they were showing off the JAS plane, but pilot ejected and ditched the plane on an island in the harbour, although I don't think he had much control at the time and they were lucky there weren't any injuries.
I am not an expert, but i think the point of flight simulators is not only better training, but lower costs of training. If a realistic simulator allows you to replace more flight training with simulator training, it saves a lot of money. (And it's rather environmental friendly)
This sig is a true statement, but I cannot prove it.
The US Navy actually does similar G force training in Lemoore California on their C-FET device. The pictures on the web site do not do the device justice. It's simply an amazing device and I've had the unique opportunity to write the software that controls the device. The Boeing Company recently updated the software and hardware that controls the centrifuge, and I was on the 1 man team to redesign the software. The Air Force has a similar centrifuge for their pilot training too.
Ball electronics had one of these down near in San Diego and I got to ride in it. It was EXTREMELY cool. I crashed my plane (some sort of jet fighter plane) about 3 times just because it was so much fun trying out the different g-force vectors.
:-)
Whats funny is I'm one of those that *hates* roller-coasters, but this was a blast. I watched a bunch of guys go on it first and seeing that big centrefuge arm spin around was pretty scary--I wasn't sure I could deal with it. But when you are inside you can't see out and I had no idea I was even spinning at all.
When I got out everyone was laughing at me because of all the "WOOOO-HOOOO!" type screams I was making everytime I did something cool.
-David
There. Now go play some cool javascript games!
This isn't the first such.
I saw an article in Av Leak several years ago. The Navy worked a project with NASA, to put an F/A-18 cockpit and sim gimbal out on the end of the old man-rated centrifuge, specifically to be able to evaluate pilots under g-forces.
The pilots recommended in the strongest possible terms that the Navy pursue the project as a training system.
What does it mean? Surely Jesus Christ would want to save you my son but I am not sure I can.
umm, you got any source for that? From what I know the steering system is developed inhouse by saab (written in some kind of dialect of ADA). What I heard the first crash were caused because the system was to sensitive and jerky (the pilots had complained about this numerous times), the second crash were cause because of the plane going too slow into a turn, it started to wobble, which the pilot tried to compensate for, the problem was that the steering system tried to compensate as well, which just made things worse. if the pilot just had let go of the joystick and let the computer deal with the wobble, everything would have been fine, but I suppose that's easy to say when you're standing on the ground.
if (!signature) { throw std::runtime_error("No sig!"); }
In addition to a great healthcare system, every Swedish citizen is entitled to a jet fighter for self defense. Much like the American "Right to Bear Arms," the Swedes have "The Right to Drop Bombs on That Ass."
I beleve you are right on the spot here. The failures was due to an "error" in the specification, eg disregarding a pilots reflexes/instincts.
;)
It wasn't a bug, it was a feature.
"Civis Europaeus sum!"
We have a photo of the earth downstairs that was signed by a group of the shuttle astronauts that took a ride in this simulator. I personally had the chance to sit in it once, but unfortunately arrived too late in the day to take a spin. (One that certainly wouldn't have pushed any G's.
I believe the NADC ride still holds the record for highest recorded G's by a human when they used a device they termed the "Iron Maiden" stuck on the end of the centrifuge arm. It was like a steel cast of a seated man with a deep sea diver's viewplate window. The man would sit inside it and it was filled with water. He would hold his breath while being spun (if memory serves). The water would allow the force to be distributed evenly. Biggest problem for pilots and high G's is the blood flowing to one's feet, away from the brain, and causing the pilot to pass out.
I'm not the expert on NADC, but if someone is making claims about the breakthroughs their centrifuge based flight simulator is doing, research NADC first. Again, I may have slightly misstated some information here, but the gist is correct. A pivoting gondola which would spin to realign the forces to simulate directional travel. They were doing this over 10 years ago. Here is a link to an NADC/NAWC site with a shot or 2 of the flight simulator, although mostly of people who worked there.
http://www.resuba.com/wa3dsp/k3nal/nawchistory.htm l