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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.'"
...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.
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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?
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How long before we get an arcade version?
Any chance they'll make a sex simulator with a simulated G-spot?
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?
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
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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.
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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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Enough about flight. What about the Swedish Chef Simulator?
Well, maybe it looks a bit like an f16 because it's single-engine.
It's supposed to be able to do all 3 traditional airplane roles (Fighter, Attack, Reconnaissance), but the emphasis is on air superiority.
It's light, quick and very modern (actualy the most advanced aircraft in service anywhere in the world right now, since the F-22 and EF2000 are not in service yet).
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.