Sim Icarus Boeing 777 Handmade Flight Deck

ShadowsMV writes "Three technology students finishing up their degrees at the DuPage Campus of DeVry University spent a term designing and building one of the most nifty flight simulators yet. Named the Sim Icarus Flight Deck, it accurately recreates the primary flight accessory controls of the Boeing 777, and interfaces directly with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004. They have tons of pictures and lists of everything you need! Previous flight decks featured on slashdot include An awesome homebuilt and wideview with 13 Monitors And 9 PCs."

Comments

Cool

[Fls'Zen]

If only my dorm room was big enough...

Quickly! Call Vaterland Security!

[Anonymous Coward]

and have them arrested for building terrorist training tools!

Slashdot Flight Simulator 2005

[Anonymous Coward]

Experience the thrill of your server levitating from the heat of its own PSU exhaust as 100,000 Mozilla-using Slashdot geeks hit your image-laden site at once with network.http.max-connections-per-server set to 100!

Everything you need?

[Tackhead]

> Named the Sim Icarus Flight Deck, it accurately recreates the primary flight accessory controls of the Boeing 777, and interfaces directly with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004. They have tons of pictures and lists of everything you need!

FDS Total =$1,479.00
PFC Total =$750.00
FL Total = $1,239.00
Hagstrom $190.00
Digikey/M$486.05
Home Depot = $390.80
Computer = $1,080.00
Software = $510.00
Brian Sign = $48.00
--
Total = $6,172.85

Heatproof wax = $priceless.

I was Building a 757 and gave up lack of $.

[BrianHursey]

I reserched for a year I wanted to build one. I even got the software woking with 6 computers. But after the evaluation of the cost of building the quality sim that I wanted I concluded that it would coust me about 10-15 thosand dollers.

best line from the article:

[de1orean]

"Proof of concept came when we relocated the simulator from Dave's house to school. "

that killed me. :)

new standard

[Jafa]

Wow, it used to be that cocaine was god's way of telling you that you made too much money, according to Carlin.
J

Re:DeVry University?

[scmason]

No, Devry is a nationwide 'chain college' specializing in tech degrees. Supposedly, their graduates are rather hirable.

How about a handmade GE90?

[G4from128k]

I rather have a GE90 jet engine from a 777. At over 123,000 pounds of thrust, it would definitely make for some seriously fun game play.

Looks Nice

[aktiveradio]

Very cool, but I didn't see any cup holders?

Shine You Guys

[stoolpigeon]

trash DeVry all you want. My paycheck for being a developer converts to currency just the same as any of you with 'proper' degrees.

Props to these guys-- that is a nice project. Those of you slamming our school-- you know what you can do. I think DeVry comes in right behind Microsoft on the 'acceptable bashing' scale here at the dot.

Re:Shine You Guys

[Lord_Dweomer]

I hope you know WHY we choose to bash the school. You see, aside from some of the most laughable ads in the history of advertising (which is the industry I'm in by the way, so I've seen a LOT of ads), they have an earned reputation of being a school for students who aren't the most successful, and who aren't "bright enough" to cut it at other schools.

It's a chain college. That and the fact that they have to advertise on tv drastically maims whatever credibility they might have as a school producing intelligent graduates.

So please, don't take the attacks as something against you personally, its all about the image your fine school has crafted for itself.

Their admin must be a complete noob.

[glwtta]

777 seems like a very insecure way to chmod a Boeing.

Re:Their admin must be a complete noob.

[gkwok]

Yes, that's just plane dumb. <ba-dum>

Re:Their admin must be a complete noob.

[f0dder]

This article is a crackup. Makes a couple of good jabs at us Yanks.. but he seems to think (do google for Airbus and you see lots of uncomfortable references to it being a white elephant) that this thing may not be all roses.
White Elephant

• Plainly this is idiotic. It would be much easier and cheaper to build them in France but politically this would be no good at all because the Airbus is intended to show how European co-operation can work. We do the wings and the engines, the French put everything together, the Germans finish everything off and the Spanish . . . actually, I don't know what the Spanish do, apart from gatecrash the launch party and lisp.
  
• That is presuming you got past the check-in. I guess you have all experienced the ludicrous queues that build up now. Well, imagine how long they are going to be when there are half a dozen A380s scheduled to depart within 15 minutes of one another. With seating for 550 on each one that is 3,300 people to be interrogated, 3,300 suitcases to be loaded, 3,300 pieces of hand luggage to be x-rayed and 3,300 pairs of shoes to be examined.
  
  Do you think that Virgin or Emirates will spend the money that they have saved on fuel by employing more check-in staff? I doubt it. As a result you will need to arrive at the terminal 3,300 hours before take-off. Then there is the flight itself to worry about.
  
• Yes, at the moment, despite much plastic and carbon fibre in its construction, the A380 is four tons overweight, but when the 747 was rolled out in the 1960s that was 50 tons overweight. So let's not get too worried. They could save four tons by simply removing one American passenger.
  
• Airbus made sure that its launch video featured on-board gyms and bars. There were big squidgy double beds and probably a polo lawn or two. But the reality is that airlines will fill the entire fuselage with seats they've nicked from a primary school to wedge the passengers in like veal.
  
  In other words, being on board the A380 will be exactly the same as being on board any other jet liner.
  
  
• This brings me to the final point. You see, the cruising speed of the A380 is Mach 0.85 (647mph), which is pretty good for something with the aerodynamic properties of a wheelie bin and engines that run on mineral water. But the 747 cruises at Mach 0.855 (651mph). This means that the 747 gets you there faster and means that you spend less time with your face wedged in an American's armpit.
  
  On that basis you can marvel at how Airbus has jumped through political hoops and climbed technical mountains to bring the world its shareholder friendly A380. But you are better off going in a Boeing.
  

Flight Deck Solutions

[BrianHursey]

You can buy to scale high quality cockpit paneling at http://www.flightdecksolutions.com/ When I was reserching to build my cockpit. I found this to be the best solution for supplies.

Imagine

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn.. imagine how good these guys would be at Halo if they didn't waste their time building that contraption? Imagine all the frivolous sports stats they could have amassed instead, had they elected to prop themselves in front of ESPN?

Instead these guys pushed the limits of their imagination and resourcefulness. Thanks for reaffirming that the younger generation isn't all a bunch of brain dead couch potatoes.

Manufacturing ?

[cyberfunk2]

I'm glad this got posted.. now hopefully some enterprising company will hire these guys. It looks like they did a real good job of something pretty hard, skunkworks style.

If I was an employer I'd wanna have them working for me.

3D idea for this setup

[boomgopher]

You know what would be cool is to:

Rig up a dual projector setup in front of this sim
Have the projected images overlap one another
Place a polarizing filter over each projector
Adjust each filter to be 90 degrees out of phase with the other

Slap on some cheap 3D glasses, and tada, 3D flight simulator.

(I think) Anyone know if this would this work? I've always wanted to try this.

Re:3D idea for this setup

[Kenja]

Can do it with one screen using field sequential stereoscopic images and a polarized LCD over the projector. Otherwise you would need a stereo multiplexor to split the signal into a right and left image for the two projectors. No matter what you would need a video card that supported a steroscopic mode and a flight sim that had full z depth queuing.

Re:3D idea for this setup

[Rolker]

This setup does work. We have such a system at work so we can show stereo stuff to a large audience with cheap polarized glasses. (Instead of more expensive LCD glasses).

The trick is to have a videocard that supports clone mode stereo, such as a Quadro card, and software that supports stereo.

M$ Flight sim?!

[iluvcapra]

and interfaces directly with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004

Somebody buy these guys a copy of X-Plane!. If not for the better environments and the fully customizable aircraft, then at least for the fact that the entire simulation can be controlled remotely over UDP.

Re:FFS, use something like Flickr to host photos

[eric2hill]

The magic of nyud.net :)

Re:Wrong

[kchoboter]

Actually you are wrong.

The legal drinking age is 18 in Manitoba, Alberta and Quebec! Everywhere else its 19.