Australian Defence Force Builds $1.7m Linux-Based Flight Simulator

scrubl writes "The Australian Defence Force (ADF) has revealed its latest flight simulator runs on SUSE Linux-based clusters of Opteron servers and uses an open source graphics platform. The Defence Science and Technology Organisation's (DSTO) Air Operations Simulation Centre in Melbourne creates virtual worlds that allow pilots to experience real-world combat situations without leaving the ground. The visuals software was written in OpenGL, using commercial and open source scene graph engines and making 'heavy use of OpenGL Shader Language programs.'"

Comments

It's pretty much a given that they saved money

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Instead of going with a licensed OS like Windows or VxWorks, they saved tens of dollars. Smart thinking and good use of money in these tough economic times.

It would be nice to see other departments try to realize these types of gains.

Re:It's pretty much a given that they saved money

[Tubal-Cain]

It may be that the software for turning a pile of Linux boxes into a rendering farm is free or less expensive or more efficient than the equivalent for Windows.

Indeed. It's not a coincidence that only 5 of Top500's list are pure Windows environments.

Re:It's pretty much a given that they saved money

[mjwx]

even Microsoft will give you source in order to get their name stamped on it.

Microsoft has twice before refused to give the source code for Windows for Warships to the Australian Navy, what makes you think the RAAF will have any more luck. The US govt will block this as they have fears that this will be leaked to the soviets (throwback to some 1960's paranoia when Australia was being blamed for intel leaks caused by a CIA double agent)

Which is why the cost savings on running Linux is funny.

How, the chair is not just a copy of MS Flight simulator X on a big screen, it's a hydraulic control system that needs to make precise movements in real time to correspond with input, Windows cant even control a mechanical lathe with millimetre accuracy, that's why DOS is still popular in the assembly line. Besides the RAAF's biggest cost isn't in software or hardware, its in operational costs. To achieve similar results using Windows (.net and what not) you need to use more powerful HW, increasing the amount of power it needs, cooling requirements and above all else, maintenance. Windows breaks more often then Linux, so the RAAF would need to spend more time on maintenance with a windows based system.

Spend millions of dollars on a project, and do stupid things like cut corners that save you statistically irrelevant amounts of money on the project and result in a far more difficult to support product.

The RAAF would have evaluated all the options, Windows simply could not perform the job the RAAF asked of it. No corners were cut here. This didn't save "statistically irrelevant amounts of money", the project provided a machine that fits the specifications detailed by the RAAF.

Deja Vu!

[InsertWittyNameHere]

I remember what happened last time they built a simulator.

Re:I want one!

[ae1294]

I want one! Where can I get myself a sweet flight sim like this?! :-o

In the Australian Defense Force?

Not really news.

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to work for L3 Simulation - one of the biggest suppliers of flight simulation gear around the world. We used massive diskless Linux clusters for making flight simulator graphics systems - and have been doing it for maybe 10 years now. We used our own Linux distro, software written in C++ and using OpenGL for graphics with nVidia graphics cards. Pretty much every F16 pilot out there plus most US helicopter pilots train regularly on Linux-based flight simulators.

On a typical system, we'd either use a helmet-mounted display driven by two PC's or a dodecahedral "Simusphere" display with 9 rear-projected pentagonal panels surrounding the cockpit mockup. Each display would be driven by either 1 or 4 PC's with a hardware gizmo that combined four raster displays into a single video projector.

Additional Linux PC's were used to stream graphics data into the graphics PC's - more were used to draw the HUD and ancilliary displays within the plane.

The machines were diskless - booting from a central server over 1GHz ethernet. The reason for leaving off the disks on the 'slave' machines was to improve reliability. When you have 64 PC's - the reliability of all of those hard drives would result in more frequent failures than we could tolerate.

Neat stuff - but hardly new!

Re:Not really news.

[Sponge Bath]

And it can make the Kessel run in 12 parsecs.

Re:I want one!

[dmbasso]

sudo apt-get install oz-flight-simulator

Re:OOS should never be used for war

[PhunkySchtuff]

Yes, because remember kids, nothing good has ever come from military funded research. You know, like the internet...

Re:OOS should never be used for war

[John Hasler]

> What about class warfare? Is it ok by you if I use free software to fight the
> evil of global capitalism?

Of course. What he really wants is a political correctness clause. After all, what if someone were to use Free Software to design a coal-fired power plant? Develop a strain of genetically-engineered wheat? Design an SUV? Manage a bank? Run a "right-wing" political campaign?

Okay

[ILongForDarkness]

we get it already Linux is used everywhere for all sorts of computing needs. Why is this news in 2009?

Re:Simulating what, exactly?

[Skillet5151]

Unmanned aircraft may be getting pretty good at firing missiles at buildings but I speculate that they're pretty far from being able to compare to the abilities of a real pilot in most situations. I'm sure Australia (like the US) coordinates its military to be prepared for a real war against another country as opposed to just the anti-insurgent potshot operations that UAVs are so good at.

Re:OOS should never be used for war

[FourthAge]

Yes. What on Earth has happened to people to make them imagine that this sort of thing is a good idea?

"Free speech should be restricted to things I agree with." "Free software should only be used for things I approve of."

It's just crazy.