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Man Builds Fully-Functional Boeing 737 Flight Simulator In His Son's Bedroom
laejoh writes "An aeroplane enthusiast has taken his obsession a step further than most after using his son's bedroom to build a Boeing 737 flight simulator that exactly mimics the real thing. Laurent Aigon, 40, from Lacanau in France, has spent the last five years collecting and buying components from around the world with best friend and fellow enthusiast (obviously) Jean-Paul Dupuy. The pair spent thousands of euros on internet orders for bits and pieces to construct the simulator – which is so realistic that the Institute of Aircraft Maintenance at Bordeaux-Merignac Airport asked him to give a lecture on his achievement. Mr Aigon has since schooled himself in all the procedures for take off and landing and says he is able to fly his 'plane' just like a real-life pilot."
But aside all that, what a GREAT dad!
Pretty cool. Guess after SFO, he's glad it wasn't a 777.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Now witness the capabilities of this fully operational 737 flight simulation!
I didn't see any hydraulics for mimicking the pitch, yaw, and roll.
It doesn't even incorporate a Stewart platform in its implementation, lame.
...using his son's bedroom to build a Boeing 737 flight simulator that exactly mimics the real thing.
5 years of noisy jet takeoffs.
Interesting that they chose a Boeing a/c rather than an Airbus!
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
But haven't dozens of people already done this over the years? For example - http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/04/18/2036248/man-builds-737-simulator-in-a-garage
I had a good friend who was the chief engineer for a major multi-national telecommunications company, who laid out around half a million building a fully functional 747 cockpit in his basement - and that was back in '99. Even had a seat and controls for the navigator.
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
I know what it's missing: http://www.benchfly.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Autopilot.jpg
This makes me feel lame - I haven't even finished redoing the bathroom.
How authentic are the fur seats?
His son has no interest in airplanes, and his dad is forcing it on him.
I remember my dad taking the family to the airport to watch the planes take off and land for hours at a time; thank god they closed the observation area after 9/11.
Microsoft Flight Simulator '98
737?
url:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/06/sfo-airport-asiana-crash_n_3555482.html
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Wee To Low
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
"Use your own bedroom, Dad!"
The G
The display in particular is pretty shoddy. I've seen much much better out there in terms of DIY flightsims.
Oh, and to this line in TFA:
"He also has interest from a couple of major aircraft manufacturers who want to use his creation to simulate various scenarios."
No, he doesn't. Aircraft manufacturers have no interest whatsoever in this.
This guy definitely has too much time on his hands. But given that this fellow seems to have this incredible obsession, how did he managed to find the time to have sex to even have a son to put in a bedroom that the poor kid can't even use except for sleeping.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
Does it run Flightgear?
He can build a flight simulator, but can't straighten the pictures on the wall for an internationally circulated photograph. Figures.
Call the NSA. He is obviously trying to aid the enemy. He even hid his terrorist training equipment in his son bedroom. What a horrible father. Take his son away! Think of the children!
It was an Airbus 757.
It was an Airbus 757.
It came in like a bus bus.
On an Airbus, the controls are simply tied to LCD and haptic feedback devices. An Airbus simulator and a real Airbus cockpit are exactly the same thing--a really expensive joystick connected to an XBox. What's the fun in that?
Suggest an alternative or STFU.
Aha, I've been on the internet for too long to fall for tricks like that.
It was a Boeing 777.
VERY good airplane. (Direct quote from an American Airlines 777 First Officer: "Sweetest-flying airplane I ever flew!" Direct quote from a very senior American Airlines 777 Captain: "10 years in 757/767. First time I got in the 777, I realized they'd fixed things I hadn't realized had been bugging me.")
Interesting that they chose a Boeing instead of a Lockheed-Martin Raptor.
I was going to re-build my 787 simulator, but the fire department won't let me.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Pretty sure that 'Airbus 757' was a joke.
You probably won't be able to tell that you're on an Airbus, unless one of the pilots does something that invisibly alters the autopilot settings.
It was an Airbus 757.
Now, that post really calls for adding a +5 Troll rating to the mod system. Applause.
Oh, and we'd better arrest this obvious terrorist training camp instructor, and water-board him till he sings.
I'm sure it is a lot harder to find matching parts and know what the cockpit looks like and what features it has... when those things are likely secrets, if not classified.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Hey c'mon man.. At least he got the damn thing out of the garage
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
My dad built me a train layout. And he built it in the GARAGE. it didn't push me out of my room...
So what. I've got a fully functional 737, 747, 757, 767, and 787 simulators right in my building. They come complete with mechanics and engineers. All you need to fly them is a little bit of budget. OK... a lot bit of budget.
And then Asiana contacts him about training their pilots on the cheap(er)? Hehe.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
No mention of the software used anywhere and no speculation.
One of the pictures looks like a windows desktop, so one would assume one of the Flight Simulator programs, most likely Flight Simulator X. Anyone who messes with the stuff would probably have assumed that from the setup. It's like speculating that the fuel in your car's gas tank is unleaded. It may be a technical detail, but uninteresting and a foregone conclusion anyway.
Learn to love Alaska
Don't worry, Airbuses have better safety track than Boeings. You'll be fine.
Don't worry, Airbuses have better safety track than Boeings. You'll be fine.
This,
The biggest difference between the A330 and the B777 is that the B777 crams in an extra seat per row.
Airline and pilot are the big factors in determining if a plane is safe or not.
I've got my first flight in an A380 coming up and I _am_ looking forward to that (just not the other 500 passengers I'll have to be around).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
It was a Boeing 777.
VERY good airplane. (Direct quote from an American Airlines 777 First Officer: "Sweetest-flying airplane I ever flew!" Direct quote from a very senior American Airlines 777 Captain: "10 years in 757/767. First time I got in the 777, I realized they'd fixed things I hadn't realized had been bugging me.")
****** A+++++ Wuld fly again
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
If I were to spend that much time building a flight simulator, I'd build something which would (1) be much more interesting to fly and (2) that I couldn't try out otherwise as well for a fraction of the cost. Some airlines occasionally have reasonably-priced hours (around $ 100 per hour) in their flight simulators for the general public with one of their pilots helping you out to experience what the job is like. There are also some companies (in at least in Germany IIRC) that have slightly less sophisticated and thus cheaper "fly for fun" simulators you can buy hours in but those too are modern aircraft. If I were to build a simulator of my own, I would probably build a DC-3 simulator - it's such a classic workhorse of the skies and your only chance to fly one even as a passenger is in the third world or at an old aircraft air show. Now a decent simulator like that with the primitive navigation aids of the time would be real fun. Especially if somebody were to also create time-appropriate scenery...
I guess all I need is three times the spare time that I barely have to do everything I want to do but I can plan my retirement when I see this kind of projects :)
I've seen several of these flight sim projects. One part of me understands completely why the people who build them build them (I have enough hobbies that others think are a complete waste of time and money to understand entirely why people building flight sims like this want to do it), but another part of my brain is saying "for the money and time invested, you can actually build your own real, flying aircraft you can pilot yourself, and the graphics and frame rate are a lot lot better!".
Kind of reminds me. About a year before they closed Meigs in Chicago (which used to be the default start airport in Microsoft Flight Simulator), I flew in there for real in my elderly Cessna 140. I was kind of surprised when the frame rate didn't slow to about 10 fps when all the buildings of Chicago hoved into view :-)
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
...that exactly mimics the real thing....which is so realistic that the Institute of Aircraft Maintenance at Bordeaux-Merignac Airport asked him to give a lecture on his achievement....He also has interest from a couple of major aircraft manufacturers who want to use his creation to simulate various scenarios...
I maintain and build flight simulators and synthetic trainers all over the world, from France to China and the same again for approvals with regulators. This thing wouldn't even reach class C let alone class D so exactly mimics is bullshit, even class D can't exactly mimic everything. Even if you follow manuals to the letter, things like control workflow and timings are always off, that's why you can even get class C equipment approved even if some of the cockpit control workflow is actually wrong. There are about one hundred of these sorts of in-house setups like this in homes around the world now, even more if you include those which don't use actual cockpit components. Hardware isn't the problem these days with flight sims and synth trainers, hell, I've seen 6DOF motion class C trainers (with projected wrap-around SPOV visuals, none of this monitor crap) that run off one Core i7 system with all I/O (including motion, excluding visuals) being handled by USB! The real problem is the software, that's where all the limitations lie as too much of it is off the shelf software or components all hobbled together, even the stuff from multi-billion dollar US defence contractors whose names I'd love to spill but alas...
Get a pilot with more experience, one that flew both Boeing and Airbus and I'll believe you, until then, it sounds like very lame advertising.
But aside all that, what a GREAT dad!
Yes, he built a cockpit in his son's bedroom. What TFA didn't say is that the entry door is located in his own bedroom.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Google image search "F-22 cockpit", there are tons of images. There aren't too many things that could really be secret, aside from maybe communications frequencies, armament and stealth factor, none of which would affect making a flight sim.
The choice was probably driven largely by availability of cockpit parts. There is an impressive amount of 737s out there in various states of operation.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Yeah. Great Dad. Uses his son's bedroom as a playroom for his hobby with his pal.
Son may be ok about it just now, but what happens when he decides he's too old for his father's toys?
For masturbation. That's what I mean.
Even if the kid has not yet reached that age, I'm sure he still needs sleep. And if you've ever been working on a project even remotely as cool as this, you know there are a lot of very late, profanity laden, nights involved. Kids need sleep! Even if they say otherwise!
Some a$$ once said "You didn't build that", so he's not a great dad, since he didn't build that! BuuuYa uckers
I've flown on AirFrance's first A380, great plane. Yeah it's massive, but the seating was quite comfortable and the in flight entertainment options were great for a cross ocean trip from Paris to JFK. Enjoy the trip.
AJ Henderson
That's true, but many with different cockpit setups. The 737 classic and NG models have seen a huge jump in technology, even for being largely the same plane.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
No. he's proven he's able to fly his simulator, not the real aircraft. An actual training flight simulator goes through an exhaustive validation to ensure it is accurately reproducing the aircraft within the envelope of interest. While he may have been able to get real cockpit parts to get the look of the real cockpit, there's no guarantee that his simulator reproduces the real flight envelope of the aircraft accurately, or that the system components were assembled in a way as to properly reproduce the aircraft system response. And training in an inaccurate simulator can be worse than training in no simulator at all.
Still, kudos for the DYI simulator. It's a cool grown-up toy, but it's not a training device.
No mention of the software used anywhere and no speculation.
One of the pictures looks like a windows desktop,
That's sky. Sometimes a blue screen is just a blue screen.
Poor journalism really. I would expect the reporter to track down the man's ex-wife for comment.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Man generously allows son to sleep in his Fully functional Boeing 747 Flight Simulator Room
Airbusses are nice. If you hit turbulence? They are "flexier" than Boeings. Unsettling, but smoother.
The overhead bins are much taller, and better shaped. The ceilings seem less enclosed.
Good planes.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Sum Ting Wong
I've flown on AirFrance's first A380, great plane. ... the seating was quite comfortable ...
Uh, I don't see you telling us your gender & size. Seating is usually comfortable for someone, like maybe most asians, but it's way too close for us manly men & women...
Why post an article about something that happened almost one year ago?
It looked like the default Windows 7 background (the Windows logo window). Seemed pretty clear to me.
Learn to love Alaska
Well, the kid has the luxury of practicing to be a member of the mile high club I guess.
I doubt the kid is that old. He was probably just born when the project started so it might be a few years before he is aware of that stuff. But hey, this is in France so who knows.
you sound like an idiot.
I don't know if FSX is flexible enough to support a cockpit like that. It could also be X-Plane or Flightgear; both available on Windows.
Yes, and there are some others. I've seen people wire in realistic controls, what I haven't seen is someone set up a game with monitors used as the glass cockpit, though I'm sure that's out there and readily available, I've not tried or seen it, so I don't know which support it, if any.
Learn to love Alaska