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Airbus Patents Windowless Cockpit That Would Increase Pilots' Field of View
Zothecula writes Imagine showing up at the airport to catch your flight, looking at your plane, and noticing that instead of windows, the cockpit is now a smooth cone of aluminum. It may seem like the worst case of quality control in history, but Airbus argues that this could be the airliner of the future. In a new US patent application, the EU aircraft consortium outlines a new cockpit design that replaces the traditional cockpit with one that uses 3D view screens instead of conventional windows.
Are there at least windows behind the screens so that they can be moved out of the way in the event of a problem?
What then?
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
can't we have both?
So what happens when the first plane has a power blip, or an engine failure? How can you land with no view?
has never been more literally applied
The bridge of the Enterprise.
please keep the answer to yourself.
Been there ... done MORE than that :)
http://www.jpbellphotography.c...
Sure. Sounds like a great way to add a lot of unnecessary complexity to make the system more unreliable. Is the extended view really worth this?
So, power goes out...
Why not just make it out of transparent aluminum instead?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...
(ok, maybe not just like Star Trek, but close enough!)
Aside from digging up prior art on such a thing, how is this idea patentable in any way, other than a very specific implementation? I.e., using certain technologies for range finding to ground, picture display, and umm... reasons?
>> looking at your plane
I'm sure the TSA already has plans to shut that down too.
We should just be happy that they're still considering leaving pilots in the planes at this point - the future might just be flying as cargo in really big (windowless) UAVs.
Planes have been landing for years with zero visibility with automated landing systems.
Jerry's office pranks got out of hand when he rigged a 500ms delay in to the video feed...
Seriously, didn't the crash at San Fran with the 777 who relied too much on technology that failed teach ANYBODY ANYTHING? When the tech stops working, it's up to the pilot to actually FLY and LAND the plane.
How many people have to die to teach that you can't rely 100% on technology that can and will fail while the plane is still airborne?
I don't say this often, but Oy-veh-gevalt!
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
rear cockpit glass"tic" (that material that makes the CLEAR cockpit glass) for auction, some of the lots had four at a time. Yeah the F86 like back in the Korean War... lol
I was thinking about one for a Green House. Or custom fit a skylight on a Van or School bus/Tour bus
I am on topic since these do give the Pilot a wider field of view. Although I still think it's rough if you want to SEE the landing gear from the cockpit.
Nevermind...
I bet I (50+ yr old) can yank out all the black boxes in in the back seat in half hour.. Even after all these years u fuckin bitchez..
How would this effect the pilots depth perception? If it did, would it even matter?
On those Airbuses and new Boeings, all the control surfaces are electronic. Meaning, your life has been dependent upon those same issues the parent mentions already.
I think it would be great to have vision enhancement to see through fog or whatever with the help of a computer integrating what it "sees' via radar or any other sensor they put in - infrared? Lidar? Telescoping? Imagine a computer that integrates it into a visual system that give the pilots super vision.
Most incidents are because pilots didn't see shit.
Catastrophic failure.
It'll cut out all that unnecessary process and materiel in the airlines' supply chain.
Technology doesn't ever fail. Never.
"tower, ByNight 666, help, we're flying blind."
"666, only until you're out of fuel, over."
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
At least now it will be easier for the planes to be flown into buildings without the pilots knowledge and no terrorists needed, by projecting a false camera view.
#911InsideJob #blessed #lolcats
I'm a satanic clam.
Seems obvious.
What if the only thing that can be seen by the cameras feeding those screens is Goose Droppings?
I can hear the Pilot and Co-Pilot, speaking in unison.........
"OH SHIT!!!!!!"
Make it mandatory that the first flight include..
All airbus engineers
All airbus designers
All airbus executive
All airbus board members
All major airbus investors
Do that, and this deathplane will never lift off
as long as they do not replace it with MS Windows!
For what does a computer need a virtual Cockpit? Pilots need a cockpit, computers don't. And I guess in 5 -10 years there is no pilot needed anymore
"People who are willing to sacrifice essential freedoms for security deserve neither freedom nor security."
B F
more souless pieces of equipment ye'll nev'r see. Anytime I have to fly, they're completely interchangable parts nowdays.
Did you ever land in fog? Noticed that in commercial airports, they usually don't bother with removing the fog?
Planes land with zero visibility all the time.
It's a good idea as long as everything's working perfectly, but the failure mode in the event of avionics problems makes it unacceptable.
Flight Simulators...
Sorry Airbus - your patent has been invalidated.
This "incomprehensibly stupid" idea is not even an an incremental improvement / and certainly not an original idea.
At most it is "let's implement a flight simulator inside the airplane and use it to really fly"...
Nothing new here at all, unless you count the reprehensible amount of stupidity involved in the risking of hundreds of people's lives on an idiotic idea.
Imagine , faced with GOATSE or two girls one cup whilst landing.
that will solve a LOT of problems... no more laser problems, drag, visual problems because dirt and the limitation in the FoV. a lot of people thinks windows are a need to fly, but they are wrong at so many levels... you can pilot a plane by instruments in the hipotetical case of screen malfunction, the screen view can give you other visual systems like real time HUD, enhanced visuals, night vision, etc. in modern airplanes the pilot uses a joystick that isn't directly connected to the airplane surfaces and it works, so a cockpit with screens instead of windows is the logical step... i would even go further and install an oculus rift system for the pilot and copilot (with 2 spare systems and the screens)
why not just reduce the window area to half it's current size. If the savings is really significant then that would be significant too. Then compensate with the video system. the remaining window would be the failsafe.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
The only reason a cockpit is in the nose of the aircraft in modern times is tradition.
You probably did more analytical thinking when you formulated the following paragraph than the entire design team who made this crap & the people who funded and approved the project:
the 'black layer' could be the hydrostatic glass that can be darkened when electric current is applied: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
see, the way business works today, they will put Million$ into projects based on some dumb idea (or supply chain order for a contractor) before they even know how it would actually work
one last thing, i was disappointed by the pedantic "point/counterpoint" conversations on this thread up till I found TWX's comment...
YES...it is ALWAYS STUPID to not have an analog back up
in aviation, and life, you should always have an analog back up whenever possible
Thank you Dave Raggett
Because Odin and Buddha know that video screens and the cameras that stream images to them NEVER EVER fail....
Autonomous cars, and now this. I have to say I'm not so eager to entrust my life to complex software. Working in software I've seen countless times that complex systems show behaviors the designers didn't intend. At a minimum I'd want to know what dead-simple failsafe mechanisms have been engineered in to recognize and handle unknown states.
After all, Windows is so old school ...
Just use transparent aluminum. Then the whole damn thing is a "screen". Scotty can help you do it.
If you take a look at the pictures, then you might notice that it looks like a set from Star Trek.
Airbus didn't patent jack squat. They file a patent application. If the patent is granted, then you can say they patented something. The difference is pretty enormous. It's like saying you are married to someone when all you did was ask them to marry you (and haven't even gotten a response). There are a few more steps involved.
Do any of the Slashdot editors know the first thing about patents? Seriously. Any?
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
It's Monday and you arrive at work. Somehow you feel you're being managed bin a bunch of cretins but you attribute this to your negative outlook on life. But today is different. In a Tommy-esque way, starting from middle management going up, everyone wares ear, eye and mouth plugs. You think, at first, that your outfit is going to the hounds because vision now truly can no longer be. However, well before the 2nd coffee break, you realize you were wrong. Stuff suddenly works. You feel at ease to communicate with your peers. Stuff that would have take weeks of meetings is agreed upon immediately. Stuff requiring well thought considerations actually gets these. You even start greeting the cleaner at the end of the day. The strangest day of your life passed and you became absolutely convinced that the magic potion for the shop was found. A new and effective way of managing a bunch of developers leaves them enthused. It is patented of course. Magic, sheer magic was cast upon everyone in the company. That night you sleep calm and sound knowing the pointy headed bosses suddenly got a clue and that in "vision without seeing" will be the next hot thing. The deaf, dumb and blind bosses sure play a mean pinball.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
I would say that cockpit windows are a solved problem.
The structural problems of the windows that the De Havilland Comet had did not have to do with the cockpit windows but with the passenger windows. It was solved by making the windows round instead of square.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
I'm not even a pilot, but I think I understand the mindset of pilots well enough, having known a few: In the event of mechanical (or system) failure(s), any pilot is at least going to want to be able to peer out a window with his own two eyes to see what's going on. It's a backup system that is hard to cause failure in: If the windshield is shattered to the point where you can't see out of it, then you've got worse problems than not being able to see! This sounds like something some non-pilot (or worse, marketing monkey or bean-counter) came up with. Or maybe, just maybe, they're patenting it for the sole purpose of preventing anyone from doing anything this dangerous and stupid with airplane design?
Could we have some actual licensed experienced pilots please join this conversation? I'd like to know what you think about this, please.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
The Airbus patent shows a windowless cockpit that removes the windows or reduces them to partial views of the outside world. Instead, exterior views are provided by a display formed by back projection, lasers, holograms, or OLED imaging systems fed by cameras outside the fuselage.
Great. Now sharks will want to be pilots.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
and remove the cockpit altogether. Drone plane, basically. Hand off control to ground stations along the flight route, and you save tons of everything.
What about using a VR set to simulate flight? Wouldn't that save even more money one hardware?
For that matter, could the fail-safe be a passive fiber optic system to a lens on the nose? "Software failure, switch to analog". That doesn't seem so terrible.
The original design for the Mercury space capsule had no window either, after all, there was nothing the pilots were going to do but ride. That didn't fly, no one would go up in a capsule without a window. Shouldn't happen for aircraft either.
What if the electricity fails? What if the camera breaks? What if this, what if that? People had the same kind of very strong objections to fly-by-wire systems, and we've had planes for decades with no physical links between the controls in the cockpit and the control surfaces that move the plane. The number of accidents caused by failure of a fly-by-wire system? None. There are so many redundancies in these systems, it makes it very unlikely to fail.
Next... seeing outside isn't particularly important. Pilots don't really need to look out the window on these planes for flying. Especially when the plane is in fog or clouds, looking out the window can be actually confusing and disorienting and it's much safer to to look a the instruments. When coming in for a landing, the runway has a guidance system that guides the plane right onto the runway (ILS).
Plus, you can actually get a much better view of the outside using cameras and screens.
This being said, this is not an invention and it's not patent-worthy. As others mentioned, NCC-1701 had a viewscreen instead of a window... almost half a century ago.
Why do they need windows in the first place? I mean subs don't have any and they do just fine without them. There's arguably less things to hit flying than there are in a sub as well. OK there is the small matter of subs cruising at 32 MPH ( ~31 knots) and a plane cruising at 750 MPH (0.75 Mach) but really a pilot should be able to compensate for that...right?
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Strange, all these planes end up in Georgia...
crazy dynamite monkey
This has been in movies, books, science magazines.. etc.. etc..
Valar Morghulis
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
They should just use transparent aluminum. After its "discovery" in the 1980's, it should be ready for prime time by now!
Certainly gives a new meaning to BSOD... Oh, my.
Scarebus Murderbus is at it again. The continue to do stupid stuff like flawed-by-wire, joystick controls, alternate laws, junk pitot tubes, you name it and scarebus murderbus has done it all. Now they want the pilots to be blind their trash computes and trash electronics never fail? The Brazil murderfest by Scarebus AF 447 doesnt stop these scarebus psychos - even though their compute just killed a plane load of people they want to take away the pilots ability to even see?
Tsarkon Reports
I believe that this was considered for various SST designs as an alternative to the droop nose to give the pilots a view of the runway while landing and during low speed opertions in congested airways.
Have gnu, will travel.
1) It is a patent application, not a patent
2) Only claim 2 mentions the total lack of windows whatsoever. This is just to cover any ratio of virtual vs actual windows to be sure so that someone else cannot apply for another patent with an explicit ratio and claim that it is different.
The F-35 does the same video trick, the only difference is there is still a cockpit and the video is in the helmet not on a screen. It seems all you have to do is steal someone's idea and make a small modification and... Profit!!
I'll be some passengers would like that prime real estate.
I find it amusing that articles such as these that push the envelope of technology appear on Slashdot and then the luddites come out of the woodwork. Particularly amusing is the fact that we all entrust our lives to technology and computers on a regular basis, including in the airplanes that we have been flying in for years. The sad part is that the vast majority of you will meet your end in a dreadfully boring fashion or possibly in an automobile collision with a drunken slack-jawed yokel, but hardly any one of you will go down in a glorious, flaming plane crash.
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power. -- Mussolini
There are numerous reasons pilots can't see out real windows. Things like clouds, fog and night. Yet pilots can flight on instruments just fine and it is routine.
If I understand the idea correctly, isn't it true that all the instrumentation on board is to be integrated into this one big window?
I'd be more worried about the brown/green screen, in the short term.
Remove the need for an in-plane copilot. Make them a remote officer, and increase the number of planes they co-pilot at any given time to 2-5 depending on the flight (and you have the advantage of fresher copilots as they rotate shifts!). The opportunity to reduce pilot expense will make these planes sell themselves. Might have some disagreements with the unions, but we're all about union-busting these days. GO 'MERICA (nevermind it's a EU plane)!
Like nearly all engineering work, there are tradeoffs involved, especially failure and recovery modes. Of course the obvious next step is autonomous flying where the pilot is merely a backup system. Note that the recent Asiana 777 crash was caused by human errors that a completely autopilot would not have made.
Transparent Aluminium!
is it FOD or a dead pixel?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
20 years back when train to be a pilot I saw a small plane that had all it windows blocked out. Upon asking about it and I was told they ran the plane at night with night vision cameras and watched the world outside through displays only. So how can they patent an 20 year old idea.
kind of goes with fly by wire.
If you have to have power to keep the stick connected to the flippers.
and the power goes out,
then you don't really need to see all the way to the crash.
Airbus should be talking about how this helps the pilot see.
Not how it makes the airplane easier to build.
If it doesn't not improve the odds of see and avoid, then it's a bad idea.
If it does, then perhaps it's worth the risk of a more complicated thing to fail.
If I were the pilot, I'd still want a peephole to use to land.
I'm actually less worried about the view-screen failing than most are; given how robust the systems on these planes are, it is unlikely that is going to be a significant problem. If it gets to the point where the viewscreen itself no longer works, the pilots probably will probably have other much more important problems to deal with, like catastrophic hull damage or engine failure (having said that, I'm all for the addition of a periscope or small viewport that can be used in emergencies).
What does concern me is the image that is going to be projected onto these screens. It is going to be a mixed feed of camera images and sensors into one panoramic display. This raises flags for two reasons. First, cameras have fixed viewing angles, and windows do not. A pilot can lean a bit to the side while looking out a window to see just slightly more to the left or right; he won't be able to do so with a fixed TV image. Secondly, having worked with how computers merge panoramic images, I wonder how much lag there will be between the time the camera SEES its image and the time it actually is displayed on the screen; even a tenth of a second delay could be dangerous. I also wonder what information will be culled because the programs cannot make a seamless match between the different camera images otherwise. Programs that merge images can make some stupid assumptions sometimes and a detail at the border between two or more images is sometimes lost due to the algorithm.
A better initial use for this technology than completely replacing the cockpit windows, I think, would be to replace the PASSENGER windows. Those are far less critical to the plane. Giving each PASSENGER a small OLED screen in place of a window would greatly increase structural integrity and decrease fuel use while also allowing the technology to better mature before replacing the much more important viewports in the cockpit.
I'm intrigued.
The visibility from the cockpit of many planes is actually quite mediocre. This was an issue, for example, for American flight 191. The pilots couldn't actually see the DC-10's engines from the cockpit, and did the wrong thing in response a perceived engine failure. Anything that helps pilots process and interpret information is A Good Thing.
Another bit of fictional prior art: the Far Star's control system in Foundation's Edge.
...laura
BSOD: quite literally, in this case!
Bone headed.
best of both worlds.
Nobody complains about all those people jammed into a metal tube with no windows powered by a nuclear reactor and dumped into the ocean(s)...
And no... Periscope only works for the last (first) 20 meters or so. They are buggering about on instruments and maps alone.
And did I mention nuclear missiles? Yeah... they jam those in there with the people.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
...
Where's the innovation in this scheme? What new approach are they using to try to justify having a patent on it? It's like the idiot-phone trying to get patents for installing a digital camera into the phone. What is not obvious to anyone about how to do these things?
They do NOT land "because someone thought a cool new gadget would be fucking flawless".
"Because someone thought a cool new gadget would be fucking flawless" is the answer to WHY they land at all. Instead of crashing and burning up in a fiery inferno of fire.
That "someone" is usually some institute or some other place full of eggheads doing pointless research.
And boy, they are researching so much pointless stuff, pretty soon they're gonna be out of things to research.
Stupid eggheads. They're gonna be out of a job then.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I notice the patent application is with US authorities instead of the Europe. Perhaps EU patent authorities saw right through the argument for originality like ... well like they were looking through a transparent cockpit window.
As someone who has worked on the ramp of a major international airport, I have concerns about how this would affect ground operations. On the ramp there is a lot of visual communication between the pilots and the gate crews and others on the ramp. Major airports have bag tugs, cars, aircraft service trucks, buses, and even commercial delivery trucks driving around on the ramp, and where the vehicle traffic intersects taxiways, being able to actually see the pilot in the cockpit is very useful so that you know that they can see you. It is not uncommon for a pilot to wave traffic across to indicate they are not ready to taxi yet (usually this is signaled by the lights on the front landing ger being on, but to due a bright day or a bad angle they can often be hard to see). While there are plenty of aids for flying that reduce the need for a pilot to have visibility, when they are on the ground operating alongside hundreds of vehicles and thousands of people, sight and visual communication play very important roles.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
I was on a business trip once going from Lima, Peru, to Arica in Chile on a 727 when the pilot announced that the navigation system in the plane was basically dead. Instead of freaking out, he lowered the altitude and he visually followed the Iquitos river and other landmarks, piloting the plane the old fashion way, taking us to the destination safely. In a windowless cockpit that would have been a non-starter. I for one, want to keep an "analog backup" as an option. Thank you.
If one could be completely assured that the technology would never, ever fail, then of course. A glass cockpit with all sorts of integrated information sounds wonderful. Especially since one could easily filter out those pesky laser pointers... So what happens when it breaks? As in the Gimli glider or those lucky people in New York a few years ago? Or is the assumption that with fly by wire, if the power goes out you are scrod anyhow so why worry?
1 - random Joes don't get to fly them anyway. "Highly trained volunteers" do. And they already do it that way.
2 - there is no light in the dark, rain, snow, fog... so windows would be useless
3 - people looking around don't drive the sub. And how would Joe feel about just before landing, seeing the copilot tie a rope around himself and walk out on the wing and start waiving hand and yelling "To the right. Right! NO! MY RIGHT!"?
Maybe that would help keep him calm? How about while taxiing before takeoff?
As for "cleared for visuals"... so?
Nobody said anything about blinding the pilots and having them fly by waiving their penises inside a bowl of sensor-jello.
The whole point of the system is to give them BETTER visuals, which incidentally can't be blinded with a $5 laser pointer.
And should their electrical systems fail during the landing procedure... they are fucked anyway.
It's all done through computers anyway. No pulling on that yoke will do any good unless there's power to run the controls.
And all of that is besides the point.
The point is that everyone is perfectly fine with world's nuclear arsenal being chauffeured around in a tube with no windows, but "OMG! They want to transport people that way!?"
And those protesters...
Last I heard they switched to saving whales. Or dolphins. Or some other thing you probable never even heard about.
Anti-nuke is so passe. Grandad.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
So, my perspective comes from having flown heavies, light singles and UAVs, and (with a weak EE background) worked with the engineers for a few systems, take it for what it's worth...
1st, all safe fly by wire systems have at least triple-string controls, and four is reasonable; dual will never be certified for manned aviation.
2nd, 3D is bullshit; we land in the dark half the time, and there's effectively no 3-D vision in the dark.
3rd, we land in shitty weather; a view out the window is not necessary. However, I won't fly a windowless airplane with passengers. UAV, routinely, freight, possibly, but unlikely, but I see no reason to bet my passengers' lives on the technology, no matter how good it is.
4th, Technology should be viewed from the "system level of safety" perspective. We all too often look at the trades vice the system level.
Sully had lots of training, had flown multiple types of planes, was a flight instructor and heres the kicker, had certification
as a glider pilot so when the engines failed he knew what to do and his co pilot and him were on the same page.
Yes, they can land in zero visibility because they have instruments.
Likewise, they can land without instruments because they have windows.
This plane is missing the failsafe for 'Oh, crap! Our entire instrument panel just went dead!"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy,_Jr._plane_crash
Sometimes looking out the window gives you a view so bad you can't even tell that it's bad and relying on what you (think you) see can be deadly.
And what development integrity level would Sir like with that software....?
I can't see a Regulator, AMC, ARP and DO mix that's going to add up to a flight deck with no windows any time soon, let alone co-coordinating the appetite for that sort of change globally. No thanks.
They don't touch down in zero visibility - you have to be able to see the runway before you get below IFR minimums [...]
They do with ILS Cat III: no decision height minimums (though there is RVR with IIIa and IIIb).
Air France 447 crashed in the atlantic because its windows didn't work. That is to say, they only showed the inside of a cloud. If they'd been computer screens as proposed here, and would have allowed the pilots to flick to synthetic vision, or IR, or one of many other reasonable modes, the pilots would have noticed that they were flying at an insane AoA.
I can tell you that our union will never stand for this. This is the first step in phasing out pilots altogether and replacing us with computer programs. By blanking out the cockpit windows the passengers will become accustomed to never seeing the pilots. The next step is then to simply remove the pilots. Nobody will question it.
A computer could never fly a plane. It is too complex. Computers cannot even drive cars yet. They can't even operate the subway system without humans.
This is bad for pilots, bad for safety, bad for the public, bad for cockpit window manufacturers, the list would be endless if I could think of more items.
... by The Thunderbird's Fireflash
Cockpit detail: https://www.flickr.com/photos/...
What's that in the door of the cockpit... oh,yeah! A window. FAIL!
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I think it is quite a big problem for pilots to stare at LCD monitors for 10+ consecutive hours without having a window to look out to.
Are there at least windows behind the screens so that they can be moved out of the way in the event of a problem?
That would defeat the point of deleting the cockpit window, which is to save weight (aerospace glass is very heavy), simplify and strengthen the structure, eliminate a potential point of failure for cabin pressurization, and improve aerodynamics.
What is needed to increase your comfort level is redundancy -- a backup camera in case the primary is damaged by, say, a bird strike, and a backup power source in case the primary power source fails.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Remember that turkey that flew through a flock of geese and landed in the Hudson river? Us weekend warriors know that they just let their instruments fly the plane.
Given that is the case the display screens might as well show pretty scenery. Show a nice view over the mountains on a clear day rather than the ugly storm that is actually outside the aircraft. Or maybe just waves rolling in on a beach. Something soothing to pass the time. Airbus is not going to let the pilots actually control the plane anyway given that that often leads to disasters.
What language is this written in?
Screens on the outside with cameras in the cockpit.
If we are going to discuss the windows on an airplane, and the placement of the flight deck, then let's consider other alternatives to a windowless flight deck.
One thing that has crossed my mind before is why the pilot is on the top of the plane. Above the plane is just air, below is where the runway is always going to be. Why not place the flight deck low on the plane so the windows face down? That way when the plane is doing a nose up glide into the run way the pilot has a perfect view of the ground coming up to meet the plane.
Why have the flight deck on the front of the plane? If they pilot needs to look up then put them at the top. I mean the TOP, as in have the pilot seated on top of the tail in an all around glass bubble.
I believe there are a lot of things we could try to improve the pilots' field of view before we resort to cameras and displays. Large aircraft always have two people capable of flying the plane, do they have to sit side by side? Perhaps one could be seated near the top of the plane so the sky is in view, then the other below to optimize the view for landing. A big enough plane with a long enough route will have redundant crews, give them redundant flight decks. Put one up front and another in the back. I believe that if aircraft get big enough having two flight decks may become nearly a necessity.
Having an airplane without windows seems like an idea that may come to pass but I also think that we've got a lot of other ideas that we will and should try first.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
right on...I wonder what the pilots and navigators think they need...
in my mind its a user interface, geometry, and data analysis question...what is the best way to communicate the most data to the flight crew? the answer can't logically involve making the plane windowless in a failure...it deprives the pilot of too much information
IIRC even the JSF has HUD tech that is over a decade obsolete so I'm sure there's room for improvement
Thank you Dave Raggett
This is laughable...
1. An aircraft including a cockpit comprising a surface, referred to as viewing surface for piloting, giving at least one pilot a view of an outside scene comprising the environment of the aircraft extending forward of the aircraft, characterized in that at least part of said viewing surface for piloting is free of any glazed surface and is formed by display means for a digital image representing at least part of an outside scene comprising the environment of the aircraft extending forward of the aircraft.
2. An aircraft according to claim 1, characterized in that the cockpit lacks any glazed surfaces, and in that the entirety of the viewing surface for piloting is formed by the display means.
I'd be amazed if this gets passed, there's surely innumerable amounts of prior art. A teenage kid could have written this up (minus the legalese). If granted, however, it would have an immense value to Airbus for bullying their competitors. Can someone explain to me why we have this system?
Cockpit windows in airliners are tiny. You have maybe 20 cm of clearance between the control panels below and above the cockpit windows, so you have a very limited field of view.
This Airbus proposal isn't the first windowless cockpit, by the way.
British Aerospace proposed the P.125 VTOL fighter which had the pilot sitting in a windowless cockpit buried in the fuselage.
And Charles Lindbergh had no front view on his Atlantic flight: he had to rely on a periscope and his side windows.
Worst still is NOT reading what's on the subject and being so eager to criticize, I'll quote it for you since you missed the word 'oh you fly with no FRONT windows'
Instead of replacing the windows with screens, leave the windows and replace almost everything below them. All or a lot those controls on a plane could be put onto visual displays and have the cameras project the ground and surrounding area onto the areas between controls. This would be like a flight simulator on our PC's.
As long as you have some physical controls still available for wing level, altitude, speed, etc up above the windows, it should still be safe if the monitors go down.
I've watched all those Mayday episodes with airline crash analysis and one thing I've learned is that all power on a plane is usually provided by one engine. Lose that engine and your power goes out. They need to fix that and add a lot more redundancy before I'd ever trust them to replace a window.
Besides, anyone who has watched the end of ST2 TWOK can tell you why a big view screen is no match for a nice window. No nebula would have messed up a window's view!
Think of all those space capsules that don't have a windshield.
Every capsule had view-ports for navigation, at the insistence of the astronauts. Came in handy during Apollo 13 when they lost power for the guidance computer (and everything else.)
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
Let me bring up the subject of the entire story: "Airbus Patents Windowless Cockpit That Would Increase Pilots' Field of View". So what is the point in bringing up a plane as an example of a windowless cockpit when it clearly has cockpit windows?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
If they do get this accepted by the traveling public, it seems like it is just a short hop to locating the cockpit anywhere. The airlines corporate offices comes to mind. Heck, maybe your pilot will just work from home?
Last I checked, computers crash once in a while. I'd hate to be on that plane during takeoff or landing and have that happen.
The Spirit of St. Louis had no front windshield because of the placement of tanks. Lindbergh would yaw the plane to look out a side window when he wanted to look ahead. The plane was also equipped with a periscope for take-offs and landings, though it's not clear Lindbergh used it while in flight.
I'm talking about airplanes the size of an airplane this system was designed for.
I.e. It's an AIRBUS.
While you rant on about "single engine GA aircraft", "airport departure" and ILS and VOR conditions under which you WON'T attempt landing - though I clearly talk about LANDING AN AIRPLANE THE SIZE OF A 747.
You're straw-mening.
I say:
A 747 lands at 172-207 mph. That's about 276-333 kph. Or 76-92 meters per second.
Meaning that they need AT LEAST 100 meters of visibility in order to see the ground 1 second before touchdown.
To which you reply:
There is no "1 second" rule. And your 100m == 1 second puts the aircraft at 194 knots. That's faster than landing speed. That's more than twice what a single engine GA aircraft will be going.
So take your pick.
You are either an idiot who thinks that 747 is a "single engine GA aircraft", landing is same as taking off, and the process of landing is the same as NOT landing, and who has difficulty reading or remembering numbers (note the speeds listed and the speed that you claim I listed)...
OR you are trying to push your limited experience in one field as an appeal to authority argument against logic by setting up a straw man or few.
Which makes you a liar and an asshole.
All your "I fly air-o-plains" talk means squat. But nice of you to share that.
I could never on my own present so adequately how fundamentally wrong your understanding of the situation being discussed really is.
Nor how self-righteous and smug you are about it.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I'm talking about airplanes the size of an airplane this system was designed for. I.e. It's an AIRBUS.
You're talking about not being able to see out of windows when there is fog, rain, snow, or night. I hate to break this to you, but aircraft other than Airbus have windows, and the Airbus windows are not not as useless as you are claiming them to be. When you make patently stupid statements like "pilots will never be able to see the ground" because there is fog, you're not limiting yourself to just one kind of airplane. You made a blanket statement about pilots.
While you rant on about "single engine GA aircraft", "airport departure" and ILS and VOR conditions under which you WON'T attempt landing - though I clearly talk about LANDING AN AIRPLANE THE SIZE OF A 747.
And I hate to break up yet another ignorant rant, but the same rules for flight conditions apply to a 747. There are visbility rules for instrument approaches, and they aren't "10 meters", at least not for the vast majority of airports on this planet. I was even pretty specific in referring to a 747 when I pointed out that the category D visibility for a non-precision approach was 1 mile. So, had you bothered to read what I wrote instead of try to show how smart you are, you'd have seen I was also talking about 747s. As well as a very very very large number of other aircraft.
I also didn't talk about conditions where I won't attempt landing, I talked about federal regulations that apply to commercial operations, which I am not. So, you got it exactly backwards. When I say that ground visibility has to be at least 1/2 mile for a pilot to attempt the approach, I was talking not about MY limit (because, as I said, it isn't the limit I fly under) but the limit the 747 pilot flies under.
By the way, you first claimed you were talking about an Airbus, now you say you were talking about a 747. You do realize that Boeing makes the 747 and not Airbus, right?
You are either an idiot who thinks that 747 is a "single engine GA aircraft",
Or you are an idiot who cannot see a discussion about visibility and flight rules that apply to a very large number of aircraft and think that it might apply to a very large number of aircraft, INCLUDING your specific Airbus. Or 747. Whichever it is at the moment.
landing is same as taking off,
Where the hell did you get that from? Now I know you're making things up.
I could never on my own present so adequately how fundamentally wrong your understanding of the situation being discussed really is.
And you still haven't. All you have is insult and nonsense. You have no understanding of the weather condition known as "fog", since you seem to think it comes in only one style and density, yet you'll yap about how pilots won't be able to see the ground if it is foggy.
By the way, the landing speed according to Boeing for a 747 is not 194 knots (100m/s), it is a measly 150 or so (various versions have different speeds.)
And the fact that you have not yet admitted, but seem to have given up denying, is that flying an airplane is not all instruments. The landing part is (other than the cat III I mentioned) always visual. The instruments get the pilot to where he can see the runway. The rules DEMAND that he be able to see it. Otherwise he'll be stuck at 100 AGL. I cited the rule, can you debate it?
Wow... You really got your head so far up your ass that you REPEAT the same straw men you just got pointed out and called on? While adding some more...
So it's no longer just putting numbers in my mouth, ranting about irrelevant trivia and ignoring the points of conversation, it's distorting my words too...
I'm talking about airplanes the size of an airplane this system was designed for.
I.e. It's an AIRBUS.
By the way, you first claimed you were talking about an Airbus, now you say you were talking about a 747. You do realize that Boeing makes the 747 and not Airbus, right?
That... that makes no sense. It's too simple to pretend that you missed the meaning.
And you can't be able to spell words like "talking" and not be able to comprehend 4- and 2-letter words like "size", "of" and "an".
It's too lame to be a troll...
So you ARE insane!
Words get read but don't register properly cause you live in a delusional state of comprehension of the world around you.
Phew! Glad we got that out of the way.
I do wonder if you're actually allowed to fly planes, or is that just your delusion too?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
So you ARE insane!
Yes, you truly are the arrogant asshole I first thought you to be. You not only ignore the federal aviation regulations regarding minimum flight visibility for commercial operations, but the actual nature and variability of this monolithic "fog" you assume exists. You make numbers up from thin air (foggy air?) and try to prove something, which I thought was that "It's ALL on instruments." That's a direct quote. I've shown you that you are wrong about that claim by the simple fact that the regulations REQUIRE that the runway be visible prior to landing and that not seeing the runway means the pilot cannot legally land. (And I'll repeat the caveat that this excludes the rare cat III airport/aircraft/aircrew combination.) I cited the regulation. I've tried to instruct you on the standard operations during approaches at busy airports, where pilots are told "cleared for the visual" or "follow the company", which requires hand flying in visual conditions. I've shown that it is not ALL on instrument. That's all I needed to do to disprove a claim of ALL. Can you cite otherwise, or just insult?
You also made the ridiculous claim that "Pilots never get to see the ground if there is fog." That was trivially disprovable by personal experience. The only countering argument that you can manage is "you are insane". You seem unable to understand that a fog that has a visibility of the minimum for an approach will mean that the pilot will see the ground at higher than 1000 feet (1/6 of a mile) while he will not see the runway until he's 1/2 mile from it. He's seeing the ground. You say "never". I say "I've done it, been there." Once again, a single example refutes a claim of "never", even were there no other simple math to cover it. Do you believe there is some magic to fog that makes it thicker in the vertical than in the horizontal? You must, if you think pilots never see the ground when flying in fog.
And finally, your claim that "there is no light in the dark, rain, snow, fog... so windows would be useless" is just as patently absurd, as anyone who has driven a car at night can freely attest. It dark out. There is, according to you, no "light" and the windows are useless. Yet, millions of people drive at night by looking out those useless windows. They drive in the rain and snow. Flying an airplane is not significantly different in this regard. Pilots use city lights, stars, the moon, and especially the rotating beacon of the airport they are approaching, along with the approach and runway lighting systems, to fly their craft and land them safely, despite your claim that it being "dark" makes the windows "useless". And that has no dependence upon the size of the airplane. A 747, Airbus, 182, or even Skycatcher -- all have windows that pilots can see things through at night, in the rain, and even when it snows. (And again, I speak from this personal experience that you claim is irrelevant. It's only irrelevant because it proves you wrong.)
Now, I assume you have more pithy insults to use to deflect the truth, but I tire of dealing with you. I've only held on this long because it is fascinating to watch you hold on so firmly to your ignorance and even parade it about so proudly. And your last comment: "I do wonder if you're actually allowed to fly planes, or is that just your delusion too?" shows that you have never had any intention of a civil, adult conversation, since your only remaining defense of your ignorance is no more than "liar liar pants on fire".
Another clearly bogus patent.
Big time prior art in any of the pilot training simulator systems dating back into the early 1980's..
Put the flight crew in the cargo hold, in their own special compartment where they can never be threatened by terrorists and let first class have the picturesque view....
And if the shell is made from a clear material and they loose video feed from the exterior cameras the shell would become clear like windows. No issue at all with this. Welcome aboard the Enterprise my friends.