Slashdot Mirror
Learning To Fly, With a Full-Size Cockpit Simulator
Make Zine features the story of Aidan Fay, a 17-year-old San Diego student who has constructed a full-size Cessna 172 cockpit simulator in his bedroom, controlled by Arduinos and using scavenged game-controller parts. Because the display Fay is using is an Oculus Rift headset, the visual similarity to an actual plane's interior (not to mention the view) isn't as great as some simulators', but the hardware makes it nonetheless more realistic for a headset-wearing pilot than some simulators that might look prettier: he's got actual rudder pedals, and a force-feedback system on a yoke (also real). Fay's interest is more than as a flight simulator enthusiast, though: he's built this system primarily as an educational tool, as he works to get around a medical problem that's delayed his quest for a pilot's license.
All this knowledge is suspicious. Probably a terrorist.
Hobbyists have been building home cockpits for years now. I don't know why this is suddenly groundbreaking news. Anyone with about $5000 and a lot of free time can do this.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
I can assure you there are plenty of people out there who own Cessna 172s (the plane this simulator replicates) that dont even HAVE an autopilot function.
For whatever reason anything that gets done using one of those is somehow "news". Doesn't matter if it is the same sort of thing does all the time, if you use a Rift to do it that somehow makes it newsworthy. Most likely because Facebook hypes it.
I work an aerospace company in simulation and it's taken us $500k to build pretty much the same thing as this kid for no other reason but inefficiency. We suck so bad, why do I work here?
There are other reasons. One of them is accuracy- you need your commercial simulator to operate the faux control surfaces with the exact same positioning, speed, resisting pressure, and variations thereof in all different conditions to make the simulator worthwhile to the commercial customer.
When I was in junior high school we had a yoke thing for the Macintosh LCII that interfaced to the mouse to control the software yoke in Microsoft Flight Simulator. It was crappy and was probably about as realistic as its pricepoint could justify. It got out of calibration extremely easily.
This simulator sounds like the halfway point. Much better than the crappy toy, but not quite as realistic or accurate as the commercial product.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
When you build this on your own, there is no need to explain every step in the way to someone else, give regular demos, document, and process input and reviews from many sources. Besides, everyone involved needs to get paid, and they work only 40 hours a week max where this kid can pull 100 hours a week for free if he's dedicated. 500k may even be cheap for a one off.
This may have changed in the 20 years since I knew it to be a factoid. But in the world of simulators there were classes. I forget how they classed but let's assume that 1 is pretty much the instructor sitting behind you in a chair while you both made brruuum brrrumm noises and class 4 is one that moves and carefully simulates a plane.
Well for airline pilots who couldn't exactly go out in the 747 and so spins and stalls the class 4 simulator was legally considered to be flying.
Thus, in theory, a student could start on an airline simulator and get their private pilot's licence without ever leaving the ground. Maybe the DOT (at the time in Canada) might have insisted that the flight test be taken in a real plane. So that would be the first time they actually took off.
But quite possibly, if the DOT cooperated, someone could go from non-pilot to airline pilot without ever leaving the ground. Then they could build up a pile of hours until they qualified to be the pilot in command or Captain. Thus it might have been possible for that person to just walk into the cockpit pick up the mike and say, "This is Captain EOC and I will be your pilot today. We will be flying at an altitude of 32,000 feet for a flight time of 6 hours. I thank you for flying Oceanic Airways and by the way you might be interested to know that this is not only my first time flying a real airplane but amazingly is the first time I have actually ever been in an airplane."
Where it could get weird is that during a normal flight test you must have things like a first aid kit onboard, have checked the oil, done a walkaround, etc. So I guess you could have a first aid kid, check the hydraulic fluids, and walk around the room that contains the flight simulator.
Well, after my last flying experience in the US . . .
I can assure you there are plenty of people out there who own Cessna 172s (the plane this simulator replicates) that dont even HAVE an autopilot function.
I can assure you there are plenty of people out there who own Cessna 172s (the plane this simulator replicates) that dont even HAVE a licensed pilot behind the throttle.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Anyone have a mirror for this site - the images aren't loading (perhaps due to the slashdot effect?).
Reading about it, it's impressive what he accomplished. It would be nice to see it, though.
I wonder if he'll sell it and teach me how to use it - load new maps, maybe use real time data, etc... That looks like a game I'd finally be interested in playing. It needn't be 100% accurate for me - just something 'close enough' to keep me occupied, learning, and entertained. It'd be awesome to play with - I presume. I wonder how much he'd want for it? I'd also need to be able to swap in new parts easily. Hopefully it does stuff like let you land on dirt runways, even wide enough highways, etc... It'd be fun to have your own environment or even real time data.
Something like this makes me think that VR might be fun for me. I've not played any game, with any seriousness, since Fallout 2. I've bought some flight sims but I just can't get immersed in them. I don't like city sims because they're not realistic. So, yeah... Something like this seems to be nice. He probably won't sell it, though. Heh... Maybe I can ship him parts and money and he can build me one. :D
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
FTA, not sure what his medical condition is that's holding him up, but he may be able to get a glider pilots license instead. The medical requirements are not as stringent. As opposed to a simulator, glider flying would teach good stick and rudder skills, energy management, reading weather conditions, and sound decision making. On top of that, soaring is a great hobby.
There are other reasons. One of them is accuracy- you need your commercial simulator to operate the faux control surfaces with the exact same positioning, speed, resisting pressure, and variations thereof in all different conditions to make the simulator worthwhile to the commercial customer.
Well, if you are an aerospace manufacturer you just take the panels and all the knobs/dials/sliders/pedals etc. from the production line, just add force feedback where necessary. If that was $500k to create an accurate simulator - that is, software that calculates the flight state given inputs and outputs that doesn't seem unlikely. If it's $500k for the actual hardware that's crazy, considering the whole plane costs something like $300k off the assembly line and you can take away 98%, add a bit of force feedback and an Occulus Rift. That said, they might think the only people that care for perfect accuracy are flight schools and there's not going to be many sales, so the simulator is really $5k hardware and $495k for making a simulation they promise is exactly like flying the real thing.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
That said, they might think the only people that care for perfect accuracy are flight schools
They'd be wrong. Everyone cares about more accuracy. They just don't care enough to shell out five grand. If they gamified their engine they could monetize it by selling it to the masses... as a game.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
As someone who was in similar boots (doing something as part of a hobby project and at work, not at the same time but still...), I think I can explain this.
When working for yourself, you set the specs. And as with everything in the industry, this is the usual 80/20 game (though often more a 90/10 game): 90% of the work take 10% of the resources. The other 10% take 90%.
And when you work for yourself, you stick with the 90%.
There is no need to redo something 10 times because it's off by a fraction of an inch. It's good enough. There is no need to replace the plywood mockup with stainless steel. You can still do that should for some odd reason the plywood crack, even though you noticed in the tests that the steel casing is by no means necessary since there is no force ever going to get to it.
Then there's the areas that tend to be expensive that you can simply cut entirely in your private project, or that are at the very least entirely up to you. Security. Safety. Comfort. That guy here is using a lawn chair as the pilot's seat. Try that in your commercial simulator!
And finally in a private project you do not pay for the most expensive part of the bill in a commercial project: Work hours. Do you think his project would still be affordable if you only put 20 bucks on every hour he spent working on it? Private projects tend to be VERY heavy in time because you usually have little in the form of money available, while commercial projects usually try to go the opposite route because time IS what costs the most.
No commercial project could ever beat a private one on cost. No chance.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Of all the things you can find on Kijiji / Craigslist... here's a fancy 747 Simulator including a few Boeing parts - but not the ones that get you in the air ;) . Built for a TV show???
http://www.kijiji.ca/v-desktop-computers/edmonton/flight-simulator-boeing-737-everyone-can-fly/1108118705
Coming down is easy. It's the ground that's hard.
I don't think that it's entirely inaccurate to think of this in terms of the Enigma and the various bomba/bombe machines built to break it, when thinking of complexity and cost of a simulator. The original machine has to simply function in its environment as it naturally would, while the simulator must not only provide the function of the original machine, but of the environment itself. Obviously there are tradeoffs in how much environment it will attempt to recreate, but either way, the task of designing a truly faithful simulator that works correctly with all manner of environmental variables is not an easy or inexpensive task. It is not as simple as taking an off-the-shelf video game and using different inputs from custom-built pedals, rudders, throttles, and the like.
Another thing to consider is the cost of goods based on quality or luxury. Consider an exponential curve. Assign quality to the X axis and cost to the Y axis. For the early portion of the curve, a large increase in quality is achieved through a small increase in cost. Slowly the cost rate increases relative to quality, and soon fairly significant cost increases are associated with a reduced increase in the rate of quality. Eventually massive cost increases become associated with adding the smallest iota of additional quality. That last portion of the curve described is where commercial simulators that must mimic real machines in real conditions sit. The calibration of the controls, the accounting for all conceivable environmental conditions, and all of the extensive testing, program tweaking, verification, and documentation are what make it expensive. It's not the hardware, that's relatively cheap and can be sourced from any of a number of aircraft junkyards for less than the cost of a cheap used car; it's all the work that goes into making it behave correctly.
The quality/cost curve is why I don't usually pursue luxury goods. There's not usually enough quality gains to justify the added expense to me over a very decently built utilitarian version of the same kind of product. For the few times that I do pursue the luxury item it's either because I've found a deal that is less expensive than it should be or because I've chosen to indulge.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Are you sure he didn't just take a fully assembled cockpit,
pry it out of a working Cessna, put it in his bedroom,
and claim that it was one of his precocious "inventions"?
When is he going to be invited to visit MIT and the White House?
People are pretty good at abstracting from a simple display to the real thing. There is a short period when learning to fly when working the actual controls has to be mastered, and an accurate simulator would be helpful. But soon that becomes second nature and the real learning begins.
Most of the time is learning procedures, navigation, etc. And that can be done on a very ordinary simulator.
Simers in the DCS http://www.digitalcombatsimula... and xplane http://www.x-plane.com/desktop... community have been using the rift since day 1. With home simpit builds that put this "news worthy pit to shame.