[simpits-tech] FlightSafety visit, heli sim

[dabigboy at cox.net]

Thought I'd post a quick brief on my recent trip to FlightSafety. Last month, my wife and I went to Tucson, AZ to visit my dad, who is a FSI instructor. This center trains mostly for Learjets, though they also have a Challenger sim. And recently, they added an AS350 helicopter simulator (technically, just an FTD), which from what I'm told, was the first Level-7 approved heli FTD in the US (2009). We got to fly the Learjet 45 Level-D full-motion sim, as well as the new heli FTD (now THAT was something rather different!). Of course, such a post would be incomplete without copious pics, so here ya go.

Please pardon the poor quality on some of these pics, I only had a basic point-and-shoot camera.

The Frasca heli...
http://68.12.192.171:8080/pics/lear45sim/heli_front.JPG

Me up front, showing some more of the stunning visuals on this sim:
http://68.12.192.171:8080/pics/lear45sim/heli_panel.JPG

Guess what? All those "steam" gauges you see in there are actually just LCDs. Makes me feel a little better about using this method in my own sim. :) Actually, there are more "real" gauges in my low-budget homebrew desktop unit than in this rig.

One more heli pic showing some of the terrain detail....the resolution was actually not great, but it was very smoothly blended, to give actually a somewhat blurry look. The textures were pretty low-resolution, lots of blending. I'm not sure if all the blurriness was due to texture res, or if the res coming out of the projectors was actually not that great:

http://68.12.192.171:8080/pics/lear45sim/heli1.JPG


The visual system actually seemed to be quite simple in principle: eight projectors were aimed at a spherical screen covering 220* horizontal by 70* vertical. No special lenses, no collimating devices, no mirrors (except for a couple of projectors that had to be mounted backwards, presumably for logistical reasons, and bounced off small flat mirrors in front of their lenses). The tricky part, of course, would be the spherical correction and edge blending. In fact, when the sim "crashed", each projector would get a flat red tint to it, which allowed us to see each projector's "territory". Very interesting.

Yours truly in front of the Lear 45:
http://68.12.192.171:8080/pics/lear45sim/me_simfront.JPG

Ruth in front of the sim:
http://68.12.192.171:8080/pics/lear45sim/ruthie_simfront.JPG

Me and Dad in the sim room with the Lear 45 and an older 20-something Lear sim just visible on the right:
http://68.12.192.171:8080/pics/lear45sim/me_dad_simfront.JPG

Here's Dad and I in the cockpit:
http://68.12.192.171:8080/pics/lear45sim/me_and_dad_lear45.JPG

The only way to fly a Lear: khaki shorts and open-toe sandals!!!
http://68.12.192.171:8080/pics/lear45sim/lear45_center.JPG

My gorgeous wife in a gorgeous simulator......be still, my heart. :) Good view of the pilot's instruments here:
http://68.12.192.171:8080/pics/lear45sim/lear45_ruthie.JPG

Good view of the sim's instrument illuminated, and the new'ish visual system - this is pretty much a big-boy version of Gene's collimated system, in fact I think it even uses the same Mylar material:
http://68.12.192.171:8080/pics/lear45sim/lear45_me.JPG

Here's a nice shot of the IOS on the sim. You'll note a lack of physical inerfaces like keyboards or button panels, this is because this sim utilizes a touchscreen:
http://68.12.192.171:8080/pics/lear45sim/lear45_ios.JPG

My wife took a turn in the left seat and had a great time, we even pulled off a landing together. I gotta say, flying with her in this machine was a blast, I really enjoyed running some of the aircraft systems and talking her through things occasionally. One of these days I've got to finish up that CFI ticket.

http://68.12.192.171:8080/pics/lear45sim/lear45_me_ruthie.JPG


The few times I've been here, I always come away with some new idea or insight to apply to my own sim project. While it always leaves me craving more realism and raising my goals for my sim, I have to say this: considering the incredible expense, R&D, programming, and raw man-power that goes into developing and maintaining beasts like these, a lot of the stuff I'm seeing folks build in their own garages is just simply amazing.

It is with renewed effort and inspiration that I attack my sim once again! Stay tuned for details on converting an old Apollo 612b Loran to a generic aviation GPS for X-Plane. :)

Matt