[simpits-tech] Interesting "big sim" tidbit............

[dabigboy at cox.net]

I was chatting with my dad the other day, who is an instructor at FlightSafety. His facility has been updating a number of their sims, and have a few fairly new sims in place. A couple years ago they did a major update on their Learjet 20-series sims....my dad informed me that now instead of a bunch of big ol' mainframes, the 20-series sim pretty much has a huge wad of wire bundles that just plug into expansion cards on a little PC or two (not surprising, considering the relative simplicity of this sim compared to its brethren).

So the other day, I asked him if he knew anything of the software or operating systems FlightSafety is using. He replied "I don't know, but I keep seeing the Redhat logo pop up on screens in the sim computer room." It would appear that FlightSafety is running their sims on Linux. :)

Now I don't know to what extent Linux pervades.....I am reasonably certain that the Vital visual systems, for instance, use some proprietary OS (though I would not be surprised if it's Unix-based).

Having been 100% Linux-based on my sim since its initial design phase, I can tell you it makes a wonderfully simple, stable, and flexible platform for doing a serious, multi-computer/networked flight simulator. It's also an ideal programming/development platform, if you're rolling your own code.

Matt