I was there with ATC flight simulators to demo their ATC-610 upgrade package which turns their old 100% analog ATC-610 into a new, modern digital flight simulator using FG as the visual system, and the core software infrastructure, along with proprietary software for the flight dynamics and instructor station and their cockpit hardware. The new system is FAA Level 3 FTD certifiable which is a lot tougher to get than PC-ATD certification, and allows you to log more hours towards the different ratings.
The expo was 3 days long and there were a ton of people each day. Our booth was generally a mob scene, often with several people waiting a turn to fly. Interestingly because this was largly a "pilot" convention, many people didn't want to fly and submit to the scrutiny and smart alec commets of the "audience." But we got enough takers to keep the sim busy. :-) Overwhelmingly the response to our sim (and FlightGear) was very positive. We had endless people sit down and fly the simulator. Over the course of the 3 days we continuously repositioned the sim in new locations and situations, continually changed weather and other conditions, had people crash into the ground, etc. etc. I was very please to see our software ran rock solid the entire time. We just fired up the sim at the beginning of the day and left it run until they kicked us out in the evening ... it was rock solid through everything we through at it. I was very pleased with the results of this "stress test".
Common questions and comments (beyond how much does the whole thing cost) were:
Is that running MSFS? (or what software are you running?)
Are those real gauges? (we are using photo-based textures to draw virtual instruments on an LCD display behind a panel cutout. Many people came and left thinking they were real gauges. We even had one guy come by and comment to his buddy, "Oh, they are using those gauges from XYZ company." :-)
People were impressed with the smoothness of the panel and the modeling of the different systems and built in sensor errors.
People were also impressed with the time of day modeling and day/night/dusk effects.
We had some people stop by that use simulators to train pilots to transition from IFR in minimums to visual flying and *very* carefully examined how much of the approach lighting system was actually visible at specific visibility distances and at specific points of the approach and seemed to think we were right on with those.
We did a lot of demoing in the SFO area and people really liked the building and bridge and other landmark models.
I ran into Robin Peel of airport and navaid DB fame. There was a guy standing there asking if we used FG for any of our software, he said something about nav databases, I looked at his name tag which read "Robin", he looked at my name tag, and we had one of those "aha!" type moments. :-) The next day he released new nav/apt data.
John Wojnaroski stopped by and it was good to finally meet him. I went out to his place today in LA to see the 747 sim he is building in his living room.
Alex and Trisha Perry stopped by the last day and we really appreciated their insistance on sticking around after the show to chip in on some of the take down and clean up.
We were near the Elite booth (who showed up with their igate product) and back to back with the Precision Flight Controls booth. It was interesting to compare our sim to our nearest "competitors". It was also interesting to see them come check out our stuff and watch their competitive/defensive mechanism kick in. :-) Like anything, everyone has their strength's and weaknesses and their best target audience, but it was very interesting to compare and see where each of us set the bar in various areas.
A lot of people asked about GPS modeling which we (and FlightGear) really don't do a good job of yet. I know that Roy has started to work on some gps internals, but it would be cool someday to be able to mimic in flightgear the sorts of gps units people are putting in airplanes these days ... such as the garmin 430/530.
Another thing that a *lot* of people asked about was glass cockpits. John W. has done some really good work on this front for his 747 project, but it is kind of isolated and specific to his system. So this is another area where there is a lot of interest, but FG is a bit weak.
Overall we had a really good show and FG performed spectacularly. Collectively I think we are doing some really good work that compares very well with people that are doing this full time as their primary business. And in a few areas we are totally kicking their butts which is also kind of fun to see. :-)
Best regards,
Curt.
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Curtis Olson http://www.flightgear.org/~curt HumanFIRST Program http://www.humanfirst.umn.edu/
FlightGear Project http://www.flightgear.org
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