On Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 10:03 PM, Bill Galbraith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
> Schweet. Details? Are those dedicated instruements, or a FG monitor
> behind a mask?
>
Hi Bill,
The instruments are built using a 2d flightgear panel displayed derived from
real photos of a Seneca panel. Displayed on an LCD monitor behind an sheet
metal cutout with plastic bezels. The knobs on the face in front of the LCD
are all functional and correctly placed. All 7 visual channels are running
the newest OSG version of FlightGear, being driven by the 8th machine that
interfaces to the cockpit hardware and displays the instrument panel. The
flight dynamics are purchased from a commercial company (running as a
separate application) and have all the documentation and support for
achieving FAA certification. So the particular simulator in the movie is
not FAA certified, but it is FAA certifiable should the customer ever want
to do that. They use their facility to train aerial water bombers in all
the communication and group strategy involved with water bombing forest
fires. They actually have 5 sims ... 2 light twins (as seen in the movie),
a single engine sim, and two helicopter sims (that I hope to install
flightgear on soon.) The helicopter sims have controls taken out of real
helicopters. I ran out of time to try the FlightGear helicopter dynamics on
their hardware this trip ... next trip ...
Right now they mostly run other software in their facility to do their
training, but high on my wish list would be things like:
- a forest fire MP model with fire and rising smoke that can grow and expand
and leave darkened areas in it's wake.
- OSG partical based retardant drops (that can be seen by other MP players.)
- The retardant needs to color the ground that it hits ... and this needs to
be visible to all players in the MP system. They drop retardant, not
suppressant. In other words, they aren't trying to put out the fire, they
are trying to box it in with suppressant and let it burn itself out. The
retardant will leave a "line" on the ground where it is dropped. The goal
then is to "paint" in the fire with an enclosing perimeter through several
drops. There are often several teams working together so they need to all
see the retardant that everyone else has previously dropped.
We probably could do most of this in flightgear between the OSG particle
system and the ability for MP models to share their submodel data ... or at
least share when a submodel is released so each system can compute it's
trajectory and impact point identically.
For what every it's worth, this facility trains pilots from several
different countries to fight forest fires ...
Regards,
Curt.
--
Curtis Olson: http://baron.flightgear.org/~curt/
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