Interesting post by John Denker... While I have no real comment about the Airbus issue (other than to say that is was a great job of piloting a stricken aircraft), I can comment on the status of a project to get Flight Gear FAA-certified.
As several of you may know, four of us are working on a project to use FG and obtain FAA Certification for it as an Advanced Aircraft Training device (AATD), suitable for 20 hours of credit towards meeting the FAA Instrument Pilot requirements. We have an ex-NASA systems architect (who has had an integral role in the design and development of the Space Shuttle ground launch system), and another fellow who has been writing printer drivers for many years, as our main programmer/developers. Another member has been a CFII for 30+ years and has thousands of hours in general aviation aircraft of all sizes--including a substantial amount of time giving dual instruction. I hold both CFII and Aircraft & Powerplant ratings, and have taken several basic engineering courses--and am currently pursuing a degree in Computer Science. I have a few thousand hours as a pilot, including about a thousand hours giving flight instruction (most as an instrument instructor). The other CFII and myself have worked with Elite Simulations Solutions (www.flyelite.com) for several years, as unpaid beta-testers and general all-around friends to the folks in Florida (US headquarters). As their software is developed in Switzerland and is somewhat outdated, we currently have their support with hardware interface of Flight Gear to their hardware--and as a matter of fact, I hope to be flying FG with a full set of hardware this week. Our developers have written drivers for the hardware, and at this point I am working to configure two computers to run FG with external visuals in my basement studio. Once that is complete, then it will be time to focus all attention on validation of the flight model for the aircraft we are going to deploy on. I can probably post pictures and possibly video of the process if anyone is interested. So while we intend to use FG as a platform for a product release, the real focus will be on scenario-based training...both for the VFR (with a Light Sport Aircraft), and for the IFR student pilots. At this point we have not yet made the decision as to which emulation to focus on first, but my gut feeling is that it will be the LSA, as (according to market research) this is a market that is sorely lacking in the US. And while the LSA emulation will not necessarily require FAA Certification, the IFR trainer we develop will certainly need this. Thus we plan to develop both products to the same set of standards. For the three years that I have been involved with FG, I am simply amazed at the capabilities of the application--and equally amazed at how little attention has been devoted to the training opportunities that are being missed. I realize that it takes the right team to make it go, and hopefully we will be that team. But in hundreds of hours of discussion on the IRC channel, few people have shown any appreciable attention in the capabilities of FG as an actual training tool! Our team owes a big debt of gratitude to several of the IRC channel folks--Jester and Ron Jenson are two that immediately come to mind, but there are others as well. And while we intend to market our product commercially, please be assured that we have every intention of sharing much of the development under the guidelines spelled out by the GPL. Of course there will be proprietary components running alongside FG (simply to fulfill the criteria spelled out by the FAA for AATDs), but there will be significant developments to be shared over the next few years. One thing that immediately comes to mind are better sound files of the various aircraft. So with any luck, we hope to be able to have a product ready to display at Oshkosh this year--although it will likely not have FAA Certification by that time, given that it takes them months to evaluate and then formally approve a new PC-based Aircraft Training Device. But based upon the hundreds of hours of experience I have gotten with FG over the past few years, I expect nothing short of full certification; eventually for several different aircraft. And after flying just about every certified PCATD available in the market today, I can honestly tell you all that I think FG is incredibly competitive with the best of them. The capabilities are simply astounding, and we hope to bring the FG development team some formal recognition from the flight training industry. TB ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This SF.net email is sponsored by: SourcForge Community SourceForge wants to tell your story. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sf-spreadtheword _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
