On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 12:17 PM, Christopher G. Prince <ch...@cprince.com>wrote:
> Hi, > > We're working on a project to feed back information about airflow on > a wing to the pilots skin (tactile feedback). Our project web page is > here-- > http://www.d.umn.edu/~cprince/PubRes/FbF/<http://www.d.umn.edu/%7Ecprince/PubRes/FbF/> > Right now, we're pretty early in progress and working with simulated > wings. I've started using XPlane to provide a simulation of wing > airflow sensors-- by tapping into its simulation of lifting forces on > the aircraft wing. Can Flight Gear do something similar? Can I get an > array of data on lifting forces over the wing back from the > simulator, in real time? > > (I've looked through the flight gear manual some, and through the > flight model docs some and can't see what I'm looking for). Hi Chris, FlightGear includes a couple different approaches to modeling the physics of flight, but I don't think anything we have closely matches the x-plane approach. (Every approach has it's strengths and weaknesses, and the X-Plane approach is interesting as a very coarse grained virtual wind tunnel that can predict some things about how an airframe might fly, and some of the data that comes out of this approach could be interesting ... especially in your case. That said, the X-plane approach only takes you a certain distance down the path, and if you are trying to match the known performance numbers of a known airframe, you might have to learn a little voodoo to make that happen in x-plane.) I glanced through some of the information on your site and I like this idea of exploring tactile feedback for flying. In a past life I worked for with a human factors research group at UMN Twin Cities campus and we did some experiments with providing tactile feed back as a warning system for when you are drifting out of your lane, or approaching an upcoming corner too quickly. In our case we had a vibration system in the seat that could vibrate the left or right sides independently (for a lane warning) or both together for a "too fast" warning. We've also experimented with having the steering wheel give some force to push you back towards the center of your lane, and also with having the accelerator pedal push back on your foot if you are getting too close to the car ahead. So using tactile feedback like this as a warning system makes sense to me. Providing tactile feedback for the feeling of flight is more nebulous. I'm still trying to think that all through. It sounds like you will be using pressure sensors on the wing, so you need to figure out a system in the simulator that simulates the pressure that the sensors would see, not so much the forces. I have no idea if that's possible in FlightGear, but maybe some of our flight dynamics engineers will chime in if they have any ideas. If you want to measure force, then perhaps you could mount some accelerometers out on the wings? That might be easier to simulate (or estimate) in software. I know that JSBSim has the capability of reporting accelerations at some offset location on the airframe, but I don't know if it supports more than one offset accelerometer? I'm still trying to imagine how the tactile feedback will feel and how that will conceptually tie in with what the aircraft is doing. Would you try to make the air pressure on your individual arms match the air pressure on the wings? I suppose a pilot could get his head around that and learn what different phase of flight feel like. Good luck on your project, it sounds like fun! :-) Curt. -- Curtis Olson: http://baron.flightgear.org/~curt/<http://baron.flightgear.org/%7Ecurt/>
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