On Fri, Jul 1, 2011 at 1:23 AM, Torsten Dreyer <tors...@t3r.de> wrote:
> Hell, No!
> Isn't buying a complete plug'n play panel contrary to the spirit of an
> open-source project? Despite the fact that it it goes way beyond the
> limits of our budget, our own tool fgpanel is able to deliver convincing
> results for the gauges.
> At LinuxTag and FSWeekend, we were able to fool many visitors with our
> setup and some still did not believe what they saw untilt they actuallty
> touched the screen.
>
I'll back up Torsten on this! There's a sim company (ATC Flight Sim) in
California that I've done some work for over the years. They use FlightGear
as their software core (and have achieved FAA certification for their sim by
the way ... which means FlightGear is FAA certified or is FAA certifiable
depending on how carefully the marketing guys want to word things ... other
sims like X-Plane perhaps are a little sloppy with how they refer to their
own sim with respect to FAA certification).
ATC Flight Sim does exactly what Torsten does ... draw the
instrument gauges in 2D on an LCD display and then put a flat panel over the
top with holes cut out for the instruments to show through. ATC goes a step
further and machines bezels to go around the perimeter of the openings and
even has knobs right on the panel where they are supposed to be.
We took their simulator to an AOPA convention one year and it was quite
entertaining to listen to comments as people walked up. Guys would approach
and quite confidently say ... "Oh, they are using Company ABC's gauges."
People would sit down, fly for 10 minutes, and afterwards not believe us
when we told them the gauges were all drawn with computer graphics on an LCD
screen. We had to let some people touch the screen before they'd believe us
and even then I'm not sure.
Lots of advantages to using an LCD screen: no calibration or adjustment,
instant startup, no need to unwind the altimeter for 60 seconds to start the
next session on the ground. No rats nest of wires behind the panel, no need
for a boatload of little embedded cpu's to drive all the PWM out signals.
Another issue is the radio stack (which is unfortunately missing mostly
> in our Cessna). I'm looking for a used, preferrably nonfunctional stack
> of King (kx155/165 etc.) radios, so I can use the original controls and
> replace the electronics by some microcontroller driven hardware.
Yeah, that's a harder one. ATC actually designed their own stack with very
realistic looking seven segment displays, knobs, and panels. They did all
the backend hardware and computer interface too.
Doing this on a second display with computer graphics would be an option,
but the knobs would be in the wrong place and it just wouldn't be nearly as
convincing or nice as dedicated hardware. (Please ignore how I start this
message praising 2d graphics on an LCD screen and then finish the message
praising dedicated hardware.) :-)
Looking forward to seeing what you guys come up with.
Curt.
--
Curtis Olson:
http://www.atiak.com - http://aem.umn.edu/~uav/
http://www.flightgear.org - http://gallinazo.flightgear.org
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