Cool simulator

[RAF74_SnakeEyes]

Had a work meet and greet thing to do at the Air and Space Museum in San Diego. They had this simulator there called maxflight. It was fun to bad the other guys I had driven there with wanted to go otherwise they would have had to kick me out of the place. The guy said it was $100,000 so a bit our of my price range. Here is a link to the one I was playing around in. http://www.maxflight.com/fs2000equipment.html

[RAF74_Buzzsaw]

Salute Snake

If you are look for something a little cheaper, I've shown this before, but here is a motion simulator you can build yourself out of PVC plastic piping or aluminum tube, or buy a prebuilt version for $2800.00.

http://www.acesim.com/chbc_flightsim-s.wmv

Here are some samples of what customers have built, including fully enclosed cockpit models:

http://www.acesim.com/ready.html

Here is the site which has the Pdf. plans for $15:

http://www.acesim.com/main.html

Here is the marketer who'll build it for you:

http://www.mydreamflyer.com/

[RAF74_Stew]

S! Snake

I "flew" in one when I visited the USS Midway in San Diego a few years ago. It was a real blast- much more motion than any other sim I had been in. Recall the sim was CFS2. I was with a bunch of business guys in town for a convention and their jaws dropped when I flew (there were external monitors for the crowd to watch). My sim-geek status was certified but it was a lot of fun.

Stew

[RAF74_SnakeEyes]

What I was flying was an f-18 from fs2004. I took one of the guys I work with and did some low level flight and he kept saying "we are going crash" and I would respond "I got this" needless to say we never crashed. A couple of the Canadian Snowbirds crew got in and did 5 minute long aileron rolls :eek: . His buddy didnt look to happy :D .

[RAF74_Winger]

Salute Chaps,

I remember having a tour around the Thales plant at Gatwick airport where they make the big full-motion simulators for Airbus pilot training plus a lot of other stuff. They don't go quite so far as this in terms of motion, but the attention to detail was absolutely astonishing. Absolutely every part inside the sim was taken from the same production runs as the real aircraft; yokes, rudder pedals, throttle quadrant, switch panels; you name it.

I think they were using 15 or 16 PCs to solve all the differential equations for the control forces, acceleration feedback, gust responses, landing gear bounce, etc. in real time and a further 4 or 5 to drive the motion platform and control actuators.

I recall that the graphics weren't too hot - not even close to IL2 levels (this was around 8 years ago), but the tactile and motion sensations could make you forget even that. The night-time scenarios, being less demanding graphically, were utterly convincing.

W.