SIMULATOR TRAINING: HOW IMPORTANT IS MOTION?

[rgrazian]

Cool article on AVweb...

http://www.avweb.com/news/features/flig ... 174-1.html

[Keith Smith]

And yet, the sims that most primary students fly with have no motion...while the sims used by airline pilots for recurrent training MUST have motion. *face palm*

[rgrazian]

indeed....

[Daddy O]

Full motion is expensive and overated. One of the lessons you get in flight school is where the instructor has you put your hood down all the way so even your instruments are obscured. He gives the trim tab a spin, and tells you to keep the plane level just by the feel of the plane.

Every student does this exercise thinking they are going to be the one savant that will get it perfect. But when you finally lift the hood, the plane is approaching a stall with a steep nose-high roll to the left. The lesson is to never fly the plane by the seat of your pants. Use your instruments, believe your instruments.

Full motion is really cool, its best application is acceleration and deceleration. I could see a single axis system to give you the sensation of a climbout, or the sensation of dropping gear and flaps. It would keep the expense down.

My personal goal is to build a Bumpy Box. Essentially a system that uses solenoids and a spring carriage to give the driver that feeling of rough air. Flying in small planes is similar to riding in a car in that there are continual bumps and bounces. Air roils, changes direction, and rises thermally in relationship to the ground below. A Bouncy Box would give you those jolts and jumps. The airborne potholes. The expense would be significantly less than full motion or even single axis motion.

[Vincent Meier]

You should feel my ButtKicker kick in when I put the landing gear down or up on the Baron 58. You would swear that they were right underneath you!!

[Daddy O]

My thumper chair is great when you get hit by flack or birds. You feel it. Mostly you feel the engine. But those are sonically powered.

I would like to build something that takes the output from Xplanes and feeds it into the bumpy box so the bumps fit the ride. With Xplanes ability to output to specific addresses or ports, It'd just take a little software, a control board, and the hardware (solenoids and power supply).

The only problem is I wouldneed a much lighter simulator. My 2 seater is already pretty damned heavy, suspending it in a carriage with heavy springs would only add to the weight.