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Home-built 747 Simulator 177

Posted by timothy from the remember-flightgear-dot-org dept.
James Morris writes: "This is a cool hack: some guy is building a 747 simulator in his backyard." This is one of the most impressive even while in progress, but the other projects linked from this site set a tough standard.
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Home-built 747 Simulator More

Home-built 747 Simulator

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  • FBI visit (Score:3, Funny)

    by UnifiedTechs ( 100743 ) on Sunday May 26, 2002 @01:32AM (#3586260) Homepage
    Oh yeah, this guy can expect a visit from the FBI any day now!
    • What's he gonna do, practice crashing into an Outback steakhouse?
      • From the Australian Security Legislation Amendment (Terrorism) Bill 2002 before parliment:
        101.4 Possessing things connected with terrorist acts

        (1) A person commits an offence if

        (a) the person possesses a thing; and

        (b) the thing is connected with preparation for, the engagement of a person in, or assistance in a terrorist act.

        Penalty: Imprisonment for life.

        (2) Absolute liability applies to paragraph (1)(b).

        (3) A person commits an offence under subsection (1) even if the terrorist act does not occur.

        (4) Subsection (1) does not apply if the person proves that he or she was not reckless with respect to the circumstance in paragraph (1)(b).

        Note: A defendant bears a legal burden in relation to the matter in subsection (4) (see section 13.4).

        (5) Section 15.4 (extended geographical jurisdiction--category D) applies to an offence against subsection (1).

        That's just one subsection of a very draconian bill. I urge all Aussies to get a copy and read it. Looks like fun, doesn't it? Especially the bit about being guilty until you prove your innocence. Yes, it's not called the FBI in Australia. It's called ASIO [asio.gov.au] and if the legislation gets passed it'll be just as dangerous.

        Note: I don't think this guy has much to worry about though. It's the possibility that's frightening.

    • Yah leave it to the FBI to be out scooped by slashdot. :)
    • Hey you stole my joke...I was gonna say something about stopping him from building his terrorist training device...

    • Re:FBI visit (Score:2, Funny)

      by Fred_A ( 10934 )
      I had no idea that the overuse of the <BLINK> tag was a federal offense in the US.
      • Actually, it is.
        If anyone uses the tag any other web developer within a 50 mile radius is required by law to come over to their house and kick their ass.

        If it's on Slashdot it must be true.

  • dead in 60 seconds (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    *already slashed*

    Sydney, Australia

    UPDATED 15/04/2002

    WELCOME
    The approximate size of the simulator is 13ft wide x 11ft long and 9ft high.
    It will include every switch and panel in the 747-400
    Built to accept full motion and visuals at a later date.
    This is a Ten year project.

    6 years to go!

    Naturally it will be controlled in time by the one and only Precision Simulator

    by Aerowinx and Hardy Heinlin

    747 SIMULATOR MESSAGE BOARD

    PS1 747-400 & FS2000/98 RUNNING ON MY HOME SETUP

    PICTURES OF DESIGN

    CONSTRUCTION TIME TABLE

    FMC KEYBOARD

    PREVIOUS PICTURES

    THUMBNAILS All pictures so far

    LATEST PICTURES And NEWS 15/04/2002

    OTHER HOMEBUILT SIMULATORS

    LINKS TO OTHER SITES

    FLIGHT IN A REAL 747-400 SIMULATOR

    WORLD-FLIGHT AUSTRALIA IS A CHARITY EVENT TAKING PLACE IN NOVEMBER 2002

    Would you like to help?
    Simulator will be based in Sydney Australia
    If you have any skills or knowledge that you can share contact me.

    mailto:hyway@viper.net.au

    Perv - Skip - Next5 - Random - Next
    Add your site.

    If you have any comments or suggestions, please e-mail me hyway@viper.net.au

    Date last updated

    15-Apr-2002 08:26

    You are Visitor No:

  • Flight Sim (Score:1, Informative)

    by n4zgl ( 578195 )
    more links www.flightsim.com [flightsim.com]

  • perspective... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Guy In Bar: Yeah, so in my free time I'm building the city's largest collection of historical NFL material.
    Guy In Bar: Yeah, I'm doing something like that too -- I 'got a 747 simulator in my backyard, workin' on it for almost five years.
    Bartender: Sir, I think you've had a little too many. Shall I call a cab?

  • So... (Score:1, Redundant)

    by teslatug ( 543527 )
    Who's calling John Ashcroft?
  • I wonder if this would get the same praise if the 747-simiulator were being built in say, Islamabad instead of Sydney.
    • Glad?! You're not saying that all people in Islamabad are terrorsits, are you? Nor are you saying that people there have less rights than people anywhere in the world?
      Please stop this racist hysteria.
      • You're right. We shouldn't bother worrying at all, if we notice that someone in Islamabad has a 747 flight simulator.

        • Re:Glad it's in Sydney (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward
          As a matter of fact.. I'm sure they DO have one. I mean there are airplanes there right?
          • Not that it follows, exactly, that because they have an airport, that there are million dollar professional flight simulators there. They often train pilots elsewhere, mind you.

            But for the sake of the argument, assume they do have a few.

            You may not have noticed, but I was laying the sarcasm on there, rather thick. It should worry anyone with half a brain that they are where they are. I wonder how many citizens of Islamabad help the terrorists one way or another, and how high up they are before they stop aiding them? What, you think some janitor wouldn't feel obligated to let a few buddies into the building late at night, where they can practice for an hour unnoticed? Or hell, maybe even some airport official, in the middle of the day, so that it won't interfere with the 5 prayers.

            If you don't see it as a problem, then you aren't too bright.
            • I wonder how many citizens of Islamabad help the terrorists one way or another . . .

              Did you know that the IRA gets pretty much all of it's funding from America to blow up British people?

              Just a though.
              • Well, there is actually an effort underway to curb that, as much as is legal to do so.

                Then, there is the point that those who contribute the most money, tend to be immigrants, or at least were immigrants from the UK at one point. You sent them over here first, after all.

                Add to that that we don't hate British people, and that we're sympathetic about the problem. And we may have even helped from time to time with it, when possible.

                So yes, I know. As far as that goes, there are probaly muslim US citizens that gave money to alquaeda. They're still all assholes, imo (muslim terrorists and IRA). It'd bother me if there were IRA training grounds in this country too, even though they wouldn't blow us up.

                Nice troll though.
          • As a matter of fact.. I'm sure they DO have one. I mean there are airplanes there right?

            Then why would the terrorists of 9/11 have travelled to the United States to train on flight simulators there, rather than just going to Islamabad to train, where it is much less likely that anything foil their plans?

      • You're not saying that all people in Islamabad are terrorsits, are you? [...] Please stop this racist hysteria.

        it may be racist to say that all people in Islamabad are terrorists, but surely chance has something to say about the probability of any random person in Islamabad being a terrorist, versus the probability of any random person in Sydney being a terrorist.

        similarly, one could make a (perhaps even more striking) statement about the probability of any random terrorist coming from Islamabad, versus the probability of any random terrorist coming from Sydney.

        statistics are a poor substitute for hard facts, but they're the only one we've found so far.

      • I'll make a deal with you. When the Muslim nations stop teaching in elementary school that Americans should die a horrible death (as the news continually showed about 5 years ago), I'll stop worrying about whether or not they're going to kill me.

        It's not racism, its fear. If you've been feuding with a neighbor and he suddenly has a lawyer over for dinner every night for a week, what would be going through your head?

        Although, in all fairness, if a terrorist group wanted to build a flight sim, we'd never know about it.

  • already slashdotted (Score:5, Informative)

    by mansoft ( 371174 ) <zouave AT telefonica DOT net> on Sunday May 26, 2002 @01:43AM (#3586283) Homepage
    Google's cache r00lez [216.239.35.100]

  • I don't understand... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ByteHog ( 247706 ) <{chris} {at} {bytehog.com}> on Sunday May 26, 2002 @01:46AM (#3586290) Homepage
    What's with all the comments so far about this being used for terrorist training?? Geeze.. that's like saying "Hey I'm building a computer! The FBI better watch out, I might hack into the DOD mainframe!!"
  • I had a guy come in a few weeks ago building a simulator for some large airplane or other,and he was upgrading the system from CRT to flatpanel, we ended up helping him out of the store with 10k in flatpanels, and he said he'd let us test it out when he got it rigged up, (SCORE!) I had pictures of the setup, and it was pretty damn impressive, so I lost them, sorry all.

  • Everybody's doing it! (Score:4, Informative)

    by rjrjr ( 28310 ) <[rjrjr] [at] [pobox.com]> on Sunday May 26, 2002 @01:48AM (#3586293) Homepage
    Google/DMOZ has a whole category [google.com] for this guy and his peers. I especially liked Kev's cockpit [flightsim.com], a little How To guide.

  • Landing? (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by cybermage ( 112274 )
    When asked why his simulator lacked the ability to deploy landing gear, he replied "I don't really need it."

    "Hey Kev, Mr. bin Laden would like to know if he can come over and play"

  • Nice (Score:3, Funny)

    by qslack ( 239825 ) <qslack@pobox.cFREEBSDom minus bsd> on Sunday May 26, 2002 @01:55AM (#3586302) Homepage Journal
    If he ever wanted to build a web server stress simulator, he's got one...

  • not much on the page but is mirrored here (Score:4, Informative)

    by thogard ( 43403 ) on Sunday May 26, 2002 @02:03AM (#3586312) Homepage
    No use blowing some small Aussie ISP out of the water.

    mirror will be here for a few days [abnormal.com]
    • The thing bombed out while tring to suck Telstra's cache dry so it only works up to about the middle of the "Thumbprints" so that might be a good place to stop looking.

      Stats so far:
      bytes: 178,368,616
      my bandwidth cost: us$00.66447487
      Oz bandwidth cost: au$34.0211

      So a poorly rated followup (it was 2 till very
      recently) to a /. story can
      suck more bandwidth in 25 minutes than all of
      my paying customers in a month.

      Welcome to the Information Super Outback!
  • This sounds so Zen. What's the difference?
  • Leaked internal MS memo: "Note to Billg: Research surveys show a strong market for a Terrorist Flight Simulator. Make sure we build in software bugs, these customers WANT to see a 'blue screen of death to infidels'.

  • ...but I will. This guy is just looking for trouble!

    It'll be funny to see who contacts him first... the terrorists or the FBI...

    • Not that I don't find the running joke here amusing, but the truth is, the terrorists won't bother trying that again. It was a one shot (successful) deal. Only the FBI is stupid enough to waste alot of effort "preventing" that sort of thing.

      Likely, the terrorists will resort to something else, perhaps derailing an Amtrak (like it needs alot of help *LOL*).
      • I dunno about that. The destructive power of a commercial airliner is just too great in terms of kinetic energy + potential energy in fuel. It was highly effective and very dramatic. If i were a terrorist, I would be looking for the chance to do it again once security grew lax again. One might argue that the passengers would rise up against the attackers. A terrorist would then need to hijack a plane with fewer passengers or even better, a cargo plane.

        There's also a matter of the USAF being willing to shoot down hikacked planes. A terrorist would then have to crash near to the plane arrival or departure airport. This is quite possible if you consider metro airports, especiall Reagan Intl..

        • I can't argue with your reasoning, but intuitively it doesn't seem right. I'd bet any amount of money the feds will be worrying about this or something like it, and the terrorists will slip through to do something entirely different. Derailing certain trains, whether they are passenger or cargo could be just as devastating in terms of lives lost or damage. Same with ships... sinking an oil tanker in some big port would really screw things up.
          • I agree with you, but trains or ships don't have the power to destroy large symbolic buildings. Also, despite what the Exxon Valdez might have shown, sinking, or even damaging a large ship is harder than you might think. An airplane otoh, takes a certain degree of skill to NOT damage or destroy.

            As an aside, I read somewhere that the target of the 4th plane was the white house. Can you imagine the shit that would have hit the fan had that happened? I think the "Let's Roll" guy, whose name I shamefully can't remember, is more a hero than we at first apppreciate.

            • At this point it's not really necessary to damage large or symbolic structures (although it would be interesting to see what happens when a fully loaded, hijacked (pirated??) oil tanker would do to the golden gate bridge footings at full speed). Thats been done, now they could progress to a campaign to destroy the 'it can't happen here' attitude across the country. Not only is it logistically easier, its guarenteed to generate large amounts of panic.

              All one would need is a couple people (a team of 5-10 drivers would simplify things), some commercial explosives (easily available to regular joes in many states) some 10 day timers (trivial), and gas money. Load up your drivers each with about 30 or 40 small packages of explosive set to go off at the same time, and start off on cross-country drives. At each security-lax small or medium sized town, make a pit stop at a gas station, fast-food joint or overpass and leave a bomb somewhere unobtrusive. A week later when bombs go off simultaniously in 300 Anytown USA's, any remaining sense of security will be shattered.

              This kind of stuff would be very easy to pull off, and while I hesitate to post it publicly with our current law enforcment attitude toward security, its so obvious that any serious terrorist would undoubtedly concoct something even more henious. Heck, the majority of slashdot users could probably single-handidly design and execute an even more sophisticated attack (perhaps in conjunction with physical and cyber attacks on major internet trunks).

              Security is largely an illusion. An attacker would do well to attack the roots of the illusion.
  • Or even better, his simulator wasn't running off the same server as the web server.

  • The nose of an actual jet... (Score:5, Informative)

    by kabir ( 35200 ) on Sunday May 26, 2002 @02:14AM (#3586344)
    The guy at http://www.737simguy.com/ [737simguy.com] (linked off the site in the article) actually built his sim in the severed nose of a real airliner. Now that's dedication to realism.

    Must be expensive though...
  • there's a guy in the neighbor with a 767 simulator. on saturday afternoons he and the guy with the WTC simulator from the next block over are usually good for a few laughs.
  • A 747 in the backyard is pretty cool, but I'd much rather have the fighter jet [aol.com] with a beer holder [aol.com].

  • Picking up old aircraft (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 1984 ( 56406 ) on Sunday May 26, 2002 @02:30AM (#3586371)
    My brother was visiting British Aerospace some years back and they had a bunch of Lightnings (old British supersonic fighters -- yes, such things existed :-) sat on an apron. He asked what they were for and was told that they were trade-ins from a sale of Tornadoes (European supersonic fighterish bombers) to Saudi Arabia.

    He asked what was going to happen to them, and was told that they were for sale... for one pound each. The condition was that you had to take it away within a week if you bought one. Did they fly? "Well they flew them in here, but they've had the weapons deactivated and they've been sat there rotting a few years." Apparently an ex-BAe fitter who had worked on Lightnings was among the purchasers of the one-pound fighters, and had reworked it so he could, if so inclined, start the engine.

    And one other point: this 747 sim is acool story. It's not "Microsoft is shit", nor about software patents or geeks in society. Just some cool borderline-crazy stuff some guy is getting up to. Reminds me of Slashdot in 1997. When I was a lad.
    • Nice to see nobody mentioning "MS is shit" for a change.

      I mean, okay, MS is shit.. except their flight sim.

      For those that don't recall, MS Flight Sim predates just about everything else they make, including windows. Fligh Sim is a niche product... it's nice to see it not as bunged up as the rest of their stuff.

  • the pilotless planes everyone's talking about, supposed ot replace all human pilots

  • Better simulation software? (Score:3, Informative)

    by ThesQuid ( 86789 ) <a987NO@SPAMmac.com> on Sunday May 26, 2002 @02:45AM (#3586382) Journal
    It seems the Aerowinx software [aerowinx.com] he's planning to use is based on empirical data from thousands of 747 flights.
    Perhaps he should consider X-Plane [x-plane.com] instead. It derives it's aerodynamics from first principles, and is quite accurate in simulating things that haven't been actually done. You can even get FAA certification from using X-Plane [x-plane.com]. It's already got the software hooks to drive a motion platform.
    Plus you can hack the hell out of it. There's a large community of users with interesting mods.

    • Also see FlightGear [flightgear.org] for linux, SGI, Mac, and Windows.

      "The FlightGear flight simulator project is an open-source, multi-platform, cooperative flight simulator development project. Source code for the entire project is available and licensed under the GNU General Public License.

      The goal of the FlightGear project is to create a sophisticated flight simulator framework for use in research or academic environments, for the development and pursuit of other interesting flight simulation ideas, and as an end-user application. We are developing a sophisticated, open simulation framework that can be expanded and improved upon by anyone interested in contributing.

      There are many exciting possibilties for an open, free flight sim. We hope that this project will be interesting and useful to many people in many areas."
    • X-plane has a better flight model, for sure.

      As for FAA approval....

      Fidelity Flight Simulation has obtained FAA approval (documented here) to train pilots towards their COMMERCIAL CERTIFICATE, INSTRUMENT RATING, and AIRLINE TRANSPORT PILOT CERTIFICATE. This training is done in a full-motion simulator, using X-Plane 6.12 as the simulator software!

      That's a particular simulator in a particular instance of X-Plane, and it's for insturment ratings and such, not flying.

      You can hack the hell out of MS Flight Sim as well. There is a full SDK.

      ANd MS Flight Sim has more terrain data I Believe.
      • My father just purchased X-plane recently (last week). There is no way Flight SIm has more terrain, it MAY have more detailed terrain, but X-plane + Scenery has 90-100% of the world for terrain. And includes an editor to modify it if you want. (Note: the scenery portion is handled as an external project and many people around the world are updating the scenery to be more accurate where they fly, or live.).

        I am thoroughly impressed with the functionality and the attention to relevent detail in X-plane. And have to admire the developers intent.

        X-plane is inherently extensible too, supports UDP for updating/changing a large number of things so you can use multiple computers for interfacing with it.
        Microsoft hasn't a chance in the long run if X-plane continues to advance at it's current rate.
        • Perhaps it's the detail I meant. I know I could punch up my hometown in central British Columbia, and literally fly by sight, watching landmarks such as mountains and rivers.

          • Try flying outside of the key cities that Microsoft designates as important and you'll quickly realize their city databases aren't any better than anyone elses.

            They are all getting significantly better on each release though.
            • Somehow I don't think my little hometown was "important".

              This was not 'flying in the city'. It was flying all over the interior of the province by landmarks alone, mountains, rivers, valleys, etc.

  • Just to clarify, the FBI is a department within the US government. Australia is a country.
  • Reports just in:
    Osama bin Ladin is training all new potential Suicide Bombers in-house/cave, with his new home made 747 training simulator.
    When asked how he made it, he replied that he found full instructions on the Internet along side the directions for creating your own Nuke, and home made Chemical and Biological Warfare Kit!
  • Does anyone have a mirror? The reason is obvious.
  • I was building a "Grand theft auto 3" simulator, your honor. Honest.

  • Oh the possibilites (Score:3, Insightful)

    by galaga79 ( 307346 ) on Sunday May 26, 2002 @03:31AM (#3586430) Homepage
    Why limit yourself to an 747 simulator when you could build your own X-Wing cockpit, load up an old copy of LucasArt's X-Wing or the more recent X-Wing Alliance and experience the closest thing to destroying the Death Star. For the complete experience you could even dress up as an X-Wing pilot [partsofsw.com].

    Surprisingly no one seems to have done this already, at least according to a quick Google search I did beforehand. You could also do something similiar in terms of a Pod Racer like the arcade game by Sega that was around a few years ago, as there is that Pod Racing game which Lucas Arts put out.

  • See the history (Score:2, Informative)

    by JohnHegarty ( 453016 )
    If you want to see the history of this project , and a non slashdotted version of the side , have a look at http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.hyway.com.au/747/ 747.htm [archive.org]
  • So where is the DMCA and the Patriot Act arguing that this is a danger to society?
  • This is a cool hack: some guy is building a 747 simulator in his backyard.

    Is he a terrorist?
  • given what happened to the China Airlines
    747 yesterday. Or should I post a joke
    saying "does it include a random number generator
    sparking an explosion in the fuel tanks "?
  • mirror [rnicrosoft.net]
  • If the US Gov./FBI come over there, the Australians/British will tell them to f*ck off. Well - maybe not the British seeing as Tony is in love with Bush.. well maybe in fact, seeing as Bush dumped him for that Russian guy.. yeah, i think Tony's pretty pissed off at the moment. Anyway, it sure is a good thing that other countries have nukes too, otherwise the USA _would_ be rulers of the world, and making 747-simulators in your back-yard would be illegal everywhere.
  • I think this kind of thing is great - showing people that "multi-million dollar technology" can be emulated at home is always something I've been interested in. Again, this proves a little ingenuity is worth a lot more than money. I eagerly await the backyard battleship and tank simulators :).

  • Flight Sim Cockpits (Score:4, Informative)

    by cr@ckwhore ( 165454 ) on Sunday May 26, 2002 @07:53AM (#3586744) Homepage
    Flight Sim Cockpits are becoming a popular thing among FS junkies. I admit, I'm one of "them".

    Most of the sim cockpits are of large jets. Many flight simmers fly these things, including military jets, because they're fun and they'll never have the opportunity to fly one in real life. With today's computing power, one can build an incredibly realistic simulation.

    I recently started thinking about building a full scale 737 cockpit after purchasing the Dreamfleet 737-400 for simulation. (www.dreamfleet2000.com). The DF737 is the most realistic 737 simulation available for flight sim. I located some good cockpit building information, and even a source of replica panels.

    www.a-g-t.com has replica panels of an F-16, F-18, Airbus A320, Airbus A340, Boeing 737, Boeing 747, Boeing 777.

    A good source of information is www.projectmagenta.com. Project Magenta was started in the interest of making "Glass Cockpits". In a modern big jet, there aren't likely to be guages for the primary flight instruments. These have been replaced with computer screens. Because glass cockpits are real, and computer screens are easily available to simmers, new modern jets become easy to simulate with 3 or 4 computer monitors embedded beneath the simulated flightdeck. Projectmagenta.com has pics illustrating what I'm talking about.

    The only thing keeping me from building my 737 cockpit is money. I'm about to dump a bunch of money into a kit plane and go flying for real. Perhaps the 737 simulator will come afterward.

    Even with real flight, I'll stick around in flight sim (as many pilots do) because I love the big jets!
  • Hey, we all have our mishegoss. I decided to start a cooking show because I like to cook.

    That said, I can't really see doing this myself; it's far too much work. But the technical expertise involved makes this a very cool, if somewhat monomaniacal, toy. What's really interesting is the links; there are clearly plenty of people who like this idea. The only downside is that it's anything other than a weekend project (which is really about the limit of what it would be worth, construction-wise, for me to build one...) and that it's brutally expensive...

    /Brian

  • What about the terrorism aspect? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sean23007 ( 143364 ) on Sunday May 26, 2002 @08:25AM (#3586803) Homepage Journal
    Does this make anyone else think of September 11th and training to fly a commercial airliner? If he actually manages to get it working, the current administration may well send some goons over to check out the situation. This is also probably a pretty good way to get a really big FBI file on yourself.

    That's not to say that I don't think he should be allowed to do this, in fact I wish I had one of these things.
    • You paranoid freaks make it out like it's virtually impossible to learn to fly a 747.

      Guess what, if you want to take flight training for a 747, YOU CAN. Even if you wear a rag on your head. Even if you are a Muslim.

      This guy is in AUSTRALIA. The FBI has no bloody jurisdiction in Australia. Why should an Australian care if the FBI is interested in him?

      For that matter, the FBI deals in domestic matters. Perhaps you mean the CIA?
      • People who are not American citizens have had large FBI files. And I resent the implication that I am paranoid. I think it's great that he's building this, and was only pointing out that he should be careful lest he draw attention to himself that might possibly cause trouble with the local/national/international law enforcement.

  • Are you sure it's a 747? (Score:4, Funny)

    by BMonger ( 68213 ) on Sunday May 26, 2002 @08:27AM (#3586808)
    All I could seem to find was a 404 simulator...





    AH-HAHAHAHAHA! (Laughs since nobody else should)

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