VR Airplane Deicer Simulator | Hacker News Reader

VR Airplane Deicer Simulator

globalgroundsupport.com

123 pointszamnos66 comments

Deicing fluid is expensive, $24/gallon or more, and an airliner might a few hundred gallons or more to deice. Also, when deicing is needed, it's fair to say _lots of airplanes_ are in contention for a limited amount of deicing equipment leading to costly delays which can compound and cause system-wide consequences. Suffice to say, any improvements to deicing aircraft quicker and more efficiently certainly has strong economic incentive.

If buying this software + some oculuses results in even a couple of minutes faster deicing or a few gallons of fluid saved on each airplane this would be an easy sell to airport FBOs.

The difficult part is in training. Training in proper conditions is really hard because when those conditions are present, it's all hands on deck and the instructors can't be instructing because they're out actually deicing planes. So there's a bottleneck for new deicers to come on board. Plus the cost of the fluid (and the highly specialized vehicles), like you mentioned. The use case is a bit more clear compared to for welding, when anyone can just pick one up from Harbor Freight for < $150.

I deiced airplanes at newark airport during college.

The deicing company just grabbed anyone they can practically off the streets. Training was 4 hours on a saturday in the fall. In the winter, folks would slam into planes all the time and someone would have to come out and look at it and make sure it was ok.

There were no "instructors". At the time, the 3 main airports around NYC was the same group of people so it wasnt just EWR. Its alot more refined now, (this was 15-20 years ago) but from what I hear, its not much better.

How was the pay?

I do it now. $20 / hour here. Depends on location. Pay is a slight premium above McDonald’s but not much.

Yea, back in ~2004 it was I think $16 the first year, and if you were good, $18 bucks after the second year. If you did it for > 5 years you became something like a supervisor.

  > The difficult part is in training. Training in proper conditions is really hard because when those conditions are present, it's all hands on deck and the instructors can't be instructing because they're out actually deicing planes.

I've never seen it this way. In the US military, de-icing duty falls on a minimally-trained E-1/E-2. We get about an hour or two training that includes some grave warnings.

While it's inculcated in you from day one not to kill aircrews or crash planes, about the only de-icing training you get is to make sure there's no residual ice on the wings and especially it's moving surfaces (eg. flaps).

Source: I spent countless hours de-icing large military aircraft as a one-striper, in an open bucket, in blizzards. It's an experience.

> We get about an hour or two training that includes some grave warnings.

Can you share examples of those warnings?

Not the person you’re replying to, but a little common sense would imply warnings along the line of “if you don’t do this properly, a crew of innocent people fall out of the sky and fucking die whilst screaming all the way down”

Roughly: “If you don’t do a thorough job, you will kill the flight crew and they will not make it home to their families.

If the first part doesn’t bother you, you’ll also be court martialed and in a brig for a long, long time.”

Did any of your training focus on controlling cost the way a commercial airport would?

No, quite the contrary. The emphasis was “go hog wild, do a good job”. No mention of budgets or saving money ever.

That and the nature of the workers’ relationships to the employer are the meaningful differences.

Clueless question: couldn't they put up a mock-up of a plane (or several of different shapes and sizes) on a field, and use a cheaper liquid with similar properties, for the training purposes? Maybe The last thing would be the limit of needing to wait for cold weather to train new sprayers.

The parent poster makes training sound a lot more complicated than it really is. I de-ice planes currently. The training was about an hour in the classroom, 20 minutes of how the truck works and then a trainer in the headset the first couple (live-actual) planes you do.

> $24/gallon or more

Is that what the airport pays for fresh stuff or what the airline pays?

I understand it that bigger airports with snowier weather will recycle it. Not that they can recapture it all...

There was a guy at where I worked that would pump it from the deicing truck into the fluid recycling truck when no one was looking. He owned the recycling truck and also worked in the deicing operation (this was jersey...)

Eventually he got busted.

Sounds about right haha

Alot of airports used to make it to cut costs. Some also had special drain systems for reclaiming the fluid. Others had a subcontractor company come and suck it up as you sprayed the planes.

There was also type 1 and type 2: Type 1 was the watery antifreeze like stuff, type 2 was jelly-like meant to spray on the plane as it was waiting to take off to keep the ice from reforming. Type 2 was much more expensive than type 1 and the first thing you learn is to not use type 2 unless told to.

There was also IR tents at some of the NYC area airports but they only served planes smaller than a 737. I think the port authority removed them about 10 years ago.

I fly out of JFK pretty regularly in regional jets and the IR tents are still there - though I’ve never been on a plane there that got anything other than conventional deicing. Unsure if they’re actually active.

Can’t find any info on the IR deicers getting decommissioned. Newark’s could handle a 757 and JFK’s could handle a 787 and 747.

I get the feeling that this should be the job of (giant) robots or drones. The number of aircraft models is quite limited (relatively speaking, compared to, say, cars on the road), and the aircrafts should all have well-known geometry that robots or drones can be programmed against.

The problem is accurately perceiving the remaining snow/ice coverage on the airplane, unless you have a guaranteed-clear-on-first-pass solution (you don't). Sure, you can get it "mostly" clear with current CV, but you have to be absolutely clear or serious incidents will result (some aircraft suffer significant aerodynamic consequences from ice less than 1mm thick). Neither airport operators nor airlines will seriously consider a robotic solution unless it outperforms human operators, and the potential liability is high barrier to entry.

Not deicer sim, but if you're into airport crew simulations in VR, there are some out there that you can get. They're based on real training software.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2088630/Airport_Ground_Ha... https://store.steampowered.com/app/2152560/Airline_Flight_At...

This has to be German. German sims are special, such as the ambulance sims where you have to put out your own cones, or the airport sims where you drive the catering trucks.

It's a training tool, not a mass-sold game.

In German sims there is no line between game and training tool. Their driving sims "play" more like DMV training films.

Looks like a more serious version of Powerwash Simulator (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1290000/PowerWash_Simulat...)

Seems like there's a huge long tail of potential applications like this where VR / AR can be used to create training environments for all sorts of risky and / or expensive situations. It seems to me the killer app is the one that allows organisations to put these together themselves. I have experimented with this using Figmin XR [0] and it's very close to viable, with its realistic physics engine. You can place people in their actual work environment and then just add objects for them to interact with as part of their training.

[0] http://www.overlaymr.com/

Yes and while training is a low hanging fruit of opportunity I can see a whole class of Applications that combine hyperspecific features with immersive tech modeled to fit that set of purposes exactly with all the enhancements available in a digitally created interactive 3D 6DOF 360 space. You get the double win here of new functional improvements with demonstrable roi metrics paid out on the nail along with the win from quality of use soft improvements that come from a more human centric experience where delight and beauty can be enjoyed.

I don’t fly much and had never heard of this:

> Aircraft flight characteristics are extremely sensitive to the slightest amount of surface irregularity, in particular that caused by frost, ice, or snow.

> In most cases ground-based deicing is accomplished by spraying the aircraft with an aircraft deicing fluid just prior to departure. […] Typically deicing fluids are applied using a specialized vehicle similar to a "cherry picker"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_deicing_of_aircraft

There's actually a lot involved with the de-icing process:

"..the spraying procedure is a regimented, step-by-step process. Pilots first follow a checklist to ensure their plane is correctly configured. Usually the flaps and slats will be lowered to the takeoff position, with the APU providing power and the main engines shut down. The air-conditioning units will be switched off to keep the cabin free of fumes. When deicing is complete, the ground crew tells the pilots which types of fluid were used, as well as the exact time that treatment began. This allows us to keep track of something called a “holdover time.” If the holdover time is exceeded before the plane has a chance to take off, a second round of spraying may be required. The length of the holdover depends on the kind of fluids used, plus the rate and type of active precipitation (dry snow, wet snow, ice pellets; light, moderate, heavy). We have charts to figure it all out."

https://askthepilot.com/snow-ice-and-airplanes/

You can't even give us one level for free? I'll settle for half the plane if you just let me play it with friends!

I don't even know why I'm frustrated at being unable to play this. It looks so boring, but so addicting... like one of those 2012-era iPhone games you'd see someone spend an hour on at an airplane terminal. Maybe I should go look for openings on the Delta website.

You might enjoy this then: http://powerwash-simulator.square-enix-games.com/

Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tooth_Invaders

They don't let you play it because it isn't a game.

That makes sense, I'm not actually mad at them. It's more like the frustration of a kid looking up at a crane operator, or wanting to get into the cockpit of one of the museum planes. So close, but so far...

My brain just CANNOT see "deicing" as "de-icing" and constantly makes my inner voice go "days-ing"

Isn’t this supposed to be de-icer? It took me literally the entire page to figure out what they were actually talking about.

That page became extremely confusing until I realised "Deicer" wasn't a brand of airplane.

It was worse for me because i thought I knew roughly what a Deicer 3000 looked like. :/

Schweizer 300 maybe?

When you make an expansion called "Plane Wash simulator" where you're cleaning all the little nooks and crannies in -10 degree weather, call me.

I'll be happy to relive my nightmares in the military XD

Ive often wondered why we can just incorporate a thin copper mesh/snake patter into the wind sandwich.

Are the fire risks too high due to the fuel being in the wings?

Typically, airplanes are deiced with heat from the compressor section of the engines ("bleed air"). Evidently it's cheaper/lighter to do that than it is to generate the substantial amounts of electricity that would be required to achieve the same effect electrically.

The 787 is one aircraft I know that uses what you describe for wing anti-ice. I believe it still uses bleed air to deice the engine nacelles.

Airplanes already have built-in anti-icing. It usually just redirects hot exhaust air from the engines. That's what they use in flight.

Adding a separate system on every plane just for the landing/taxi/takeoff phase probably isn't worth the effort: it'd require them to carry around additional weight, and the deicing system would require additional maintenance.

But who knows, maybe we'll see innovative systems in the future which can deal with it in a better way!

And some other aircraft (like turboprops) use deicing boots on the leading edges. Rubber like surfaces that expand at specific intervals (usually a low and high setting).

And those in the GA community have weeping wings / TKS deicing fluid which leaks out of the leading edges thru small holes (again, with a low or high rate).

Neither of which you wanna rely upon for takeoff - need to make sure that stuff is gone from the surfaces and if using fluid be aware of holdover times.

Indeed:

https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/iced-out-the-crash-of-ut...

> On the 2nd of April 2012, a Russian airliner conducting a regional flight in Siberia ran into trouble immediately after taking off from the city of Tyumen. The plane swayed wildly from side to side as the pilots yelled over each other, seemingly unable to figure out what to do. Just one minute after takeoff, the ATR-72 plunged into a snow-covered field, cartwheeled, and burst into flames, killing 33 of the 43 people on board.

> As the pilots taxied the plane to the runway, Captain Antsin switched on the plane’s on-board de-icing systems. Although the de-icing systems were designed to be used in flight, not on the ground, there was technically no prohibition against this, and many pilots at UTair made a habit of turning the system on during taxi to check that it was functioning properly. The on-board de-icing system inflates rubber “boots” inside the leading edges of the wings and stabilizers to remove ice which accumulates there while in flight. But while the plane is parked, ice can build up across the entire upper wing surface, rather than just along the leading edge. The de-icing boots can’t remove ice that has formed behind the leading edges.

Ironically they were not used to deicing procedures partly because it is usually too cold there for ice to form on the ground. As I understand it you need a dew point and temperature of around zero, so that water will condense and freeze on the surface. Snow alone is no problem as it comes off, as I understand it.

If your wings are above freezing when you park, then snow can melt and refreeze on the wings.

I love the fact that the first image all silhouetted almost looks like a Start Wars AT-AT or some other sort of Star Wars inspired thing with weapons to shoot. They clearly have the coms unit to talk with the pilot of whatever vessel it is. Yes please, I'd like a simulator of that

If I wanted to experience airplane de-icing, I'd pick up a Denver turn in open time.

I like that the trailer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdi6gToF3rk) says "Full fluid dynamics" and then in the next frame of the video the deicer jet goes straight through the wing of the plane

I'm pretty sure it's hitting the leading edge of the wing and then going over both the top and bottom of the wing.

You kind of push the ice off the plane from underneath. More efficient

So they send you a "High-performance CPU"? Isn't that weird? If you need a CPU, you probably need the whole computer and GPU.

I agree with you, and with the chair and stuff that's also included, this thing probably costs tens of thousands of bucks and should include literally everything you need. So I suspect they're just using it as slang for a computer. Like old Nintendo games did! "VS CPU" mode etc.

The whole tower is probably almost a rounding error in the hardware cost of this setup!

I suspect it was written by someone who thinks "CPU" means "desktop computer".

Flight sims are getting more and more niche...

I would like to have a sim of the guy who waves airplanes on to the parking lot

That was available as a launch title for Nintendo Wii! A similar effect can be had by running "Dance, Dance, Revolution" in the hidden "Airport mode."

Guess I was hoping for a FIKI simulator where you could test icing conditions against aircraft FIKI systems to figure out when you’d fall out the sky.

What happened to hyphens?

  deicer
  de-icer

Just out of curiosity, are you British?

I had never seen deicers (TIL the actual name) until I had to fly through Calgary in winter lol

This is the worst sequel to Enders Game I've ever seen...

I wondered what a Dei-cer was for a full 30s.

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