1/1 Scale F-16 Cockpit | Hacker News Reader

1/1 Scale F-16 Cockpit

arcair.com

64 pointseksith44 comments

When I was a kid my brother (much older, getting his ME undergrad) built me a 1/5 or 1/6 scale biplane out of plywood and other lumber. It had working control surfaces and the wooden propeller (which he had "carved" by hand on a table saw) rotated freely. Needless to say I was in aviator heaven for a summer.

Thanks. You have now given me a great idea of what to make for my son who is 19 months old. I might even have it ready for when he's 5.

Wow, that's a pretty awesome brother.

Is it weird that I just caught myself daydreaming about mapping every one of those keys to a vim, emacs, or Sublime command?

Imagine your first day at a new job, and the programmer next to you straps herself into a replica of an F-16 cockpit to get her work done.

Side note: what's with the over-the-top political correctness epidemic on HN? Every time somebody talks about a random programmer it's "her" or "herself". I am all for gender equality and more women in tech, but this sort of stuff just seems strange.

Er, not sure about 'over-the-top', but I noticed the same thing regarding third edition Dungeons and Dragons. When they were trying to broaden the appeal to more than just, well, the traditional AD&D player, all the pronouns in the new books became female when talking about the player or player character.

Sentence could have been made gender neutral pretty easily:

> Imagine your first day at a new job, and the programmer next to you straps themselves into a replica of an F-16 cockpit to get their work done.

I do feel that using a gender does make it read better though.

You may just be falling for confirmation bias. Anyone out there want to take a random sampling of these types of sentences and see if there actually is a gender bias?

Except that technically "their work done" is improper grammar when your subject ("the programmer") is singular.

Are you sure? Because people use 'their' as a singular all the time when talking about someone of an unspecified gender, and the dictionary seems to agree with that:

"belonging to or associated with a person of unspecified sex: she heard someone blow their nose loudly"

http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/their?q=the...

At the end of the day grammar is convention, and 'singular they' seems like a sensible one. (in part as it's got a long history, in part as I don't know a better alternative)

Perhaps I am. Given the prevalence of males in our industry, maybe every "she" just sticks out more than it should.

I'd actually be interested to see if there is a prevalence to use one gender over another for imaginary people. Not sure what it would mean, but it'd be interesting. Even more interesting if there was comparable data for people in other industries.

Over-the-top epidemic??? Pretty silly exaggeration. In a male-dominated industry, you'll never be accused of gender bias as a male if you use feminine subjects in your sentences. So if we say "he" all the time, we're gender-biased, and if we say "she" all the time, it's an epidemic?

I can't speak for anybody else but for me, it's a conscious choice.

I don't see it as a big deal. Words like "over-the-top" and "epidemic" seem a bit hyperbolic, don't they? For whatever it's worth, I certainly don't think we're going to solve gender disparity merely by flipping a few pronouns. But what's the harm?

I also added it for comic reasons. Imagine incorrectly assuming that the female programmer doesn't have chops or isn't "serious" about programming - and then you see her writing code like she's flying a fighter jet. At least to me, that was a funny case of confounded expectations.

What's stranger about it than using the male pronoun?

In this particular scenario, it's strange because the probability of it is so low. Maybe you are surrounded by lady hackers who are fond of military tech (tell me where you work, I'll apply), but statistically they are such a rare breed that using "she" in this case just looks like trying too hard. "Hey look at me, I am not a brogrammer, I said 'she'!". JMO.

I don't know, I'm kind of skeptical that your language reflects statistical realities at all times. Have you never described something with the adverb "probably" that actually had a less than fifty percent chance of occurring? If not, I'm not sure what it is about this particular usage that merits the increased scrutiny.

I dont find it odd. In my team, out of eight members, we have two female programmers and a female scrummaster.

I haven't noticed that but odd since "he" is gender specific pronoun while "she" is not. To me, the use of "her" is a the opposite of gender equality.

(I'm not a native English speaker)

Only if she clocks out with an ejection seat!

Slightly nerdy and not my style because of the militarism, but way cool idea ;-)

I like how on Hacker News, building an F-16 cockpit replica to control a text editor is merely "slightly" nerdy!

My idea: 1. Use Oculus Rift 2. Surround cockpit with a green curtain 3. put webcam in Oculus Rift (if it doesn't already have one) 4. Project camera view with green-screen over virtual scenery

That way you might use your hand-eye coordination (minus stereo) with the cockpit and the rest is still "oculus rifted".

Sorry, someone else already had that idea and posted it. Apologies...

Where does the screen go? Does he throw a large LCD in front of the entire thing or mount several smaller screens in the gaps?

Imagine:

1. build a box to put this in

2. paint that box a very distinct shade of something e.g. yellow

3. get a very even lighting

4. wear an Oculus Rift

5. have software do chroma-keying of the outside of the cockpit

6. dream about mounting it on some kind of hydrologic piston contraption..

Hydrolic flight simulator platforms start at about $1600 and go to about $14k (for something which can spin and roll 360°), and probably a lot less if you make them yourself.

I looked into pneumatic actuators for this a while ago, the parts are pretty reasonable, the real cost would be the time it takes to build and integrate your own motion platform.

Or try this: http://www.airforce.com/contact-us/recruiter-locator/ (or equivalent in your local country)

Unfortunately, there are height restrictions on pilots in the air force (at least fighter jets, not sure about every plane) and some of us are too tall.

If you're building a box and painting it anyway, its cheaper to paint it white and rig up some projectors.

One of those "in my infinite spare time" ideas. Along with skipping the cockpit and interfacing with google streetview. Psuedo-realtime image stitching is a PITA.

>"in my infinite spare time"

Can we please make this a thing? I'll even share one:

Rig up some arduino's to some sort of Sonar device, and use it to detect boundaries when my eyes are closed. That way I can walk around buildings blindfolded with no cane and freak people out. (And possibly actually use if I ever become blind.)

Early in my career I worked in the Sim lab at General Dynamics (before Lockheed bought the fighter business). Looks pretty similar to what I remember we had. This was early 80's. The working ones had screens around them to display imagery. We had a bunch for testing the computers. Never got to fly one though sadly.

I wonderif it would be possible to somehow get all of the indicators working too? Perhaps something like a RasberryPi that grabs info from the game and feeds it to the altimeter, pitch/yaw indicator and so on. Shame games don't come with APIs like that.

X-Plane has a plugin interface that would make this very possible. I've used plugins that show various instruments in different camera angles, so that data is there and can be grabbed. And there is a lot of 3rd-party hardware that simulates and controls various components of the aircraft (like external GPS modules for training). Probably wouldn't be hard to get the data out of the process.

DCS series has some support for pit-building, and afaik relatively complete Lua-API. Afaik you should be able to get most of the instruments working.

http://forums.eagle.ru/forumdisplay.php?f=101 here are some examples what the community have built so far.

You've pretty much described the X-Plane SDK, although it can do a lot more than that.

X-Plane is pretty much the ultimate flightsim.

The main challenge is old instruments are "cheap" from ebay but they're not really designed to be precision driven (or even non-precision driven) by a servo or a voltage. Usually something can be hacked up with enough duct tape and patience...

The Oculus Rift will make these kind of projects obsolete.

Short of inventing the holodeck out of Star Trek, I can't possible seeing that being entirely true as it's not quite the same as being physically immersed with more than one's eyes.

Oculus Rift would be useful in those situations when you want to switch between say a WW1 flight sim[1] and a modern day one. It would be a little jarring to be flying a Fokker Dr1 in from the confines of an F-16 cockpit (well unless you want to pretend you went back in time and suddenly your mach 2 jet fighter must obey the limitations of 1917 aviation). The cockpit + Oculus Rift would at least dampen the sense somewhat of being seated in a modern day cockpit without having to build two (though building a modular one that you can swap the cockpit part in and out might be an idea). Maybe add a programmable fan blowing in front of you that adjusts its RPMs based on velocity to simulate wind effects :)

[1] http://store.steampowered.com/app/244050/?snr=1_5_9__205

Except that this project seems to be mainly about providing realistic controls (switches etc.) which the Oculus Rift can't do much about.

I've worn an OR, and without physical feedback even games where you are strapped into a cockpit or driver's seat are lacking. Seems like this kind of thing will be made more popular by the OR.

Au contraire, this is the perfect complement to the oculus rift for physical feedback.

What buttons will you push?

One's made of wood, the other is made of vapor...

I suspect the long term effect will be much like simulators have displaced some recreational real world flying and training, but not as much as you'd think.

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