
1/1 Scale F-16 Cockpit - eksith
http://www.arcair.com/Gal2/1801-1900/Gal1882-F-16cockpit-Sachs/00.shtm
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mbenjaminsmith
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.

~~~
nekopa
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.

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JohnBooty
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.

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vadman
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.

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papercrane
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?

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

~~~
papercrane
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...](http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/their?q=their)

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bayesianhorse
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".

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

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josefresco
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?

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willvarfar
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..

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MacsHeadroom
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.

~~~
TrevorJ
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.

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coldcode
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.

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nekopa
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.

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yesimahuman
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.

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OGC
The Oculus Rift will make these kind of projects obsolete.

~~~
yareally
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](http://store.steampowered.com/app/244050/?snr=1_5_9__205)

