Prepare for Impact!

"This 3D game has been developed in the context of an international, aviation safety research project (http://hcilab.uniud.it/aviation), aimed at exploring possible new approaches to safety education. The game reproduces the experience of real-world aircraft emergencies from the passenger’s viewpoint, with the highest fidelity allowed by today’s mobile devices.

In each virtual emergency experience, the player can try first-hand right and wrong actions that a passenger can take, and see the positive or negative consequences those actions have. Your goal is to take all the right decisions to come out from the plane unharmed as fast as possible.

The game also offers the option of publishing your best evacuation results on world leaderboards. The different levels of "Prepare for Impact" depict major types of emergencies, such as in-flight decompression, ground collision, runway overrun, water landing, and crash landing.

Moreover, they are able to simulate the different threats that can make aircraft evacuation more complex, such as fire, smoke in the cabin, water, unusable exits, and others. "


I chanced upon this. Doesn't help my flying anxieties at all, but I guess there is some 'edutainment' in safety briefing and escape simulations out of tight spots and also prepares for the 'drop everything and get out in the safest manner as possible" in the form of a timed score.

What do you all think?

Tired, Confused and a Citation Bravo

So what a night, yesterday.

I was tired from work. And had about 2 hours before sleep to tinker around with some of the planes I downloaded for Flightgear.  One of them is the Cessna Citation Bravo.

At first I tried the Saab JA-37 Viggen. It is a fighter jet that is in development, and honestly, no matter how hard I tried, I could not get it to fly properly (with the keyboard). I will download an update and see if that fixes the problem.

Once that is out of the way, I tried the Cessna Citation Bravo. I think the jet flew rather nicely, very nicely modeled on the outside, and nice cockpit on the inside. Perhaps a combination of fatigue and distractions from reading more about the airplane in the FG wiki, but I wasn't able to land it properly at KSFO, had 2 go arounds. Also, having to chat with the ATC while all this is going on, makes it quite busy.

It wasn't today actually I realized that I should have used the spoilers. And again, the importance of checklists, I suppose..

On the second go around I noticed an F-14 coming up behind me so I aborted the landing and spent the rest of the time just watching what it was trying to do. Sure enough it looks like it was trying to get a shot of me, and at that point I was really tired and just went straight to bed.

Don't fly fatigued :)

What about the Citation Bravo? It's excellent. I feel that it's as good as the Citation X that came with Flightgear, and that it's FDM is slightly on the simpler side (but then again, I've never flown at Citation Bravo). Nicely done, would recommend.

Flightgear Plane Download : 787-8

  I downloaded the 787-8 manually from work and after some difficulty, installed it on my computer at home with a USB drive. Loaded up for a test flight, in its Boeing Dreamliner livery, what a beauty.

  First "test" is to pushback, taxi out into an empty spot, and look through all the cockpit systems, test out the flaps, spoilers, thrust reverse, engine, aileron and rudder. Looks great. Position it on the runway, check flaps, brakes on, throttle up, release brakes, roll down the runway. Awesome. The animations are very nice, the nosewheels turn, on rotation the rear wheels angle upwards.

  Unlike the FG 777, the FG 787 is doesn't jump off the runway with ease, and seems to require a little bit longer runway than the Triple Seven. However, it does get off into the air nicely, and once in the air flies smooth and easy.

  A short round trip in the air and got back in for a landing. I set the autobrakes setting to "2", and lined up nicely with the runway with surprising ease, checked the speed and it's about 140knots. Seemed like my best approache so far, every is right. HOWEVER, upon touch down (a little long, thanks to my flare that kept it in the air for a little bit longer) about a few feet from the runway numbers I activated the thrust reverse, spoilers, added some power, waited for a bit and......

  Wait.... it's not stopping. OK, add more thrust. Brakes. Slowing, but still not stopping.. brake, brake, end of runway is fast approaching... in that panic I activated the parking brakes... but the plane went off the end of the runway.

  So imagine, the 787-8, with the nose poking into scenery just off the runway, and the tail still within airport boundary, slightly nose down position (runway elevation is slightly higher). How embarrassing.

  To save from the situation I thrust reversed out back onto the runway, which must've looked real funny to any bystanders.

  It seems to fly very although obviously I have never flown a 787 IRL (or any aircraft in real life, for that matter), but I'm may have screwed up the approach. Perhaps I let the speed increase during the approach, resulting in my overshoot.

 Comparisons: From what I could see, the 787 has the advanced stuff (such as Electronic Flightbags, Fly-by-Wire, etc.), and a great failure management system but then again I have to get familiar with the plane more to provided a better summary.

Download it here

"Random failures"

 This morning I had some time, so I started up FlightGear and took off from WBGR and practiced touch-go a little bit with the Citation X. Once in the air about 6000 feet, I was browsing the menus and saw "Random failures".

 Feeling adventurous, I selected it. A menu popped up, asking for failure sequences and time to fail. I selected within 1 minute and some other option I did not bother to look through.

 Must be something I did, because the failures came piling on one after another!! First the electrical system, so all the instrumentation blanked out, including the Master Caution lights. I began turning the aircraft around, did my imaginary emergency calls, and prepare for an emergency landing. As I did so yet another message appeared telling me something failed.

And another.

And yet another.

 I simply did not have time to understand the failures! At one point I saw the message "Engine 3" fail, and thought, huh, CitationX only has two engines... but didn't think much about it - I was on single engined approach.

 Things kept failing. I couldn't even keep track of what, exactly. As I was appraching to fast, I hit the speedbrakes to slow down, and as I was slow enough I retracted it - and guess what? Speedbrake fail! So I increased engine thrust and pulled up - this was when I was about 1500ft agl, and just in front of the runway.

 On FlightGear at WBGR, there is a big tree at the end of the runway. I clipped that tree with my wingtips when I watched the replay later.

 The plane was not properly lined up, and I did some aileron turns to line up, and THAT failed. Fortunately, the last turn was lined up relatively well and I had to use rudder alone to align. Hit the runway - hard- at an angle, wit ha high sinkrate, at just stalling speed (less than 120kts) and probably slapped the wingtip there, used rudder to further align with the runway and hit the brakes.

 Screeched to a halt. Well the CitationX in FG had suspiciously good braking distances but I''ll ignore that for now, that would be a good thing in this situation.

And then, Engine 1 failed. The plane is now dead in the middle of the runway with no power.

Didn't stop there though, things kept failing. Things that I didn't know existed on a plane failed.

Oh, what fun! But I'm probably not going to try Random Failures again.... with the kind of failure I just had, it was probably an onboard fire by the looks of how everything just stopped working completely.



And someone needs to cut down that tree growing in the middle of the landing path...

Pictures soon..

Nostalgia: Commanche 3

Commanche 3 is a helicopter sim by Novalogic, which uses 'voxels' for rendering the landscape, which created a really awesome landscape for flying for its time.

Some of the voxels are, for the lack of a better word to described it - 'puffy' and sort of clip a bit so when you land on the ground and they dig in a bit, creating a visual effect just like tall grass does to a helicopter landing gear.

Although it wasn't exactly realistic and based on a non-existant helicopter (the Commanche project was stopped I believe), it was the most fun I had with a helicopter simulator, and just have many days going through it imagining I'm driving Airwolf, flying low over the landscape, hovering in place to observe the enemy and calling for artillery or unleashing the chopper's firepower on them.

The landscape loops; that means if you see a rice field below you and keep continuing in that direction, then you will see it again. There are sceneries like trees. It was a very nice game/sim that balances play,simulation and fun quite well. I love the espionage / intelligence gathering missions - it's basically Airwolf.


Quite a lot of thought went into the game as well, as there are even auto rotations in the event of an engine failure (although the engine takes damage, it doesn't really just fail completely - you can limp the aircraft home) the manual states that you can actually turn off the engine mid air, autorotate to the ground, gear down and flare slightly on landing, and do it right you could actually get away with some gear and frame damage.

Trying to describe the game with words I can only do so much, the experience for Commanche 3 was so vivid and great that I cannot fully describe this into words.

I no longer have the sim, and I miss it much.

Novalogic ruined the 4th version (Commanche 4) with a stupid mouse-driven shoot-em-up-helicopter-simulator that just doesn't work, it was too time demanding, and most of the time I just don't know what was happening.

Been Playing Kerbal Space Program

Interesting game as hell. After initial false launches and falling back onto Earth, I figured out the proper launch maneuvers and finally put barely a capsule into orbit (after spending too much fuel). Subsequent flights I got better and got more efficient.

It's an awesome simulation - check it out. I would not call it realistic simulator but I did learn a lot about space flight trajectories, orbiting manuevers, etc from it. You can actually get to the "Mun" and other planets in that solar system, however. I never actually got there, yet.

Download the demo version: http://www.kerbalspaceprogram.com

How to get Started in FlightGear

Here's a tutorial I did mainly for a friend who's completely new to FlightGear on how to get started off the ground.

1. Press "H" to see the HUD. This gives you a virtual display of the plane's informations such as rudder and aileron position, throttle position, altitude, speed and heading. This would be very useful later on.

2. Assuming you're starting out on the default runway, and the engine has started (use Help > Autostart feature), the first thing you should do is to get power to the engines (we will leave all the preflight check etc for purposes of QuickStart guide). Do this by press PageUp key repeatedly until the throttle reaches about 80%. You can go up to 100%, but this is not necessary because 80% is enough to get you airborne, and most real planes don't go 100% to save on tear and wear and also prevent failures.

3. Once you have the throttle powered up, you will realize that you are now moving along the runway and gaining speed. You might need to correct a bit to the left or right due to wind conditions. The 0 and Enter key on the number pad of the keyboard is the planes rudder. Tap 0 once to correct left a little, and Enter to return the rudder to position. Enter to go right. Remember to return it to center position. Try to stay on the runway, as excursions will destroy the landing gear on some aircraft. Don't worry too much about this part, as the plane will more or less stay quite straight.

4. Usually the take off run is quite short, and you would have gained enough speed to take off. Tap the "Down" cursor key about 3-4 times. This will pull back on the yoke, and your jet will start to liftoff. At first, the front wheel will lift off the ground, but the rear wheels will still be on the ground. Eventually as the plane gains enough lift, the whole plane will be off the ground. Remember to center all ailerons and rudder!

5. Now you're airborne. To slow things down a little, throttle down (PageDown key) to about 60%. Tap the "Up" cursor key one or two times and watch how the plane is. At this point you might need to make a lot of corrections until the plane heads the right way. Now you're airborne! Press "G" to stow the landing gear, climb to a safe altitude (6000 feet would be nice) and get a feel of the aircraft in the air!


Things to remember:

PgUp = Throttle up
PgDwn = Throttle down
Up key = Nose down
Down key = Nose up
Left = aileron turn left
Right = aileron turn right
0 = Rudder turn left
Enter = Rudder turn right

To view your own plane, press the "V" key.

Tap the left/right keys to turn left or right sparingly. Tapping it once or twice to the left, watch the plane make a bank, and centering it, rather than turning it left all the way in a hurry and you don't have enough time to center it until you're tumbling out of control.

Watch the HUD for information regarding your aircraft. It gives you quick information on altitude, speed and various other information that you can't quickly grasp by looking at the instruments.

This tutorial also more or less the same for propeller planes, but be warned, the prop planes may be slower, but they have torque effect that really turns the aircraft into a bank (in midair) or yaw left on the runway! You will need to counter with some skillful rudder action (on ground) or aileron (in air).

Check out this page for more tutorials

X-Plane 9 Simulator

Here's a nice video of X-Plane, one of the best simulators available for the home computer!