Circular Runways?

I think circular TAXIWAYS made more sense. Thevideo shows just how easy it is to make a wing/engine strike. And in turbulent/windy/freaky conditions, the pilot would have to constantly adjust during the banking turn. I have a hard time in a simulator on a straight runway (and apparently some pilots do too in real life).. what more one that requires you to make a banking turn..

...and just how do you do a crosswind at the moment of touch down? Just imagine a sudden crosswind during touch down and the rudder turn right after that would have to be huuuge to compensate for the xwind + runway bank + runway radius...

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?

Worst Places to be a Pilot

 I just saw this on youtube, and I'm hooked..


Slight note : The way some of these pilots are treated (essentially living in luxury in one of the vids), I'm not sure if that title holds up well....... but of course it's most dangerous places to be flying that's for sure..

Air Traffic Flying Around Storms Near a Busy Airport

What happens when thunderstorms hit the world's busiest airports, how the planes fly around storms and go into holding patterns can be seen clearly.

Boeing's 787-9 Dreamliner & Airbus 350 Performance at Farnborough

Boeing's "Rehearsal" video That climb was 45 degrees, holding it for about 5 seconds and then a negative-G back to level. That, for an airliner is very impressive. And the 60 degree bank! For most airliners 60 degrees would most definitely upset the turn. Another maneuver is the touch n' go with a banking climb, which was eventually banned! Airbus 350 doing the "combat climb". The steep climbout is way shorter, and it turned to its right. No negative-Gs.

Old 1960s Boeing 707 Promo Video

Old 1960s B707 promo video. Seems so relaxed and carefree, those days.

A (Very) Brief Overview of X-Plane 10

 I have downloaded the X-Plane 10 demo lately.

All I can say is -- WOW! The dynamic lighting makes flying the night scenes so realistic! This, combined with the cars moving about on roads, it looks just like when I'm on a real plane, looking down towards the ground. Austin Meyer, founder of Laminar Research and maker of X-Plane says in an interview that the roads are based on OpenStreet Map, and based on that street map data they auto-generate the buildings and roadways in the sim. The effect is wonderful - even though the city we're flying over won't be exactly the same, the the sim loads up buildings in what it thinks are suburban areas and cities and place buildings accordingly. That means roads near a waterfront will have waterfront houses, densely packed areas will have tall buildings, etc. It is a wonderful result.

The dynamic lighting also makes the sim realistic, how the lighting looks depends on time of day, and it is dawn or dusk that is especially interesting, especially when all the light on the aircraft comes on, and all the city lights and cars went on.

The clouds are even better, never have I seen so convincing clouds in a sim yet - like in real life, you can have cloudy areas in one direction and clear areas in another direction.

The sim does have some problems though - if you treat it like a game, then it will be like a toy. For example, most obstacles and buildings don't have collision detection, you just fly through them. Landing on water, you will just float like a child's bath toy. You can even take off again from water....

But ultimately, we don't get simulations to do things such as those, we use simulations to fly, and the planes provided that I tried so far have been great.

Needless to say there are a lot more things to write about X-Plane 10 which I don't have time to (I'm working as I type this!) and it is my latest interest so far- other than Kerbal Space Program, and FlightGear of course.

The simulation runs quite smoothly in default settings on my late-2012 Mac mini. The demo will disable joystick input after 15 minutes.


X-Plane 10 Demo can be downloaded here

Helicopter Scoops Water from Private Pool

Helicopter Scoops Water from Private Pool. Insane piloting skills! Very dangerous. I certainly could not do this when playing with Flight Simulator a few years back.
Helicopter Steals Water From Pool by Jokeroo

Amazing Helicopter Flying Without Blades Moving

FlightGear Headtracking System

FlightGear with a head tracking system. Awesome stuff!

X-Plane 9 Simulator

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