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..

Saab JA-37 Viggen (Flightgear Jet Testing)

I've been a test pilot for the Saaba JA-37 Viggen lately. The plane is made by Anders Lejczak (3D model & textures) and Nikolai V. Chr. (Aerodynamics, animations, sound, effects, HUD, coding), and can be downloaded here. 

Now have to bear in mind this plane is under development, and I probably don't make a good test pilot.

Because:

...I kept crashing it.

Testing is done at KOAK, and embarrassingly, I never really left the airport compound and poked three holes in the area.

So, a little about the plane, for the brave souls who would like to try it out. First off, I wasn't able to control it with a keyboard, I'm sure others have better luck doing so, but the developer did recommend it would be better with a joystick. It requires a long runway, and afterburner takeoffs are recommended.

Being in development there are some minor issues with it, such as afterburner sound stuttering and all, hoping that it would eventually be fixed.

UPDATE : 30th May 2014 - I found the reason why I can't fly it. With a keyboard, the "5" key to reset all controls to center is not there, and because there is also no standard HUD I am not aware the plane controls doesn't reset when I hit "5" on the numeric pad. This explains why the plane is unflyable, as I kept thinking I had reset the controls. (It didn't help that the jet gave impressions that the center key was pressed when I do so mid-turn). Once I found out, and flew with a mouse, the plane was actually completely flyable. I contacted the author of the FDM about this and he said it's been fixed in a new version. I will try it out and blog about it. 


Model :

While the FDM is being sorted out (I'm confident it will be), I will talk about the model. It's a nice model, with nice livery, you have two sets of livery with it, one is the standard gray (I can not remember the names of the liveries!) and the other has a nice camouflage scheme that I quite like. The HUD is standard, showing altitude, attitude indicator and angle of attack, but I can not say how accurate this is to the real jet though, because I hardly know about Saab JA-37 Viggens. The cockpit is a bit sparse at the moment, but all the necessary items for flying are there to use, and with the radar screen(?) in the middle like all jet fighters should have.

Crashing :

I feel I should write about crashing it because I am already an expert. I don't know how others fly it with a keyboard, but I can't, and the jet seemingly won't respond to my key commands. So I just lose control and crash into the ground. The crash not only have an explosion sound effect, it also has the pilot gasping his last breaths. Hmm. Becaue I am an expert at crashing the plane, I came to dread hearing it .  My last few flights, when losing control and about to crash, I just pause and quickly reset it. Didn't want to hear another pilot getting killed :) .

Random images of recent flights around San Francisco in Flightgear

Just some screenshots of random flights past few days. I gotten the hang of the CitationX, but the Seneca seemingly trying to fight me all the time, especially during take off and landing. Interestingly, several times one of the engine didn't startup as expected, I have to choke it or something to get it to startup. So naturally I didn't notice that one failed to start the first time (right engine) and took off with a single engine, resulting in yawing, stalling and going into the drink. Subsequent flights I actually checked to see that both engines start up.

Didn't help there was some wind and turbulance on that day too.

Shiny Cupholders! Important equipment in the Citation X

Approaching KSFO - Speedbrake on

Missed approach - go around, pilot sucks

  

Citation X cockpit, at KSFO

A failed takeoff ended in the drink (Piper PA34-200T Seneca II)

Seems all's well at cruise

...and a failed landing