Homemade $230,000 Boeing 747 Flight Simulator
Some people love flying and some love flying a 747. But there are some people who are willing to pay hundreds and thousands of dollars for getting the feel of flying a 747 at home.
Similar is the case with an Australian hobbyist Matthew Sheil. The gentleman has spent around $230,000 for making his own personal 747 flight simulator.
The simulator mimics the cockpit of a 747 to the smallest detail. The result is a world class cockpit that feels more real than the actual one.
Sheil is an amateur pilot who runs a trucking company and has already spent more than eight years in the making of the awesome simulator.
Sheil still believes that the simulator is like a painting and can never be complete.
The flying experience is also much better than the actual 747 as it has got real-time weather, preflight safety lecture, ATC and even Qantas Airways food. The benefit is that the pilot cannot crash.
The simulator is run by some of the most powerful computers and the fastest LCD screens that give the best detail possible of air space and surroundings.
If you talk about the brains and the computers that are installed then let me tell you that the simulator runs on 13 computers that control the audio, video and other systems while the DOS-based software and Microsoft Flight Simulator provides the flight data.
The windows in the cockpit are nothing but Philips 19-inch superfast LCDs that are having a response time of just three-milliseconds.
Audio is controlled by a set of Bose Companion 5 Speakers that can imitate the surrounding sounds to the smallest detail.
Motion is controlled by a hydraulic motion system that has its own pump room that lets the pilot feel the bumps on the runway and also the G forces during turns.
Via: popsci
