On 01/18/2017 07:08 AM, geneb wrote:
On Tue, 17 Jan 2017, Jon Elson wrote:
On 01/17/2017 01:50 PM, geneb wrote:
I used to work on a 727 flight simulator that used a
Varian 620 to generate the visuals. The display was
capable of addressing 1024 points of light and that's
how the runways and airport outline were drawn. Pretty
neat stuff. Here's some pics of the system that ran the
sim:
http://flightweb.simpits.org/BehindTheScenes/727sim_page1.html
Was that a McDonnell Vital system? That's where the
Varian I had came from. Vital II had stroke writing and
variable beam width, ideal for painting the runway,
stripes, numbers, etc.
It's a Vital I. I don't recall a McDonnell branding
though. I _think_ the 727-100 sim was built by
Conductron-Missouri, which was the same company that build
the 737-200 that was located in the next room.
Conductron-Missouri was an outfit that may have been started
by ex-McDonnell people, and did a large portion of their
business supplying electronic systems to McDonnell. It was
later bought by McDonnell, and became McDonnell Douglas
Electronics Co.
The sad thing is, both sims are gone. Simulator Training
went bankrupt due to the aviation industry disruption
caused by 9/11. A guy from Boeing/Alteon showed up with a
corporate credit card. I didn't have the resources to bid
against him. :( The 727 went for $1200 and the $737 went
for $1500. Both sims were fully operational and both were
purposefully destroyed after purchase.
Wow, kind of surprised they were concerned about that.
Especially a 727 sim, who the heck is still flying THOSE??
A friend of mine got 4 mirrors out of Vital II sims, and has
one on a large X-Y display. He wrote a sim program that ran
on a Data General Nova clone (he built it himself, not a
commercial clone). It is no longer working, some stuff went
up in smoke last time he turned it on. But, would be great
to put a giant LCD monitor on those mirrors and use it with
FlightGear.
Jon
