University of Minnesota Human Factors Research Lab

Curtis Olson (curt@flightgear.org)

In the past, the Human Factors Research Lab has done a variety of aviation related projects funded by the FAA and NASA. Current lab research and projects are primarily centered around ground transportation issues, but two of the old aviation simulators are still sitting "in the back."

In preparation for a presentation to the local Minnesota chapter of SIGGRAPH I retrofited our Agwagon sim with FlightGear. View pictures of the sim.

The retrofit involved connecting a modern computer to the large TV monitor and resolving sync and connectivity issues. The sim contains a joystick that original cost $3000. It is connected to an old 486 running an early version of Linux. It's still possible to fire up the old 486 and read the joystick positions so I wrote a little joystick server app that talks to the running version of flight gear.

The end result is that you can sit in the sim, see the rendered display on the big monitor, and fly with the joystick. It's nothing too spectacular, but it's kind of fun, and worked great for my presentation.

Curtis L. Olson