Learjet 45 Simulator Project » Software

Happy Holidays! Santa Simulator will be back next year!

Captain — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 16:55:46 +0000

Happy Holidays from Santa Simulator and nine point eight one Studios

Santa Simulator is taking a year off. Research is in-process for a better development platform. Download a demo of what we have in store…(Testing was very limited and this demo requires a newer computer. Your mileage may vary and I apologize for any technical issues.)

Happy Holidays for WIndows

Happy Holidays for Macintosh (Intel only)

More 3D Modeling

Captain — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 00:03:43 +0000

Hi all! I apologize. It has been too long. Life has been pretty busy lately and I’m on the cusp of an exciting new adventure.

That said, progress is still being made on the miniature 3D model of the Learjet 45 for the test motion platform. I’ll be splitting off the motion control software to a separate site on nine point eight one, but I’ll also link to it from here, so you won’t miss a thing. Progress on the full-size shell has stopped for now, but once the weather cools off, I’ll be back at it.

Miniature Learjet 45 3D Model for 3D Printing

3D Modeling (Booleans are Bad Mmmkay)

Captain — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 03:24:17 +0000

I’m working on a 3D model of the Learjet 45 that I will eventually be 3D printing for my miniature motion base test setup. My last serious run at modeling was back n the mid ’90s, so I’m kind of rusty. I apparently forgot that Boolean Operations can wreak havoc on meshes, so my idea of cutting the windows out of this thing with Booleans, is a wash. I’ll need to take a few steps back to see if there’s another way without starting over. Good thing I saved all those iterative versions.

Learjet 45 3D Model

Micro Servos (Fit for a Tiny Elvis)

Captain — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 23:47:40 +0000

Found some micro servos that can be used for the yaw coordinator. The technical drawing is full scale. I’m still not sure how I want to build it yet, but I have a few ideas floating around in my head. The experiments continue…

Micro Servo and Yaw Coordinator Technical Drawing

Yaw Coordinator

Captain — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 23:58:14 +0000

I’ve got my software working reasonably well, so I decided to build a quick and dirty mock up of a yaw coordinator and test it out. The ball shakes a little too much, because the connection wire to the servo is a little too thin. The final design will be more complex, due to the slight curve of the glass tube the ball sits in, but this gives me something to play around with while I’m finishing up the software interface. Sorry for the low-quality video.

I need to get back to finishing the shell exterior. One of these days I’ll get back to it.

Motion Control Hardware

Captain — Thu, 26 May 2011 03:44:38 +0000

I finally jumped-in and purchased a ServoCenter servo controller card. It can handle 16 servos and has a myriad of other analog and digital input/output options. Additionally, it does smoothing and has some other neat features that will prove useful for motion control. The API is fairly straightforward and I managed to get a hobby servo connected and linked it to the yaw coordinator data coming from FSX/SimConnect pretty easily. Now it’s time to build out a easy-to-use front end to set up and save the servo settings.

Ideally, I’d like to include other interface card options (like Phidgets) as well, but that will be in later versions.

Early Version of Servo Settings Panel

Motion Control II

Captain — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 03:04:23 +0000

I converted the Z acceleration data into a tilt angle that can be used for simulation. The max angle I’m using is 45 degrees, which is too much to be practical, given that the linear actuators aren’t that quick. It makes for a good test though. I’ve also converted the yaw coordination ball into data that a servo can deal with. I’m working on a home-made yaw coordination ball instrument for the Learjet 45. Next up, as I said before is to get a servo controller card and hook it into the software.

An image of the Turn Coordinator on the Learjet 45 is shown below. The video illustrates what happens to the sim base when taking off. The angle increases as the acceleration rate increases.

Learjet 45 Turn Coordinator (white ball) shown above the Flight Display

Motion Control Software

Captain — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 02:53:41 +0000

I know it’s probably a long way off for me, but I’ve been working through some ideas about creating simulator motion control software for my pit. Ideally, the software will control several servos that manipulate a few home-built instruments and also a motion system using linear actuators.

Simulator motion is very complex, so to simplify it immensely, I will limit motions to just acceleration. You know, Newton’s action/reaction stuff that pushes you back into your seat when you hit the gas in your car, or throws you out of it when you hit the brakes. This can easily be simulated by tilting the sim base while the visual screen is attached and the outside visuals do not adjust for this tilting.

I’ve got the basic data I need out of Flight Simulator X using the FSX SDK SimConnect, some C# code, and MS Visual Studio. That is the easy part. The next step is getting a servo controller board, probably something from Phidgets, and hooking that into the program to talk to it.

Yea, I know there are a couple of proprietary software systems out there already built for this, but none of it is cheap. It can also be limiting if you can’t customize it, or you have to learn another home-grown scripting language to set it up.

Here’s a shot of the program getting data out of Flight Simulator…

Getting Data out of Flight Simulator using SimConnect and C#

New Software Suite

Captain — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 05:20:30 +0000

In my ‘pit, I will be using the Jet 45 Advance Avionics Suite by FlightDeckSoft. A 15-day demo is available and they are having a pre-release discount for a limited time.

If you’re building or flying anything that uses the Honeywell Primus 1000 avionics suite, this may be the package you’ve been looking for!