Ultimate indoor flying site (32K pano), running on Linux, and a Brazilian SAE Aero Design RC model for SeligSIM
If you’ve been looking for the ultimate indoor flying site, the new DLC for SeligSIM is ready for download and might be a match. The indoor space measures 1,188 ft (362 m) long, 886 ft (270 m) wide, and 295 ft (90 m) high, giving a floor space of 1,052,065 sq ft (97,740 sq m) - 24.15 acres of unobstructed flying space! A few pictures of the site are shown below.
The space is large enough to hold 8 Hindenburg airships side-by-side. If stacked two high, it would hold 16. The container ship, Dali, that collided with the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland - it could hold 5 of those.
It is large enough to completely enclose Hangar One at Moffett Field in California. In fact, it could enclose two of them, and almost three. To give you that sense of scale, the image below shows Hangar One from the air, and then the next image shows a transparent overlay of this new indoor panorama site.
For lighting, there are 468 fixtures on the ceiling in addition to windows and glass doors around the perimeter. Powering all that light with LEDs would run about $50/hr, or if incandescent lights were used, it would be around $200/hr. But that would be just the beginning of how much it would cost to own and operate an indoor flying site like this.
Do you see the two mannequins in the pictures? They are painted all white and standing on the elevated walkway that goes around the entire perimeter. That walkway is about three quarters of a mile long (1.25 km).
I don't know what it would cost to build and own a site like this, but all things considered, it is out of my price range.
This panorama for SeligSIM comes in two resolutions: 16K and 32K. The smaller 16K uses a panorama that is sized: 16,384 x 8192 pixels. The 32K pano is a whopping 32,768 x 16,384 pixels - four times more resolution. To show this larger panorama in full resolution as one image pixel-for-pixel would take an array of 255 monitors, arranged with 17 monitors wide and 15 monitors tall (using monitors with 1920x1080 resolution).
The 32K panorama image file size is 1.57 GB in its native TGA format, while the smaller 16K version is a quarter of that size at 0.38 GB. (For a quick download, the images are compressed as dds files.) Although these images are large, most modern graphics cards are capable of running these panoramas smoothly. This is achieved by dynamically loading and unloading tiles of the panorama into the graphics memory as you fly through the virtual environment, rather than rendering the entire image simultaneously. As a result, the majority of contemporary computer graphics cards can efficiently handle these high-resolution panoramas.
More about this “32K” size was described in one of my early newsletters.
At present, the walls and ceiling are not modeled as hard surfaces, i.e., you can fly “through” them. As long as you do not fly “into” the walls and ceiling, you won't even notice that these are a work in progress. The present versions (v1) are ready for download, and later updates announced in this newsletter will include the collision surfaces (walls and ceiling).
Installing the New Flying Site
The new sites will install with DLC-01-v1 (Downloadable Content #1). Always install updates as Administrator. The SeligSIM Power Tools program needs to be used to complete the installation of the new flying sites. When running the SeligSIM Power Tools program (in the Windows start menu for SeligSIM), find the menu item: Flying Sites | Panorama Sites, and then click on the “Add New” button to add both new sites to your list of pano sites.
Running on Linux
A user “gwenbeth” on RCGroups.com reports that they got SeligSIM 2024 running on Linux using Wine. That's pretty cool. My first Linux box dates back to around 1995. While Windows is my main work environment, I've been a Linux user ever since, and all my websites run on CPanel, which is based on Linux. See a screenshot of the post below.
SAE Aero Design Brazil - Project Albatroz Aerodesign
João Vitor S. de Sousa, a mechanical engineering student at the University of the State of Santa Catarina in Brazil, recently posted a question on RCGroups.com seeking recommendations for simulators to model his team’s entry in the Brazil SAE Aero Design competition. As a part of the Albatroz Aerodesign team, João is working on his course completion project and aims to add their aircraft to the simulator for flight dynamics and performance testing. The Brazil SAE Aero Design competition, a university-level annual event, challenges teams to design and build heavy lift aircraft. The competition has been running for many years, having originated in the United States as the SAE Heavy Lift Aero Design Competition.
In response to João’s post, I offered guidance and support. He is now using SeligSIM to model his airplane from soup to nuts. The images below show the real airplane along with a version that he is creating in Blender. The model will be ‘painted’ to closely resemble the team’s actual airplane, sans the transparent covering. João and I will collaborate to develop the aerodynamics and simulation data for flying the aircraft in SeligSIM. Once the airplane model is complete, it will be made available for download and announced in this newsletter.
João’s current graphics model is well on its way to becoming a highly accurate ‘digital twin’ of the real aircraft. Stay tuned for more updates on this project in the near future.
Until next time, happy landings!
Notes:
https://www.seligsim.com/download.html
https://michaelselig.substack.com/p/ultra-high-resolution-32k-panorama
https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showpost.php?p=52323443&postcount=505
https://saebrasil.org.br/programas-estudantis/aero-design-sae-brasil/
https://www.saeaerodesign.com/
https://www.space.com/27741-google-leases-nasa-moffett-field.html
https://www.theverge.com/2014/11/10/7190057/nasa-leases-moffett-airfield-to-google-60-years