WorldFlight: driving virtual airspace to the max
On 02-11-2010, in Simulator world, by hoppie
On a sunny, crisp Sunday morning in Melbourne, Australia in the late 1990s, Matt Sheil raised the gear of his light twin and called Departure. With little traffic, he received clearance direct Sydney, his home town. Matt pointed the nose to the North-East, engaged the autopilot, and looked where he had put his newspaper.
Ten seconds later, he dropped the paper and stared at the GPS. What the hell was he doing? Sitting here in his own airplane, reading the newspaper, having himself transported home like cattle… why did he actually own an airplane and did not just book a seat on an airliner? The next morning, he sold off the aircraft, and decided that he would take ten years to build a credible, semi-professional simulator, to get the fun part of flying back into his life.
By the year 2000, the simulator actually was flyable and Matt decided to organise a small event to get some operation going. The aircraft simulated was a Boeing 747-400, so an around-the-world series of flights seemed the right way to go. A skeleton crew was assembled, and on November 5, 2000, Worldflight took to the skies, raising money for the Royal Flying Doctor’s Service.
John Davis, sim owner, and myself, software engineer, flying the Coventry 747-400
Over the years, Worldflight has grown to an annual event with a large share of followers. By now, up to nine full-size flight decks join the group, augmented by dozens of desktop simulators flown by people all over the world. All aircraft are linked into a virtual airspace provided by one of the virtual ATC networks, VATSIM. They can see each other out of the window, register all on TCAS when so equipped, and create a buzz of traffic that is quite a handful for the controllers.
A team in Sydney mans a complete center, including a tower cab, fully equipped with multiscreen radar displays, large plasma TVs for the field overview, and all required paperwork and IT backup to run a credible operation. When available, local air traffic controllers all over the world join the network to provide the flock of aircraft with genuine, local ATC. If local ATC is not available, the Sydney and European centers take over to assure a continuous ATC bubble that travels with the Worldflight group over the globe.
Matt Sheil’s full motion 747-400 simulator in Sydney
The simulators have grown as well. Matt’s sim in Sydney now sits on hydraulic legs and is a very close copy of real, professional simulators used for pilot training. The other large sims are fixed-based, yet come as close as anything to what you can do without a multimillion budget. In Coventry, UK, John Davis has converted a bedroom into a 747-400, using just simple materials and a few basic purchased items. Both Matt and John run the bulk of their rig off a core simulator built by Aerowinx back in 1995, enhanced over the years by a shell of networking and interfacing programs developed by several people including the author of this article.
World Flight pilots during descent briefing in Coventry
Although the sims are not in any way certified for anything except plain fun, professional pilots do find their way to these sims to brush up their sim skills before their semi-annual check rides, and to get a quick introduction to the -400 if this craft happens to be used by airlines for job assessments.
The Sydney full motion simulator, including wrap-around curved visual system
With my own interest in air traffic control (not so much as controller, but more as engineer), one of the first things I started building for these simulators, and Worldflight, was a near-complete ACARS emulation. With this, we uncovered many typical operational issues that also have hit the real aviation world. The unique situation of Worldflight of course allows for much more experimentation, yet simple reliability and usability remain very important.
Over the years, I decided to get a shot at adding CPDLC, which since three years has been available for all to try. Of course, CPDLC is of no use without an ATC counterpart, so this called for cooperation with the producers of simulated radar consoles. This whole ecosystem of amateur simulation can get uncannily close to the political and strategic (mis)thinking we know sometimes makes large-scale programmes such as SESAR and NextGen a challenge. Just offering technology does not mean it is picked up. Having many aircraft with CPDLC does not mean the ATC side has it. Offering pre-departure clearance via ACARS to avoid the hour-long queues on the VHF channel does not mean that everybody now gets off the mike.
ATC Tower Cab, part of the Sydney ATC center that travels around the world
To get an idea of the traffic levels that Worldflight handles, this year’s first leg from Sydney to Nadi (Fiji) ended for our Coventry aircraft (BAW744) in a hold at FL390 about 80 nm out. The resulting organised chaos is one of the rewarding aspects of joining Worldflight. It does give you the impression that you are not part of something trivial. Operating a 747-400 around the world using real weather, real procedures, and real traffic levels requires some dedication. Although the majority of Worldflight aircrew and controllers are amateur hobbyists, some of them are professional, and we were lucky enough to host two professional 747-400 pilots on our Coventry team last year. Their comments and clear joy in participation lead us to believe that we created a credible, unique challenge to allow experienced hobbyists to join realistic operations.
Sydney Center
Worldflight is hard work. Cruel flight schedules with sometimes understaffed crews, all-night flights over dark oceans in bad weather with dropping fuel reserves and holdings at the destination, traffic levels that no team of controllers can cram into one single runway, and the inevitable technical problems all conspire to wear out the hundreds of participants. After a full week, we really need a vacation. But hey, we need to show some stamina to raise money for our charities!
We try hard to maintain a good online presence, tapping into the many resources that the digital age offers to us. Next to the various web sites, we have OOOI feeds running off ACARS and into Twitter, live web cams from the flight decks, blogs, daily video journals, and of course the unique offering to join us both in person and virtually. With straightforward software, people can join Worldflight from their home. Of course, the end target is to raise money for charities – all teams together have by now raised well over EUR 100.000. To this effect, please consider a donation to one of the charities if you like what we do.
The central hub web site is here with links to the individual teams. Since I participate in one of the UK teams, based in Coventry, I take this opportunity to shamelessly plug our own charity, the Warwickshire and Northamptonshire Air Ambulance.
Our web site is here and for the associated software and other technical aspects, you may consider to visit here and follow the bread crumbs.
Worldflight 2010 runs from October 31 to November 7 (UTC). Welcome aboard!
