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Matt's Multi-Mission Military Flight Simulator
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SIM various
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James & Ted visit 2003
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Sim pilots 1999-2004
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Basement tour 2004
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Canopy & projector
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Sound system enhancement
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SIM TV studio
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Instructor's station
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Flight controls
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Instruments
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Control heads
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HUD & MFD Functions
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Misc.
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Childhood sims to present
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Evolution of current sim
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Ejection seat progression
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Above is a picture of the HUD and the upper part of the main instrument panel. As you can see, the HUD matches the electromechanical instruments. The ability of the electronic and mechanical displays to mirror each other without noticeable lag is a tribute to the EPIC card's ability to transfer data from Flight Sim to the hardware efficiently.
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Planned upgrades
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EPIC interface
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Instrument interfaces
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HUD development
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Other projects
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Software
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Parts sources
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The above MFD image shows the magic of Project Magenta's Fighter MFD software at work. Flying around Denver Colorado, terrain data is displayed in the background. This background terrain follows fluidly as the aircraft flies. The legends adjacent to the MFD bezel keys select the various map features and other available display modes. They do not seem lined up since this is a head-on shot of the MFD and the text is positioned to line up from the pilot's downward left view. Some functions, such as different MFD pages and map range are also contollable via the control stick, while others are selecatble via MFD buttons only.
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Flight plan stick maps are generated when a flight plan is entered into the flight management system via the CDU. The flight management system is another Project Magenta product that interfaces to the rest of the avionics suite via Ethernet link between computers. In addition to generating the stick maps, the autopilot can be engaged and coupled to the FMS to steer the aircraft along the course displayed.
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The ADI mode is displayed above which mirrors the information provided on the electromechanical instruments.
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The HUD repeater mode above displays the same image that appears on the HUD.
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Above is the fuel and engine display mode.
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Above is a picture of early experimentation with an MFD. I had it connected to its Programmable Display Generator (PDG) black box which provides power to the MFD along with the signals required to drive it.
The F-16 MFDs can display RS-170A (NTSC) video as long as digital horizontal and vertical sync are provided. In this picture I inserted the signals from an old IBM PC with CGA card, which was pretty easy to feed to the MFD. A simple MS-DOS file listing is displayed, which was a great, but hollow, success. In no way were these MFDs designed to work from the standard VGA signals used today and VGA to NTSC converters would result in fuzzy images.
The PDG would not generate any usable displays since it realized the rest of the aircraft was missing due to the silent 1553 data bus. It may have also zeroed its internal memory when it was removed from the aircraft. I'll never know.
In the end I wound up salvaging the CRTs and driving them with a 5" VGA monitor chassis. The result was the crisp, clean images displayed above glaring through the same exotic green polarizing filter glass of the real MFD.
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