Immersive Flight Simulation Dome Offers Seamless, Super-Real 360-Degree Views

Video: Immersive Flight Simulation Dome Offers Seamless, Super-Real 360-Degree Views

By Clay Dillow

Barco's R-360 Flight Simulation Dome Barco

Barco, a maker of large-format projector technologies, has just unveiled what it is calling abreakthrough in flight simulator technology, and for all the hardware involved we’re inclined to agree that his must be something big. The new flight simulator dome--it’s really more like a sphere--offers state of the art high-res visuals and full 360-degree views, allowing fighter pilot trainees to spot other aircraft from 12 miles away.

That’s something of a step up from that flight simulator you used to play on your mom’s PC. The dome is bathed in light from 13 or 14 10-megapixel projectors, which are calibrated by laser to ensure complete crispness in picture. The projectors can also display imagery in infrared so pilots can train for night flights--wearing night vision, pilots actually see the blooming and halo effects caused by night vision technology.

That kind of realism is critical to ensuring pilots are prepared for real-world scenarios, the company says, and should help launch a new generation of similar simulators designed around a completely immersive experience in which several pilots can actually work together to carry out a mission rather than just run through a set of programmed scenarios.

The setups are configurable and customizable so you’ll have to call up Barco if you want a price quote. The video below is mostly an extended commercial for the product, but it does provide some nice views from inside the cockpit.

[PhysOrg]

Electronic Circuits Rewire Themselves on Demand, Depending On What They're Needed For

By Clay Dillow

Static Circuitry Northwestern researchers are developing circuit technology that can rewire itself on demand. johnmuk via Flickr

Northwestern University researchers--the same ones that brought us self-erasing documents a couple of years ago--are envisioning a day when computers and other gadgets can rewire themselves automatically to better suit the user’s needs at a given moment. As a step in that direction, they have today published a paper in Nature Nanotechnology describing tiny circuits they’ve created from nano-scale materials that can be resistors, diodes, transistors, or other components depending on what the computer needs them to be at a given time.

Basically, they’ve created circuitry that can rewire itself in the lab. Harnessed for consumer electronics, this technology could enable a new breed of computers that are always optimized for the task at hand.

The nanoparticle-based electronics work by basically creating new and fluid ways of steering the flow of electrons through a material. Rather than being static, the particles in the material can be rearranged to create varying degrees of resistance, conductivity, or whatever the system needs at a given time, even creating multiple streams of electrons flowing in different directions at the same time through the same material.

This is all made possible by a few tiny, five-nanometer-wide electrically conductive particles coated in a positively charged chemical all immersed in a pool of negatively charged atoms. Signals from a computer can then move the negatively charged atoms around, creating regions of high or low conductivity that dictate where and how electrons will naturally find a path through the material. Once an electron path is no longer needed, it can scrubbed from the system by simply reconfiguring the negatively charged atoms in a different way. In doing this, the computer can basically conjure different electrical components--diodes or resistors or switches or what have you--on demand.

The result of all that could be computers that can quickly adapt to whatever task they are performing at that particular moment, making high-powered computing--or even the common tasks performed by a smartphone-far more efficient.

[The Register]

Virgin Galactic Announces Completion of Spaceport America, the World's First Commercial Spaceport

By Dan Nosowitz

Virgin Galactic Spaceport Virgin Galactic

Virgin Galactic and its thoroughly British CEO, Richard Branson, announced another milestone on their way to opening the world's first commercial spaceport: Construction is finished, and the terminal and hangar have been dedicated.

Virgin seems to be updating us fairly frequently, with equally frequent dedication ceremonies, on the progress of the spaceport. Just one year ago, they toasted the completed runway. But now, construction on Spaceport America, located a remote section of desert in New Mexico's Sierra County, seems to be finished. The hangar and terminal will be home to the new shuttle, mission control, and a waiting area for soon-to-be astronauts.

The company expects to begin test flights next year.

[Virgin