Mustangman!
How far away are we from flying our own planes "from the cockpit"? Went to a meet last year and watched the landscape on a TV outside the clubhouse from a camcorder in the nose of a twin engine model. It made me think how wonderful it would be if you could put a camcorder or Macintosh type iSight lens in the nose or cockpit of your model aimed out over the cowling, don your Vitual Reality head set or goggles, sit back in a chair with your transmitter in your lap, and fly your own model. A P-38, P-61 or F7F, twin engine figher/bombers we all wish we could have had the money and expertise to own and fly. Bifocals, cataracs and glaucoma, not to mention 20-20, limit many of us to a quarter of a mile o less, even with a model that can do over two hundred. But not with VR. You could fly it far out of sight and still bring it back. With a geo-satellite finder on board you could easily locate it if it crashed.
Gone are the halcyon days when I could have bought a Canadian P-51 with only ferry-time on the engine for a grand, or from Mather Air Force base outside Sacramento in 1961 for five. I think we are less than a step away from donning our VR goggles and flying our own creations. With an extended range transmitter and the modern engines of today, you could easily fly to 30K or a hundred miles away and see what was there. Of course this would give the FAA the "fantods," to quote Huckleberry Finn, and they would most definitely rule against it to keep someone from flying their model into the duct works of a 747. But are we there yet price-wise for the average modeler, and the existing software and hardware?
Would love to hear from you and others on topic. dicktracy
Yep...It is just amazing to think of what will be available in not too distant future.
Judgeing from past experience, it will be stuff that we are not even able to invision now.
Probably have fleet of micro RC jobs doing combat right in the living room.
Sure were some good deals on surplus neato airplanes in years past.
Of course now days, if you had one of those old warbirds, would cost a mint to fill the gas tank, maintance, insurance and such.
Now I have to decide on my next gallon of fuel, as to go with 15% or 30% nitro. :unsure:
It's going to be a vary long time befor we ever get that. But it would be cool.
You did say it would have a crash locator on it right???????? But then again, depending on what it crashed into, we might not want to go get it. Maybe we better make sure thay can't trace it back to us :o
Don
| QUOTE (rtparr@frisurf.no @ Apr 8 2005, 08:57 AM) |
Mustangman!
How far away are we from flying our own planes "from the cockpit"? Went to a meet last year and watched the landscape on a TV outside the clubhouse from a camcorder in the nose of a twin engine model. It made me think how wonderful it would be if you could put a camcorder or Macintosh type iSight lens in the nose or cockpit of your model aimed out over the cowling, don your Vitual Reality head set or goggles, sit back in a chair with your transmitter in your lap, and fly your own model. A P-38, P-61 or F7F, twin engine figher/bombers we all wish we could have had the money and expertise to own and fly. Bifocals, cataracs and glaucoma, not to mention 20-20, limit many of us to a quarter of a mile o less, even with a model that can do over two hundred. But not with VR. You could fly it far out of sight and still bring it back. With a geo-satellite finder on board you could easily locate it if it crashed.
Gone are the halcyon days when I could have bought a Canadian P-51 with only ferry-time on the engine for a grand, or from Mather Air Force base outside Sacramento in 1961 for five. I think we are less than a step away from donning our VR goggles and flying our own creations. With an extended range transmitter and the modern engines of today, you could easily fly to 30K or a hundred miles away and see what was there. Of course this would give the FAA the "fantods," to quote Huckleberry Finn, and they would most definitely rule against it to keep someone from flying their model into the duct works of a 747. But are we there yet price-wise for the average modeler, and the existing software and hardware?
Would love to hear from you and others on topic. dicktracy |
I would not want to be the one with the controls when it hits a airline and kills hundreds!!!
The technology is here!!! Price is not :wacko: