The rest of the cockpit

• Glass Cockpits are software displays

  • What about the panel with instruments and knobs

• FlightGear uses a collection of XML files to draw a panel

  • It's nice, but not the same as knobs you can push

• It is expensive to put in all the motors and switches

  • It's even more expensive to wire them to a computer
  • There are expensive specialist interface cards
  • The manufacturer doesn't sell very many of them

• Tempting to use cheap consumer gear

  • For example, USB lets me easily attach 100 devices
  • I might need 20 sound cards, 30 joysticks, etc etc
  • But standard Linux systems have trouble with this

Notes: