Company Putting Aircraft Manufacturers in the Pilot’s Seat

Flying somewhere over the Imperial Valley, at an altitude of about 7,000 feet, pilot Rick Willard stalled his F-18 fighter plane. Far from being concerned, Willard was calm--even proud--of his predicament.

But then Willard wasn’t actually in a cockpit, he was in a comfortable chair in the conference room at the Sight, Sound and Motion Corp. offices in Thousand Oaks. And the F-18 he was operating was not hurtling through space, but hovering on a computer screen.

The three-dimensional simulated aircraft, controlled by a pair of high-tech joysticks, is one of a virtually unlimited number of existing or imagined aircraft--jets, missiles, commercial airliners--that can be programmed into Sight, Sound and Motion’s FltMaster flight simulator.

Sight, Sound and Motion officials have begun marketing the combination hardware-software simulation system to such aeronautics leaders as Northrop Corp., Lockheed Martin, McDonnell-Douglas and Rockwell International.

“We started working on the product two years ago as a NASA-quality flight simulator that plays like an arcade game,” said Willard, vice president of Sight, Sound and Motion. “We feel it is now better than that.”

By programming information such as an aircraft’s weight, its aerodynamics and its propulsion into the FltMaster system, Willard said, aircraft officials can see, on screen, how an existing or proposed aircraft and its parts will perform under given circumstances.

Unlike existing simulators currently employed by aircraft manufacturers, he said, the FltMaster is able to simulate multiple types of aircraft.

“Aircraft companies have high-fidelity simulation systems, but they are just for one plane,” said Willard, a former U.S. Navy pilot and technical manager for Northrop. “The biggest selling point of our system is its productivity and affordability. It can do a very sophisticated simulation in a fraction of the time it would take for the aircraft manufacturers to [create] the same thing.”

To construct a new simulator for each particular aircraft, he said, takes 1 to 1 1/2 years and can cost $5 million to $100 million. The FltMaster sells for $75,000.

“I think they’ve developed a tool that can be used across many countries and across many airlines,” said Craig Richesin, a safety data analyst with McDonnell-Douglas. “When you look under the hood, the quality is there. It is head and shoulders above any other system out there.”

Willard said the FltMaster can be used at various stages of the aircraft manufacturing process.

“Clients can use the FltMaster system in research and development to design and computer test [aircraft] prior to building it. This is a lot cheaper than trial and error,” Willard said. “They can also use the system during the design and fabrication phase. They can put the characteristics of the electronic parts they are using into the simulator to reassure themselves they are on the right path.”

Once an aircraft is up and flying, he said, clients can feed flight data into the simulator to evaluate the craft’s performance. The system also can be used to test proposed changes to aircraft before they are made.

“From time to time a manufacturer upgrades an aircraft. Now they will be able to see if the aircraft really will perform better before they actually make the changes,” said Stan Kranzler, president and chief executive of Sight, Sound and Motion and its parent company, SystemWare Inc. “It can keep them from spending money that they don’t have to spend.”

Separate from his involvement with Sight, Sound and Motion, Kranzler, through his SystemWare operation, manufactures products that analyze radio waves and other signals. Kranzler’s clients include the U.S. government and the governments of other NATO countries.

In addition to its potential use in aircraft manufacturing and testing, the FltMaster can recreate a flight from the statistical information found in the black box recordings of airplanes that have been involved in accidents. That information includes the location of the aircraft, its positioning (whether the nose is up or down), and its speed, altitude and the condition of its engines.

Richesin, of McDonnell-Douglas, said an instrument that can both simulate and reconstruct flights could have significant potential in his industry.

“A tool like this,” he said, “could make the aerospace business more efficient and faster.”