A bigger sim

Today and tomorrow I'm at the AOPA Summit in Florida. Walking around the exhibit hall today offered me the chance to fly a Fresca simulator setup for a Cirrus SR22.

This thing has a wraparound screen that probably covers 180 degrees of your forward view (so nearly total side-to-side coverage) and maybe 40 degrees up-and-down (so plenty). I kept my flight short, but just after takeoff I rolled over into a steep bank and felt a little disoriented. It was kind of cool, but something that I'd have to get used to as getting all that visual input with no seat-of-the-pants input was a touch strange.

The graphics looked like MS Flight Sim, so I assume that is what was driving the view, and the avionics were near-real-life mockups mounted in a cockpit setup not too different from the real SR22. Very very cool.

To end the flight I did something unique. I slowed down, reached up, and pulled the chute. The sim seemed to do a decent job simulating the event, and it was a bit of an eye opener. The initial pitching moment from the chute deployment didn't look as extreme as I imagined it might, but the descent rate looked more, umm, "intense", than I had previously imagined it would be. That told me that I really don't want to ever pull the chute in real life (unless that's my best option of course).

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