New bird. No front window?

No windshield saves a ton of weight and complexity. Think about the Concorde's droop nose system, for example. Also think about bird strikes at high speeds.

More details:

https://www.fastcompany.com/91009725/na ... ill-fly-it

You can see the top mounted camera in the photos.

We could call this "view by wire".

Honestly, it probably isn't much worse than some airplanes from the 1930s with large radial engines that blocked forward view in the landing attitude. For example, the Gee Bee racer had basically zero forward visibility while landing.

Mike C.

I seriously question the practicality of this concept. Depth perception is important when you land an airplane and a flat screen won't provide that. One difference between this airplane and those round engined types of old is that those airplanes, even WWII fighters, landed at much lower speeds than this thing will, and you could wheel land them to provide forward visibility.

Is this concept OK for an X-plane? Was negligible visibility OK for a 1930's racer? Sure, but I can't see either approach being used in commercial operations.

Charles Lindbergh

Yep, the Spirit of St. Louis had no forward vision capability without a periscope. It's too bad he wasn't able to choose a Lockheed Vega for his flight (first flight in the same year - 1927).

Dan

Counter proof: flight simulators. They project on a 2D screen and pilots seem to make that work. I just spent 8 hours in one and my landings were great (often better than the real plane, sadly).


It already is given some planes can land without the pilot seeing the runway and/or using night vision equipment on a flat display.

If the flare is an issue, tech can solve that for a lot less complexity than some sort of direct view means.

Mike C.

A plane like that is flown by the numbers, and I’ll bet that includes flaring to a predetermined attitude at a predetermined height.

And remember that this is just a technology demonstrator, it’s not even a prototype of a planned airplane. I’ll bet it’s going to fly a set number of flights to complete the program and then either get cannibalized or go to a museum somewhere.

People have been landing successfully in simulators for a long time. I’ve done it myself and can tell you that it works just fine.

Landing zero zero is no problem with radio altimeter call outs; that's where the auto land takes it's cue for throttles and flare.

I seriously question the practicality of this concept. Depth perception is important when you land an airplane and a flat screen won't provide that. One difference between this airplane and those round engined types of old is that those airplanes, even WWII fighters, landed at much lower speeds than this thing will, and you could wheel land them to provide forward visibility.

Is this concept OK for an X-plane? Was negligible visibility OK for a 1930's racer? Sure, but I can't see either approach being used in commercial operations.

Landing this on a 10000 ft runway with a camera would be childs play compared to putting a Corsair on a straight deck carrier.

What blows my mind checking out pilots new to blind airplanes is they are perfectly comfortable taxiing at 20+ mph blind as a bat, but freak out because they cant see on the runway.

It should be exactly opposite. I have no problem landing a blind airplane, but I'm scared $hitless ta iing one at Oshkosh.

That blind landing skill has come in handy more than once with an iced up windshield too...

As for depth perception for landing, the cue for flare height has more to do with seeing the the angular shape of the runway change as the plane descends upon it, through practice and storing the sight picture for touchdown.

When a pilot depends on depth perception alone landing, and looks at the runway too close to the plane or fixates on the touch down point he will usually fly it into the ground; looking too far he will usually flare too high, unreliable perception of height. But when he looks out a ways he will see the runway appear to flatten with the sight picture stored in his mind for touchdown. The sight picture taxiing is the sight picture for touchdown, and doesn't rely on depth perception. I've flown with one-eyed pilots at the airline.

Many pilots can't say what cues they are using for landing, but subconsciously, that's what they are doing, seeing the sight picture flatten.

Read the X-59 has a single F414-GE-100 turbofan, a custom variant of this popular engine found on the F/A-18 Super Hornet

Rollout video, mostly talk, but short segment which talks about the vision system

Skip to 10m 4s

[youtube]https://youtu.be/KjCdGqgD9Bs[/youtube]

I heard it's been given the name Pinocchio.

But will it scale up to airliner size? Might be hard to get close enough to the jetway.