For some reason the thread “Volocity: The most boring aircraft in the sim” stimulated the following thought. Why not have an autopilot mechanism that allows you to launch additional aircraft that would fly in formation with you or fly according to flight plans that you provide the bot-piloted aircraft? I don’t know if Microsoft will ever allow the military jet to engage in anything resembling combat action but if you could add additional bot aircraft then at least you might attempt to simulate Blue Angel’s flight formations, etc., with military jets.
On the most boring aircraft in the sim, bots, and autopilot, etc., I read an article in 2015 or so in the NY Times that actually pilots of modern airliners spend very little time manually flying their airplanes.
In a recent survey of airline pilots, those operating Boeing 777s reported that they spent just seven minutes manually piloting their planes in a typical flight. Pilots operating Airbus planes spent half that time.
So I don’t think anyone should complain about “most boring aircraft in the sim” because real-life pilots are very little engaged with actually flying their airplanes manually. In a way, MSFS is simulating bygone days of flying for airliners if you’re manually controlling and fully engaged in flying from point A to point B.
Haven’t found the other NY Time article that inspired the “let’s have more auxiliary bot planes to join us in formation” idea, but several years ago there was another article on a female military jet pilot who saw herself being replaced by a bot pilot because they could withstand higher G forces than a human and were more “expendable” so that they could engage in more dangerous combat maneuvers (like a missile) so the woman pilot was changing the arc of her career course in the military to avoid possible obsolescence as a jet pilot.
So it might be interesting as the sim evolves with all the variations on standard aircraft, gliders, helicopters, etc., that MSFS kept up with the times and offered an interface to pilot an aircraft from the ground to let simmers experience what it’s like to pilot either a full aircraft or a fixed wing drone from the ground.
But if aircraft are becoming more drone-like with respect to actual time spent under human manual control, I don’t think anyone should complain about “most boring aircraft in the sim, etc.”
I actually retired from airline flying for the very reason you are stating. I like to fly. That said, the statement is a bit misleading and I think unfair to those still ‘pushing tin’.
Anyone that flies airlines will tell you that the advantage of automation in the cockpit is not additional nap time. The flight deck on a huge bus with wings is a busy place. When I was strapped in one, we didn’t have 90% of the automation that is commonplace today. The workload was often nearly overwhelming. Many of the aircraft I flew required three on the flight deck because there was no way two could safely manage the tasks.
The added automation today means that very few aircraft require three crew but the two still hanging out behind that locked door are very busy, indeed. I bring this up because, the last thing we need is for someone to believe that we could whittle that crew down to one and maybe they wouldn’t be so bored. Image the cost savings, to all but the life underwriters.
As for additional bot planes to join me in formation? I would far rather have a team of meat sacks on my wings, participating through a robust multiplayer interface. Now THAT would be anything but boring!
Depends on the airline, most have changed the policy to fly manually whenever workload allows it. Also, 7 minutes is a decent amount of time, usually take-off up to a safe altitude and approach / landing are flown manually (weather permitting), those are the most critical parts. I mean, there is no point in manually flying the aircraft in cruise flight for hours, there is very little skill involved in that.
yeah i doubt commercial aviation will reach the ability to have a single pilot. Not just from an automation perspective but simply for the fact if something should happen to the pilot, then theres literally no one to fly the plane. We’re still many many years from using AI to pilot commercial planes and it’s unlikely we’d see this form of transportation due to the inherent fallibility of machines. Imagine flying to Denver in a Skynet plane and the plane suddenly bugs out? Now the plane is thinking it’s landing in Miami and the plane still thinks it has another 5000 feet when it actually still has 250 feet before it lands. oops…
It’s better to just invent teleportation tech than to try and reinvent commercial air travel honestly. and even then it’ll still take 3 hours to get through security…
And yet we are only a handful of years away from having city and highway traffic whipping around at previously unheard of speeds while the “driver” naps.
You and I may think that aviation is exempt but reality is that people are becoming more trusting of technology than humans. I don’t think fully automated airline travel is as far away as we may think. When the military proves they can have autonomous combat aircraft, civil aircraft won’t be far behind.
idk, i think government red tape will really prevent automated air travel from taking off (pun intended). There’s so many issues of safety it’s likely to get stuck there for the longest amount of time.
But yeah you’re right, once the military invents something, it’s usually not long before civilians are able to get their hands on the same tech. How long was the DARPA dogbot used by the military before they began offering it to civilian law enforcement?
This is slightly off topic but theres a book about this paraplegic pilot who signed up for this secret Air Force program where they would have mind-controlled fighter drones that were capable of taking off and docking from the wings of modified B52 bombers. The idea was to have up to 4 drones controlled by a single pilot but the mental strain led to one guy in the program going nuts and nearly nuked Las Vegas (or something). I think it would be cool to have commercial planes piloted from the ground via mind-helmets or satellite connected FPV cameras. Imagine the ground pilot sneezing the plane just goes nuts in the air…
Actually, I’d beg to differ strongly with that statement. Sorry I don’t have actual references handy but I read a number of years ago that the VA Medical system had switched to robots for dispensing all medications (pills, from storage containers into patient prescription bottles) because the bots are decidedly more reliable than humans. The number of people who get sick or die from taking the wrong medication is estimated to be 7,000 to 9,000 folks annually in the U.S. with an additional hundreds of thousands getting sick from the wrong medication and associated medical costs of treating wrong medication associated problems estimated to be $40 BILLION each year. Medication Dispensing Errors And Prevention - StatPearls - NCBI Bookshelf (nih.gov).
Similarly with mammograms, bots do a better job at detecting suspect areas on an x-ray scan than human radiologists. They don’t get bored, tired, or distracted, and always scan every radiogram with the same complete thoroughness.
Also, human error or oversight is probably largely responsible for the 32,000 people who die each year in the U.S. in auto accidents with more than two million people injured each year. The numbers actually used to be higher in the 60’s and 70’s in the U.S. but getting tougher on DWI and better car safety features and laws have brought the numbers down even though the population has increased.
Sorry I haven’t any numbers for flying but I daresay that the same sort of trend would be observed for flying. If it weren’t for electronics and programming looking over plane and pilot performance, etc., I dare say flying would be more dangerous than it is now (one of the safest things in the world to do!). And it’s not bots that design bad automation. Humans poorly designed the Boeing 737-Max features that caused crashes, particularly because pilots weren’t properly informed. And wasn’t the Air France flight that crashed in the Atlantic on the way from South America to Paris because the pilots were unfamiliar with the new plane (or something like that) and didn’t appreciate that they were seriously icing up?
So, yes, bots are not very good at dealing with the unfamiliar and I agree totally that bots are not the answer to everything. But human beings are certainly not much more reliable than machines. If it goes for stuff on the ground, it certainly goes for performance in the air, too. A bot pilot does not show up for the job drunk, about to have cardiac arrest, or maniacally determined to fly a suicide mission (the Malaysia Airlines MH 370 flight)
As of now, autopilot is excellent for doing routine stuff. Humans are much better in assessing non-normal situations and coming up with creative solutions to a problem. Not saying it will never happen, but even with autopilot engaged after take-off until landing (including autoland) multiple human interventions are required each flight, not only from a flying perspective, from a system perspective, reroute or reprogram around weather or other traffic, etc. Its a very dynamic environment, AI can probably handle a flight perfectly from take-off to touchdown with current technology when the weather is perfect, no other traffic around and no technical problems. And not even talking about ground maneuvering.
In 2020 Airbus flew an empty passenger plane (plus two pilots for backup) autonomously… Takeoff, cruise, and landing all on its own.
It won’t be far off before people will be worried if the pilot had to intervene mid flight, means there was a problem!
In 1988 the Soviet Space shuttle flew without pilots and flew via onboard automation. An amazing accomplishment, although it did choose the wrong runway for landing, probably because it was using stolen MFS ATC code.
Oh yeah… Bot wingmen… There was a plug in for FSX that did this. It was not all that fun. Formation flying with other players, now that is a rush.
Flying from the ground? That’s mostly what we are doing now.
Exactly, the flying part is not an issue at all, a computer is much better in the “up, down, left, right, more noise and less noise” part. When weather is fine and everything works then all is fine. Aircraft could technically land with zero visibility (CATIIIC), the technology exists for years, yet there is not a single CAT IIIC approach active in the world. While a computer can safely land an aircraft in zero visibility, there is no corresponding technology available to taxi to and from the gate. We are far, far away from seeing fully automated flight from gate to gate, and even further away from removing people from the flightdeck.
Nope, commercial aviation is at least 10 years behind on what is technically possible. Nice technology demonstrators, still not gonna happen anytime soon. I’m not gonna see that happening in my career for sure. By the way, both links are concepts from start-ups…
You said the tech doesn’t exist at all. Now you are saying the tech doesn’t exist from a major manufacturer but both Airbus and Boeing are investing in autonomous aircraft and already flying prototypes. Truth is all of the necessary tech exists today, the problems are more around what solutions will work best and cost the least.
Military tech and urban taxis/cargo are already leading the way. After that it will be long haul cargo and by then passenger planes will be transitioning. I’m not pretending to have a crystal ball and predict the future timeline, but I do believe the path to automated flight is already here.
There is technically much more possible than currently used in commercial aviation, having a concept is one thing, getting it approved takes years and tons of money. You will probably see such technology used in general aviation first.
Having a technology demonstrator is nice, still does not mean that the technology exists. No doubt an aircraft can operate autonomously from gate to gate right now, with no traffic around, no faults and clear weather. The technology to maneuver an aircraft safely on the ground in zero visibility however simply does not exist yet, hence the lack of CAT IIIC approaches.
Continuing with my “connect-the-dots-but-skip-quite -few-in-between” thinking that spawned my bot suggestion in the first place, another far-out area that Microsoft could explore in MSFS is adding space vehicle flying. Perhaps the different companies that produce space or near-space vehicles of some sort would jump at the chance to collaborate with Microsoft and Asobo to include their vehicles in such a “flying machine” category in the sim. The dot connection is that undoubtedly these days flying a near-space plane or going into orbit in a space vehicle is a largely bot-controlled endeavor. And Microsoft and Asobo certainly have the data to simulate views of the Earth, 10, 50, 300, 22,000 miles into space, etc.
One could go by the rule that, HEY, this is a sim and as such should provide only common, popular real-life flying machine simulations to the masses. But somewhere after helicopters and gliders, maybe there’d be room for the inclusion of more futuristic, even imaginary vehicles. Maybe even now NASA has enough data to simulate flying anywhere in the solar system and one could just set one’s capsule on autopilot as you coast 1 1/2 years or whatever it is to Mars out of Earth orbit, etc., before you do your Seven Minutes of Terror touchdown.
Basically, I think there should be room to try out on users simulated experiences that are not entirely the cut-and-dried, down-to-earth variety (literally and figuratively). AIA, if there’s already a couple of space vehicle threads somewhere here on the forum…
