NTSB used ClimaDrive™ “to investigate weather-related flight accidents” and has “most recently used to recreate and weather-related accident scenario for the Air Safety Foundation at the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA)”.
You can now access it as well, and Pilot Training System has a 30-day free evaluation period where you can try the software.
Here is the full press release:
Madison, Wisconsin – Just in time for the holidays, gift givers and flight simulation enthusiasts can purchase a new weather-simulation addon for their home flight simulators. ClimaDrive™ is a weather-simulation addon to ActiveSky™ for Lockheed Martin Prepar3D® (versions 1-5) and the original Microsoft Flight Simulator® X. It allows flight simmers to create real-time and historical flight scenarios that include full, aviation-standard, pre-flight weather briefings that correlate with dynamic in-flight weather patterns of visual and non-visual weather effects powered by ActiveSky. Working in parallel with ActiveSky, ClimaDrive elevates the realism of simulation by generating real-time and historic weather events from a database that contains terabytes of historical weather products published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) from Feb 2015 to present for the continental United States.
“The Federal Aviation Administration funded my PhD research to improve aviation safety by investigating weather-related accidents like those that killed Kobe Bryant and John F. Kennedy Jr., and my developments have helped the aviation industry understand the human-performance limitations associated with one of aviation’s deadliest risks, which is weather,” said Founder and CEO, Dr. Chris Johnson, who is an Air Force veteran, instructor pilot and senior scientist whose research lab at the University of Wisconsin is funded by the US Army to develop advanced simulation for robotic-combat vehicles. “For years, I have used ClimaDrive to improve the realism of flight simulation and expose weaknesses in flight training among certificated pilots, and I recently began using it to train computer-perception systems that serve as the foundation of artificially intelligent robotic vehicles,” said Johnson. “I decided to commercialize ClimaDrive after several simulation experts and many simulation users, including many of my experimental subjects, attested to its ability to improve training, and I’m excited to learn what my users think of the system.”
Dr. Johnson went on to explain that ClimaDrive is used by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) to investigate weather-related flight accidents and that it was most recently used to recreate and weather-related accident scenario for the Air Safety Foundation at the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA). He also noted that this week he accepted a professorship at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, FL and that he intends to use ClimaDrive in his research there to stress-test both manned and unmanned systems, producing smarter pilots in the cockpit and on the ground as well as more robust computer-vision algorithms for autonomous air and ground vehicles that require no human operator.
Pilot Training System is the first training provider to offer FREE ground-school courses online at www.PilotTrainingSystem.com, and flight simmers who are interested in evaluating ClimaDrive™ FREE for 30 days can sign up at www.ClimaDrive.com.
