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I wonder about what technology is used to visualise flying instruments on this little lcds that are in cockpits in planes.

I am windows applications c++ software developer, and I'm interested what what libraries are used to this highly reliable systems like aircrafts onboard systems example of one of this lcds, probably from boeing aircraft?

radio_f8
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  • From seeing one crash in front of me, some of the entertainment systems run Linux and X11. They're likely running some real time OS, possibly custom. – Alyssa Haroldsen Mar 29 '16 at 09:50
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    Most instruments use a real-time hypervisor of some description to hard seperate real-time processes from one another, the most popular being Wind River multivisor (effectively the VxWorks real time operating system), or Integrity (http://www.ghs.com/products/rtos/integrity.html) which supports GL applications now – RAGNO Mar 29 '16 at 09:58

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https://www.khronos.org/openglsc/ OpenGL has a safety critical subset, that's worth reading up on.

RAGNO
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MFDs (Multifunctional display) are completely separate computers themselves. They communicate with other components (to obtain the data to be displayed) conforming ARINC661 standard, which defines a binary communication format to exchange data between display and user applications (sensors, etc.). Avionic systems also use RTOS (Integrity was being used in my project), each component has a partition itself and allocated processing time by the OS. Also, as Andreas stated, OpenGL has a safety-critical subset for this purpose. Avionic codes go through elaborate reviews and certification, and are coded over-safe (e.g. we were not allowed to use "new" keyword in C++, only static memory allocation was allowed).

corsel
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I'm in the aerospace industry. Glad you asked.

My experience is that the hardware setup is unique for each display unit. Commercial or custom made GPU:s are used, but drivers and libraries are always made by the display unit vendor more or less from scratch since the combo of CPU, GPU, OS and connectors in between is often unique and always a company secret of the display unit vendor. OpenGL Safety Critical profile does appear in some products but in the end the vendor only develop what the customer really need and is willing to pay for. And quite often companies buy the basics and then pay for additional functionality such as another blend operation or larger textures. Similar to addons for cars.

In general aerospace is 10-20 years behind in graphics capabilities. For displays like the one in the picture there is no need to get up to date either. More complex capabilities introduce a gruesome cost on verification without any customer actually ready to pay for it. Can't have wrong altitude presented to the pilot, so testing and documentation is immense.

Entertainment systems are in general more capable as the information displayed cannot crash the aircraft. I think they are similar to systems found in casino slot machines. As long as the hardware does not ignite itself it is safe enough.

Most what I do is either company or military confidential. I can't say much more than what is publically available or common industry knowledge. I hope this shed some light on the environment you were interested in.

Andreas
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