Airplane Farm Harvest: from CAD to VR flight.
The Harvest CAV flies in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, in VR, with a custom HUD and an engineering twin, while the real prototype is still being built.
Harvest CAV in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024: lift-off at Reno, climb-out, the transition HUD, cruise, and chase views. No sound.
The aircraft
The Harvest CAV is an all-electric powered-lift aircraft designed by The Airplane Farm of Sparks, Nevada, and built on its Electric PowerWing (Patent Pending). It takes off and lands vertically or on a short field, the pilot flies lying prone, and the fly-by-wire controls are what the designer calls Simplified Flight Controls.
The Harvest is in design, with prototype construction and initial testing underway.
The Harvest CAV at theairplanefarm.com →- Efficient cruise speed
- mph
- Maximum horizontal sprint
- mph
- Continuous cruise range
- miles
- Flight time to discharge
- minutes
The Airplane Farm's published figures, from theairplanefarm.com. They are not outputs of our model.
The brief
Show the aircraft flying before the prototype does, and give the designer an engineering model to test ideas on.
What we built
Simulator
- The Harvest built from the designer's CAD and flying in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024
- Every flight phase: vertical takeoff from the tail, transition to wing-borne flight, and landing
- A VR cockpit, flown on a Meta Quest 3
HUD and automation
- A custom HUD designed for the prone pilot, with hover, transition and cruise layouts
- A terrain visor with terrain-clearance warnings
- Flight-path and energy displays
- Autoland and auto-takeoff guidance, checklists, and a display of the pilot's own inputs
- Auto level, auto-throttle, automatic takeoff and autoland in the simulator
Engineering twin
- A JSBSim model of the Harvest built from the designer's data
- It runs inside the simulator about 480 times a second and flies the aircraft in place of the simulator's own flight model
- A fly-by-wire prototype on the twin, with envelope protection for speed, angle of attack and bank angle, plus a speed brake
- Every test flight recorded for Tacview and shared with the designer
From the test flights
8 stills · in flight orderOn the runway at Reno before takeoff, HUD in ground mode
Flown in VR
The same aircraft, flown in virtual reality on a Meta Quest 3: lift-off from Reno with the takeoff guidance, a banked turn over the city, the terrain visor over the hills, and a gear-down descent.