NASA wants to use CapFrameX to measure FPS in its flight simulator
After giving us incredible innovations like pens that write upside down and ice cream that tastes bad (and a pretty significant chunk of modern technology), NASA is looking for its next breakthrough on earth. Okay, a “breakthrough” might be conceited for an IT benchmarking tool. I bury the lede here: NASA wants to use CapFrameX for its giant flight simulators.
CapFrameX, if you don’t know, is a popular benchmarking tool. Users love its ability to capture and analyze system and performance information with a dizzying number of readouts and tons of customization. It is based on PresentMon, an open source project from Intel.
According to the official CapFrameX Twitter account, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (which has been to the Moon several times) has “expressed interest in using CapFrameX to evaluate the FPS performance of cockpit simulator video systems and has initiated the US Government software approval process.” Subsequent comments from the account indicate that “they have started the approval process.”
It makes sense that NASA would invest heavily to operate its flight simulators efficiently. Even regular pilots must accumulate thousands of hours of simulated flights before climbing into the cockpit of a real machine. Therefore, controlling the machines that enter the upper atmosphere and Earth’s orbit has literally higher stakes.
Today, NASA uses a lot of commercial software and hardware in its flight simulator setups (as Tom’s Hardware notes), but its elaborate training simulations remain among the most advanced in the world. These include full-motion, fully enclosed systems that move on their own axes.
If I were a software developer working on an open source reference tool, I’d be thrilled that NASA thinks it has what it takes. Well done, CapFrameX.
