In 1998 two students created our first 2D Bird Flight Simulator for Windows 3.1.
Although only 2D it showed steady flow was possible with flapping wings in a real time simulation model.
A joystic must be connected to control the wing lag movent to go up and downwards.
It's an experimental version in Dutch language only.
With the bird designer it's possible to make your own birds, aerplanes or gliders.
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Introduction
Based on airplane areodynamics Bird Flight Calculator 1.1 (for WIN95,98,2000,NT) calculates for you fully interactive the flight speeds of a bird, hang-glider or airplane at minimum drag or power. For a bird also metabolic parameters are given like heart beat, flapping frequency and power consumption, based on avarage bird properties.
Birdflight database
It's possible to build your own database of birds and other flying animals or planes even including pictures. You can estimate the flight speed of prehistoric animals like pterosaurs.
Input
To generate correct output you need to know the wingspan (tip to tip), wing aspect ratio (slenderness), mass, and viscious drag coefficient (or glide ratio) of the bird.
Flightspeed depend on the spanning ratio of the wings.
New 1.1 version !
The new 1.1 version is updated with a database containing flight data and pictures of a lot of birds. BFC 1.1 will be officially released before the pre-anouncement of Bird Flight Simulator in September 2000.
We appriciate your comment on Bird Flight Calculator. Improved versions will follow. Version 1.1 is planned to be added as an inline calculator in our coming Bird Flight Simulator software.
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