All About Linux 2008: Penguins fly! An interview with Charles Ogilvie, Virgin America’s head of In-Flight Entertainment
- March 27th, 2008
- Read 94 times
- 30 Comments
Rather than bore you with a handful of other random gadgets and doodads that run Linux, I’ve decided to focus on one really big thing that’s phenomenal. So I present to you, dear readers, with Virgin America’s in-flight entertainment system, RED. I’ve written about it once or twice before and every flight I take on VA gets better. I’ll be flying to Vegas this weekend for CTIA and I’m as giddy as a schoolgirl because I’ll be taking VA. It’s a completely different experience and its only getting better, but don’t take my word for it. You should really take advantage if they’re servicing your city. If not, then wait it out and try it when you can. It’s definitely worth it and once Aircell’s GoGo network is implemented into VA’s fleet, you won’t find a better airline in the US.
Today, we’re interviewing Charles Ogilvie, the Director of Inflight Entertainment and designer of RED.
CG: Why did you pick linux for RED?
CO: Linux is very stable and agile. We were able to pare down the embedded seat-back side to only the libraries we need, license a container app and then write the code needed to tie everything together
Which distribution are you using?
Flavors of Red Hat & Fedora (we have embedded seat-back units, seat & distribution boxes and a head-end that consists of some file servers)
Wow long was it in testing?
We’ve been developing it for 4 years and it has gone through numerous iterations. Before a new version is released, it is tested on a simulation rack
Did Microsoft approach you about running Windows on the back end?
We’ve talked with a lot of software vendors.
What was the hardest part about creating the system? Was it the software? The hardware?
The hardest part is maintaining agility. The beauty of the architecture is that we can continue to move forward, innovate and constantly look for additional areas to add new, unprecedented functionality like our inflight food ordering system or seat-to-seat chat.
Why don’t more people use Linux in high traffic situations like this?
I don’t know. They should.
How often does it crash? The Linux machines, not the planes…
Resets or reboots occur in different areas. Because we are trying different open source games, we do notice issues with porting them for example. Over time, we work through those issues. Our inflight team members (flight attendants) have the ability to reboot seats. The seat units also monitor themselves and can reset themselves if they freeze or lose connectivity (a heart-beat) with the head-end.
What’s the deal with the in-flight chat? Why was that included? Have people connected through that?
Seat-to-seat chat and TV-Chat are some of the most fun features we have. We’ve had everything from people striking up great conversations with other guests in chats to groups using it laugh and have fun while watching the same program. The whole idea behind it is to allow a sense of community to take place in a typically confined, airborne environment. I cannot wait for broadband and the chance for our passengers to chat with the ground
What’s in store for the future besides in-flight Wi-Fi?
The ability to compose a music-video playlist is pretty cool and on the horizon. The READ section is also awesome in that it takes what is typically a bunch of wasted trees (excess newspapers, periodicals) and allows us to be more environmentally friendly and timely with things like news/event info/sports/entertainment etc.
Wow, here in the UK the latest technological advance is a new terminal at Heathrow that doesn’t work…
seems like a cynical attempt to lock people into buying virgin branded services while locked into a seat for 8 hours. Doesnt mention real access to the web or external email services, as that would take away income from the new cell phone premium access rate
Wow, cranky much?
Broadband on an aircraft is not as simple as you seem to think it is. This is a great step in the right direction, and positions them very well for when broadband services become affordable.
right,
couldn’t possibly about innovating, or trying to provide the best, most comfortable experience when making often unavoidable mundane domestic flights?
uhh wait…who’s cynical here? Please be smart before trying to sound it…
cynical
adj : believing the worst of human nature and motives; having a
sneering disbelief in e.g. selflessness of others [syn:
misanthropic, misanthropical]
riiight anyway you’re the cynic here…that’s not bad, but seriously please brush up on your vocab
good
Are shooting games on planes really a good idea? :)
Haha, good point. I believe that some people will see that as counter-productive. Seeing as the airlines are attempting to prevent weapons from being on board, I don’t know that this is a good idea.
Hey, great idea…Now terrorist can recieve in flight training tooo :-)
zomg yeah it’d be terrible for us if people could immerse themselves in a fantasy, just in case they pull the guns out of the game and use them for real….
This right here will be huge. I hope it catches on with all airlines.
I really like the idea of the seat to seat chat. Think about all the times you have to sit and another family member or friend is a few rows back. I know I’ve seen many mothers roaming seats to check up on their kids. Now they can have the direct contact to their kids that they want.
Now for my ideas: I think they should have either pull out keyboards from the arm-rests or some available for rent. They could also have a usb port available on the headrest or in the arm rest to allow people to connect their flash drives. This would then allow business users to work on the plane and save the data to their jump drive.
I really hope frozen bubble is on there :-)
Thanks for the excellent post.
-Aaron Snyder
Aaron, the chat is text based and the controller is in the armrest and pops out if I recall correctly - one side is a gamepad and the other is a qwerty keyboard.
I still think they should have gone with a VMware solution. Less hardware… more stability, more control.
How does VMWare solve the problem.? I would think a mini PC embedded in the headrest, and a efficient and streamlined *nix OS with some core server components being as minimal as possible is the optimal solution. Giving everyone their personal 400Mhz miniPC seems smarter than thin client / VDI solutions, as they all rely on some major server component. VMWare = I love it, but sorry, I disagree entirely with it being a solution in this environment. I think what they have chosen, was exactly perfect; modular, embedded, flexible, with some central control.
As for in flight chat letting you “holla at the hot babe across the isle.” Lets put ourselves in the shoes of the hot babe… Now she can get harrassed while trying to watch an in flight movie from a bunch of losers whose only way to hit on a chick is though a computer console while they have her trapped in an airplane cabin 30000 feet in the air. Awesome. Have you have tried actually approaching a hot babe. Innovation != airplane stalking.. I would see it more for letting children chat while enjoying an in flight movie.. You need to get out more Tahoeman
well yeah but he hollas…unless it’s gwen stephani I think he’s safe (she’s no holla-back girl, as you may or may not know)
yeah, but VMware has more implied cost…maybe something like xen or when KVM finally matures….
I think that in the mean time it’s been fairly self-evident that the industry is moving away from mainframe type environments and more into the realm of clustering type environments. Getting a decent framerate to every console on the plane would be a nightmare from a networking standpoint, and at this point they can probably clone the mini-computer images as easily as they could the vmware images without having to manage a separate image for every seat, which would require extensive documentation and procedures, rather than just recognizing that whatever is wired to what display is where it serves the data.
VirtualBox can do almost everything VMWare can do. But it is completely open source and free.
What problem are you trying to solve with vmware that linux can’t handle? Keep in mind, vmware is based on linux Kernel — so, why complicate the design by adding unnecessary layer?
I think this is an inovation at airborne level, especially that seat-to-seat chat. If there’s a hot babe across the plane that you wanna holla at, just message her and take from there.
Just got back from a London - Dubai - Nagoya flight on Emirates
About 200 films and 300 albums on demand all running on linux
Excellent system
Oh wow that sounds cool! I really hope it catches on and other airlines pick up on it.
I just hope there are settings that make it so you don’t receive any messages while watching a movie. Adding settings to block on a per seat basis would be good too.
http://www.tech-exposed.com
Now how much does this increse theprice of a Flight??
the website you linked, or the free OS?
I agree, RED is fun. I flew from SFO to LAX a month ago and I loved it. I took pictures of RED and showed it to my friends.
While I applaud Virgin’s ideas, the system itself needs work. I recently flew on Virgin America on a flight from San Francisco to Las Vegas, and had a less than ideal experience with the “Red” system. Many of the features in the menus were not available, the interface was sluggish at best, and the thing locked up on me twice in just a few minutes of regular use.
Hopefully Virgin can work out the bugs and make the system into what this article makes it sound like.
Interesting piece of technology. Thanks for sharing this.
aerlingus already has this done, it definately makes a 6 or 7 hour flight enjoyable
There are several airlines allready using this kind of system (Quantas, Delta, Singapore airlines etc.).
http://www.linux.com/feature/119544
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