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Who's the guy in the in-flight entertainment system?

anders.io

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Re: Who's the guy in the in-flight entertainment system?

#11

Post by breadbox »

witty_username wrote: post #3
callesgg wrote: post #2

I have been tempted to play with the entertainment screen in airplanes a couple of times. But as it is on an airplane traveling 900km/h 10 000m in the air. I dont feel like poking at stuff that is connected to the stuff that is keeping me and the other passengers alive. Also it i don't feel like speeding life in prison. But those things don't exactly feel like top quality stuff. They feel more like something that tha…

In-flight entertainment system is barely connected to the important parts of the airplane, if at all.

Last week I would have sworn the same was true of cars.

Re: Who's the guy in the in-flight entertainment system?

#12

Post by objclxt »

facetube wrote: post #10
anseljh wrote: post #7

I noticed the unmistakable X Windows "X" cursor and gray loading screen on an in-flight entertainment system that crashed on me. I think it was Virgin America, one of their early flights after they launched.

The Delta in-flight entertainment systems also (at least as of a couple years ago) seem to be Linux-based. I had one crash and reboot spontaneously while I was using it, and was greeted by a couple Tux logos and a verbose Linux 2.4 boot process when it came back up.

I used to freelance at one of the big two major IFE manufacturers. Their systems are a bit of a hodgepodge of platforms. Currently, the dominant platform is Linux, running either a) a QT based GUI or b) a HTML based GUI.

But most new planes coming off the ground today are moving to Android based systems, since they have many advantages - it's much easier to get content like games and apps, and cheaper to engineer and develop for.

One of the problems with IFE systems today is that both A380 and 787 deliveries have been significantly delayed - often the IFE hardware is just sitting in a warehouse for several years waiting for the plane to catch up to it. So by the time the plane finally is delivered to the customer the IFE system may already be 4-5 years out of date.

Re: Who's the guy in the in-flight entertainment system?

#13

Post by justizin »

anseljh wrote: post #7

I noticed the unmistakable X Windows "X" cursor and gray loading screen on an in-flight entertainment system that crashed on me. I think it was Virgin America, one of their early flights after they launched.

I helped someone sitting next to me on a flight deal with the fact that the touchscreen wasn't calibrated, you had to move your finger around and see where the cursor ended up, then start to translate your pokes a few inches. ;d

Re: Who's the guy in the in-flight entertainment system?

#14

Post by justizin »

witty_username wrote: post #3
callesgg wrote: post #2

I have been tempted to play with the entertainment screen in airplanes a couple of times. But as it is on an airplane traveling 900km/h 10 000m in the air. I dont feel like poking at stuff that is connected to the stuff that is keeping me and the other passengers alive. Also it i don't feel like speeding life in prison. But those things don't exactly feel like top quality stuff. They feel more like something that tha…

In-flight entertainment system is barely connected to the important parts of the airplane, if at all.

[citation needed]

http://www.wired.com/2015/04/hackers-commandeer-new-planes-p...

Re: Who's the guy in the in-flight entertainment system?

#15

Post by Smushman »

Several years ago, on a transatlantic flight, I observed some strange behavior in a game when I specified a high score name with some special characters. I noticed it would crash and exit back to 'home'.

I tried to hack at it by specifying the semicolon and such, but could not get it to do more.

I observed they had it at least mildly secure - it would not accept input for some special characters when typed; they would simply not appear on the screen within the game. But clearly there are holes in these. Without more information on the construction it was not trivial though.

Re: Who's the guy in the in-flight entertainment system?

#16

Post by data_spy »

anseljh wrote: post #7

I noticed the unmistakable X Windows "X" cursor and gray loading screen on an in-flight entertainment system that crashed on me. I think it was Virgin America, one of their early flights after they launched.

The In-App restarted on my Virgin Atlantic flight (About two months ago) and it was linux
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