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Post by cptmatt on Feb 25, 2015 15:32:25 GMT
So I've been mulling over how best to approach my cockpit build taking into consideration the time, resources and skill available to me and I wanted some opinion.
Currently I fly single engine GA aircraft. C172 / C182 / AMC Scout and such like, I may also add in some light twins at some point. I'd like to keep the simulator reflective of airplanes a recreational pilot is likely to have regular access to in real life so large complex types and jets don't need to be simulated.
I'm not planning to model my cockpit after one particular aircraft. I accept it won't be scale and I want to be able to 'reasonably' easily go from a Piper Cub to a Beech Baron.
In regards to instrumentation I already know I want to incorporate a screen into the GPS panel and physical displays for the radios, autopilot etc...
So I'm kind of in a no mans land at the moment where half of the panels are input and output whilst still relying on the virtual cockpit for standard instrumentation.
Building representations of actual steam gauges is beyond me, I could build the mechanics but not the fascias. Also some of the aircraft I fly have glass cockpits. Having watched Mark's videos though on Panel Builder and Air Manger it seems incorporating additional screens and running nice virtual instruments into them is a pretty straight forward thing.
This has left me thinking that with the incorporation of a couple of 10" screens I can build my cockpit to include complete input and instrumentation, more akin to how most jetliner sims are built.
Having rambled a little this leads me to my main point, if all (required) inputs and outputs can be modelled then there seems little need for a virtual cockpit. Not unlike a typical jet sim the view outside the window can simply be the terrain.
In theory this seems like a great idea but I've never flown a decent sim which doesn't use the virtual cockpit. I'm concerned as to whether this will reduce the immersion and realism, the main goal here of course being to increase this. Also add on developers use the virtual cockpits as one of their main sales points and I'm suggesting here just to throw this away.
I'd be interested in feedback / experience.
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Post by ScottB on Feb 25, 2015 15:59:43 GMT
Very well put and I've wondered the same thing. Mark is definitely the right guy for insight on displays. I've tried flying FSX on my setup without the virtual panel and it felt a little weird to me, especially during the landing flare. It may be better with a different sim or with some sort of physical aircraft nose in front of a much larger display for a better sense of perspective from the ground.
SimPlugins posted these:
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Post by cptmatt on Feb 25, 2015 17:04:34 GMT
I've tried flying FSX on my setup without the virtual panel and it felt a little weird to me, especially during the landing flare. It may be better with a different sim or with some sort of physical aircraft nose in front of a much larger display for a better sense of perspective from the ground.
This is certainly one of the concerns. With where you sit and how you fly a large jetliner the virtual cockpit is of little consequence assuming you have actual flight controls.
3 point landing a Scout with no reference, I'm not so sure.
I suppose some sort of zoom seating could be employed to go past the instrument panel while retaining aircraft structure to a level.
It's quite a difficult thing to experiment with as it's obviously quite hard to mock up and compare.
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Post by ScottB on Feb 25, 2015 18:31:16 GMT
I've tried flying FSX on my setup without the virtual panel and it felt a little weird to me, especially during the landing flare. It may be better with a different sim or with some sort of physical aircraft nose in front of a much larger display for a better sense of perspective from the ground.
This is certainly one of the concerns. With where you sit and how you fly a large jetliner the virtual cockpit is of little consequence assuming you have actual flight controls.
3 point landing a Scout with no reference, I'm not so sure.
I suppose some sort of zoom seating could be employed to go past the instrument panel while retaining aircraft structure to a level.
It's quite a difficult thing to experiment with as it's obviously quite hard to mock up and compare.
I agree completely. I think the first decision is to commit to one specific GA aircraft (as typical in real life). Once past that, you can fabricate a convincing mock-up and then focus on scenery realism, frame rates, and display size and angles. Trouble is, I could never commit to one aircraft. I think Mark has considered much of this too, and has shown interest in the Icarus Avenger (they seem to be on the right track) in the "Monitor Options" thread. Good point on the "zoom seating". Sort of looks like the Avenger employs that idea.
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Post by MarkH on Feb 25, 2015 18:35:50 GMT
Yes, I am still struggling with this same dilemma. The virtual cockpit with TrackIR lacks a certain something but you realise just how good that combination is when you try to do without it! The reason I am looking seriously at the Icarus projector setup is it retains everything that's good about the VC but (potentially) makes it work better. I say potentially because it's yet to be seen how good the display is, particularly the reltively low resolution when compared to LCD displays. But if it's good enough it opens up some interesting new options to experiment with. I have no problem using the VC for instruments as long as they can stay in my field of view and I don't need to rely on TrackIR to look at them. This is something that the Icarus genuinely seems to allow - by more or less doubling the vertical field of view we get with a regular desktop monitor. What I find really quite exciting is the idea of the Icarus with a TrackIR but tracking x/y/z movement only. So you don't need the TrackIR to look around but you can lean forward and look over the panel, look around the door pillars, lean across and look at the co-pilot instruments and so on. Even if you have a full hardware panel and a fixed outside view, this is a significant loss if you give up TrackIR. I am currently deciding what to do about panels in such a setup. You would definitely still want hardware inputs for everything major - radios, GPS, autopilot - and how far you go depends on how 'realistic' you want it. Although my Twin Otter looks nice, there are switches on the panels that I have never touched once I got them working so perhaps in a next generation I would leave out the idiosyncratic stuff like the test panels (which are actually useless in practice). So many experiments, so little money P.S. Here are some pics from Simpit. These feature the Carenado C152.
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Post by cptmatt on Feb 25, 2015 20:05:59 GMT
This is certainly one of the concerns. With where you sit and how you fly a large jetliner the virtual cockpit is of little consequence assuming you have actual flight controls.
3 point landing a Scout with no reference, I'm not so sure.
I suppose some sort of zoom seating could be employed to go past the instrument panel while retaining aircraft structure to a level.
It's quite a difficult thing to experiment with as it's obviously quite hard to mock up and compare.
I agree completely. I think the first decision is to commit to one specific GA aircraft (as typical in real life). Once past that, you can fabricate a convincing mock-up and then focus on scenery realism, frame rates, and display size and angles. I think you're right, in fact I've just created my list of controls and instruments using the A2A C182. Using a base airplane I think is unavoidable and I think this will be it. It's also questionable without the virtual cockpit just how different some airplanes are going to feel to fly. That said I still have the desire to be able to go C182 / Cub / Baron.
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Post by cptmatt on Feb 25, 2015 20:10:56 GMT
Yes, I am still struggling with this same dilemma. The virtual cockpit with TrackIR lacks a certain something but you realise just how good that combination is when you try to do without it! The reason I am looking seriously at the Icarus projector setup is it retains everything that's good about the VC but (potentially) makes it work better. I say potentially because it's yet to be seen how good the display is, particularly the reltively low resolution when compared to LCD displays. But if it's good enough it opens up some interesting new options to experiment with. I have no problem using the VC for instruments as long as they can stay in my field of view and I don't need to rely on TrackIR to look at them. This is something that the Icarus genuinely seems to allow - by more or less doubling the vertical field of view we get with a regular desktop monitor. What I find really quite exciting is the idea of the Icarus with a TrackIR but tracking x/y/z movement only. So you don't need the TrackIR to look around but you can lean forward and look over the panel, look around the door pillars, lean across and look at the co-pilot instruments and so on. Even if you have a full hardware panel and a fixed outside view, this is a significant loss if you give up TrackIR. I am currently deciding what to do about panels in such a setup. You would definitely still want hardware inputs for everything major - radios, GPS, autopilot - and how far you go depends on how 'realistic' you want it. Although my Twin Otter looks nice, there are switches on the panels that I have never touched once I got them working so perhaps in a next generation I would leave out the idiosyncratic stuff like the test panels (which are actually useless in practice). So many experiments, so little money P.S. Here are some pics from Simpit. These feature the Carenado C152. I have no doubt that the best solution lies in a projector based system of some sort. At this stage I don't have a large enough dedicated space, or wallet, for the way I'd really like to do it but the Icarus does look interesting. I'm also happy to use the VC instruments but it's exactly as you say the vertical field of view is the killer.
So many experiments, so little money and not enough time.
Every time I sit and think about this project for 5 mins a months work gets added!
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Post by cptmatt on Feb 25, 2015 20:16:21 GMT
It's only just occurred to me that SimPit is a NZ company. I'm from that neck of the woods and will be home in June so I will almost certainly check out their products.
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Post by ScottB on Feb 26, 2015 16:05:10 GMT
Good stuff fellas. I enjoy reading about the ideas and projects. Not many people "get it" (our hobby) in my local area, including family!! :-) Thanks again for the forum Mark.
Cptmatt: Hope you get to check out the SimPit, will be interesting to hear your take. Hope you keep this forum posted on your sim progress. The A2A stuff is amazing and you can make all of the buttons work (even button animations) by using FSUIPC, Lvars and/or Linda. At least I found that to be true with their Cherokee. Like you, I'm still undecided about virtual cockpit when it comes to the possibility of a generic mock instrument panel and large format display.
Mark: Thanks for posting the pics, they provide a little more insight as to the clarity. You make great points of course about the virtual cockpit/TrackIR but I'm curious, if there was no virtual cockpit, wouldn't that free up some vertical real estate and maybe make the lower resolution less noticeable? I'm afraid I might be disappointed with the resolution on a VC instrument panel, and that goes for any type large display. SimPit is definitely a step in the right direction though. Maybe placing their display around something like this from your other post?
Or this from Wideview:
Scott
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Post by cptmatt on Feb 26, 2015 17:21:44 GMT
I came across this image today -
I'm struggling to find a bigger version or better angle. What I thought was quite interesting though is with the screens set back and the panel actually protruding above it, to me it looks like this gives some prospective against the runway and I suppose the screen surrounds actually add to that.
Based off of this I've sketched the very first image of how my cockpit may look -
Clearly this isn't detailed or to scale but of the 50 or so individual flight controls & instruments found on the A2A C182 I'd have everything while still having space to incorporate additional things for more complex types.
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Post by MarkH on Feb 26, 2015 18:44:44 GMT
if there was no virtual cockpit, wouldn't that free up some vertical real estate and maybe make the lower resolution less noticeable? Yes and no. If the screen only shows the outside view above the level of the (real) instrument panel you lose the outside view everywhere else below this level, as the screen is a simple rectangle (or cylindrical section). So in something like a Cessna 172, for example, your left and right view stops half-way down the window. I wouldn't do it like this - if I had a real panel I would still have the display positioned so I get the proper side views and I could look left and downwards. (I don't know if that makes sense - it's times like this you wish you could just sribble a quick picture into your post.) In fact the pics you posted illustrate this. The WideView displays are positioned lowish in the manner I described, so you wouldn't actually gain any vertical real estate, you would just hide some of the forward view. Same with the Icarus - I would position it in front of the cockpit so much/most of the forward view was hidden but the side views worked 'properly'. A better solution, which you could do with WideView, would be to use a non-rectangular array of screens.
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Post by ScottB on Feb 27, 2015 13:38:56 GMT
Clearly this isn't detailed or to scale but of the 50 or so individual flight controls & instruments found on the A2A C182 I'd have everything while still having space to incorporate additional things for more complex types. That's going to be a really nice setup! Scott
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Post by ScottB on Feb 27, 2015 13:59:26 GMT
if there was no virtual cockpit, wouldn't that free up some vertical real estate and maybe make the lower resolution less noticeable? Yes and no. If the screen only shows the outside view above the level of the (real) instrument panel you lose the outside view everywhere else below this level, as the screen is a simple rectangle (or cylindrical section). So in something like a Cessna 172, for example, your left and right view stops half-way down the window. I wouldn't do it like this - if I had a real panel I would still have the display positioned so I get the proper side views and I could look left and downwards. (I don't know if that makes sense - it's times like this you wish you could just sribble a quick picture into your post.) In fact the pics you posted illustrate this. The WideView displays are positioned lowish in the manner I described, so you wouldn't actually gain any vertical real estate, you would just hide some of the forward view. Same with the Icarus - I would position it in front of the cockpit so much/most of the forward view was hidden but the side views worked 'properly'. A better solution, which you could do with WideView, would be to use a non-rectangular array of screens. Thanks for the input. That all makes sense. Basically, if you are going to use a virtual cockpit, you probably need TrackIR to get the most out of the view to the side and down (for example). No virtual cockpit, you'd need to reposition the screens to get the most out of the view side and down but, you'd loose some of your forward vertical view doing so, and they'd need to be pretty tall screens. The last pic you posted makes a pretty convincing virtual cockpit view, more so than I expected. One thing missing from no virtual cockpit would be the ability to see the aircraft wings. I have no idea what a "non-rectangular array of screens" is! Google??
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Post by ScottB on Feb 27, 2015 14:19:36 GMT
I guess the GA stuff is more prevalent than I thought. I only wish....
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Post by MarkH on Feb 27, 2015 14:48:14 GMT
I have no idea what a "non-rectangular array of screens" is! SCR SCR SCR EEN EEN EEN
SCR SCR EEN EEN
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