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Guest simbuff

the use of real instruments in cockpitsimming

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Guest simbuff

I'm in the process of finishing my tabletop cockpit project of a turboprop twin engine. I would like to know if a lot of people are using real instruments (not the real onse, but looking like the real ones -simkits like). Is there an interest in the market and what would be an afoordable price. My setup costed about 6000 euro. Am I crazy, or is there no limitation on the price of your dreams?What has the community to say about that?check out the pics (anyone knows how I can put the pics inside the message instead of an attachment?)and please check out my websitehttp://users.pandora.be/theportablecockpit

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Guest stevelep

Hi,I build a twinprops too, with simkits for the gauge and a LDC screen for the engines gauges (fadec). BOB

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Guest SHORT360

Bob,What soft are putting behind the LCD screen for your engine gauges ??GreetingsRoger

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Guest stevelep

The native Kingair gauges of FS are bad quality when you display it bigger... I've FSPanel Studio and are on way to modificate it by changing the back pict of the gauge by my own bitmap redraw with corelI haven't test it yet ...If you've better idea or some free hi-def gauges add-ons ?I've 2 small LCD-Displays too of 20x4 lines managed by FSLCDon the LPT1 portBOB

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>>The native Kingair gauges of FS are bad quality when you>display it bigger...> I've FSPanel Studio and are on way to modificate it by>changing the back pict of the gauge by my own bitmap redraw>with corel>I haven't test it yet ...Please share your modified bitmaps / gauges if you make those, such things would be very useful for many people. The kingair gauges are indeed such bad resolution..>If you've better idea or some free hi-def gauges add-ons ?Thankfully the Dreamfleet C310 I am using for my home cockpit has excellent resolution on its gauges.. those are lovely. But not turboprop.>I've 2 small LCD-Displays too of 20x4 lines managed by FSLCD>on the LPT1 portYea, FSLCD rules, those things are awesome for radios, a great way to get your whole radio stack display out of the screen into these above the knobs. While it is not "1:1 with bendix/king look", then again that has zero impact in practical use, those work great.//Tuomas

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Guest stevelep

I'll share it if it's work but I'm still working on it ...Need to redraw the graduations the circle etc ...BOB

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You might get good results by taking photos from a real plane somewhere as well.//Tuomas

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Hi MarcDid I talk to you last weekend at the fsweekend in lelystad?There was a guy from belgium with a beech cockpit that was a little bit different than on your website. The instrument gauges were from simkits too and it looked marvelous.(PS I was the guy sitting with my fsclub under the dc4 in front of you. The guy next to me had the fds 777 mip, and I had a cessna like panel with me and parts of my cockpit , yoke throttle quadrant and MCP)regardsNorbert Boschhttp:/home.wanadoo.nl/norbert.bosch

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Guest simbuff

Hey norbertYes we did talk. I still have to update the website, but ther's already an attachment on my thread.Anyway. I noticed that a lot of people were mainly involved in glass cockpit. i suspect this is because of the price. i could easily make a nice desktop model for about 1/3 of the price of my beech. The boys hat flight deck solutions have their flightcenter and the price is about 1700

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Guest gasebah

I'd love to have real looking mechnical instruments, but I have seen simkits in action, and they move exactly as jerky as the FS default gauges. I do not know if there is a workaround for this. If you have flown the smooth Project Magenta stuff this is awful.So instead of going the simkits road I put the PM GAIFR primary gauges on a small 10,5" LCD and put a wood plate with cutouts on the monitor. Then I took simple photo filters on the cutouts. All I can say is that this looks very real.Alex

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>I'd love to have real looking mechnical instruments, but I>have seen simkits in action, and they move exactly as jerky as>the FS default gauges. I do not know if there is a workaround>for this. If you have flown the smooth Project Magenta stuff>this is awful.They run mostly just fine. Especially the artificial horizon is okay.If you have a slow computer, and FS has a bad framerate, that affects the gauges, since AFAIK FSUIPC updates are synced to the FS framerate. On our sim (www.mik.fi/simulaattori/ - sorry just finnish text, but the pictures are understandable anyway, click them for large versions) the gauges are just fine. There have been some improvements on the smoothness over new software versions, and currently the engine tachometer is a bit jerky. But it's nothing you cannot use for serious practice flying. The artificial horizont is especially smoother - because the FS gauges move in a step of one pixel of the screen, but Simkits servos have a higher resolution and just follow the value on FSUIPC.>So instead of going the simkits road I put the PM GAIFR>primary gauges on a small 10,5" LCD and put a wood plate with>cutouts on the monitor. Then I took simple photo filters on>the cutouts. All I can say is that this looks very real.Yea, that is another option and naturally works very well. I am going with gauges myself too, with a TFT on my home sim. But try poking the yoke through your TFT :) That wasnt quite an option for the C172 sim that we have in a real fuselage (of a C150 though - quite a bit of stuffing all the instruments there.. :))Anyway, we are very happy with the result. Those are EUR1500 instruments, so you dont expect the same solid build as real, but they are still darn good and serve very well on the sim. I'd still purchase them if I was to do the sim again :)No, I dont get paid by them, but I just wanted to clarify a bit - besides, there's a heck of a lot more to a simulator than just the gauges. Having real-life like instruments that we could fix to a real-life -like panel made the simulator look a lot more "right" in terms of where everything is located in the cockpit. No compromise there. :)//Tuomas

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Guest gasebah

Could someone enlighten me regarding the diferent working modes for RealityXP and PM gauges in difference to the default MS gauges. As the RXP and PM gauges are so much smoother. If the same concept could be applied to the servos I might get convinced and rebuild my sim.Alex

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Guest SHORT360

Alex,PM is written in OpenGL, the mother of all 3D graphic motors and is not comparable with the crappy FS Direct 3D motor. Reality Xp are better and use AFAIK a different anti-aliasing.But back to the servos. Servos are in all respect to the opinion of Tuomas more or less bad. I have made several experiences and I am not very happy with them. It is simply a problem of resolution. The gear of servos are not precise. There are some but then each gauges would cost too much. To get smoother movement think Stepper ( very cheap) with higher resolution or even the old fashionned air-core movement I am going to try for my engine gauges.Just my two cents to the subject.greetingsRoger

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Yeah. Servos are reasonable and work okay for us. Not completely perfect, but a pretty good compromise considering their availability and price.If you want super smooth, you have two options: RealityXP or Magenta (magenta has the GA IFR for "steam gauges" and also the full glass shebang for the nintendo people :)) - or steppers and homebrewn electronics and software. And LOTS of work. A TFT screen might be just a more flexible option in that case unless you want to do the electronics for just the satisfaction of it.MS Flight Sim use the Windows "GDI" graphics toolkit, which, unfortunately, is pixel-grid based. That means the smallest amount of movement you can get is moving a graphic element in a gauge one pixel up or down. This hurts the artificial horizon especially much, since you'd need to have a insanely high resolution on your screen to make it smoother. It jumps annoyingly. Precise pitch adjustment is very hard.The RealityXP stuff AFAIK uses the "GDI+" programming toolkit that has "sub-pixel" vector graphics. That means, movements of elements (gauge parts for example) is not limited to the "pixel grid" - it is rather relative, and can be "between pixels" as well - it is just smoothed and antialiased between. This makes it move more smoothly. New "PICv2" (the levelD 767 sim) will most likely use that as well. And I would very very much hope the next FS from MS would use it too. That would be a major improvement in the precision of the gauges. I wish RealityXP did a regular old-fashioned artificial horizon gauge based on their stuff, that would be such a great thing. The AI is the most critical, all other gauges work more or less okay anyway.It's all about what you want. I have done some pretty okay IFR stuff on the simkits, I suck more than the gauges anyway :) They are still working, the whole sim - which the gauges are just a part of - is still very stunning experience. For their price they are very good. And there's a lot more that makes a realistic simulator than just them.//Tuomas

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Guest gasebah

That was a pretty good insight Tuomas. Thx fr it.Alex

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