Flight Simulator for Flight Commander/wcX

hakatsuru

Rear Admiral
Yeah, I was in plant science class, and came up with a schematic for a flight simulator to be used with flight commander and any wing commander or flight simulator for computer. It was simple at first, a chair (possibly either an old ejector seat out of an outdated aircraft or a homemade flight chair), an enclosed "cockpit", rudder pedals, a joystick and a throttle. For the visual aspect I was going to buy a computer/tv screen projector and position it above the headrest of the seat, so a projected image will be on a dome canopy.

As time went by, and I got to the detailing of my simulator I began to wonder if there was a way to take the instrumentation, the speed, the target mfd and actually relay that data onto mfd's that I would build into an instrumentation panel, or is that way too far out?
 
hakatsuru said:
Yeah, I was in plant science class, and came up with a schematic for a flight simulator to be used with flight commander and any wing commander or flight simulator for computer. It was simple at first, a chair (possibly either an old ejector seat out of an outdated aircraft or a homemade flight chair), an enclosed "cockpit", rudder pedals, a joystick and a throttle. For the visual aspect I was going to buy a computer/tv screen projector and position it above the headrest of the seat, so a projected image will be on a dome canopy.

As time went by, and I got to the detailing of my simulator I began to wonder if there was a way to take the instrumentation, the speed, the target mfd and actually relay that data onto mfd's that I would build into an instrumentation panel, or is that way too far out?

Firstly, stop daydreaming and pay attention in class.

Don't think any gaming software today was designed to be projected on anything but a flat display. You can project any laptop screen onto a flat movie screen today for about 2000 dollars. Some computers support multiple monitors, don't know how well this is supported by opengl.

Starting with a force feedback joystick/throttle is certainly doable.
 
spiritplumber said:
www.x-plane.com

Email the author and ask him about interfacing -- this can and is being done. You will likely need one computer to run the actual sim and another to run the instrumentation.

Yeah, I've played X-Plane on mac a few years back... thats the laminar research group right? And I also came to the conclusion of some sort of cpu being implemented to control the mfd's. I was thinking of taking off all of the info (shields, armor, weapons selected, target eject, lock etc) and relay the info onto different guages and stuff...
 
eddieb said:
Firstly, stop daydreaming and pay attention in class.

Don't think any software today was designed to be projected on anything but a flat display. You can project any laptop screen onto a flat movie screen today for about 2000 dollars. Some computers support multiple monitors, don't know how well this is supported by opengl.

Starting with a force feedback joystick/throttle is certainly doable.

The class isn't that paramount for my psychology degree, its just an easy lab credit heehee
 
x-plane has REALLY improved in the last ~8 months. And ya, it's Laminar.... they need a flightsim interface to comply with FCC certification reqs and since they're nice kitties the format is completely open :) if you decide to build your own simulator box the author will probably give you a hand at least as far as explanations go, just as long as you send him pictures :)
 
yeah, last night I hammered out like three pages of schematics on how I want this thing built... I have no clue about the interface though, or how a 2nd cpu would control them... I was going to have a lock indicator, an eject indicator, fuel and weapon energy indicators, armor and shield guages, and was thinking of 3 mfd's that can switch between communicating with different ships, damage status, target info and one other that escapes memory, and the radar. I was also thinking of a 12-switch switch board that can be used to select weapons (guns, missles and the like.) I'll try to get some specs up here later.
 
hmm... I know x-plane uses UDP to allow the instructor console computer to talk to the sim computer...

for switches and lights, you may want to use an older pc with ISA slots, get some parallel port cards, and run the lights and switches from there. Then write a driver to poll the input lines and turn on/off the output lines?
 
Here is what I had in mind for the layout of the weapons selector panel



The lights had three colors:

Green for selected, blinking green for reload
Yellow blinking for low ammo
and red for out of ammo, weapon destroyed
 
hey,

I thought about buildin a flight simulator a while ago but stopped due to lack of funds, but I had somethin set up for when I played prophecy and secret ops, the weapons display, eject sign and all that would be displayed on seperate screens (I took them out of old monitors and tvs I found) by using mirrors to reflect those parts of the screen. I have some old schematics I drew up but theyre on paper only, I might be able to draw them on paint or somethin for ya.
 
eddieb said:
And what about a cost estimate :).

Hahahaha a few thousand :p

About a thousand for the projector maybe 500 for the building costs (I was thinking of a wooden frame, and the internals would be accented with sheet metal or something) and maybe 200 for the junker computer that would control the mfds and lights and stuff. And 100 or so for the led's the sound system and the buttons.

I was also thinking about just putting random buttons and lights to make it look more futuristical and stuff. They'd have no purpose other than looks.
 
Iceman16 said:
hey,

I thought about buildin a flight simulator a while ago but stopped due to lack of funds, but I had somethin set up for when I played prophecy and secret ops, the weapons display, eject sign and all that would be displayed on seperate screens (I took them out of old monitors and tvs I found) by using mirrors to reflect those parts of the screen. I have some old schematics I drew up but theyre on paper only, I might be able to draw them on paint or somethin for ya.

Hey, Thanks! That'd be great. You said you were able to use old monitors and tv screens? hmmmm... I haven't thought about that.... not the tv screens that is. I did think about monitors for the mfd's though. How were you able to get those monitors to display something?
 
I took the screens out of the old tvs and monitors, but the tv screens worked better. all you do is open up an old monitor or TV that wont work anymore, take the screen out (carefully though, you dont wanna scratch it), cut it usin a glass cutter if need be, and put it in a slot that you can make in your simulator.

now what you do is set up a couple of mirrors so that the portion of the screen you want projected is in view (use flat mirrors so your image wont be flipped or stretched). I'll draw some prints for it soon, when I have some time (damned school homework)
 
Iceman16 said:
I took the screens out of the old tvs and monitors, but the tv screens worked better. all you do is open up an old monitor or TV that wont work anymore, take the screen out (carefully though, you dont wanna scratch it), cut it usin a glass cutter if need be, and put it in a slot that you can make in your simulator.

now what you do is set up a couple of mirrors so that the portion of the screen you want projected is in view (use flat mirrors so your image wont be flipped or stretched). I'll draw some prints for it soon, when I have some time (damned school homework)

Oh... so you use the mirrors to reflect a PART of the screen.... interesting. I was all like "mirrors?"
 
Another issue is the image.... I was told that I would have to use like three projectors or something, because one will not do. What sayeth thou?
 
hmm, I dunno about usin 3 projectors, or usin projectors at all. all I used was a 17 inch monitor that sat right in front and the mirrors as I said before. if you wanna use projectors, go ahead, but I didnt, but then again I got as far as designin and makin the monitor setup.
 
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