sim cockpits

TurboTim07

TurboTim07

Rear Admiral
anyone ever tried making a fighter cockpit for their space sims? im not talking about just a chair, throttle stick, pedals, and a screen in front of you. im talking about all that but instead of a screen in front of you, you get a full all around view so you don't gotta mash keys to change views, just turn your head. if someone has then im interested in how they did it. cuz i think it'd be cool(yet very expensive) to have a few of those and hook them up together and play a custom made WC game with actual people as wingmen or opponents and be able to feel like you're in a fighter. and i know ya'll have made them but does anyone have the actual directions on how to make the flight suits from WC3/4 and/or Prophecy? and what about the helmets?
 
Simpits are intriguing, if you can afford the time/effort to build one. You won't see many for things like Wing Commander, over stuff like X-Plane and MS Flight Sim, partly because it's way easier to extract data from the last two, and have that data sent over to real simulated instrumentation (whether it's the glass kind (using Project Magenta, Open GC, Free GC, or many other glass simulations), or "analog" instrumentation (I found a company selling altimeters, attitude indicators, etc that look like the real thing, and interface to EPIC boards (which are basically immense I/O boards)). Plus, there are EPIC boards with displays so radios and avionics are easily simulated as well.

Other games typically don't have this ability to export their simulation information. The surround vision is somewhat easy with many multi-monitor setups and extra-wide displays (triple head Matrox video cards, for example). Sound is equally easy.

But the hard work is the cockpit itself - not easy at all.

As for the flight suits and helmets - people have done them here, so that's one of the easier parts around.
 
Some years ago, I heard of what you're talking about. It was a place in California called "Fighter Town USA". You paid money and got to spend a day with your friends, flying in a replica cockpit of whatever craft you were flying (say, an F-14), and you could look all around you to see what you would really see. You played against other people, doing missions (one person I met who had been there himself told a story of escorting a cargo plane with his wingman, and having to defend it against a pair of bandits, one of which he shot down with an IR missile (infra-red . . . heat seaking, not Image Recognition). It was really neat to hear about (also saw some footage of it on tv, once).
 
As I've said before, I would personally love to see a WC simulator that has literally dozens upon dozens of people playing at once. An entire fleet action. Everything from cap ship helm, turrets, fighters, etc is manned by a person. I think that would be so awesome. And, everyone would have their specific job to do (and a commander to obey, even though it's hard to enforce). Fighters would run recon at the beginning, patrols would be established, and, at the culmination, a confrontation that would result in a massive battle. Light and medium fighters running escort for bombers; interceptors trying to take out bombers; heavy fighters doing Wild Weasel runs on turrets, and taking out CAP; corvettes and destroyers jumping into the frey, trying to keep battlewagons away from the carriers and flagships; torpedo runs going haywire; fighters sneaking around the outside to get at a ship from a different angle. Oh, man . . . it would be so incredible.
 
I remember years ago a company used to sell a chair that was just like the one found in fighters. It had a subwoofer right under the seat to give you that thumping as rounds hit you, also had mounts for joystick, throttle and rudder pedals. It looked awesome, I think it was in an old PC Gamer or something...
 
hmmmm.... anyway to convert a canopy into a panoramic monitor? or maybe put those 3d headset thingies into the helmets?
 
overmortal said:
I remember that. It was made by Thrustmaster, and it cost $1000 in the ad I saw.
Click to expand...

Yeah that's it...I thought earlier that it was designed for use with the F-16 FCLS, TQS, and RCS.....

I'm going to go do a little searching see if I can come up with something on it....

Thrustmaster was always my joystick of choice for both PC and Mac flight sims.
 
hmm . . . how something akin to VR goggles (such as the old Nintendo Virtual Boy) mounted in a helmet, which you wear. All your audio would come through the headset within the helmet. The only problem was that you'd have to be really familiar with your cockpit layout, because you wouldn't be able to see it . . . unless it was programmed into the game.

Maybe some sort of HUD technology, with a blue screen inside the canopy.
 
ok the cockpit's gonna be complicated and probably never made. but does anyone have any step by step instructions on how to make the helmets and/or flight suits?
 
$1000 for a sim-seat... hrm.

I remember seeing someone else reproduce a ACES ejection seat for sims and charging around $2000+ for it, though, I've found real ejection seats for sale for $3000... ah the fun of hooking up those ejection handles and the life support system...
 
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