My engineering approach to a Hornet pit build project

Looking forward to you showing how you fabricated the parking brake and wing fold mechanisms.

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That's pretty incredible.

Thank you man. I've done some tests today and I'm pretty happy with the results.

That is commercial grade - absolutely magnificent - well done.

My commercial grade vendors always have some serious skills to show off :pilotfly:

Looks fantastic, I'm curious as to how readable the exported AMPCD is compared to regular in-game one.

I've made a screenshot of the game play with the AMPCD view port and the in game AMPCD view side by side. These images are both generated by DCS World. The in-game view obviously is rendered with virtual environmental lighting effects. But you can always zoom in to get a closer view.

While the view port extracts the raw image which is free from visual effects, you can't enlarge this display area once the game is running. All I did was locating this view port on the monitor behind the MIP mask.

The strokes of those symbols look kind of bold by default. I think they can be adjusted by tweaking some lua files. I've also got some problems with the RWR image, it gets blurry. But generally they are all software issues, I'm not worried about them, just need to fix those scripts.

Everything is amazing, one of the best build I've seen, looks flawless!

But the best part for me, that canopy bow! :joystick:

Better jump in behind that bow AFTER everything has been properly set up, or else they'd get in the way of a lot of things on screen which can actually be annoying :)

Looking forward to you showing how you fabricated the parking brake and wing fold mechanisms.

These two were a bit difficult to design. But much easier to fabricate - William found a supplier who makes 3D printed parts out of fiber reinforced nylon, so I decided to give it a try. As shown in the following drawing, the wing fold handle actually has a lot of structures hidden behind the sheet metal.

There's a bistable linkage which helps lock the shaft in either extended or stowed position. I still don't trust plastic parts with heavy duty linkages, will upgrade 'em to metal sooner or later. I've built some electronics inside the nylon housing. While the interface PCB is attached to the bottom of it, which makes this unit another MCAD-ECAD hybrid design, just like the landing gear unit.

I've been testing this handle a lot, all the latch positions feel pretty distinct to the touch, the springs also feel strong enough for gaming.

It also stows in the HOLD position, which doesn't show on the animation above. The parking brake can't get more complex than this, so I'll just skip that part.

My engineering approach to a Hornet pit build project

Please share with us the tweaks to the lua files you made to get your exports so clearly displayed. The entire pit building community would welcome the solution (especially in OVGME format...so ED can't ruin it with the next update)

Thanks for sharing your wing fold mechanism.

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Please share with us the tweaks to the lua files you made to get your exports so clearly displayed. The entire pit building community would welcome the solution (especially in OVGME format...so ED can't ruin it with the next update)

I have yet to look into it, and the RWR too. My previous post only used default settings. And frankly I'm not impressed with that. I tried some MDI tweaks that I found a few months ago from another thread, which were supposed to enhance the sharpness of the MDI display, but it no longer works. I have a feeling I will need more help from the community on this one.

The previously "working" mods seems to have gone south with the lighting updates. Why are the DDIs and AMPCD connected to the HUD? Are you using 1440 or 4K for your instrument monitor?

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William found a supplier who makes 3D printed parts out of fiber reinforced nylon, so I decided to give it a try.

 

That sounds expensive lol.

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The previously "working" mods seems to have gone south with the lighting updates. Why are the DDIs and AMPCD connected to the HUD? Are you using 1440 or 4K for your instrument monitor?

Yeah a lot of old stuff stopped working. I've also noticed that third party software like Helios kept evolving too. Code got more organized. I guess some setbacks are worth it.

My instrument monitor maxed out at 1920x1080, which is more than enough. No display is connected to the HUD in my pit. The HUD is not functional, just an eye candy sitting on top of the UFC.

The HUD overlay from the Alt+F1 view is more than enough for me. I did some supercarrier flights today, the sunset in DCS looks kinda cool.

That sounds expensive lol.

Well, this project is at phase 2 now, cost constraints from the very first post no longer applies, and I get to indulge myself a bit. Half a dollar for 1cm³ feels acceptable to me. :music_whistling:

At least it's cheaper than aluminum CNC parts.

My engineering approach to a Hornet pit build project

My monitor is 1080p as well. I have never been able to get the tweaks as clear as yours, The mod provided reasonably readable DDIs and a clearer AMPCD, but thinned out the hud lines making them more difficult to see compared to the un-modded lua.

I have never compared yet, do you get more clear viewport exports only displaying the HUD view? I can't try it for myself until I get the dash back together - 48 more indicator lights to wire up, lol.

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My monitor is 1080p as well. I have never been able to get the tweaks as clear as yours, The mod provided reasonably readable DDIs and a clearer AMPCD, but thinned out the hud lines making them more difficult to see compared to the un-modded lua.

 

I have never compared yet, do you get more clear viewport exports only displaying the HUD view? I can't try it for myself until I get the dash back together - 48 more indicator lights to wire up, lol.

As far as I can see, whether I switch to HUD-only view (Alt+F1) doesn't make any difference on viewport export quality. However, I also feel that my HUD contrast is not high enough. It gets difficult to see against the bright sky under broad daylight. I've turned the HUD brightness knob to the max but sometimes still need to rely on the HUD view on the MDI. It didn't occur to me the symbols on the HUD could be thinner than they were supposed to look.

OMFG, great job. You must be 80 years old, it took a life to build :)

I love the quality of this build. I can only hope to end up with something like this over the next few years... but in the form of an F-4E.

OMFG, great job. You must be 80 years old, it took a life to build :)

Hope I'd still have my good eyesight at that point, lol

I love the quality of this build. I can only hope to end up with something like this over the next few years... but in the form of an F-4E.

That'd be a cool build too. The older the aircraft, the more mechanical parts there are. Hence more fun.

It's been a busy week. The seat and side consoles are almost complete. They make up the aft portion together, and there's an electric cylinder which moves them back and forth.

We've thought about attaching the stick base to the seat too, but found out that it has more cons than pros for us.

I love everything about your build, super jelous!!

Great job, must feel amazing!

I love everything about your build, super jelous!!

 

Great job, must feel amazing!

Thanks Robin, it does feel pretty cool to sit inside. :pilotfly:

It's been a month since I cound find time for this project. The updater had been acting up too, so I was only able to finish a major update yesterday with a 10GB+ download. I spent several hours replacing my old Helios 1.4 with the latest 1.6 version and its files, loved it.

I've modified the new sample F-18C profile to fit my pit, all the gauges and viewports are working. Even the blurry RWR is looking normal now. It was actually my own fault, the width setting in my monitor config file was too wide and I never noticed it till today.

Everything felt better except for the AoA indexer. I can no longer seem to get it lit up now. No value is registered when the AoA is active. I spent the last few hours trying to pinpoint the culprit, wish it was something I could fix, but it's starting to feel like a DCS bug to me.

Helios uses mainPanelDevice:get_argument_value( ) to fetch indicator status. The parameters for AoA indicator lamps are 4,5 and 6 according to the latest scripts. I thought ED might have changed their definitions, so I went to my DCS Installation folder\Mods\aircraft\FA-18C\Cockpit\Scripts\MainPanel\lamps.lua and confirmed they remained the same:

-- AoA Indexer Lights
create_caution_lamp(4,		CautionLights.CPT_LTS_AOA_HIGH)
create_caution_lamp(5,		CautionLights.CPT_LTS_AOA_CENTER)
create_caution_lamp(6,		CautionLights.CPT_LTS_AOA_LOW)

In Helios script it says the following:

Helios_Udp.Send("483", string.format("%.1d", mainPanelDevice:get_argument_value(  4)) )   -- CPT_LTS_AOA_HIGH 				>  "Caution Panel", "GUN UNSAFE", "Lit if gun is capable of being fired."
Helios_Udp.Send("487", string.format("%.1d", mainPanelDevice:get_argument_value(  5)) )   -- CPT_LTS_AOA_CENTER			>  "Caution Panel", "OXY LOW", "Lit if oxygen gauge indices 0.5 liters or less."
Helios_Udp.Send("490", string.format("%.1d", mainPanelDevice:get_argument_value(  6)) )   -- CPT_LTS_AOA_LOW      			>  "Caution Panel", "SEAT NOT ARMED", "Lit if ground safety lever is in the safe position."

So I'm supposed to get something like "483=0" or "490=1" when I pitch up and down during approach. In the F1 view I could clearly see the in-game AoA flashing wildly, but these values were nowhere to be found.

If anyone has encountered the same problem please let me know. Thank you.

Alex, please, please update your YouTube channel more frequently. The fans demands it

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Alex, I have a blank cheque with your name on it.

is that a real seat?

Amazing work! I wish I had the time and knowledge to put something like this together. Deff subscribing to this thread.

Remarkable project. subscribed as well

Alex, please, please update your YouTube channel more frequently. The fans demands it

Thanks so much for the attention. I'll be attaching a video in this reply.

Actually I've been getting so much encouragement lately that I've finally decided to start a business and manufacture some cockpits & ejection seats based on an upgraded version of this project. Meanwhile, there are so much cockpit wizardry lying around my lab that I haven't disclosed yet. This business will provide the funding I need to develop more cockpits, modules and components for the flight simulation community.

Despite my engineering background (mostly as an employee), for the past decade I've only been casually involved in the simulation hardware business. At most I would help some of my friends make their own solutions. Now I will be directly involved in this new business, I hope this cockpit will be a good start.

Here's a demo video of this cockpit in action. Some of you may have already watched it. It's branded NeoEngress Simulations. It's meant to symbolize a gamer's novel ingress to a virtual combat world.

I only wanted to highlight the control mechanisms with this video because they are the most anticipated features one would ask for with a physical pit. Curved projections, navigation and tactics can wait a bit. Hope you will enjoy this one for now.

Alex, I have a blank cheque with your name on it.

Speaking of which, it's actually high time for me to haul ass with production if I'm determined to make a Christmas delivery. lol

is that a real seat?

Nope, that NACES came as part of this project. Also built from scratch.

Here's a video of how you adjust the seat bucket height with the switch box:

I thought it'd be cool to have the entire aft portion of the cockpit on the rail, so I've adopted a dual toggle version of the switch box from another NACES variant, and used the second switch for lengthwise adjustment. I'm optimizing this feature so it won't increase the shipping cost.

Amazing work! I wish I had the time and knowledge to put something like this together. Deff subscribing to this thread.

Remarkable project. subscribed as well

Thank you both and welcome to my project :thumbup:

Sweet. Waiting for the web site to go online! good luck.

Alex,

Glad to see that progress you are making. The design and system is looking great! Meant to ask you a question a while back, curious to where did you get that throttle assembly? Is that an off-the-shelf (COTS) or your own design?

Keep up the good work. Sent you a PM.

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