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Need some advice on new simpit


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Hey Guys

 

So i am just starting out on this journey of making my own simpit for the first time.

 

Now i am a pilot in real life (though not for a living, its a long story, i just fly for fun now) so i am pretty aware of how i want the cockpit to set up but i am just having a difficult time deciding on building out a physical cockpit with MDF(s) and other modules or simply going the VR route.

 

Obviously VR is simpler and faster but i guess what i am looking for is some advice from some aivid simpit players.

 

If you were starting a new pit, would you go VR or mount monitors and buttons and switches (and Track IR obv)?

 

Does VR have any other advantages? And one question i have in particular is... How have you VR players managed actually flipping switches in the game cockpit (do you have a trackball or something nearby?) and how have you handled not being able to see your keyboard for chatting and such?

 

Thanks for any advice guys!

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its up to you. there are alot of VR simmers including myself.

cockpit building cost time, space and money.

if you have that... jump right it.

there is joy in building. i have built controllers, including a cyclic collective set for helo flight.

but im in an apt, so space is limited.

how u deal with it is, u just figure out what works for u. i have a custom button box to faciliate some controls. others in game VR control with the oculus touch controllers (that is if i can access them in game)

 

good luck!

find me on steam! username: Hannibal_A101A

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197969447179

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Hey Guys

 

So i am just starting out on this journey of making my own simpit for the first time.

 

Now i am a pilot in real life (though not for a living, its a long story, i just fly for fun now) so i am pretty aware of how i want the cockpit to set up but i am just having a difficult time deciding on building out a physical cockpit with MDF(s) and other modules or simply going the VR route.

 

Obviously VR is simpler and faster but i guess what i am looking for is some advice from some aivid simpit players.

 

If you were starting a new pit, would you go VR or mount monitors and buttons and switches (and Track IR obv)?

 

Does VR have any other advantages? And one question i have in particular is... How have you VR players managed actually flipping switches in the game cockpit (do you have a trackball or something nearby?) and how have you handled not being able to see your keyboard for chatting and such?

 

Thanks for any advice guys!

 

Hi asims33,

 

About 12 months ago I jumped into VR. The experience is transformative. You are in the cockpit, not looking through a window into a cockpit. What I have also started to do is to put real switches where they should be, so I can reach out and operate specific switches in flight. Many are still operated by mouse of course, but particularly radios and navigation equipment I have set up to be real dials, knobs and switches. So I have built a cockpit, and some of it has switches, but no monitors or steam gauges, those I see in VR.

 

Chat is done through Teamspeak, Discord and/or Simple Radio. Not typing for me, though some do.

 

Good luck, there are lots of great ideas and different methods on here. Explore the forums, ask questions. Its a great fun journey!

 

Mole

SCAN Intel Core i9 10850K "Comet Lake", 32GB DDR4, 10GB NVIDIA RTX 3080, HP Reverb G2

Custom Mi-24 pit with magnetic braked cyclic and collective. See it here: Molevitch Mi-24 Pit.

 

[sIGPIC][/sIGPIC] www.blacksharkden.com

bsd sig 2021.jpg

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I went the fr route myself. But depending on the aircraft you might want or need physical toggles, buttons and rotary for interacting with the aircraft. I’m trying something new but wasn’t having success setting it up before the rework of my pit. Space is a factor for me. I’ve seen the best of both worlds switches and vr plus motion which I wish I could have .

BlackeyCole 20years usaf

XP-11. Dcs 2.5OB

Acer predator laptop/ i7 7720, 2.4ghz, 32 gb ddr4 ram, 500gb ssd,1tb hdd,nvidia 1080 8gb vram

 

 

New FlightSim Blog at https://blackeysblog.wordpress.com. Go visit it and leave me feedback and or comments so I can make it better. A new post every Friday.

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Hi asims33,

 

About 12 months ago I jumped into VR. The experience is transformative. You are in the cockpit, not looking through a window into a cockpit. What I have also started to do is to put real switches where they should be, so I can reach out and operate specific switches in flight. Many are still operated by mouse of course, but particularly radios and navigation equipment I have set up to be real dials, knobs and switches. So I have built a cockpit, and some of it has switches, but no monitors or steam gauges, those I see in VR.

 

Chat is done through Teamspeak, Discord and/or Simple Radio. Not typing for me, though some do.

 

Good luck, there are lots of great ideas and different methods on here. Explore the forums, ask questions. Its a great fun journey!

 

Mole

 

Do you have any pics of your set up? i would be interested to see that!

 

Thanks for the advice btw

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Ive not gone VR yet and I am building a pit mainly for the hobby of building a pit, I recon once its finished my PC will rock and a next gen VR will probably replace it as I cannot afford multiple projectors, of course that is depending on if I get motion sickness when I try it.

 

 

 

You may be better asking yourself what you want from DCS, many of the pit builders probably build more than they fly.

 

 

 

As you are probably aware, you can get by with a startup switch and hotas commands (with some UFC inputs) so why build a pit?

 

 

Dont know about VR and physical switches, but if you look at the Eurofighter cockpit all the switches you need to use in combat have different shaped levers so you know what you are touching without looking, a bit like the visually impaired use braille.

 

 

 

re -reading your post, building a simpit is an experience where you learn (or use your skills) to create something, its not so much about the sim, more about the build, the build is bigger than DCS imo.

 

 

If you are not bothered about the build journey, from what I have read on here, the VR experience is awesome.

 

 

One final thought, if you have a decent rig, VR is not that expensive and is pretty much immediate gratification which can be used for more than just flight simming whereas a simpit will take you a long time and can only be used for flight sims, if you are really unsure, buy a VR headset :-)

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Good luck, there are lots of great ideas and different methods on here. Explore the forums, ask questions. Its a great fun journey!

 

VR is ... quite neat.

 

But IMO - if you disregard the low resolution - currently only usuable for WWII-A/C.

As long as I cannot see(!) my external Pit through a VR device, I lean back save my money and wait..

 

I have experience with VR, but it didn‘t satisfy my expectations.

Lack of good reolution is the other point besides the one mentioned above.

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I’ve been in flt simmimg for decades in the past five years I guess I went from just a hotas setup which I had back in the 90’s and updated over time to adding the saitek panels then was planning on building a portable or stowable switch panels then before building it I got a rift and all thought Of building a pit was gone in the beginning but as I got into dcs and the lack of fly inside the need to manipulate the switches and rotarys are important and I’m at the process of using the tm mcfds switches and a button box I plan on building. Might work I have a second solution in the works also. Ideally if you can afford the space and cost. Having physical switches and knobs with a friend setup would be idea.

 

Added: I read somewhere here (next post) that the major switches that are needed inflight are usually locate in the same area of the cockpit for us fighter so if you place these physical switches the muscle memory takes over and aides in the immersion so if you just add the inflight switches you should be good in vr


Edited by BlacleyCole

BlackeyCole 20years usaf

XP-11. Dcs 2.5OB

Acer predator laptop/ i7 7720, 2.4ghz, 32 gb ddr4 ram, 500gb ssd,1tb hdd,nvidia 1080 8gb vram

 

 

New FlightSim Blog at https://blackeysblog.wordpress.com. Go visit it and leave me feedback and or comments so I can make it better. A new post every Friday.

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Why not use VR while sitting in a cockpit? Muscle memory is a pretty incredible thing. Just don't build in every switch and toggle, only the ones you really need in order to reduce clutter and make it easier to find by feel what you're looking for.

 

You can easily train VR muscle memory for a VR pit…for example:

 

Master Arm switch is in the same general location of all jets (far left on vertical panel), close enough in any jets to have a VR pit positioned with a switch on the far left vertical and fool your brain into feeling immersed…plus a Master Arm switch always 1) has a locking toggle switch to have to pull out 2) has a unique head on the switch top. Same goes for Master Mode push buttons.

 

Emergency jettison, same general place. The only big circle push button, so easy to feel out.

 

Landing gear assembly is easy to “feel out” as well, it’s always on the left side, protrudes out, and your mind will easily learn where exactly to grab it with your hand coming off your throttle on the left side.

 

Flaps switch is always in same general location and is the only switchtop that is flat headed

 

A DDI/MFD is easy to feel out…5 buttons on each side, you know where it is (i.e. where to reach to) it will only take a second to find the right button (i.e touch 1, 2, 3, press down the left side of OSB’s, for example).

 

A UFC would be the most challenging to ingrain muscle memory on, but I 100% believe it can be done with repetition through flying.

 

I think the key is this: You build a VR pit with only switches, knobs, buttons, handles, etc for the functions you need to work while in flight. This minimizes clutter and makes it easy to blindly locate the things you need in flight (e.g. the items above plus others). Those items are, generally speaking, located in the same area of the cockpits of jets so you won’t need to be “looking at your cockpit inside the HMD to find the real life cockpit switch”, you just reach and hit the switch because your brain knows where it’s at. This is why real jets vary the switchtops on switches that are next to each other…you shouldn’t have to physically look at it to find it, you can do it from muscle memory. Things like Formation, Ant-Collision, etc externally lighting knobs don’t need to be included…you can tune those knobs with the mouse on the ground during startup and use the “Master External Lights” on the outboard part of the throttle to control those. You don’t need APU and Engine Start switches because you never use those in the air, only on the ground during start up. And so on, you probably get the point by now.

 

Just my $0.02


Edited by =Buckeye=

VR Cockpit (link):

Custom Throttletek F/A-18C Throttle w/ Hall Sensors + Otto switches | Slaw Device RX Viper Pedals w/ Damper | VPC T-50 Base + 15cm Black Sahaj Extension + TM Hornet or Warthog Grip | Super Warthog Wheel Stand Pro | Steelcase Leap V2 + JetSeat SE

 

VR Rig:

Pimax 5K+ | ASUS ROG Strix 1080Ti | Intel i7-9700K | Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Master | Corsair H115i RGB Platinum | 32GB Corsair Vengeance Pro RGB 3200 | Dell U3415W Curved 3440x1440

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Do you have any pics of your set up? i would be interested to see that!

 

Thanks for the advice btw

 

Hi again asims33,

 

A few pics of my pit, (apologies for img quality). It is a work in progress. As a big Mi-24 fan, I was lucky enough to get a stick and collective lever from a scrapped Hind on eBay, (long story). Same as in the Mi-8 and other Mil helicopters. But I decided that since DCS will produce a Mi-24, I would prepare for that.

 

attachment.php?attachmentid=192131&stc=1&d=1534372598

attachment.php?attachmentid=192132&stc=1&d=1534372598

 

The left side wall above the collective has functioning radio switch and dial panels powered by Bodnar boards, while the authentic ARK-15 is running on Arduino and DCS-BIOS. There is a Garmin box too on the right dash, and a Doppler panel at the left knee. As Buckeye has said, muscle memory takes my fingers to the right place every time, and I am sure just like a real pilot, sometimes I have to feel for the right one by relative position. Pushing a button makes the virtual button depress in-cockpit.

I currently mostly fly the Mi-8 and it shared a lot of equipment with the Mi-24, just that the panels are in different places...

 

I have had loads of fun researching and building this, learned a lot too. And flying in it is just amazing. Some complain that VR is too low-res. The trade off is immersion, which coupled with tactile input actions is just a joy.

 

Feel free to ask for more info, happy to provide. I keep meaning to create a thread about it on here, but get distracted. Luckily I do take pics of the WIP. I will add flat printed images of dials and such to "decorate" the parts of the pit like the dash, but they do not need to function. Next on my list to build are engine start switches etc.

 

Mole

pit-010-a4.thumb.jpg.300aef328b916e7b29e73b9a4c9d9c99.jpg

pit-viewfromrightside-a4.jpg.848ed9f993e9a24e2964e093af8a03e9.jpg

SCAN Intel Core i9 10850K "Comet Lake", 32GB DDR4, 10GB NVIDIA RTX 3080, HP Reverb G2

Custom Mi-24 pit with magnetic braked cyclic and collective. See it here: Molevitch Mi-24 Pit.

 

[sIGPIC][/sIGPIC] www.blacksharkden.com

bsd sig 2021.jpg

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Hi again asims33,

 

A few pics of my pit, (apologies for img quality). It is a work in progress. As a big Mi-24 fan, I was lucky enough to get a stick and collective lever from a scrapped Hind on eBay, (long story). Same as in the Mi-8 and other Mil helicopters. But I decided that since DCS will produce a Mi-24, I would prepare for that.

 

attachment.php?attachmentid=192131&stc=1&d=1534372598

attachment.php?attachmentid=192132&stc=1&d=1534372598

 

The left side wall above the collective has functioning radio switch and dial panels powered by Bodnar boards, while the authentic ARK-15 is running on Arduino and DCS-BIOS. There is a Garmin box too on the right dash, and a Doppler panel at the left knee. As Buckeye has said, muscle memory takes my fingers to the right place every time, and I am sure just like a real pilot, sometimes I have to feel for the right one by relative position. Pushing a button makes the virtual button depress in-cockpit.

I currently mostly fly the Mi-8 and it shared a lot of equipment with the Mi-24, just that the panels are in different places...

 

I have had loads of fun researching and building this, learned a lot too. And flying in it is just amazing. Some complain that VR is too low-res. The trade off is immersion, which coupled with tactile input actions is just a joy.

 

Feel free to ask for more info, happy to provide. I keep meaning to create a thread about it on here, but get distracted. Luckily I do take pics of the WIP. I will add flat printed images of dials and such to "decorate" the parts of the pit like the dash, but they do not need to function. Next on my list to build are engine start switches etc.

 

Mole

 

Thanks for all the info!

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