My Plans for new F/A-18c Hornet SimPit - I/O and Multiscreen Questions

[TopperHarley]

I am in the planning / parts acquisition phase of a Hornet simpit project.  I am building out a dedicated room in my basement which will be dedicated as the simpit, with an adjoining room to house the computer and sound equipment/wiring etc. Carpeted, sheetrock walls, HVAC etc

 

The attached Sketchup images details the room, the cockpit and the plan for multi-monitors.

My PC Plan is:

AMD Ryzen 9 5950x w/ Gigabyte X570 mobo

64gb RAM

Nvidia RTX 3090 GPU 

Separate SSD/NVME drives for storage/game and OS

 

I plan to purchase the Cockpitshop (Tejay Stang) F18 Cockpit + Seat KIT  (precut pieces, assembled by me)

 

For the control panels, I have used the NATOPS diagrams and have blocked out each sub-panel to be implemented by sourced USB controllers,

such as:

the WinWing Throttle Quadrant (Flight Ops Panel)

Thrustmaster F-18 HOTAS

TEKCreations Left Panel (USB)

TEKCreations Right Panel (USB) 

TEKCreations "Hornet UFC USB Controller"

TEKCreations "Hornet Landing Panel" (USB)

TEKCreations "Hornet Right Warning Caution Advisory Panel" - USB Controller

TEKCreations "IFEI Panel" (Panel only, no USB)

TEKCreations "ECM Panel" (Panel only, no USB)

 

I have also purchased the Andres "JetSeat" USB device for vibration effects

 

TEKCreations also makes most of all the other acrylic panels for asthetic purposes which I will use what is they have to round out the rest of the MCI,

I do not really want to go the entire full-blown route of trying to replicate everything 1:1 and have to source switches and wire up with Arduino boards etc.... hoping I can do 95% of everything with sourced USB controllers

 

For the 3 DDIs, I will use 3 "Cubesim" USB LCD displays, enclosed with the Thrustmaster Cougar panels, and do all the necessary .lua configs to extract the screen outputs to drive the cubesim displays.

 

 

My plan is to wire all the USB controllers to USB hubs, and run one or two USB cables from the simpit HUB to the computer, and hopefully Windows/DCS will recognize everything!!!

 

 

So, one big question I have is, I have planned on 3 65" Samsung Curved LCD 120hz UHD 4K TVs as arranged in the Sketchup model..... and the question is, will there be any issue with the 65" displays working with a Track/IR?

 

Anyone have any feedback on the above plan, like the USB components or DDI controllers,  before I go down the path too far?

 

Thanks,

 

 

[PEEP]

Hi TopperHarley

Unfortunately i cant give any sound advice as my setup is nowhere near the specs you plan on going with as i only run 3 x 1080p. But i would be interested in the advice this great community can give also. I reckon the track IR will work OK as i assume it only relies on the sensor and what you use on your head.

I would be interested to know myself if you will get decent frame rates on high settings with your rig and 3 x 4K TV plus running the LCD for the MDF's and if you can run it even with this high end rig. I have heard talk on the forums that spotting targets is a little harder to see in 4K for some reason also.

Good luck with your project, i will revisit to see what advice comes in.

[Mr_Burns]

Only thing I can think of with regards to the Track IR - that is a whole lot of moving pixels, might make you feel weird?

 

Aside from that, congratulations on your lottery win!