Find your way into flight simulator cockpit construction
7. Final remarks
Well, what is your next step ?
If you want to take a closer look before you really make up your mind, you can (again)
browse through all the sites in the example section with the insights you gained
reading this text. Additionally you can watch several videos on OpenCockpits (download
section) about flight simulator cockpits. This link is worth the effort to visit,
you will be impressed. Also on Novel-
If you want to try first, you can book a simulator flight at:
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Or search for a similar supplier in your area.
If you doubt if a flight simulator cockpit is the right choice for you, think about alternatives:
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An overview of the impact on your health (worst case scenario's) is given in an editorial on Flightsim.
If by now, by seeing for instance the sites about the salvage of real cockpits, you start to feel more empathy for maintaining a real cockpit than for the construction of and flying with a flight simulator cockpit you should pay a visit to the International Cockpit Club for owners and restorers of aircraft cockpits.
If you are so hooked by now that you want to make a living on flight simulator cockpits,
you can start selling parts, this is the route some of the current suppliers followed.
But you can also hit the road with the "Area X51 money making machine" provided by
Cyberdome for your own cockpit circus. Or how about 20 networked simulators in a
rental space, with you charging the would-
If you want to stick with reading as you perhaps do now, there are some very nice books for sale:
Lulu: "WLP Wild Life Protection by John T. Chance. Follow Max Stein, a tough kind
of old fashioned adventurer,ladies-
TooMuchFS: "Get Real! by Bill Smith is a wonderful mixture of humor, drama, intrigue, excitement and fantasy. For the new flight simulation enthusiast, it will stimulate and educate. For the seasoned flyer, it will take you on an adventure unattainable from your computer keyboard, and for the hobbyist’s significant other; it will give insight into why we enjoy flying the virtual skies for hours on end. To those who have never heard of flight simulation, a word of caution. Reading this book just may prompt you to visit your local software retailer and join the virtual friendly skies."
StarshipDiaries: "The Starship Diaries by Dallas Kachan is a new aviation adventure and travel novel, in which the author chronicles a round the world flight in the futuristic Beechcraft Starship. The story is based on adventures he conducted using Microsoft Flight Simulator."
On Flightsim Books you can find a set of (older but) free books on the Microsoft Flight Simulator. For those who want to start a quest into the Microsoft Flight Simulator history the The Old Flight Simulator Vault is a good starting point.
If at the end only flying is your objective, then there are many ways to further
enhance your flying experience. You can join a virtual airline like DC-
There are not many extensive texts on flight simulator cockpit building in a hobby setting. You can however find a lot of literature with respect to professional simulators, interesting starting points are: FlightSimulation, NASA SimLabs or Google. The same goes for the underlying technology. On many of the sites that describe flight simulator cockpits (see section 2) you will find descriptions of technology in use, but in most cases only very little information on underlying principles. You will have to search in a different track on Internet. You will be amazed about the detailed information you can find on many subjects on Wikipedia.
Specific sites for further study are:
The site of Mike Powell where you can find an enumerated overview of issues around flight simulator cockpit building. Additionally he wrote a technical but very interesting book "Building Simulated Aircraft Instrumentation" as an introduction to making gauge style flight instruments.
The site SimProjects (Roland van Roy) where from a practical point of view the complete construction of a flight simulator cockpit is described.
In general a regular visit to the online meting places mentioned in “User group and forums” (section 2) will keep you well informed about the latest developments. If you want to go more in depth with the Microsoft Flight Simulator in general, first take a look at sites like AVSIM, FlightSim (see also the tutorial section for articles), SimFlight and Simviation and their forums.
Finally, if building a flight simulator cockpit is not enough, you can also consider to program your own flight simulator. You can start from scratch, for instance based on the book "Build Your Own Flight Sim in C++: Programming a 3d Flight Simulator Using Oop" by Michael Radtke and Christopher Lampton or by joining an open source initiative like Flight Gear.
Whether your dream is to have a real B747 cockpit in your garage or a set of pedals
below your desk in addition to your joystick, it is all possible. When going for
the "high-
The challenge of building a flight simulator cockpit is -
