Virtual or Actual Simulator Build ?

[mcros7]

I'm a private pilot who has been flying the X-Plane sim for about two years now on an iMac. I've been wanting to build a sim cockpit, but the question is whether to go virtual or actual. I enjoy flying a variety of different aircraft from light singles, to helicopters, to biz jets to the 787. Building an actual cockpit seems to be the holy grail for most sim pilots. With the realization that it would lock me in to a particular type of aircraft, as in light singles, or heavies, depending on what I build, I've been thinking it may be preferable to build a virtual cockpit that would retain the ability to sim any aircraft I feel like flying. That is not to mention that virtual instruments will never become outdated and always retain the ability to change with the software.

It seems to me that designing a sim around large screen LED TV's just might be the ticket. The only other equipment needed in the cockpit enclosure would be two seats and joystick controls, which many aircraft use today with fly by wire. Granted the virtual instrument panel would not quite be like the real thing, but it would have the advantage of changing with the type of aircraft I would be flying. That would certainly provide a more realistic simulation than building an actual light single cockpit and then flying a heavy, or vice versa.

There is no "one size fits all" approach, and sim construction is always going to be the best compromise for the pilot involved. Based on my thoughts, however, I'd like to hear your ideas and thoughts.

[Kennair]

Hi Malcolm and welcome to the forums.  I think your last sentence said it very well and I doubt you'll get much argument from anyone here.  Unless you're dedicated to a single liner sim and know you'll stick to that you will have many compromises, as I have constantly    For my mind you have to determine which aircraft you favour and if its many then do your best to design and build your sim to cater.  In my case after a couple of sim incarnations I decided to dedicate to the Boeing 777 but shortly after got involved as a partner in a commercial FDS built 777 making it pretty silly to also build one at home.  So I reverted to a multi-pit which does please me as I love to fly the King Air and PC12 among others.  I also decided to trim down to a single seat pit, partly due to space constraints, and partly after seeing the impressive work of FDS's JetMax sim.  Although heavily based on the design of the 777, due to the fact I'd already built much of the structure before my design shift, it will have the ability to become many aircraft quite adequately.

Most of my sim will still be real rather than virtual but aircraft avionics changes are accomplished by using advances in networked panel software allowing to keep the load off the FSX PC.  I'm talking about the latest FSXpand, SimPlugins Panel Builder 2, SimAvio2 and of course for 777 specific avionics Sim-Avionics.  I'm flying in both Prepar3d and X-Plane 10 and yes based around big screen HD LCD TV's for outside viewing.

Attached is a snapshot of the early stages of the transformation.

Ken.