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What have you done for your simulator today?

Started by blueskydriver, January 14, 2018, 04:01:20 AM

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0 Members and 4 Guests are viewing this topic.

Trevor Hale

Perfect Ray, you are practicing for Worldflight lmfao. Nicely done.
Trevor Hale

Owner
http://www.cockpitbuilders.com

Director of Operations
Worldflight Team USA
http://www.worldflightusa.com

VATSIM:

Neil Hewitt

Immersive Calibration Pro 4.01 is more crash-prone than ever - I mean, I used to get occasional crashes in previous versions, but it's ridiculous now. That said, I managed to largely eliminate crashes by making sure I run it as administrator and overriding the DPI scaling settings - though from your screenshot, it looks like you're on Win7? In which case, that's not an issue for you. But on Win10 and with a 4K screen, I found that telling Windows to override the scaling seemed to eliminate a lot of crashes. No idea why!

I got so sick of it crashing on save and taking my config data with it (it crashes after clearing the save file and before writing the new data, leaving your file empty!) that I wrote a small utility that will sit and watch the save file and back it up each time it changes, and auto-restore it if it gets wiped. That was a lifesaver doing my last calibration.

Multi-camera calibration is a real dark art and I've never gotten the blend area between projectors to line up properly, and post-warping can only do so much. Luckily my screen is small enough that I can do a single-camera calibration and the results there are much better, the problems are at the edges and are much easier to fix in post-warping. Personally I think the best results are achieved with an on-screen calibration vs the cameras but you need to have a very high density of markers on the screen and they have to be perfectly aligned, and you end up doing the edge blending yourself and that's one thing the camera calibration is very good at.

Lately I've been working on fixing the black-offset issues caused by projector overlap - the bright patch caused by double-ambient light where projectors overlap that edge-blending generally deals with for bright scenes, but which drive me crazy flying at night. Because I have a two-projector setup and my blend zone is right in the middle, ie directly in front of me, I simply can't ignore the bright stripe and so I stopped flying at night / late evening, basically any time after dusk. But I found a blog post on the Fly Elise web site where they talk about using shutters to fix the problem - this is what professional systems do, I believe - which means placing a physical shutter over part of the lens of your projectors to block the light falling into each half of the blended area from each projector. The idea being you get as close to blocking all the overlapped light as you can - and then edge-blending takes care of the rest.

I played about with some simple shutters made of a stiff black carbon-fibre material just blu-tacked on the front of the projectors and actually, you get can pretty good results. I still have a slightly discernible bright stripe but it's small, blurred out rather than sharp, and it could easily be dismissed as just moonlight :-) So I can fly at night again. The downside is that it's slightly upset the daytime blend and there's a slightly visible bright stripe in the day, whereas before my daytime blend was pretty much perfect. I suppose if I could make a mechanism to easily mount and dismount the shutters I could just put them up when night-flying... but for now I'm pretty happy. (Pictures attached of night view with the bright stripe, after the shutter fix, and the daytime view with the shutters in place.)

NH

(Long-time lurker, first-time poster!)

helloo

Added a cup holder out of a used Boeing.  I had to put epoxy in the bottom to level things out since it came out of a flightdeck where the cup holder was at an angle and not flat like I have it. 

Trevor Hale

Trevor Hale

Owner
http://www.cockpitbuilders.com

Director of Operations
Worldflight Team USA
http://www.worldflightusa.com

VATSIM:

RayS

Quote from: Neil Hewitt on September 18, 2019, 05:53:26 PM
I played about with some simple shutters made of a stiff black carbon-fibre material

I ended up doing a full manual align. I wasn't happy that if I used ICP, I couldn't make corrections on-screen and instead had to go back to ICP.

So, full manual alignment with lasers, and am now learning that blending is indeed a black art. I saw that article on using physical baffles and I do get those faint bands at night. Will have to try that. Most of my flying is at dusk/night so that will come in handy.

Ray Sotkiewicz

Caflyt

#630
well I received, finally, my TQ from Arif in Indonesia. Most of you are aware of the odyssey I've been through with this. All is well now. I also got word from Art at Northern Flightsim that my rudder pedal covers and skids are complete and will be shipping soon.

Caflyt

#631
A little more work on the dynamic control loading. We fabricated the levers for the motors and pivots. Here is the rudder (yaw) axis lever and rod.

Caflyt

#632
Here is the picture because the video doesn't work.
I will upload to YT

Caflyt


kattz

Working on the 737CL>NG landing gear handle conversion...

RayS

I've been 'Cold and Dark' for awhile but I've been up to stuff :)

1. Brand new sim computer
2. Retired old sim computer, now living out it's days as an over-powered Streaming system.
3. Built new mounts for the projectors so they are solid and immobile,
4. Re-Aligned projectors
5. Learned the black art of edge-blending
6. Rebuilt Stream for The Beech House. Now able to stream ForeFlight on iPad


7. And most importantly, bought airline tickets for WorldFlight 2019.  :laugh:



Ray Sotkiewicz

Trevor Hale

Giving the sim another test run tonight before I start streaming. Need to make some recordings for the new stream intro video and see how that works out. 

Now that the website stuff is up to date.
Trevor Hale

Owner
http://www.cockpitbuilders.com

Director of Operations
Worldflight Team USA
http://www.worldflightusa.com

VATSIM:

jskibo

Quote from: Trevor Hale on September 30, 2019, 10:47:12 AMGiving the sim another test run tonight before I start streaming. Need to make some recordings for the new stream intro video and see how that works out.

Now that the website stuff is up to date.

Slacker :}
Less than 4 years to retirement......

Trevor Hale

Quote from: jskibo on September 30, 2019, 01:51:05 PM
Quote from: Trevor Hale on September 30, 2019, 10:47:12 AMGiving the sim another test run tonight before I start streaming. Need to make some recordings for the new stream intro video and see how that works out.

Now that the website stuff is up to date.

Slacker :}
I couldn't agree more
Trevor Hale

Owner
http://www.cockpitbuilders.com

Director of Operations
Worldflight Team USA
http://www.worldflightusa.com

VATSIM:

RayS

The Brunnar Force Feedback DIY kit arrived last week and am starting to piece it together. Still trying to figure out the cooling. These cards can draw 6 amps each which means they generate a lot of heat.

The included/recommended heat sinks I don't think are up to the task so working on some solutions.
Ray Sotkiewicz

jskibo

Sold my BenQ HT2150ST's and bought Optoma GT1080 Darbees
Less than 4 years to retirement......

Trevor Hale

Quote from: RayS on October 07, 2019, 09:36:03 PMThe Brunnar Force Feedback DIY kit arrived last week and am starting to piece it together. Still trying to figure out the cooling. These cards can draw 6 amps each which means they generate a lot of heat.

The included/recommended heat sinks I don't think are up to the task so working on some solutions.
Just keep eating the Goldfish...  The cheesiness in the crackers help you think.
Trevor Hale

Owner
http://www.cockpitbuilders.com

Director of Operations
Worldflight Team USA
http://www.worldflightusa.com

VATSIM:

KyleH

Quote from: RayS on October 07, 2019, 09:36:03 PMThe Brunnar Force Feedback DIY kit arrived last week and am starting to piece it together. Still trying to figure out the cooling. These cards can draw 6 amps each which means they generate a lot of heat.

The included/recommended heat sinks I don't think are up to the task so working on some solutions.

Hey Ray,

I imagine it's the motors that are dissipating the 6A, not the board itself.
Kyle

Chief Pilot
Worldflight Team USA
http://www.worldflightusa.com

RayS

QuoteI imagine it's the motors that are dissipating the 6A, not the board itself.

Possibly, but even without any load on the cards, a few of those heat sinks are too hot to touch.
Ray Sotkiewicz

iwik

#644
Ray,
Read here it may help. It was quite happy running like this for years. Trouble free.
http://bffsimulation.com/BLDRV3/Set-Up%20and%20Commissioning%20BLDRV3.pdf
Paragraph 3.
That's not to say more heat sinking isn't a good thing.
Les

blueskydriver

Hey Ray,

Glad to see you got this item, but by looking at it, the enclosure box layout is not helping you at all.

First, the power supply (ps) is right next to the box, producing ambient heat in the same areas as the heat sinks. And, with those black horizontal bars (are they fans) next to heat sinks themselves, the hot air is not flowing away.

Next, you have an enclosure with no lid, yet it has a fan on one end that looks like it's setup to be a closed box. If it does have a lid, it should be on and at the other end of the box there should be intake vents to allow air flow into it.

Lastly, if I were you, I would move the PS away, get a better box that has some serious air flow capabilities, if possible change the heat sinks to water cooler type heat sinks (even if they don't sit flat, they'll work better), and place the entire box at the lowest level in the room (on the floor would be cooler and better).

John

PS. Looking forward to future videos from you on showing how this all works...
| FSX | FDS-MIP OVRHD SYS CARDS FC1| PM | PMDG 737-700 | UTX | GEX | UT7 | ASE | REX2 | AES | TSR | IS | TOPCAT | AvilaSoft EFB | OC CARDS & OVRHD GAUGES| SIMKITS | SW 3D Lights | FS2CREW2010 | FSXPassengers | Flight1 AE | MATROX TH2GO-D | NTHUSIM | 3-Mits EW230Ust Proj |

RayS

#646
Agreed with everything said here.

This is only for bench testing. The end result will have everything segregated/isolated & neatly buttoned up... This layout is definitely not the final configuration.  The airflow will consist of 2 fans in a push/pull configuration and the box will be fully sealed, minus the openings for the fans.

I'm still working out the heat sink layout and type.

It's a work in progress.
Ray Sotkiewicz

blueskydriver

Hey Everyone,

Thank all of you for keeping this thread going, and even though I haven't commented or replied on what everyone is doing lately, I do read everything posted here. It truly keeps me going everyday and I wish there was a way to tell you this in person. Hopefully, I will get a chance someday...

Thanks again and please keep posting. 😀

John
| FSX | FDS-MIP OVRHD SYS CARDS FC1| PM | PMDG 737-700 | UTX | GEX | UT7 | ASE | REX2 | AES | TSR | IS | TOPCAT | AvilaSoft EFB | OC CARDS & OVRHD GAUGES| SIMKITS | SW 3D Lights | FS2CREW2010 | FSXPassengers | Flight1 AE | MATROX TH2GO-D | NTHUSIM | 3-Mits EW230Ust Proj |

jskibo

Ordered 24ft of Flex Gray screen today from Carl's Place
Less than 4 years to retirement......

RayS

#649
Building the pilot-side carriage for the new force-feedback system.

Ray Sotkiewicz

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