My 737NG "ElephantAir" build (updated January 1, 2014)

[Flying_Fox]

Hi All,

Finally starting to build my 737NG cockpit.

First item to build will be the screen. I plan to build the screen from three 4' x 8' hardboards and paint them with Behr SilverScreen paint.
I have three Optoma GT720 projectors  (bought them for 670 CAD each in March). Will try the projectors setup with Immersive Display Lite 2. Got also three projector mounts like this: http://www.amazon.com/NPL-Series-Projector-Mount-White/dp/B001R2OAVA/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1307673096&sr=8-4


Then I plan to build the wooden shell myself. Still working on the drawings, however overall layout you can see here.




I plan to run FSX on the main computer for visuals and use at least one other PC (for the beginning) for the instruments. One thing at a time.

The main PC is assembled now and has:

MSI P67-GD65 motherboard,
Sandy Bridge 2600K processor,
8 GB G.Skill RAM,
NVidia GTX 570 video card.



Initially bought Antec 750 PSU, however after 5 min of work its fan just fell off  and it was returned and replaced by CoolerMaster 1000W PSU.

Two Corsair SSD drives F60 and F120. 60GB drive is for Windows 7 64-bit and 120 GB for FSX stuff. Matrox TripleHead2Go purchase can wait until the screen is built.

On March 25 I ordered  CPFlight MCP737EL and two EFIS737EL, from AviationMegastore.com. Pretty fast delivery by UPS  - I received it on April 5th and I was charged only HST tax - no any brokerage fees or duties charged.







The complete MIP is the previous FDS generation, courtesy of Jackpilot (Thanks again, Jack!).



It is unpacked now, but still not assembled yet, since I need to build the base first. Jack did really good job on wrapping! 




I have two Acer 18.5" P185H monitors for instruments and one used Dell 153EP 1024x768 monitor for EICAS screen that I picked up from eBay for $29 +$41 shipping and handling  .

One interesting "byproduct" from Optoma GT720 is its ability to work at 120 Hz and produce 3D HDTV video at 1280x720. I use it with NVidia 3D glasses kit. Works perfectly, just like in RealD cinema or IMAX. However, the setup for 3D took 2 evenings of dancing with the buben around the computer and drivers, until I've got the sequence right.   

Probably might not progress too fast with the building in summer - need some bad weather for that (however it's not a problem here in Nova Scotia.   )


Nick

[jackpilot]

Glad to see how well my "ex" will be treated..   

[jskibo]

Nice.  I have 3 of the same PJ's.  Haven't set them up yet, so it will be fun to watch your results! 

[phil744]

Looks to be a well thought out and planned build, keep us posted

[MLeavy737]

  Looks like your off to a great start! That screen setup looks awesome!

Mike Leavy

[Flying_Fox]

Time for a new building report 

While I already have ~60-70% of simulator parts, the actual simulator building is going slow so far. During the fall I've bought more stuff:

* Real 737 TQ (being interfaced by Rob now),
* FDS overhead (assembled but not wired yet. Courtesy of Jackpilot. – Thanks Jack!)



* 10.4" monitor for lower EICAS.

* One FlyEngravity CDU (Thanks Rob!)
* one interfaced Boeing clock (Thanks Rob!)
*  interfaced flaps indicator. (Thanks Rob!)

* Bunch of  real 737 pedestal instruments (Thanks to Jack, who pointed me to many of them).

What's missing from the big items so far are:

* Yokes ( I have Saitek one that can be used initially for tests)
* Seats
* Pedestal box
* Set of radios (probably from Open Cockpits).
* Shell (I thought of building wooden shell myself, but now I am more inclined to buy FDS aluminum shell).


I started with building the projection system in September.

For the projection I have 3 Optoma GT720 projectors and built 200 degrees curved screen of my own design.

Now the screen is built and is under testing.
The main features of screen design are:

* 180 degrees free-standing wooden construction.
* Actual screen surface made of 3 particle board 5 mm sheets 4 x 8' (~$22 each)
* The screen shape is easily adjustable.
* The screen sheets are not screwed in, so the screen surface stays untouched.
* The whole screen structure can be assembled/disassembled within an hour (with no damage to the screen sheets).
* It will have tiny gap lines between the sheets but I can live with them.

Here is the picture of the first screen test with just roughly warped/aligned image (ImmersiveDisplay Lite 2)




Screen radius is 195-220 cm ( it's not exactly cylindrical due to side projectors positions)
Screen height 124 cm (4 ft)
Screen bottom height from the floor 72 cm
Screen arc length is 700 cm -  (245 cm x 3) minus 35 cm cutoff. The image does not take all 700 cm due to blending areas overlap - will tell the final size when I finish the adjustments.
Room height is only 233 cm (which poses some problems).

At the moment the panel with projector mounts stands on the floor stand, so when the image alignments are finished it will be attached to the ceiling. There was a month delay in screen testing since one of the projectors failed after just 10 hours of work (bad DMD chip) and was sent for warranty repairs. I got it back just before Christmas.

Stay tuned   

Nick

[blueskydriver]

Nick,

How did you attached the sheets for the screen? You said no screws and that you have the seams, so I wonder how expansion and contraction will play into it later on. With the weather changes you talk about in Nova Scotia, I bet you'll have to deal with this later.

My suggestion for you and everyone else is to go with the screen material that I got from Carl's Place Projector Screens; look here:

http://stores.ebay.com/Carls-Place-Projector-Screens?_trksid=p4340.l2563

Look at what I posted about this previously. I can tell you that we went through all the same issues with screens, and in the end, the screen material was the best for only $400 US (it was custom sized even for that price). You would'nt need it too be as big as ours, so it should be even cheaper in price.

Otherwise, your project is going great, keep posting the pics as you go.

BSD

[727737Nut]

Looking good Nick!  I would go with the FDS shell.  I had one and I loved it!

Rob

[jackpilot]

I'm Glad you use the FlyElise warping soft. Real deal and it seems to do the job!Please report
The MIP should fit without any major adjustments, maybe the side support will need some resizing which should be easy with MDF
I highly recommend the FDS shell. It will save you months of building time .
Very happy camper with mine.

[Flying_Fox]

My suggestion for you and everyone else is to go with the screen material that I got from Carl's Place Projector Screens; look here:

Hi blueskydriver,

Yes, I've seen your posts about screen material. They appeared just after I finished building my screen.    So for now I will use mine, however will keep in mind yours. However it seems to me that the that material screen with all those tension stuff will require more space around which might be a problem for the small room. My screen is only  5.5 cm from the wall in the tightest place.

See the my screen building details in the post below.

Thanks,
Nick

[Flying_Fox]

Here are details of the screen design.

Materials:

* 3 particle board sheets 4 x 8 feet
* 1 x 3, 2 x 3, 2 x 8 and 2 x 10 inches pine lumber,
* deck screws 8 x 3 and 8 x 2 ½.
* Plastic window moldings,
* machine screws
* Velcro (industrial strength)

The screen base is made from standard 2 x 8 pine lumber. There are 12 sections like this,


each one has a shelf (except two sections that I use to crawl behind the screen) and held together by  standard 8 x 3 deck screws.



The sections connected together also by a few deck screws 8 x 2 ½. 

There are 12 screen posts (2" x 3") the posts ~ 170 cm in height installed the following way:
There is a piece of 2 x 10 lumber which is screwed to the bottom end of the post



This piece tightly slides in a vertical slot formed by the section side and another vertical piece. This allows changing the actual screen radius at any post.



After adjustment, the piece is just screwed in with a couple of deck screw 8 x 2 ½ through the side. It can be screwed out and readjusted if necessary in a matter of minute. The height of the slot is a bit bigger than a sliding piece, so the posts can be adjusted to make a desired vertical.

There is no real precision required to build the screen, except adjusting the screen height that was done with the rotating laser level.



So: the base sections are built, the post bases inserted into the slots, then adjusted vertically and horizontally (roughly achieving the desired screen shape and radius). Sections screwed in together.
Then actual screen supports are built on each post. They look like this:



Since the radius of screen can change at any post, it is not possible to put just one rigid shelf to stand the screen on, or screw the screen to the posts. The screen support shelves are built in pieces that lay on the small support blocks screwed to each post.



The position of support blocks is aligned up with the rotating laser level.





The screen shelves pieces made of 1 x 3 boards just screwed in by one screw on the left side, the right side can slide on the next supporting block when you adjust them.



When the shelves are adjusted, the hole is drilled through the support shelf and underlying block and the machine screw is inserted like a pin into it. Just inserted, not screwed in. It is enough to prevent the shelf piece from moving.



The screen sheet just stands on the shelves and held from moving by other machine screws inserted into the shelf at the desired positions making the arc.



Here is the trick how to shape and hold the screen without the screws in it.

I bought a few plastic window moldings that look like this:



The top part you don't need, so take the part with the slot and cut off its bigger shelf with the scissors. The slot size is ~ 5mm and it fits tightly over the bottom edge of the screen. Also those moldings have the sticky layer on bottom that I had to scrape off.  The height of the molding is also ~ 5 mm, so it does not take away any significant screen height.

Now, when the screen sheet has the molding on its bottom I just lift it up, bend and place on the support shelves. Then I use the clamps to hold its upper part to the posts. It all can be easily done by one person. 



After this I evaluate the shape on bottom, adjust it and mark the positions for the machine screws that will hold the shape where necessary.



When the positions for the screw holes are marked, I rotate the particular shelf out of the screen and drill the hole.





Then I insert the machine screws and rotate the shelf back in position and re-insert the screw that holds its right side.



So, the machine screws are stopping the screen from moving in radial direction and pushing the molding with the screen edge  to desired position, and not damaging the actual screen surface. If I want to readjust the part of screen – I just mark and drill the new holes.

The clamps on top of the screen sheet are used just temporarily, until I make the entire screen and image adjustments. To hold the screen in use I initially decided to use the industrial strength Velcro (from Home Depot) which is located on the posts and the back of the screen. While the adjustments are not finished, there is a piece of cardboard inserted between the Velcro surfaces so they do not stick yet.







The screen holds its shape very well.

Instead of Velcro, I can apply the same molding+stopping screws system on the top of the screen.
Also, to make the structure more rigid one can additionally fix the top of the posts to the ceiling (of course only after all image adjustments are done).

Right now the whole screen structure just stands on the floor.

I already did one adjustment by rotating the whole screen ~10 degrees counterclockwise. Just separated it in 3 blocks, moved each one to new position screwed in again. All took about 10 minutes.





I believe this screen design is especially convenient for those who live in apartments. It can be disassembled/reassembled within an hour.

The expansion and contraction problem does not really exist in this design. The screen sheets are floating on supporting shelves and can push each other out. The screen is standing for 2 month now and I did not notice any seams problem. If the gap increases I could just push one of the outer sheets in to close the gap. That's why I now inclined to apply the molding system on top of the screen too instead of using Velcro. Maybe Velcro will stay for the central sheet and side sheets will be held by moldings.

Building of this screen structure is easy and does not require any significant precision. The only precise thing needed is to level the screen bottom horizontally which is very convenient using the rotating laser level.

The posts have extension pieces on top. Just because it is much easier to operate a somewhat shorter post that does not try to scrape the ceiling. Later the black material will be attached to them between screen and the ceiling. I bought a bunch of nice  black rugs in Wal-Mart for 99c apiece. 

The total cost of the screen is about $150.

Nick

[Flying_Fox]

Projectors setup

Optoma GT720 is a nice short throw projector 3D-capable at 1280x720 3D at 120 Hz.

It is cheap enough (I bought them for $670 CDN each) therefore there is no lense shift and zoom.
In general I found it not the best choice for the sim projection, especially in a small room, because of the short throw = 0.72 is not small enough for projector placement convenience.

It turned out that no matter what screen radius you choose, all three projectors need to be placed in the same spot very close to the center point.



Projectors with throw rate ~0.5 can be placed more apart and closer to the screen and do not interfere with each other position that much.

Placing projectors beside each other results in some image distortion on the far left and right sides, where the distance from the lens to the screen is smaller.

I expected that from the preliminary screen calculations and that is the main reason of my flexible screen design where I can adjust the shape of the screen.

The throw angle of GT720 projector is 69°, so theoretically it can cover ~ 210° of screen. However, with image overlapping needed for edge blending it reduces to ~ 180°. Looks like, short (~0.5) throw projectors have the advantage here too. 

Beside the projectorcentral.com Projector Calculator
http://www.projectorcentral.com/Optoma-GameTime_GT720-projection-calculator-pro.htm



I also use these two convenient sites for the screen parameters calculation.
http://www.cleavebooks.co.uk/scol/calsect.htm



and http://www.visualtrig.com/



To overcome the absence of the projector zoom I developed the moving base platform with the rails for each projector. Initially they looked like this:







The rails are made from the standard folding closet door rails that can be purchased from any hardware store for about $5.



The base is made of the standard particle board piece, plus I added pieces from plastic kitchen cut board to achieve 22 mm height exactly fitting the door rail. The door rail fixed to the main base board with aluminum angle profile.




The projector mounts I've bought allow for a low projector placement. The included extension piece has the standard 1/1/2 thread and can be replaced with a threaded steel nipple of desired length from the plumbers section of any hardware store.




So, to overcome the image distortion problems I placed central projector lower and two side ones above it as close to center as mounts allow.







Along with changing the screen shape that gives me roughly equal distance from lenses to the screen. The slight shape distortion can be compensated by image warping software. And if there is still a little bit of distortions they are at the far ends of the screen, at the peripheral of the view.

My ceiling is only 235 cm height and that presents extra problem since the increased height of the projectors "2-storey" placement may interfere with the top of the 737 shell which is 183 cm,( according to FDS data) and should stand on ~ 8 inch simulator base. Can't say for sure right now, but it looks they may overlap by a few centimeters – may be I will have to move the shell a bit back from the screen. If you have the ceiling height over 8 ft, that should not be a problem.

[MLeavy737]

Nice screen and projector setup! thanks for sharing!

Mike L

[Maurice]

Very nice setup Nick but a word of advice from someone who has been there & struggled with the same issues you are dealing with. My screen is nowhere near perfectly cylindrical and I also did not have projectors with zoom lenses and I was really worried about that at the beginning.

But it turned out that the warping software easily takes care of that and the result in my sim are fairly spectacular based on the reviews I received from people who have seen it.

Also, I elected not to use edge blending because from what I have been told, flying at night leaves 2 very wide lighter bands in the 2 blending areas. I get these as well but they are very narrow & less objectionable I would think. But of course, this is a personal preference and yours may be different.

Anyway, these are my 2 cents re. distortion and lack of zooming ability. Keep in mind as well that once in the cockpit, your viewing area is severely limited by the windows so you will barely notice any distortion. Basically, in my experience, projector positioning is much less critical than what I imagined or perhaps I am just easier to please 

Maurice

[jackpilot]

I'll just add to that :
I flew Mau's 73 and cant even remember that there was no edge blending ....really!
Jack

[Flying_Fox]

Anyway, these are my 2 cents re. distortion and lack of zooming ability. Keep in mind as well that once in the cockpit, your viewing area is severely limited by the windows so you will barely notice any distortion. Basically, in my experience, projector positioning is much less critical than what I imagined or perhaps I am just easier to please 

Maurice

Thank you Maurice for your insight.
Yes,  my conclusion for distortions was the same after initial tests. It's on the edges of screen and should be not noticeable from inside the shell. I was suprised how tolerant the mage was to irregularities of screen shape - the image stays focused (at least in my eyes  ) while the projection distance changing from 185 to 205 cm along the screen.

Nick

[Flying_Fox]

The screen design is finalized. I abandoned the idea of holding the back of screen with Velcro – there is no need in that. The molding system in the bottom is enough for the whole screen to hold its shape. I removed the temporary clamps, installed the plastic moldings along the screen top edge and made 12 holders like this:


The holders are screwed to the posts like this:



After that I connected the tops of the boards with planks like this:


The planks are for fixing the black material, they also give the structure some extra rigidity.

The black stuff around screen is made out of 16" x 24" floor mats that I've bought in Wal-Mart for 99c each.



They are attached with just two small Velcro pieces each. Same mats will be also installed on Velcro to hide the screen base.



Nick

[Flying_Fox]

After getting my failed projector back from warranty service it was time to do the final projectors adjustments and initial test for image warping/soft blending.  Warping/blending operations will be repeated when the projectors are placed on the ceiling, after they are fine tuned and tightened up.

The screen shape adjustments that I did to decrease the distortions at the ends of the screen succeeded completely. There is no image distortion on the left and just slight one on the right.






The relative projectors arrangements are also finalized. Here is a picture with the dimensions and angles. 
Physical projector positioning on the base depends on projector size and mounts adjustment range.













As you can see, side projectors' mounts moved to the corner as far as possible and the center projector mount is practically in the middle.

It is very difficult to design the projector arrangement just "theoretically"ahead of the test and before the actual mounts are installed. This should be done by trial and error. You might find the perfect position is not available because one projector leg hits the side or top of another projector. In case of GT720 you cannot just unscrew the projector legs and take them out. Pity, it could have saved me ~ 1cm of height.

So, my projector rails were not screwed completely in until the last moment. If the projector positioning is tight (and it will be, especially for smaller rooms), you should also take into consideration the input/power cables placement – they may interfere with each other, or prevent the projector moving in rails:

[blueskydriver]

Nick,

You likely took this into consideration, but the proximity of your projectors is extremely close and the biggest killer of the bulbs is heat. Now, add your design to the closeness of the ceiling and you probably will be shortening the life span of your bulbs by 1/3.

Most projectors have a low setting and that is nothing more than running the bulb at less power to save it's life a little longer. You might find a setting called economy or something like that. However, if you ran it on that setting you will see very quickly why you like brightness; especially, with your simulator. Anyhow, the point is this, you should have a fan or two that is mounted on the ceiling and blows the heat away from the projectors.

I can tell you for sure that three projectors will heat up a room pretty quick, but if you add in all the heat coming from the simulator, which goes where? You've guessed it, right up to the ceiling where the fans in the projectors are drawing it in to try to cool themselves off with.

It is for this very reason why I have three fans placed in areas that will move the air, as well as run an AC unit. Without the AC unit running, the room can go from 62F to 78F in about 3 hours. That's about 5-6F per hour, might seem slow, but in 6 hours it will top out about 86F and then the computers will start acting up and video cards will be getting hot. All that ambient heat just keeps adding up...so cold is the word of the day!

By the way, awesome work you got going, love all the pictures.

BSD

[Flying_Fox]

Nick,

You likely took this into consideration, but the proximity of your projectors is extremely close and the biggest killer of the bulbs is heat.  Anyhow, the point is this, you should have a fan or two that is mounted on the ceiling and blows the heat away from the projectors.

You are absolutely right. It's hard to not notice the "boiling" spots on the projection picture. I already have two fans installed. I am thinking of buying oscillating fans, however it's not really a "fan season" at the stores yet. 

I am still thinking of adding AC unit - will see later. Right now I don't turn on heating in simulator room and it's fine after a few hours of working projectors.

[Flying_Fox]

For image warping and soft blending I use ImmersiveDisplay Lite 2 (version 1.9). This program is amazing for what it does.

As you know already I have Optoma GT720 projectors and Matrox TH2Go Digital Edition. The projector native resolution is  1280 x 800, according to the specs.




I noticed that the projector without the signal has bigger lighted area, compared to its 1280 x 800 picture size. Interestingly enough, the TH2GO Display Properties suggest resolution of 1280 x1024 as default for it.




Here are the projected pictures of unwarped image. I specifically increased gamma/brightness here to show the areas that fall on the black frame around the screen.






Also want to note for the people who never did the warping before, that typical sample warping  pictures on actual software sites or in manuals may be confusing misleading.
What shown there as a sample of warped image is not what you see on your projection screen and not what you work with. Here is the picture form Immersive Display site:




The picture they show is the image after warping - how it looks on the FLAT screen, not on curved screen. You almost never see that image unless you move the warped picture on your flat auxiliary monitor, (if you have one). I guess they put these pictures up just because it's easier to do a screenshot from the PC, then bring the camera and make the actual picture from real projection screen. Sure it's obvious to the developers, because they know what they are talking about, but may be confusing for the first-time users.

To have the auxiliary monitor in addition to projectors is a really good idea. Since the initially projected image is warped "the wrong way", it is really difficult to operate with Windows menu bar, since it typically falls onto screen support structure outside the actual screen where it's hard to see. I have the Windows taskbar moved to the flat monitor and docked there.

So, when you have the projected image like this:



you need to fit that crooked image into your curved screen. You may lose resolution pixels in vertical direction as a result, since both lower and upper image borders are curved, one more than another. Note also, that the pictures I show were done in "projectors on the floor" position.

Obviously, with the projectors on the ceiling the curves of the projected image will be upside down – greater curve on bottom of the image and smaller curve on top.  There will be still highlighted areas above/under your screen even after warping – which might not be too bad on the black material. For this light bleeding issue there is a special "Mask" feature in the Immersive Display program that will apply another user-created image, masking those areas so the light just does not go there from the projector.

Before "Mask" feature the only other option was to build a physical mask around the projector lens to block the unwanted light areas.

Here are my current settings for the display properties and Matrox GXM software.





Note "Swap Displays" button in the above picture. Do not try to use it. It is evil.  After cycling through it, the Matrox output completely ignored my left projector. While the Windows Desktop was still working, the Immersive Display warping program was starting display from central projector, no matter what settings were. I had to completely reinstall Matrox GXM software to put things back to normal. So if you want to swap projector inputs – just reattach the input cables appropriately.

When starting your warping - do not use the mouse to move the adjustment points. At least until you get the hang on it.  It is far more precise and convenient to move adjustment points with arrow keys. Left-Right-Up-Down arrows move from point to point, Ctrl+Left, Ctrl+Right, Ctrl+Up, Ctrl+Down - move the points it the desired direction. For the initial warping you only need to adjust points vertically, and using the mouse you can easily mess the horizontal point position without you noticing it.

Here are the pictures illustrating the warping. I used 6 x 6 points grid. Note that Immersive Display dialog box is not warped along with the actual picture, so you may move it to the screen position where it's easier to read.

Left screen adjusted, working on central:


Left and central screens adjusted:



All screens adjusted:



I found the most convenient to adjust on the default image with text lines. Then I checked on all other images:









All process including projector images positioning/sizing/alignment, then warping and some edge blending took me about 3 hours. The projection now covers the whole screen with 700 cm arc, which considering the current projectors position, gives 200 degrees field of view. Image overlapping for the edge blending is only 5%. I know it is recommended up to 20% overlapping, but I just do not want to sacrifice that much of the screen estate. Will see.

I also quickly tried the soft edge blending.

–here is the picture without blending:


- and here with some blending applied:



What you adjust for blending is -  Overlap % in the first box. When you change this value you will see the overlapping part moving and you must make sure the image in that area matches.

The second box  - Fade %  adjusts the gradient on the blending area. This requires more tests with both daylight and night pictures in FSX. The trouble is that what might blend perfectly in daylight picture may have highlighted areas around in the night picture. I just did it for All colors – however you may adjust color values separately.

For one blending area you adjust it from both sides, for example Right side on the left projector and Left side on the central projector.

You will also need to additionally adjust the alignment points vertically near the blending area.






Correct blending sure will take more time than warping – you cannot rely only on how it looks in Immersive Display only.

This was just a quick test; the blending will be finalized after moving the projectors to the ceiling.

Nick

[Flying_Fox]

This update is open for GetTogether discussion 

February - moving the projectors up on the ceiling.

Moving the projectors to the ceiling requires more than one person – not enough hands. J
The projector base is 60 x 117 cm. I could be made smaller after the projectors placement adjustments, however I needed to hang it on more than one ceiling joist which are ~ 16 inches apart. Mounted projectors weight per asssembly: 4.6, 4.6, 4.2 kg, projector base (with rails) weight - 9.2 kg.

After the projector adjustments were done I marked the position of the central projector lens on the floor.
Then I used plumb line to match this position on the ceiling. Also, marked the position of projector base front edge and placed the masking tape on the ceiling along the line.

I used the stud finder to find out the joists positions, and then drilled small holes through the ceiling to pinpoint the joists edges. Next, I chose more or less central hole position  (relative to projector base front edge marked on the ceiling with the masking tape) and placed my rotary laser level under it (it also gives the vertical laser beam). I pointed the laser into the hole and then lifted the projector base and put it to match the front edge line and the central lens mark. While I was holding it, my wife quickly marked the laser dot position with a pencil.

Then I've put one 12 x 4 screw through and loosely fixed the base to the ceiling.
Next, I turned the base around the screw so the next hole showed up. Then I repeated the operation with laser pointing the hole and marking its position on the base. After doing so for all holes I drilled through and screwed the whole base in several places to the joists. In general, after you marked two holes along one joist you can just project the joist line and place the additional screws in it. Laser pointing definitely beats the work with a measuring tape for such task...



March - fighting with FPS

It took only one evening to put the projector assembly up. Then, of course I had to redo the warping again.
I also tested NTHUSIM trial for the warping, and in terms of picture quality I personally did not find any difference compared to my Immersive Display Lite. The initial warping setup in NTHUSIM looked a little faster, however I found overall possibilities of fine picture adjustments are far better in Immersive Display Lite (in my opinion). Also want to mention that I abandoned the soft edge blending whatsoever and found  the precise windows positioning with no overlapping a better option. Thus I got a wider overall picture that now covers 204 degrees - 3 docked windows of 68 degrees each, which matches the physical projector throw angle.

I also spent about 3 weeks playing around FSX/Nvidia Inspector settings to get the acceptable frame rates. The PC now is overclocked to 4.6 Ghz.

So, now I have ~18 FPS on the runway at ORBX Cairns runway, that I use for the performance tests. But the optimizing looks never finished, I still try new and new settings. I am OK with ~17-18 FPS, but still work trying to get a better picture and reduce blurries and artifacts.

Here is test flight around Cairns.

Cairns2_14_55.avi

I also completely blacked out the sim room in order to reduce reflections from the ceiling and walls. I did not intend to use any black paint for that and used cheap black landscape fabric instead.



It may look like I destroyed the whole room, but in reality there are only 7 small holes in the ceiling that hold the projector assembly. There is no more damage to the walls than from hanging a couple of wall photos – that's it.  The black masking is not attached to the ceiling – one end of its supports is attached to the projector assembly and the other ends just lay on the screen support structure, that in turn just stands on the floor. The whole room black masking can be removed in five minutes without a trace. There are two fans installed on the ceiling that blow away the hot air from the projectors.



April - Sim base.

The next task was creating the sim base. I made it exactly match the FDS shell size – here are my big thanks to Nick1150 from Athens! - who helped me with the measurements from his base and shell. I built the base from 6 x 2 lumber. The construction is modular and consists of 5 blocks, screwed together with 8 x 3.5 screws.

Here is the original design of the base and I simplified it somewhat later.



The top is from 6 plywood pieces that were cut from two standard 4' x 8' sheets, and painted Boeing grey so far, then it will have the rubber cover on the floor.



There are 16 casters under the base, 6 of them with the brakes.



Total weight of the base is 102 kg . To prevent any floor damage from the base I put another layer of the cheap laminate (that I got on sale  ) over the floor.



The next sim addition were two IPECO seats (big thanks to  blueskydriver!)  from this 737-200. The seats are in the great shape, however they are not installed on J-rails yet and just stand on the sim base.



So far I installed temporary fixed yoke post and put my Saitek Pro Yoke on it along with Saitek throttle quadrant. That allows me to fly already.



I also built the stand for the main flight PC and two UPS units. It stands behind the sim base.



May - 737 TQ.

I received my 737 motorized TQ     that Rob worked on for a while. Excellent job, Rob!



Now I turn it into the working condition after the shipping.
I also had to rework the base to accommodate the TQ "tail" under  the base floor:



and reinforce the "tail" since what's left from its aluminum frame flexed a lot.



Now TQ already can be installed in the base. It can slide in the fittings back and forts as necessary, since the position of MIP/TQ/pedestal will change when the FDS shell is installed. I do not have it yet - may be by Christmas.

I went over my budget for this year  and not going to buy anything else so far – need to work on what I already have.   



See you all at GetTogether this weekend!   

Nick

[Trevor Hale]

Nick,  this is awesome.  You must be quite happy.  I bet you did blow your Christmas budget.  If you want, pm me your cell # and I will keep you posted as to our locations.  Otherwise, see you there.

Trev

[Flying_Fox]

Poor man's IBL. 

I started to work on MIP. Since I have non-IBL version, first thing  to add is the  backlighting. I reworked the design on one panel backlighted by Jack and here is the result.

The backlighting sub-panels are made from white Coroplast sheet  and fixed in place with Velcro. The backlighting sub-panels are completely removable in a snap.

Depending on actual panel, there may be the stand-offs installed (small pieces made  from balsa wood that have Velcro pieces on both sides), or just Velcro attached to the back of the pot. I keep the distance between panels ~1/2 inch

The LEDS are warm white (the kind  that are sold in 300 LED strip rolls). I will add the  color acetate film filters to match IBL color later - right now only one panel has the filter installed.

One panel typically could be backlighted in just 1 hour.

[fsaviator]

Very nice, Nick.  Good idea.  I used the same LEDs and proto-board.  Your way would have been much easier.