Hello from Braunschweig, Germany

[altwein]

Hi,

my name is Andreas and I'm located in Braunschweig, Germany (near Hannover).

I'm using the Flight Simulator 2004 from Microsoft, like flying with the Cessna most (IFR). I tinker with the idea of building my own Cessna cockpit. Yes, I know ... lot of work and lots of money, but I'm not so ambitious that I want to do this within a week or so.

Right now, I do'nt know where to start, so I regeistered myself in this board in order to get some ideas.

To myself. I'm a male, age of 38 and software engineer.

CU
  Andreas

[Trevor Hale]

Hi Andreas.. 

LOL, That is rather ambitious, but totally doable if you have the week of work..  and you really don;t want do do much.  I have been working on my simulator for 2 years now, and I am not even 1/2 way finished.  before that I had 2 other sims.  I have been in the simulator building hobby for at least 7 years

The hard part about building a sim, is the research, we all try to avoid.  There is no single way to do what you want to do, but the first thing you will need to do is order yourself some interface cards, which will probably take more then a week for you to receive them.  But you could always try.

What do you want to achieve?  Just a little or a complete setup. 

Welcome to the site,

Trev

[Bob Reed]

Hi,

my name is Andreas and I'm located in Braunschweig, Germany (near Hannover).

I'm using the Flight Simulator 2004 from Microsoft, like flying with the Cessna most (IFR). I tinker with the idea of building my own Cessna cockpit. Yes, I know ... lot of work and lots of money, but I'm not so ambitious that I want to do this within a week or so.

Right now, I do'nt know where to start, so I regeistered myself in this board in order to get some ideas.

To myself. I'm a male, age of 38 and software engineer.

CU
  Andreas

Welcome Andreas to our home! You will find plenty of people here to get you into this money pit!  Really sounds to me like you are into the hardest part of the build.. The planing. I think we have a few GA builders so look around and ask questions and we hope you enjoy your stay here!

[Boeing Skunk Works]

Hi Andreas and welcome aboard. If we can help let us know.

I get up your way in the sim every now and again.

[altwein]

Hi Trev,

The hard part about building a sim, is the research, we all try to avoid.  There is no single way to do what you want to do, but the first thing

Yes, I was thinking about that. And the fact, that there is no plan like "okay, perform a) then b) and you have your simualtor" is the thing that sounds interesting to me.

you will need to do is order yourself some interface cards, which will probably take more then a week for you to receive them.  But you could always try.

And this is the part of it I'm really scared of. If I got an interfacce card for something ... this interface card must be feed with information of the flight simulator, e.g. with altitude, VS and such things. I always thought of the MS flight simulator as a "black box" which does not provide such information outside the program. I have no clue, how to grab this information from a running simulator or how to influence the simulator from the outside... (So, any hint is welcome, though I'm still researching for my self).

What do you want to achieve?  Just a little or a complete setup. 

Something in between. As I wrote above, I'm a software engineer and can do lots of programming by myself. I know that a real simulator with the hardware is quite expensive and I'm not sure if I could effort it, to buy all this hardware stuff.

An idea for a first setup was, to grab the information that I can get from the simulator (Speed, Altitude, fuel, etc) and extract the to anoter PC via Ethernet. I really would like to build some own hardware (not the original Cessna hardware). At the beginning this could be some switches (e.g. for the light). At the second stage I'd create my own hardware interfaces (yes, I can :-)) for the radio stack. Again, this would not look like the original hardware like in the Cessna, but is some hardware that releases me from using the mouse to setup the frequencies at the radio stack.

So, this ist the first thing... Just a little start. But before I begin, I really have to find the information what kind of software interface is provided with the MS flight simulator.

Andreas

BTW: I apologize, if some of You are offended by my English, but English is not my mother tongue. I promise to do my best in order to make myself understandable.

[Boeing Skunk Works]

Your english language skills are far better than my German language skills. In fact, better than some natives right here in this country.

Flight simulator will accept almost any command any of the aircraft have the option for. For commands FS does not recognize there is the FSUIPC software interface to accomplish this. There is literally no limit with FSUIPC and nearly every builder on the planet uses this software for one thing or another. The hobby would probably not be as far as it is today without it.

The problem arises with some third party aircraft that will not output commands through FSUIPC to an interface card to drive indicators and some guages. FSUIPC will not work in these cases as it is not recieving the command from the flight model software.

Other software such as SIOC script can perform most logical functions that FS will not provide, but I know little about it and have not used it. I have used FSUIPC for much of my sim for unrecognized commands with a built-in mouse capture utility.

And then there are entire aircraft panel and guage software packages that will do it all and bypass FS all together except for the flight model. Some free, some reasonable, and some, â,¬â,¬â,¬â,¬.

There are almost as many input and output cards available as there are aircraft from which to chose for your build. Leo Bodnar makes a very popular input card while Open Cockpits make both good input and output cards. There are also Phidgits where you get to write everything yourself and program it the way you like it. Oh, and we can't forget about Hagstrom products. They were some of the first but not originally designed for FS years ago when they came out. They were keyboard emulators for games and other control devices for industry and commercial use but found their way into the FS building community almost by accident. They have expanded their product line over the years with better products for use in FS.

Lot's of choices and lot's of decisions to make. It can become very confusing at times to know what to chose when you haven't used any of it and not knowing what is completely correct for your situation.

[Trevor Hale]

Great explanation Mike.

Basically what we are getting at is, it is not possible unless you have been involved in this hobby for a few years, to be able to put something like this together in a week.  One just cannot possibly learn enough information in that little time.

Honestly, if you are really serious about doing this, then there is one thing I suggest you do.  Before you spend any money and want to see if this interests you.

goto http://www.mikesflightdeck.com/upcoming_book.htm

Buy the book, and read it.  It is a fun read, and there isn't anything that it does not cover.  YOU WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED.

Best regards,

Trev

[Bob Reed]

I think you need to head over to Peter Dowson's page and have a look. http://www.schiratti.com/dowson.html Here you will find the software you require to "talk" to FS. Peter even has an SDK to get you going. Take a look around his site.