What have you done for your simulator today?

[navymustang]

I actually thought it was the transporter room on the Enterprise

[bernard S]

my sim my money my.madness 😉..if people dont like it then write me a chq to change it lol

[blueskydriver]

Hi Bernard,

We're not criticizing you at all, actually we are admiring your work...be it looking like an ATC Control Console or Star Trek Transporter Room, that means it's a really cool thing! Being an ATC Controller is awesome and having a setup would be great, as well as it being a Star Trek item would be even more awesome. I mean who doesn't love Star Trek...uh, okay...unless you love Star Wars instead...lol!

So no worries mate, you're doing amazing things and we like it 

John

[navymustang]

As Bernard said - we are truly enjoying the craftsmanship of your builds. Sorry that our attempt at humor offends anyone. We truly appreciate all the work everyone does to make this such a great hobby. Please keep posting - your ideas and designs will inspire others to step out of the box and try new things.

[bernard S]

i received such a great deal on x2 server cabinets  25 bucks each  .. so a must have  so getting here easy enough used a buds truck   excitmemt rules   alas   do they fit   hell no .. after getting them up 15 ft in air .. what to do remove sides of sim cut out metal re weld and Bob's your uncle 

[bernard S]

more fun

[Bob Reed]

Well the sim will get a new SSD hard drive today. Fingers crossed! When I installed P3Dv4 I did not see an option to change the directory it would be installed in. Either it was not there or I was in too much of a hurry, probably the case, to look for it. Fast forward to now. 3 days before WorlFlight I purchased Orbx. I came home form Orbx and wanted to install it... Well my tiny little SSD that was my C drive just would not do it. What to do.... I ordered a new SSD that wold more then hold all my Sim stuff and set a path forward for when I start to run out of space again which I will. Cloned the drive last night and am going to install it back into the computer and hit the magic power button.. Wish me luck!

[Joe Lavery]

Best of luck Bob,

But you know already that the new drive is never going to be big enough...  

Orbx continues to model the world, now in even higher resolution. The latest UK scenery (TrueEarth GB South) is over 27GB and that's the compressed size before installation. As they expand the areas covered it's going to consume huge amounts of space. So probably not for most folk in this forum, who tend to fly the big tin.

[fsaviator]

Don't forget, cyber Monday is just around the corner...  there will be great deals on SSDs at Newegg, Fry's, and places like that.  They need to get rid of old stock

[RayS]

Progress on getting the 1900 back in the air has been slower than expected. Tonight I'm re-committing to getting one major component re-installed each week.

Tonight the co-pilot yoke went back in. This weekend will be spent re-installing all the linkage to get each yoke connected again.  I miss flying her!

[Bob Reed]

Well the hard drive clone went very well. Installing Orbx, not so well! lol I am sure this is another self inflicted issue. If I tinker I can get it all working but the minute I say, buy a new airport and install it, the sim is broke again. If I go and try to move to another airport or try and load a different flight P3D crashes to the desktop. This is a scenery issue for sure. Well see if I can get a band aid on it today, with Trevor's help as in the next 2 months I am building a new computer and I will have to do a new build on all the sim software anyway. Oh, how much do I love this hobby??? 

[Bob Reed]

Best of luck Bob,

But you know already that the new drive is never going to be big enough...  

Orbx continues to model the world, now in even higher resolution. The latest UK scenery (TrueEarth GB South) is over 27GB and that's the compressed size before installation. As they expand the areas covered it's going to consume huge amounts of space. So probably not for most folk in this forum, who tend to fly the big tin.

Yes Joe, I do know how ever big of a drive I bought, it would have never been big enough! But you will notice I did build a moving forward plan into this scenario! 

[RayS]

Co-pilot yoke is installed and linked!

Left to do:
Wire in the center console
Wire in the overhead console
New side panels
Finish rear cab

....so close.

[_alioth_]

Not today, but this weekend I have interfaced the 2.0 version of my ADI.
I have update the arduino mega to an Arduino Due, which is really fast!. And I have improved my scripts for comunication fsuipc <-> arduino  and some other updates in the code.
Very happy with the result. Smooth and reponsive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4hwjwpkHTU

And I am doing some code lines to simulate the startup sequence of a vacuum ADI. Arduino Due is fast, and I can use real vibration equations and link them with vacuum gyro speed. Testing it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtPEWfXD97E

I LOVE Arduino Due!! bye bye mega.

Arturo Moreno.

[navymustang]

OMG - reminds me of watching the gyro as a tennager and being so in love with aviation 

Great work!

[RayS]

Tonight will mark a significant milestone wrt the new hangar space...

The last of the pit will be put together and the last of the internal wiring connected.

Next up: The task of connecting the sim to the server rack.

Flying next weekend? Fingers crossed!

[Bob Reed]

Took the sim for the last flight before the major upgrade to the main computer system. Great little flight. Took some pics of the "numbers" so I have a base to compare too. This weekend, build a new computer!  Oh what fun!

[RayS]

I feel like I missed out on Cyber-Monday... All y'all bought newer faster shinier computer bits!

[Trevor Hale]

Yeah but we all gotta pay for them LOL

[Bob Reed]

The new computer is assembled and running. Have a little of the software installed. Much more to go. Will put the computer back "into" the sim tomorrow and start working on setting up the monitors for the main view. So much more to do before I can fly. I hope it was all worth it...We will see.....

[navymustang]

I'm installing P3D v4.4 on all three projection PCs this weekend. A test on the host visual did not show any change in frame rate so that is a good thing.
Will report any visual changes this week. I think I will have to wait until some scenery designers start using the new materials rendering capabilities before we see much.

[RayS]

After 6 months of downtime, a move to a new facility and lots and lots of system upgrades, I'm finally at the point to conduct a full power-up systems check.

In all honesty, I've been ready for a few days but have been reluctant to power anything up. Things could go really well or they could go really expensive if any of that magic smoke got out.

In the words of Doris Day: "Que será, será". Whatever will be will be, right?

So I applied power to everything...... 

One by one, everything started to light up like a Christmas tree, indicating that the sim was undergoing power-up checks.

In a few minutes everything was successfully powered up.

After walking through various systems check, everything looked good there as well.

The only things that didn't work were the fuel gauges and the flaps gauge. I had forgotten a ground wire which is kind of funny. In high school I took a class in advanced electronics. Our final project was to acquire a tube radio, bring it to class, completely tear it down and rebuild it.

My radio was the only one that worked after the rebuild, but only after the teacher noted I had missed a ground wire.

Queue Doris Day. :-)

[Joe Lavery]

Ray, I did something similar a few years ago when I was building a synthesiser. The instrument had a touch keyboard with over 300 diodes in a matrix,  which I soldered in the right way around. Then the very last components were a pair of large mains capacitors,  so naturally I managed to solder one of those the wrong way around. I didn't get a lot of magic smoke but the near explosion it caused when I switched it on frightened the life out of me. 
Joe

[fsaviator]

Today is the day...  I am upgrading to P3D4!  Just running a single 1920x1080 screen right now.

Installed P3D4 and ran a stock/default FSXMark07 Benchmark to get the starting numbers.  With my old GTX670 installed, my FPS were min 82 / max 137 / avg 113.

I decided to hold off upgrading the CPU/MB/RAM until I see what gains I get with just the GPU change.  I'm still running an i7-3770K @ 3.50Ghz.  That's P3D4 minimums.

Just installed my shiny, new RTX2070 and Nvidia Drivers v417.22.  No OC or adjustments.

Ran another Benchmark and FPS were min 82 / max 147 / avg 121.

So there you have it.  If anyone was curious as to what difference just a GPU upgrade makes!

Incidentally, I ran the Benchmark on my tweaked and stable FSX install with the 670 and this is what I had (keeping in mind that I have a ton of scenery installed, and the benchmark tool has a VC in it that I didn't have in P3D):  FPS were min 11 / max 31 / avg 17.

Now it is time to reinstall Orbx and Rex and Active Sky...  and airports etc.

This weekend I plan to redo my screen and hopefully get my GTX1080Darbees up and running!

Out of curiousity, I just slammed all the sliders to the right and reran the benchmark...  FPS are min 29 / max 53 / avg 41

[Trevor Hale]

When you add the 3 screens and the full ORBX you will notice a drop down to 1/3 what you had with one monitor..  However..  The frames in 4.3 are very stable, if you have 30, they stay around 30, if you have 25 they stay around 25.
Food for thought..  One thing to mention is a clean install makes everything beautiful..  Just don't mess with the typical tweaks or NI changes..  Only adjust the Sliders in 4.3
Remember (Cloud draw distance, traffic, and LOD) are your biggest framerate killers followed closely by the AA Settings.
Good Luck!
Oh... And I almost forgot..  Unless your going to be flying underwater, leave the Bathymetry off LOL