Boeing 737-800 Next Generation Simulator

[fsaviator]

All right everybody...  tired of worrying about posting updates...  I'm so far behind I'll never catch up so...

here is a rather long video that should capture the status.

On approach to Shannon, Ireland.  I threw in some thunderstorms and winds to make it a little more fun and hand flew the actual approach.  I think I overdid the quality and length of the video though.  I need to do a better job editing.  Sorry for the music...  it's stock Youtube.


http://youtu.be/BO-vRMKyfpg

[sagrada737]

Great job on the video, and congratulations on all the progress!

From what I saw in the video, your TQ is motorized.  What functions does it emulate, and how well does it perform?

Mike

[Maurice]

Warren,

This is a totally amazing progress especially considering you moved to Germany less than a year ago and had to practically start all over. Well done!!!

Maurice

[fsaviator]

Thanks guys.  You are right Mau, I packed up my sim last May and started rebuilding it in August.  FSWeekend provided the last motivation I needed to get it flyable. 

Still a bunch to do...  the MIP is still missing some backlighting, I haven't hooked the MIP gauges up yet, still need to build my aft overhead, and I still need to put my pedestal together.  Still... it's flyable.  I'm having so much fun I can overlook the things that need to be finished for now.

Mike, my TQ is a version 1.5 Revolution Simproducts Proline (with the additional structural upgrades from the 1.6 version).  It runs on two DCmotor cards and a joystick card via SIOC and Prosim737 (or you can use FSUIPC and FSX).  Everything works (or is supposed to, as the parking brake servo needs some adjusting, but it activates).  It has motorized throttle levers, trim wheels (no manual trim, only auto or via yoke switches), speedbrake is motorized and if armed deploys when it should, and retracts as it should when power is added.  The reverser levers will not move if throttle is not at idle.   The only thing that does not work right now is the horn cutout, but the Prosim update that was just released is supposed to take care of that... just haven't looked into it.

I will tell you, that regardless of what people may think, how long it took to get (and I was an early purchaser), the issues I had getting it to work right (most due to my inability to grasp SIOC at the time) that RevSim and Oral addressed...  the best investment in my sim has been that TQ.  Once I spent some time online with Oral walking through each problem, it has been awesome.  Well worth what I paid back then.  Not everyone has been as lucky as I.  A very good friend of mine still has some issues with his.  Not sure why.

[jskibo]

Nice job Warren.  Really looking good!

I blew the dust off my Rev Sim, same era, and working with Oral to get it right (SIOC say module stopped, but it runs.  Trim moves 2mm a sec whether sim is running or not).

[fsaviator]

So, finally my updates. All caught up. Click along (oldest at the top, moving down), or go straight to the website. You can also follow on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/fsaviator:

Printed out the FCOM, FCTM, and QRH

Setting up the curved screen

The shell goes in...

Base and floor almost complete

The overhead arrived

Installed an EFB

Finally... a Progress Report

[Maurice]

Warren,

The pictures do not show up probably because I don't have a Facebook account. Can you post them without using Facebook?

Thanks,
Maurice

[fsaviator]

Warren,

The pictures do not show up probably because I don't have a Facebook account. Can you post them without using Facebook?

Thanks,
Maurice

Try them now, Mau.  I messed up the links.  Should be good now

[fsaviator]

For better or for worse, I ordered the parts for my new system:

http://www.b737ng-sim.com/wordpress/2013/01/20/ordered-the-parts-to-build-a-new-pc-for-the-sim/

[jskibo]

Nice stuff Warren!

I'm torn between 680/670 and a 7970 right now to replace my SLI GTX 275's

[fsaviator]

Nice stuff Warren!

I'm torn between 680/670 and a 7970 right now to replace my SLI GTX 275's

Check out the Passmark Benchmarks here, if you haven't already:

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Radeon+HD+7970&id=51

All three cards are there.

The only thing that kept me from going with the 680 was that I always buy the top of the line GPU and I never get a chance to use it's full potential (just like my pair of then top of the line 8800GTX in SLI).  That was $500 I threw away for the second card.

In fact, I almost went with the 660.

[fsaviator]

New FSX PC parts arrived!

http://www.b737ng-sim.com/wordpress/2013/01/28/new-sim-pc-parts-arrived-almost/

[jskibo]

Nice! 

I'm collecting for two more PC's now.  Have the Mem, cases, coolers coming from newegg.  Wife grabbed an i5-3570K form Microcenter when she was in detroit and got me an extreme6 MB too, bought another Extreme4 from Newegg.  Just need another CPU and a couple Power supplies

BTW, thanks for talking me out of the 7979.  Got a refurb GTX680 for $419 and loving it!

[fsaviator]

Very nice.  This order was painful.  Everyone charges shipping now to send to APO so that was another $80 in shipping.  The worst part is, I'll be in the US this weekend for a week.  I could have ordered it and brought it all back over in an extra suitcase for less than that.

[fsaviator]

So back from my trip and carrying on upgrading my system.  Ended up that Sysprep wouldn't work as I was using an upgrade so I was unable to use my old install.  Got tired of dealing with workarounds and started over.

So..  I'm setting up my GeForce 670 and am at the familiar point of:  what settings do I use for the Nvidia drivers?  What is everyone else using for the Graphics cards settings?  As a follow on of course...  what tweaks for FSX?

Damn this is frustrating...  it is never ending updates...  As fast as I can download and install the Windows 7 updates, after the reboot more are available.  I just want to get to a point where all the updates are installed, so I can image the drive...  it never ends!

[FredK]

Warren....Try using Nvidia Inspector with settings as defined here:

www.kostasfsworld.wordpress.com/fsx-software-and-hardware-guide

I do not bother with any of the FSX tweaking defined there...just the use of Invidia Inspector.  Just scroll down to it.

[fsaviator]

Well, Excuse the rant, in advance, but short of smashing something, I need to vent.

I have just spent the last two days in hell, with brief glimpses of Nirvana.  The lesson learned...  ALL SATA DRIVES ARE BANNED FROM BEING ANYWHERE WITHIN TOUCHING DISTANCE OF MY FS SYSTEM!!!!!!

I about threw my whole computer off my bedroom balcony today.  I have spent the last two years with my Win7 disk in my system because my last motherboard randomly would decide that my scenery drive (a SATA drive) needed to be my boot drive as opposed to my SSD, with Win7 installed.  The only way to get it to boot was if it read the DVD first.  No tips or trick would fix it and it was the impetus to upgrade my system.

So I upgraded, all was fine, and I decided to throw a fresh SATA into the system for all that scenery and to hold backups...  Good to go!  No issues!  Spent a day installing all my old megascenery to my laptop, then  copying it all to my FSX system (in order to get all the seasonal textures).  A long process.  I would have been better off installing FS9 to my FSX system and installing the megascenery that way (lesson learned).

Anyway...  everything to include REX, loaded....  seen Nirvana in FPS and scenery...  I carry my system down to the basement and install it into my sim (nothing hooked up yet) and boot up.   

You got it...  It wouldn't boot.  Throw the repair disk in that I made this time...  It wants to repair my Windows installation on Drive F...  What?  F?  Out to a prompt, Dir...  Nope, there is D and E with Win7 and FSX, and F.... Scenery.  It appears that my scenery drive picked up a boot sector again (got to love Win7).

Spent the rest of the day trying to fix that then said screw it.  Ripped it out and now I am installing FS9 so that I can install all my scenery again.  Never again will a SATA drive get near my system.  I don't care.

[Boeing Skunk Works]

I'm still using NTSF drives and XP Pro, and FS9.

I hate change when something works. I was in the military too long to know how that is.

[Maurice]

Probably not going to help now but I am using Windows 7 with a mixture of SSD and SATA drives with no problems. So I am wondering whether you set up the boot drive in the BIOS. Once it is set, it should never try to boot from a different drive unless the boot drive is not present and then it tries the next one on the list (usually DVD drive)

Anyway, I'm sure you already did that but if you didn't, don't assume the bios will automatically keep booting from the original boot drive when you add more disk drives. In fact, it is very likely the original boot drive will no longer be the first choice in the bios. This happened to me as well when I added the sATA drive but it was a simple matter to specify the real boot drive.

Maurice

[Garys]

Yep, boot disk priority is a function of the bios. Nothing to do with win 7 or the type of drive you have. Your boot drive probably got changed in the bios again. Running a mixture of ssd and sata drives here as we'll with no problems. The fact that this has happened twice on two different systems pretty much points to that.

Gary

[fsaviator]

I hear you guys.  Not sure what the issue was.  I had disabled all other drives from booting.  The only thing that was enabled to boot was the OCZ SSD with Windows on it.

Who know.  Twice bitten...  I'm starting to think it is the OCZ SSD.  While it was the first and only drive in the system, on SATA port 1, it was good.  As soon as I put in the Kingston SSD that FSX went on, it took over as Drive 0 and my Win drive became Drive 1.  Even now when I pull them up in Disk Management, it show my windows drive as Disk 1 (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition) and my FSX drive as Drive 0 (Primary Partition)...

No idea

Warren

[Boeing Skunk Works]

As Mr Scott has stated; The more complicated the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain.

[Garys]

So you have everything running fine again?

Gary

[fsaviator]

Sorry for the break in contact here.  I am back up and running.  Had a few issues there with the hard drive, but got around that.  Actually bought another SSD so now I have plenty of room for scenery.  64GB SSD runs the OS, 128GB SSD runs FSX, and a new 256GB SSD has all the scenery and a swap file.

Got everything back together again and am now tweaking the graphics a bit as well as installing REX Essentials Plus Overdrive (Once I get it downloaded again).  That will go on my instructor station.

Installed my awesome J-Rails (now my seats work great).

Looking for some help on finally getting to the bottom of an issue I've had a long time.  How do I set up the following in FSUIPC?

FO side TOGA
FO side AT Disconnect
FO side brakes

I hope to shoot some video over the next couple of days and get everyone caught up.  All that is left is an Aft overhead, FO CDU, and my pedestal which I have completely blown off since Prosim lets me set COMM and NAV via the FMC.  I have all the parts, just been lazy and enjoying the flying.

[Maurice]

How do I set up the following in FSUIPC?

FO side TOGA
FO side AT Disconnect
FO side brakes

Huh?? Unless I misunderstood you, you simply wire the switches in parallel since they all do the same thing and just run one set of 2 wires for each function to the interface card.

Brakes are a bit trickier and I never configured them so someone else can jump in here.

Maurice