WWII period cockpit (Part I)

[JBaymore]

[quote]There is a usb controller home made kit called the "mjoy"

[Andrew17]

The most precious source (I'm always short of..) is time...
Anyway, here below a couple of pictures showing the actual configuration of the "Silver Can", with the monitor tray and the fresnell lens in front of the windshield. Third picture shows inside the fuselage: while waiting for the USB controller to arrive (I followed good prompts of Chuck and ordered one) I was cabling for the throttle inserting the wires in a bent aluminium tube, so that to give some "realistic touch"; it can also be seen the cushion on the pilot seat: it's a work of art of the Real Boss!
I'll post some pic of the panel and throttle once those experiments are ready.

Bye!

[chuckcrc]

Looking good Andrew

Well done.

cheers
chuck

[Andrew17]

Hello Chuck, happy New year to You and Everybody of Simviation.
Thanks a lot for the words of encouragement ; during that Xmas time I had shot time for the pit, but I modified the soft part of the panel. Some details here below.

After the installation of the first "split panel":



It is a very fine panel, complete in the particular; I needed something that involves only the pneumatic instruments, so I modified the .bmp files and panel.cfg to obtain:




If someone's interested I'll paste the panel.cfg files mods and the .bmp images.

What about Your Mustang, Chuck? Hope that one of those days we manage to do some formation flying from the two cockpits!

Bye!!!!!!!
A.

[beaky]

Wow; looking good! The "LCD sixpack" concept seems to be well-suited for your 'pit...by all means, show us how you confihured that when you have time- I'm planning something similar for mine.
 And I like the raw aluminum look- mine will be clad in sheet metal, also.
Where did you get that stick grip from? I like that.

[Andrew17]

Hello Rottydaddy! Thank You both for Your words and all the info You're sharing: I appreciated Your idea for the throttle quadrant.
The grip in the pics is from an hazzard I made on a perfectly working, 19euros paid, thrustmaster joystick. I disassembled it, and inserted a segment of aluminium tube between the grip and its base. Even if it was my firs try with soldering it works  ::)!
My PC has a graphic board with two exits for monitors so I use one for the external view and the other for the panel.
So, the panel (that experiment is for my CFS1): i started with the freeware for spitfire mk I downloaded from http://www.simviation.com/cfs1panels3.htm
It was a complete panel, a very fine work complete with all indicators and push buttons (magnetos, starter, chassis lever, etc.); since my intention is to realise those items with a "touchable" style, I modified the panel for keeping only the pneumatic instruments.
I drawed a black square in the file popup, and I modified the panel.cfg file where window 01 was concerned, leaving only the six instruments and incrasing their dimesion for better fitting the monitor; here below what is written in my .cfg file for that 01 window:

"[Window01]
file=popup.bmp
position=7
size_mm=800
window_pos=0.0,0.0
window_size=1.000,1.000
render_3d_window=1
pixel_size=0,0
sizeable=1
visible=1
ident=HUD

gauge01=Spitfire_MKI!Airspeed,100,70,200
gauge02=Spitfire_MKI!Attitude,320,70,200
gauge03=Spitfire_MKI!Vertical_Speed,540,70,200
gauge04=Spitfire_MKI!Heading_Indicator,320,350,200
gauge05=Spitfire_MKI!Turn_Indicator,540,350,200
gauge06=Spitfire_MKI!Altimeter,100,350,200   "

My suggestion is to try saving the original (just in case something goes wrong there is no need to reinstall the sim) panel somewhere.

Hope those info will be useful for Your pit.

Bye!!!
A.

[beaky]

Excellent; thanks!!

BTW, the throttle quadrant idea is history; I'll have to make it from scratch. But it was worth checking out, and I'm sure some bits and pieces of that thing will find their way into my 'pit.

However, since you're building a single-engine fighter cockpit, you might want to check here: they have sweet, simple power/prop/mix setups, readymade for real aircraft (homebuilts)- but not very expensive:

http://www.aircraftspruce.com/menus/ap/throttle.html


Lots of other neat parts, too..

[Andrew17]

We were talking about the control grip. The one I told about is a fine solution just for this starting phase: it is very functional but it's too modern style. For a WW II cockpit something more realistic for the period is needed; I've got really a few time for my experiments but I'm plenty of ideas . Here in the following some links as a source of hispiration:

http://www.checksix-forums.com/showthre ... e=21&pp=10

http://www.checksix-forums.com/showthre ... e=23&pp=10

http://forums.ubi.com/groupee/forums/a/ ... 3911084134

As soon I realise a prototype, I'll post some pics of it.

Bye!
A.

[chuckcrc]

Looking good Andrew.

Would you be able to do that split screen with the instruments for CFS3 ?

I would love to be able to fly online one day,  but at the moment we have sold our house and we are now looking around for a new house. Also my flight sim PC has bare minimum software on it, ie no anti virus software etc and I only run XPsp1 so I would have to update before I could connect to the internet.

The new place will have to have a workshop of course but until then I'm afraid the Mustang will have to go into storage , so I won't be building anything for some time , however I can still dream of stuff I suppose.

cheers
chuck

[Andrew17]

Hello, Chuck! And Hello Everybody of the Forum.
The time I manage to dedicate is always too little, but with the help of a lot of friends amazed by the idea of a warbird (something similar) under the roof, some step forward has been done. A friend of mine cut from 4mm thick plywood a base for creating the intrument panel. It's a half circumference of 345mm of radius, with a cerntered window for the monitor 310X265 mm. I'm thinking about which command/switch and where to put them; I'll attach one of my sketches; any comments and/or suggestion is very welcome.

First detected problem is how to realise the landing gear lever and the flaps(both wing and cowl) one. While for the rest I have the idea of using a temporary switch, I do not know how to make a stable control that instead sends to the PC (through the USB controller) only a single signal. Any Idea for it?

Software experiments. As illustrated some post ago, the experiment with CFS1 has been sucessful. Only problem is that I have to reposition the windows, after the undocking every time I start the flight. Any idea to solve it?
CFS2: has a similar structure and each time I have 5 minutes free I'working on it, I do not see big problems for it, only time..... CFS3, instead seem to have a different config: I still cannot undock the windows.
On the Other hand the software UPDSpeed is fantastic!!!!!!! I tried it only for a test, using the 6 basic Russian gauges, installed on the same PC where IL2 was running, and it works perfectly.

Bye!
A.

[Andrew17]

Hello everybody!!!

Here below the data fro my experiment in CFS2: first I made a panel_background_1024 file as it was the base of an instrument panel, then I modified the panel.cfg. Here below a copy of my new panel.cfg for the F4UCorsair:

// Panel Configuration file
// F4U1A Corsair

[Window Titles]
Window00=%window_title_00%
Window01=%window_title_01%


[Window00]
file_1024=Panel_Background_1024.BMP
position=4
size_mm=640,480
window_pos=0.0,0.0
window_size=1.000,1.000
render_3d_window=1
sizeable=1
visible=1
ident=MAIN_PANEL

gauge01=F4U1A_Corsair!Tach,30,60,170
gauge02=F4U1A_Corsair!Altimeter,250,60,170
gauge03=F4U1A_Corsair!Airspeed,470,60,170
gauge04=F4U1A_Corsair!Attitude,250,300,170
gauge05=F4U1A_Corsair!Turn_Coordinator,470,300,170
gauge06=F4U1A_Corsair!Vertical_Speed,30,300,170

[Window01]
file=ECU_background_640.bmp
file_1024=ECU_background_1024.BMP
position=6
size_mm=188.187
window_pos=0.0,0.6
window_size=0.25,0.4
sizeable=1
visible=0
ident=THROTTLE_PANEL

gauge00=F4U1A_Corsair!ECU,0,0

[VCockpit01]
size_mm=256,256
pixel_size=256,256
texture=$F4U1A
background_color=0,0,0
visible=0

gauge00=F4U1A_Corsair!Manifold_Pressure, 0, 0, 64, 64
gauge01=F4U1A_Corsair!Tach, 0, 64, 64, 64
gauge02=F4U1A_Corsair!Airspeed, 0, 128, 64, 64
gauge03=F4U1A_Corsair!CHT, 0, 192, 64, 64
gauge04=F4U1A_Corsair!Turn_Coordinator, 64, 0, 64, 64
gauge05=F4U1A_Corsair!Altimeter, 64, 64, 64, 64
gauge06=F4U1A_Corsair!Oil_Temperature, 64, 128, 64, 64
gauge07=F4U1A_Corsair!Ignition, 64, 192, 64, 64
gauge08=F4U1A_Corsair!Fuel_Quantity, 128, 0, 64, 64
gauge09=F4U1A_Corsair!Attitude, 128, 64, 64, 64
gauge10=F4U1A_Corsair!Oil_Pressure, 128, 128, 64, 64
gauge11=F4U1A_Corsair!Tail_Gear, 128, 192, 64, 64
gauge12=F4U1A_Corsair!Fuel_Selector, 192, 0, 64, 64
gauge13=F4U1A_Corsair!Vertical_Speed, 192, 64, 64, 64
gauge14=F4U1A_Corsair!Clock, 192, 128, 64, 64
gauge15=F4U1A_Corsair!Compass, 192, 192, 64, 64


[VCockpit02]
size_mm=128,128
pixel_size=128,128
texture=$F4U1A_2
background_color=0,0,0
visible=0

gauge00=F4U1A_Corsair!DG, 0, 0, 64, 64
gauge01=F4U1A_Corsair!Fuel_Pressure, 0, 64, 64, 64
gauge02=F4U1A_Corsair!Master_Switch, 64, 0, 64, 64
gauge03=F4U1A_Corsair!Starter, 64, 64, 64, 64

[VCockpit03]
size_mm=32,32
pixel_size=32,32
texture=$F4U1A_3
background_color=0,0,0
visible=0

gauge00=F4U1A_Corsair!Stall, 16, 0, 16, 16
gauge01=F4U1A_Corsair!Hydraulic_Pressure_Warning, 0, 16, 16, 16
gauge02=F4U1A_Corsair!Carb_Heat, 0, 0, 16, 16

[Default View]
X=0
Y=0
SIZE_X=8191
SIZE_Y=5000


[Strings]
"window_title_00"=F4U1A Corsair -- Main Panel
"window_title_01"=F4U1A Corsair -- Engine Controls


Hope will result useful.

Bye!
A.

[JBaymore]

Due to the thread size getting very large, the next part (Part II) of the documentation of this great project has been moved to

[JBaymore]

bump