Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Decisions, Decisions

The Decisions

Many people who fly simulators love the variety afforded them by the software. They fly fighter jets, little Cessnas, airliners and helicopters. There are many different aircraft available and various levels of “realism”.

I have always been interested in aviation and flying and took some lessons once upon a time – but they were very expensive and I had a family, so I had to stop. I have always had a secret desire to fly commercial airliners and when I decided to make my sim, I knew it would be based around an airliner. I also knew that I was after a level of realism and immersion that would require me to choose one aircraft and devote all my energy into making it as real as possible. I wanted to build a proper cockpit. I chose the Airbus A320 for several reasons. 
  • It is a proper, complex airliner that is still very much a part of modern aviation and has a nice balance between complexity and automation.
  • It has a glass cockpit. Most of the cockpit displays are on LCD screen rather than traditional analogue gauges. This is much easier to replicate.
  • It flies with a sidestick rather than a traditional control column. Again, this will be much easier to fabricate in a realistic way.
  • It is getting on a bit. It first flew in 1987. This means that there is a lot of information around regarding systems, documentation, dimensions, etc. Again, that makes it easy to replicate the real thing.
  • There are several realistic “flight models” around that are faithful to how the real aircraft flies.

Having decided on that, I built a PC that was capable of handling (at least initially) the A320 as I wanted to fly it.



Software

There is a bewildering array of ways to fly a plane using your computer. Even when you have decided which aircraft you want to fly, there are lots of ways to do it. I knew I wanted to be flying as quickly as possible and as realistically as possible so I chose what is probably the easiest path. There may come a time when this no longer meets my needs and I will be prepared to change. To be realistic, the simulator has to model 3 “worlds”.

  1. The terrain. The world outside the aircraft. This is probably the least important for me, but I recognise that it is the most important for many fliers.
  2. The flight dynamics. How the aircraft flies and handles. How it responds to the controls. Very import for me that this is a realistic experience.
  3. The flight systems. The flight computers, the autopilot and autothrust, the flight planning software. This is the most important to me. I want to replicate how real pilots fly the real plane in the real world.

My setup is as follows.

OS: Windows 7
I’m very comfortable with Win7 and know it well. Although I have access to a free upgrade to Win10, I’m holding off until I see a compelling reason to upgrade.

Flight Simulator: Microsoft FSX: Steam Edition
I have used Microsoft FS for several years and am quite happy with it. The Steam edition seemed to be more stable and required less tweaking.

Flight Model : Aerosoft Airbus Extended A320
This has a great A320 cockpit and system emulation engine. It is very realistic – particularly on the systems side. It also has a nice payload/fuel manager and built-in Web Server that enables me to output the MCDU (the main flight planning computer) to an iPad – which is very cool.

Control Interface: FSUIPC
There are many knobs, switches and buttons in the A320 and they are not all mapped to the standard FSX keyboard and my joystick/throttle. FSUIPC enables me to map a whole load of common controls to keyboard keys or joystick buttons or even homebuilt switches.

Control Interface: LINDA
FSUIPC only takes you so far. In such a complex aircraft, not everything can be mapped using FSUIPC. LINDA is a LAU-based program that allows me to make my own switch and control panels and map common flight operations to them.

At present, my Sim doesn’t look very realistic. It runs across 6 screens and an iPad. However, it flies in a very realistic way. Your typical A320 pilot relies on programming the MCDU and using Autopilot and Autothrust for almost all of the flight. There is very little hand-flying. It all works very smoothly – as long as the prep-work is done properly. It might seem a bit odd, but for me, the joy is in the proper planning, programming and execution of a flight rather than hands-on flying, because that is how it’s done in the real thing. I get great satisfaction when I do everything right. It is always interesting when I stuff things up – those flights tend not to go so well because I don’t have much experience hand-flying. That will change over time, but for now I’m happy to fly the way the pro’s fly!!


Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Let's Try That Again

In 2008, I started to build a replica Airbus A320 cockpit in my garage. It didn't get very far but I learned a lot. I eventually broke it down and disposed of the pieces. Part of my frustration was not being able to machine things precisely enough or create items that looked and behaved like the real thing.

Even though I got rid of it, I still had a desire to do it again  :)

This year several things happened.


  • 3D Printing became commonplace and cheap - many of the the things I would need could be 3D printed
  • all of my kids had left home, which left a rather large man-cave upstairs I could use, which was clean, dry and air-conditioned
  • I discovered a wonderfully eccentric and diverse geek community at the Perth Artifactory with a huge workshop and access to such amazing tools as laser cutters and CNC machines. This would enable me to produce realistic working cockpit pieces.

So I built my new A320. One of the mistakes I made last time was to begin the construction before getting it flying. My new cockpit is all computer-based. It runs on 2 PCs, 6 screens (plus an iPad) and is based on Microsoft FSX:Steam Edition.


The plan is to keep it flying but gradually replace the screens with replica panels.

Watch this space  :)

J