Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler My "other" hobby

Hi,

some folks in this forum might enjoy a peek into the other area of time spent: the General Purpose Cockpit - or GPC.

GPC is an attempt at simulating a large variety of vehicles, from planes & helicopters, to mechwarriors & trains, to the occasional NASCAR racer.

It serves as a scaffold for developing various electronic bits (the part i enjoy most), and as a "get-away" - a sort of primitive version of Star Trek's holodeck.

Here's a shot of the console - a continual work in progress:



Just about everything (alpha displays, custom panels, things displayed on CRTs) is re-definable, so most things get re-used across the variety of simulations.

If an API is provided, (such as in flightsim or Orbiter , you can get very involved with hardware support. Flightsim models many existing aircraft displays, and you can make your own if you are handy with C++.

Speaking of Orbiter (which is free, definitely check it out), here's a shot just prior to docking with "Space Station V" from 2001: A Space Odyssey.



Note the information on the CRTs is different from the 1st image. A projector provides the 8-foot-plus view out the front window.

Contrast this to the original image:



Ever since i saw this movie as a kid, i wanted to shoot this approach. The major difference is: the simulator is much more functional than the movie set was.

It's a good place to "disappear" to when the wife wants to see a movie that i have no interest in.

Cheers,

Elden

One word.... WOW!

uhmm... whoa. Hats off to you. That's incredible.

And I thought a joystick made a flight sim 'realistic'.

I wanna play!

Good Lord, Elden. You're not kidding, are you?

Amazing. I ain't never seen no shiznit like that before.

You have a community for this sort of thing, or are you your very own unique freak show?

That does look like fun.
I had a friend who was on a simulator once for the Canadian Space Agency. He threw up. But that's what happens when you are not used to zero gravity conditions.

OMFG!! Can I come play at your house?

When I was younger, somebody bought me "The Space Shuttle Operator's Manual" for Christmas. Not the 'Nasa' one obviously but a published book that explained every freaking button and dial in the cockpit of the space shuttle and had detailed lists of the takeoff and landing procedures and such and huge foldouts of all the instrument panels to follow along if you wanted.

It was cool to see how long it would take you to find that certain button out of hundreds. The novelty wore off long before you could get to the end of the list but with your setup.........

This is the closest I ever got to something of that magnitude.

Bren R.

That's so cool! I love Orbiter and I had to cut back on it a little bit because I was spending hours on it!
That's another reason I want to build a nice htpc for my projection room, nothing better than playing some sim with a 100" image!

Do you have more pics of your setup? With the lights on? I always wanted to design something similar, though it would be mostly geared towards standard flightsims.

Very nice. Now make me one.

I know where I want to go for my next vacation!

This morning the pics wouldn't load for me. Now, they do.


Wow.


Now I see what you guys are talking about. I kinda want one of those too.

Hi,

answering as many questions as i can:

* no, i'm not the only cucumber in the pickle barrel.

simpits.org is the most visible organization of cockpit builders. their projects reflect the imagination, technical ability & wallets of each individual who undertakes the challenge.

* i, too have that space shuttle owner's manual. i hope to flesh out various non-functional sections with similar panels found in that book.

* it's a work in progress - the whole thing is going to be torn down and tossed away, to be replaced with 'Sim 2'. when you don't know what you are doing, it pays to make a sandbox-prototype first.

speaking of sim2: here's a shot of some CAD work:



Matrox makes a spiffy adaptor that splits a single (albeit wide) image into 3 individual video streams. this allows you to connect 3 monitors (or 3 projectors in this case) to create a seamless panoramic image. this works in both Orbiter and Flightsim without modification.



This image helps understand how the images fit into your peripheral vision. i've made some basic tape-measure measurements in the basement, and the above image will extend beyond my peripheral vision when seated at the console.

the remaining bits (overhead console, possible windshields) need to be determined once the actual projector hardware is installed.

it's very much a "build, try, modify" type of situation.

Cheers,

Elden

Don't forget to add a few bags of honey-roasted peanuts and bad coffee.

It's all in the details.