For a long time I’ve been flying flighsims, and I’ve always had a dream of creating a SIMpit. The questions I’ve been asking myself (yes only madmen ask themselves..) are:
- what type of pit, full blown cockpit or a desktop hybrid
- a replica of a specific model, or a more generic one
- “glass cockpit” or steam gauges with stepper motors etc.
- which sim should it be built around to interface with
- Do I have the tools needed, how do I acquire the skills needed
- how big should the project be, in terms of hours of work and when to finish
I started out testing small projects against different sims to see what was achievable for me.
Sims I tried interfacing with:
- BMS Falcon 4-(a great F16 simulator, which has a big community when it comes to hardware builds) Using Leobodnars BBI-32 USB interface and Arduinos with various software from the community, like YAME64, F4toserial-arduino etc
(flyingfalcon.org, viperpits.org ) - DCS -Digital Combat Simulator, (awesome military sim with fantastic graphics and state of the art modelling of planes like A10C, FA-18c and F-16 Viper to name a few) Using DCS BIOS
- MS FSX and MS FlightSim 2020(Extreme graphics alert!), using Pete Dowson’s FSUIPC and Arduinos
- Prepare3D (Lockheed Martin), flying the awesome Dash-8 Q400 using Mobiflight and Arduinos
- XP11 (Laminar Research), testing:
- SimVim-Arduino interfacing hardware with multiplexers, as well as SimVim Panels, panels over network with 2way comm.
- Air Manager -for steam gauges
- Plugins:
- XHSI-for export glass cockpits, mostly dedicated B737
- ZHSI-for exporting the Zibo mod B737, really nice plugin in dev., cross platform, Java based
- XTextureExtractor 2.0-for extracting HSI, ND, EICAS, and CDU displays, but only OpenGL, Vulkan support on v.1.3
- Extplane-for send/receive datarefs and commands over TCP, cross platform
- Extplane-panel -a fully featured panel collection to run over TCP
Some of my test projects,some not finished.. and my final G1000 glass cockpit using XP11 and SimVim at the end:
testing 7segment display 
generic ILS instrument 
FA18C UFC 
FA18C UFC with OLEDS 
UFC with DCS BIOS 
UFC ugly truth 
UFC back 
CNC PCB 
testing CNC and LED backlighting 
Testing stepper motor with BMS 
Oscilloscope,- looks good but really novice here! 
testing OLED display 
F-16 ICP PCB with backlighting 
F-16 ICP 
PAN-Zoom stick switch 
Pan-Zoom stick switch 
CNC cabinet 
Cabinet coming together 
G1000 coming together 
Gear handle lights up 
G1000 SIMpit, XP11 and SimVim
Flying the fantastic TBM-900 made by Hotstart
This project would not have been achievable for me without the support of:
If you’re on to something similar, I want to mention that I ran into some strange irradic issues when processing signals from dual concentric encoders with an un-original Chineese type Ardu Mega 2650.
I swapped it out for an original Arduino and troubles were gone.
The hardest part of all is keeping it tidy! But there is also a balance going on, should it look good and be easily serviced, or should it just work.. 🙂
Anyways, time to fly!
“I believe I can fly”
