Boeing 767 Flight Simulator

My desk top based cockpit is not a complete replica of a 767 cockpit because of lacking space. However, every push-button, toggle switch, rotary switch, rotary encoder, led and display is working. There are no dummies!

I am able to fly my Level-D Boeing 767-300 flight simulator from Cold and Dark start-up till landing and shut down, without ever having to use mouse or keyboard. This was my ultimate goal when I started building this in 2003 …

 

The cockpit hardware is interfaced digitally with the Level-D 767 via the Level-D's SDK and my lekseecon program.

Programming is done in Opencockpits SIOC. The SIOC code is available at the download page.

In total I am using 312 inputs for push buttons, switches, rotary switches, rotary encoders; 169 outputs for leds and decimal point control and 85 digits in displays.

Next to that I am using three flight controls; Yoke, Throttle and Pedals. They provide 10 Joystick axis; Elevator, Pitch, Tiller, SpeedBrakes, Left Engine Throttle, Right Engine Throttle, Flaps, Left Toe Brake, Right Toe brake and Rudder and a number of buttons and hat switches for visuals control.

Not visible in this picture are three special functions that have "enriched my cockpit experience": Cold and Dark Cockpit support, Lights test (to check for hardware malfunctions) and dimming of displays.

 

Intermezzo (Dreaming):

My ultimate goal is to have a full scale 767 simulator like Ian Cameron from Tasmania did. His simulator is based on the same technology (Level-D 767 300 + Opencockpits IOcards + SIOC + lekseecon). Look what you can achieve with it.... Awesome!

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PC Hardware

I use two PCs connected via an Ethernet network. My main PC, running FS9 and FSX is housed in a Antec P180 case with a 500 Watt Enermax Liberty power supply.

It was assembled by myself and contains:

• Asus P5B motherboard (S775, iP965, 4xDDR2, PCIe, ATX)
• Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 3.16GHz, S775, 6Mb cache, 1333 MHz FSB
• Zalman CNPS9500LED CPU Cooler
• Kingston 2x1Gb DDR2 PC2-6400
• integrated gigabit LAN
• integrated sound
• MSI NX8800GT 512 Silent video card (for 1 screen and  1 TV-OUT)
  

  The NVIDIA Control panel is very difficult to use with respect to 3D settings. Luckily I found  a free tool on the internet called nHancer.  I'm impressed by this tool. For the first time I have got rid of blurries and shimmering effects (!), and I can now finally see anti-aliasing work... For more instructions about the use of this tool see this thread. I have defined two new profiles, one for FS9 and one for FSX; you can import them from here if you like. In FS2004 and FSX you have to uncheck AA and set filtering to trilinear. In the NVIDIA control panel: set Vertical Sync to force-on. Do not forget to manually activate the right profile when you start FS2004 by the nHancer icon in the toolbar.
  

• two Samsung Spinpoint P120 SATA2 250Gb 7200rpm 8Mb cache hard disks (one for Windows and one for FS9)
• Creative FPS 2000 4+1 speakers
• 22 inch Acer V223W TFT monitor at 1680 x 1050 resolution

The Operating System is Windows XP Home edition SP3 with DirectX9.0c. The video driver is the Nvidia Geforce, version 196.21.

The second PC is used for the connection to the VATSIM network, voice communications, flight planning and weather provisioning.

It is a Hushtechnologies B3, containing:

• fan less mini-itx Intel Core DuoT2400 (2 * 1.83 GHz),
• 1Gb DDR2 553Mhz RAM,
• integrated VGA graphics,
• integrated sound,
• integrated gigabit LAN,
• 40Gb 5400 rpm hard disk 
• head set with microphone from Sennheiser,
• 19 inch Samsung Syncmaster 913V TFT monior at 1280x1024 resolution.

The Operating System is Microsoft Windows XP SP3 with DirectX9.0c

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Software

This section summarizes the software I am using at each PC. In total I am using eleven programs and four dynamic link libraries (!). You can image that you have to be rather accurate in order to let all these programs cooperate.

Flightsim PC  (Adam)	Communications PC (Eden)
MS Flight Simulator 2004 (FS9) or FSX	SquawkBox3.1
767-300 Configuration manager	ASE
lekseecon9/X (+LVLDSDK.dll)	WideClient
SIOC	FSBuild
FSUIPC.dll	Fuel Loader
Wideserver.dll	VATSpy
Simhardware.dll	nDac

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Flightsim PC

On the main PC (named Adam) runs Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 (FS9) with the Level-D 767-300ER add-on. The resolution is 1400*1050*32 and almost all sliders are maxed, no artificial ATC.

Here is a screenshot of the 2D panel of the Level-D 767-300 waiting at EHAM gate E2 for push and start clearance for a flight to EDDM (rwy 24, ARNE1S departure).

The beautiful airport scenery is Cloud9 Amsterdam for FS2004.

Also very important to note is Pete Dowson's FSUIPC program. FSUIPC offers a software interface for third parties to functions and variables of FS9 (and FSX) and is very often used in the flightsim world.

Pete's program is implemented via a dynamic link library that goes into the modules directory of FS9.  I can also use these services at another PC with the help of another program of Pete Dowson called WideFS.

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Communications PC

On this PC (named Eden) runs a WideFs client, called WideClient.exe. It provides communication with FS9 on the main PC, via FSUIPC.

A very import program is SquawkBox3 (SB3). You need this great program for multi-player flightsimming on the VATSIM network. I run SB3 at this PC and not at the FS9 PC, in order to have maximum frames per second in the simulation and not to disturb my view.

For the same reason I also run another important program here, the real time weather program ActiveSky Version6.5.

Here a screen shot of my desk top.

There are three visible windows of the running programs: SquawkBox3, ASV6.5 and VATSpy. WideClient runs in the background.

The weather program shows the current weather in EHAM and EDDF and is in control over the weather engine in FS9, providing me the current weather (a beautiful feature!).

VATSpy gives information about who is on-line and where at the VATSIM network.

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WideFS

The Widefs software package brings the FSUIPC interface over a network to other PC's. You can run add-ons like ActiveSky, SquawkBox3 and Fuel Loader at other PC's than the one that is running Flight Simulator and containing the FSUIPC program.

WideFS consists of a server program and one or more client programs. The server, WideServer.dll, is a dynamic link library that goes into the modules directory of Flight Simulator 9 and will be activated as soon as FS9 starts. The client, Wideclient.exe, runs at the communications PC.

My Wideserver.ini file is shown here:

 [Config]
 AutoUpdateTime=13
 AutoRestart=0
 MaximumBlock=4096
 NoStoppedRestarts=Yes
 Port=8002
 RestartTime=10
 SendTimeout=15
 AdvertiseService=No
 ProtocolPreferred=TCP
 Port2=9002
 TCPcoalesce=No

 ; ------------------------------
 [User]
 Log=Errors+
 [ClientNames]
 1=EDEN

My Wideclient.ini file reads as follows:

 [Config]
 Window=-32000,-32000,160,31
 Visible=Min
 ServerName=Adam
 ButtonScanInterval=0
 ClassInstance=0
 NetworkTiming=5,1
 PollInterval=2000
 Port=8002
 ResponseTime=18
 WaitForNewData=500
 ApplicationDelay=0
 MaxSendQ=100
 Priority=3,1,2
 OnMaxSendQ=Log
 NewSendScanTime=50
 MailslotTiming=2000,1000
 Port2=9002
 Protocol=TCP
 
 ; ------------------------------
 [User]
 Log=Errors+