Starting to build a 737(NGx) cockpit

All,

Thanks for all the input.
The reference to the sites where you have made all your experiences available is very usefull.

First steps have been taken by now.
I ordered the christmas special mcp/efis combo from opencockpits and have found a friend (thanks arjen for that tip) who is brilliant in wood carving and handling and who will be helping me in making the base for the mip.

First action is to get the OC MCP/EFIS working with the PMDG NGx. I found a thread where people got the devices to work direct with pmdg's 737ngx through sioc. So this will get me knowledgable on sioc.

In parallel my friend will start building the base and i will start clearing the room to get myself some space. :-)

Steef and Arjen i will be visiting you sometime in the new year to learn from your expierences. Thanks for the offer.

I will keep you all posted on my progress but not so beautifull as claus has done with his website
(I am in IT myself but lack the skills and time to do it so thouroughly)

Happy new year

Hi Killerbee,

Interesting to read about your plans, a while ago I also decided on building a home cockpit. I also went with the 737NG because of the availability of products. Since I want to do more flying than building/programming/etc, I'll go with the OC MCP and EFIS first, too.

Currently I am spicing up the old pIV I have with some new video hardware and an Eyefinity setup (2x22"). I was wondering how Eyefinity is working for you and if you would be willing to post a picture of your setup at the moment?

I am using X-plane 9 and XHSI for PFD/ND/EICAS/etc by the way.

Cheers!

Hello Bas,

I am very pleased with the eyefinity setup i have at the moment.
I am running a 3 x ilyama e2409hds as main monitor for out of the window (and at the moment also for the vc) in 5760 x 1080i and a separate ilyama e2407-hds as a fourth screen attached to a radeon HD6970 2Gb videoadapter.
I can run fsx windowed on my triple screen in VC and still reach 10+ fps at eham with aerosoft scenery and the pmdg 737NGx.
At FL370 (or in fact anywhere in flight without too dense scenery) i get 40 + fps with clear skies dropping to 25 + fps with complex clouds as generated by AS2012.
The rig is a i2500K running at 4.4 Ghz and a 128Gb ssd for os and a separte 128Gb for FSx.

Although i am very happy to run all this on this one rig i have started to offload fsc/as2012/efb and other flight related utilities to another pc and that way i gain anohter 2-4 fps for running fsx full screen (this however will disable the fourth screen).

Mind you this is with fsx gold (incl accelaration) and running a very sophisticated addon like pmdg's 737NGx.
I have not tried X-plane 9 in this config.
For FSx and demanding addon aircraft and scenery a pIV might be a bit underdesigned i would guess.

But as far as i can see a triple monitor on a hd6970 has no ill effects on your fs performance (but take care ymmv) :-)

i don't know how to attach pictures in this message but if you sent me a pb i will happily sent you one but then i advise you to enter eyefinity in you tube and you will get many hits showing you what it is like not even in a still picture but with running apps.

One last remark. Home cockpit building requires patience/endurance/skills/money. My research sofar has learnt me there is no easy way to do it. Prepare yourself for a demanding, yet very rewarding long term effort to build your cockpit. One of the people that have gone done our road long before us stated " you will never be finished' and i guess he is right.

Please note there are already quiete some knowleagable people in the netherlands. I for one have already found more beside arjan and steef who reacted on this forum.
Have for instance a look also at dutchfs.nl forum where foofighter has a very nice thread where he is showing how he managed to build a very good looking cockpit at reasonable cost by doing much of the work himself.

Have fun building and let's keep each other updated of our progress. There is much to be learned i guess from the other (and as mentioned the many that have gone down this path)

Hi Bart, thank you for your information. I understand that a lot of cockpit builders use FSX/FS 2004. As I started out with a MacBook Pro, I went with X-plane. Biggest drawback is the (lack of) detailed scenery I guess. I am using the x737 plugin from the people at http://eadt.eu which is a great plugin.

For now, I want to have a reasonable setup with 2x 22" (Eyefinity) and some smaller 15" monitors for PFD and ND (possibly offloaded to a Zotac 1.6 ATOM pc). I might buy an OC EFIS, a yoke and throttle quadrant from CH Products, but then, it's saving up for the FlyEngravity desktop MIP I guess.

For all the different modules, I really like the OC products, mainly because of pricing as I can't say much about the products themselves since I don't have any yet (the MCP is on its way though). I think they allow for a faster quality experience because of price. I am not looking for a 1:1 replica of the real thing, ideally I'd like to achieve a fairly realistic setup without having a 2nd mortgage.... In my opinion this means buying more goodies for less money (e.g. a fairly realistic MCP with its shortcomings instead of a 1:1 replica that costs 3 times as much).

All good comes to those who wait ;)

I second your statement that we should have fun building and learn from each other. Life's just too short to re-invent the wheel!

Well done to you, and look forward to seeing how you get on.

For building on a budget, have a look at my URL www.G-HOLT.co.uk

Its using 2004, but the principles are the same.

Good luck with 737NGX, I have just upgraded to a new desktop with Win 7 FSX and NGx all running on an i7 @4.7 Ghz, on an Asus P8P67 Pro board, 16GB of memory and 2 x XFX Radeon HD 6970's (2 Gb each), all working nice a smooth.

However could also do with some advice on installing it into my Pit to replace XP and 2004?

Any offers, does NGX work with MCP's etc?

Daveanne

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Daveanne

Well done to you, and look forward to seeing how you get on.


Any offers, does NGX work with MCP's etc?

Daveanne

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Your craftsmanship is impressive.
I enjoyed reading your site and i can see how you managed to build against a reasonable budget.
I won't go that way. First of all i lack the skills required to build many of the stuff myself, secondly i do not have the time so i will be more busy assembling the factory available and bought stuff.

As for operating the mcp with the NGX, this is not a easy thing to achieve.
Please read my progress over here
http://forum.avsim.net/topic/350572-...-737ngx-ready/

I really hope pmdg can release the sdk soon and this will ease things. I have no problem diving into the programming of sioc but again time is limited so i might at one stage abandon ngx and go with IFly. But not ready yet. I still feel NGx is the best 737 sim around at this moment

Fred

I'm at the same stage as you, maybe a small step ahead on your points 1 and 2. I absolutely wanted the Revolution Simproducts Motorized Throttle Quadrant, so I bought that last year (waited forever and half an ice age for it to turn up)... They just started selling products from other vendors, and I decides to buy the CPFlight's MCP and EFIS Pro - nice looking hardware... :) And in that same order I got the Engravity CDU...
I'm a software developer by trade - and I have a hard time getting things to work! :) A little more 'plug & play' would be nice...

I'm waiting for the PMDG SDK to be released, and for hardware vendors to make drivers for my hardware - patience is my friend (I keep reminding myself of that)
I'm thinking that all the software packages may be obsolete if the hardware can talk to PMDG's model - only having PMDG and the hardware with easy-to-setup drivers would be perfect! But I'm at a standstill at the moment also - what's next? I fear that will be my question the next 10 years... :)
So now I'm looking into how to build some of the shell, the MIP and windows maybe - just to get a sence of forward motion...

So good luck there killerbee - we all need a bit of that... :)

https://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/259490551844/

Dan

Seems good luck is on my path.
I managed to have the mcp and efis combo from Opencockpits to work with my PMDG NGx.
I also noted in the vatsim forum that the sdk is about to be released (rsn).

So time to start buiding the mip base and think about which mip hardware panel i would like to order.

I tried to run the mcp/efis on the ifly 737 and although it was easier to get the boxes to work it was uncomfortable since the operating of switches etc in the vc of the ifly is just different.

So as said i too look forward to the sdk as this will probably ease the way we will interface with all the other switches and not to mention the possibility to control pfd/nd's from another pc

hello Daveann

The soon to be released SDK should make it possible to interface more equipment to the NGx but as of now i have the Opencockpit MCP and captain EFIS working smoothly with NGx.
This is all the work of a Roar K.
For details please see the PMDG 737NGx forum

Did you manage to get the dual EFIS to work? I tried it at the start of my build with PMDG but I could not display captain and F/O independently.