I’m looking for advice on how to best build my home cockpit for a C172/GA single engine. Most of the examples I’ve been looking at have three displays with controls/instrument panel in the middle. I really want to build a mockup of a C172 cabin (at least from the seats to the windscreen) and then have my three displays “outside” of the cabin for my views.
Has anyone done a similar setup? Is this setup even possible given the correct eye distance for the screens? Anyone have advice on how to best accomplish this or ideas for a better setup? Also, does it work to sit off-center of the center display as in a dual seat setup or do you really need to sit in the center? Thank you in advance!
I recently completed a build and went for a more compact setup sitting in the middle of the instruments. The G1000’s are purchased and the Alt, Speed, Attitude, Thottle, Flaps, Mix and Garmin Touch Screen are DIY using Mobiflight. With 55" displays I sit about 42" behind the main screen. The sides are at 45 degrees and, when seated, consume my entire peripheral vision. I like VR too but enjoy the physical setup just as much.
VR only provides the visual experience. It does nothing for the control side. Having to use a mouse or VRcontroller is pants. If you want to learn or practice systems/procedures it’s pretty useless. Right now it’s just not viable. With an external visuals system and full cockpit controls like the OP outlined this can be obtained. It’s why pro flight systems are this way. If tech moves on and solves many of VR’s limitations then it might have a chance but until then not a viable solution.
VR is a divisive topic among the cockpit builder community. Some people, a few have documented it on here, have created ‘VR simpits’ which include panels and switches and knobs and they have built them in such a way that, if they scale and position the VR view correctly, they correspond with the position of the knobs and switches in the VR cockpit, so you reach out for what you can see and it’s there in RL.
My impression is that this is a difficult thing to achieve and it’s basically single-type-specific - you do it for a C172 and that’s all it really works for. Some people only want to create a single-type cockpit. I personally want to fly multiple types and my cockpit setup is a compromise arrangement to let me do that with the realism of real controls versus clicking with the mouse (or a VR controller), but not with the specific or correct arrangement of controls of any one aircraft type. That works for me, but it wouldn’t work in VR.
That’s before you consider the drawbacks in VR that some - not all - people discover. Motion sickness (although I did try MSFS in VR early on and I didn’t have any, surprisingly, as I’ve always been prone to it), eye fatigue from the vergence issue (eyes see stereo depth but the plane of view is right next to your eyes = eye strain), physical fatigue from wearing a (relatively) heavy object on your face for long periods. All of this is getting better as the tech gets better, but for me, it’s not there yet. Not by a long way.
There’s promise in AR, where you could use an HMD for the outside view but pass through the full cockpit you’re sitting in so you can see all the physical controls. There’s some test video of just such a system that (I think) the USAF put together using (I think) X-Plane and a Varjo headset. This has super high-resolution ‘almost as good as RL’ pass-through. But it’s super-expensive and not something the home cockpit builder could generally afford, and the solutions we do have - Quest Pro, Quest 3 etc - have inferior passthrough that is simply not good enough.
For now, at least, and for me, the balance tips in favour of multiple screens in a physical cockpit.
For OP - you can do what you want but you will need screens large enough that they can meet up edge-to-edge at the distance from the cockpit shell that you need them to be. If you have gaps between them then things won’t line up given the way that multi-view works right now. I’m going to be doing something similar. I figure I will probably need 65" screens.
Well for me 1st paragraph works wonderful. I reach my arm to flip a switch and there it is…
Secondly if you have real controls then it kinda limits already the fidelity of what aircraft you’ll fly. When you have a generic cockpit controls where you can load multiple aircraft that’s hardly having cockpit fidelity.
As for motion sickness, I had it for the first few hours because my system wasn’t setup properly, latency was way high… After I tweaked settings, no more motion sickness.
The immersion will never be beaten by 2D flying… VR is on another level.
Different people have different goals. I’m not bothered about 1:1 fidelity to any particular aircraft cockpit. I’m bothered about having access to the systems and controls of the aircraft without having to use a mouse or keyboard (or controller). That’s what I want. You might want something different; that’s great. I find VR problematic enough that I don’t want to use it. You don’t. That’s also great.
Bear in mind I’m a VR early adopter, I have four headsets in my house right now, I’ve owned several more. I’m not anti-VR, and I know how immersive it can be if done right. It does not suit my use case for flight simulation, so I don’t use it for flight simulation.
What I don’t want is to be told that there’s only one way, and that’s VR, and everything else is inferior. Some people might feel like that; again, that’s great. But VR is not the One True Way, because there is no One True Way, and there never will be. What I have works for me. What OP might choose needs to work for them. That might be VR, it might not.
Depends on what you mean by ‘immersion’. Level D sims are pretty immersive and yet the graphical fidelity of their outside view is generally well below the standard of MSFS. The compromises involved in gaining the immersion provided by VR in home flight sim are simply not acceptable to me, so I do without them in order to get the things I want. If and when that changes, I’ll be straight into the headset.
Nice setup, BTW . Have you seen the Warthog Project on YouTube? There’s an example of a highly immersive non-VR setup.
Hello, I am running 3, 55 inch TCL TV’s with Honeycomb Alpha, Bravo and rudder pedals. I was building a panel, but realized it really limited what I could fly. You may be able to find my pics here on this site… The three screens are 90 degrees with a roof. You actually sit in it. I am running a 3070 card and get about 25-30 fps. I will be purchasing the 4090 card soon, so I can turn up features. Also, I tried the VR, but for my 55 y/o eyes, I went with this setup instead. I’m not even remotely done building this. Hope this helps.
The above pics are the culmination of various stages. I have not completed the floor well of the cockpit. I was making a panel with two touchscreens and knobster. It limits my planes, so I’m running just the 3 tv’s and not the Air Manager panels. Also, I will be adding a car seat and rails, since the gaming chair moves when doing rudder work. Hope this helps. The black edges of the tv’s don’t bother me. Lastly, on my night flights, the left tv has a lot of glare, so make sure all three tv’s are same model. All of mine are TCL’s, but I bought the left one earlier.
I’m getting ready to do a similar build. Did you buy a frame for the TVs or build something? What kind of desk setup do you have for the flight controls / touch screen?
How do you find the feeling of the tv’s at a 90 degree angle. I see some at a 45 but I would like to completely enclose my cockpit. I am just getting started on the build and I am trying to gather as much info before I jump into it. Thanks
I have tried mine (three 55") at different angles. I felt that the 45 was too wide but 90 felt too tight. I sit left seat (rather than center) and at 90 I felt like I was too close to the left display. Right now I’m flying with them just a little wider than 90, perhaps 80 or so and it feels pretty good. Luckily I built mine to be able to easily adjust.
I’d like to build some side panels to make my cockpit feel real and then I might put my displays even a little wider but I’ll keep experimenting.
. Have you seen the Warthog Project on YouTube? There’s an example of a highly immersive non-VR setup.
