Welcome to cockpit.varxec.de, a Boeing 747-400 home cockpit contruction project
flightgears 747 with custom paint leaving VHXX Runway 31
1. Introduction
We (a friend and I) are building a 747-400 type cockpit that will be run by the Open Source (GPL) Multiplatform flight simulator flightgear (FlightGear) and some other bits and pieces of software, including a set of Glass Cockpit software that I'm developing right now.
1.1. Goals
- Our prime goal is:
- make it as cheap as possible
- while making it as close to the real thing as possible
- I know those two usually don't mix together well, but we try to compensate by brain grease :-)
- One of the goals we had from the very beginning was to have all the controls linked
- aileron / yoke
- elevator / control column
- rudder pedals
- fully enclosed cockpit
- adds to realism (esp. light- and soundwise)
- All Linux
- no windoze here ;-) (although flighgear runs on windows, our software could be ported)
- no license costs
- serveral Linux boxes networked together for outside views and glass cockpit displays
- only free software, no shareware, no commerical software, especially not from M
- )
- everything is open and source is available. So YOU can make changes if you want to.
- Use computers we have available or can get for cheap
- right now, all machines are slower than 800MHz
- most used are in the range of PentiumI, maybe even 486, and PII and PIII
- glass cockpit display machines in range of PentiumI/486 running only the XWindow System
- Since our Instrument displays are in the PentiumI range with "nothing special" graphics cards,
- OpenGL-based Glass Cockpit instrument displays will not be an option
- Therefore we decided to develop our own set of PD, ND, and Upper/Lower EICAS displays
- based on Xlib(X11/XWindow System)
- t1lib (for type1 fonts). Later, I'll work on something for the CDU.
- more info on the software pages
- no Project Magenta because:
- windows only
- MSFS only
- expensive (in my opinion at least) since every single piece costs extra and spending that much money on a hobby (for which PM is only a part)...
- no EPIC, no Hagstrom keyboard encoders, we are in the process of designing our own interfaces to the simulator
- so far, we have come up with a very cheap solution to hook up 64-512 switches to a RS-232 connected PIC 16F628 based key matrix. The projected cost (excluding switches/buttons/...) is about 10-15 Euros.
- no need to poke around other applications memory to get variables in and out since flightgear as quite a few methods of accessing its internals
- home-made panels
- backlightable
- cheap and relativly easy to make
1.1.1. Use the navigation bar on the left to find out what we've been up to.
We have/will have photos, construction ideas, circuit schematics of our electronics stuff, drawings/plans and software downloads
