Home built cockpits

[ban2]

Just curious as we're all aviation fans, i'm sure most of you like me enjoy flight simulator but has anyone gone 1 step further and built a cockpit at home?

it's something i've always wanted to do and now the technology is here and our mortgage is nearly paid off and a spare room in the house is beckoning to me, it's something i hope may actually happen in a few years anyway

[swiftus27]

I have seen pictures of ppl's home cockpits used in FSX but I don't have one personally.  Sounds as if they can easily cost anywhere from 5-10k USD.   

[ban2]

you're right, they can cost between £100s and £10000, my spare room is just big enough for the 10k models (ps how do you break it gently to the missus that the spare room she wants for arts and crafts hobbie will soon be cruising at FL35)  

p.s http://www.flightdecksolutions.com/  is a good resource to start with

[Sigma]

I don't seriously flight-sim (anymore -- used to do combat stuff like WarBirds, Aces High, and WW2OL; but was never that great), but I have been known to do some serious sim racing.  My gaming rig is below, and I could easily mod it to accept my old Saitek X45 if I wanted with very minimal effort.

The below picture on top is older, but I included it because it's better.  I now have a 42" 1080p in there (had to make a wider surround as per the drawing below), upgraded the surround sound, and while I (or the wife rather in the below picture) was using the old MS FFB Wheel, I now run it with a fairly expensive Porsche 911 Turbo S Clubsport setup that is not only probably the highest-quality non-custom FFB wheel that you can buy, but it is also compatible with all my gaming machines -- 360/PC/PS3.

It includes a 42" 1080p LCD, 5.1 Surround, an integrated Buttkicker LFE on the seat (think Force Feedback for your body), cupholders, game storage, fully-adjustable locations for both the pedals and steering, automotive-grade carpeting where appropriate, and cooling fans where needed. The seat is from PlaySeats.  And I designed it as 3 separate components that will easily pass through doorways (I move frequently), unfortunately I didn't give a lot of consideration to weight, so it's anything but "portable".

I use it for all my gaming which I try to do a fair bit of the rare times that I am actually at home.


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