New user fom the UK starting out on Sim Build

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  • #3889
    Jefff
    Participant

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    Hi All.  Just got my account activated here on the forums so thought I’d say hi from the UK.  Huge thanks firstly to BFG for a great site, some amazing inspiration and information.  I am just embarking on a sim build that I know is going to take me a while but will be a great project.  I am doing it so I can practice real world flight training and for the enjoyment of flying. It was going to follow the same construction as a lot of the ones I have seen here with a wood framed cockpit, but I had the most amazing stroke of luck, I have gotten my hands on a real Cessna 152 fuselage.  I found it lying behind the hangar at the local flying school where it has languished for about 5 years.  It is stripped of most of the parts but as I wont need them for the sim, that’s fine.  The poor craft was flipped over at the end of the runway after a bad landing and the tail section was pretty mangled and not fit to repair so it was scrapped. It has been a donor for the other school planes ever since.  Its now perfect to be made to fly again as a Sim as the bit I need is perfect.  I should be off to the airfield soon to get the saw to it and take the tail off back as far as the rear window and then use the remainder as my sim enclosure.  The side screens will be mounted outside the windows and like BFG I’ll use a projector for the front view.   I’m already testing hardware and visuals on the bench at home and planning like crazy.  Arduinos, ARDSimX and Mobiflight among others are becoming my best friends as I am building everything from scratch.  A few Saitek bits will creep in to get me “up in the air”  until I build all the radio stacks etc.  There is an amazing community among Flight Sim enthusiasts and I am proud to be a part of it.  Hopefully any experiences I have that will help others I will be able to share.

    Ive added couple of pictures of the fuselage as is stands now and this is before I have even washed off 5 years of dirt and moss. I’ll upload more as things progress.

    Best wishes to all from the UK

    Jeff

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    #3895
    John
    Participant

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    Hello Jeff,

    Welcome!  I look forward to seeing your progress.

    My own sim build has stalled due to work and family obligations, but I hope to get back to it soon.

    John

    N916PP

    #3899
    Basement Fly Guy
    Keymaster

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    It’s going to be amazing for you to give that 152 new life!

    N15JG On PilotEdge

    #3935
    Jefff
    Participant

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    Thanks.  Looking forward to getting it home now so I can make a proper start on the construction. In the meantime though I am testing visuals and hitting a few issues.  I am using an i7 6700K, 32MB DDR4 RAM, 250GB SSD for xplane and OS and a 1TB SATA for data and other stuff, 1080ti 11GB GPU, 1x 1080p Optoma projector and 2 x 32inch LED TVs at 720p each.  I am also running another 21inch monitor off the mother board built in graphics card for instruments.

    With just the projector or using a 1080p monitor for main visuals and the MB driven instruments, I can get over 60fps with everything maxed out.  This makes XP look amazing.  I know it would actually be a greater FPS but the monitor can only refresh at 60 anyway even though I can see it trying to go above that on the screen display.  The problem comes as soon as I add the other monitors.  The frame rates fall through the floor and are often below 20 even with sliders backed off quite a lot and losing the quality of mesh and scenery.  Same FPS with either 1 or both 32 inch monitors connected.

    Question is, could the differing resolutions be having an impact and would having all monitors at 1080p help??  What settings/add-ons do you use to improve frame rates as anything below 20 in my view is not really usable.  It keeps sending me warnings about rendering settings.   I’d love to get to about 30FPS and  the system was built using quite a high spec but its not achieving what I had hoped.     I am about to try out the 3JFPS tool and looking at the LOD settings to see if I can push a few more frames through.  According to Task Manager though, neither the CPU or GPU are maxed and therefore I cant understand where the bottleneck is.  The frame processing times are roughly similar for both CPU and GPU too.

    Any thoughts from the folks here???

    Loved the review of GB south from ORBX. I will be getting that, as the area is exactly where I will be flying.  If you get a chance, have a fly over Exeter, Dunkeswell and Eaglescott, all of which are close to me.  Exeter is a commercial airport but the others are GA.  Also a lovely little strip to fly to is Bodmin EGLA and that’s where I do my RW training.  From Bodmin, a short 10 min flight to Newquay over the disused RAF St Eval and then towards Perranporth and Lands End is a really nice trip along the North Cornwall coast.   Coffee at Lands end, then back up the south coast over Falmouth, (Look out for the shipyard…I did my apprenticeship there as a Marine Engineer) head out to Fowey via the Gribben Head day mark, St Austell and Plymouth followed by Torbay, Teignmouth and Exmouth on the way back to Exeter.  That will be one of my first flights when ORBX lands on my sim and I get FPS up a bit.

    In the meantime, I built the flight yoke with force feedback (thanks to Jay at VR FlightSIM) so things are moving forward. It has a real 152 yoke attached to it which feels great. It works well though and gives me real feel and vibration in the controls. All built from a cannibalised MS Sidewinder joystick for the motors and electronics.

    Best wishes all and happy flying (RW and Sim).

    Jeff H

     

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    #4150
    Basement Fly Guy
    Keymaster

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    Every full-screen sim monitor is going to cut your frames by an equal proportion. 90 FPS with one monitor will be 45 FPS with two, and 30 FPS with three. (2D panel screens, like the ones I use for GPS, don’t impact the framerates, BTW.)

    With a similar setup myself I think you’re going to be very hard pressed to get over 30 FPS with everything maxed out. With my 980ti I always ran at HDR visuals, no shadows, no reflections, 4xSS+FXAA, and objects one notch down from max. That’s with 3jFPS running.

    Now with the 1080ti I am a bit more aggressive, and can often run with max objects and 2xSS+FXAA, or even 4xSS, and that’s with Twick VR managing object visibility (I prefer it to 3jFPS now). But the bottom line is that three screens has a significant impact, and I am happy to dial down my sliders a bit to keep performance at or above 30 FPS.

    Also, I’ve overclocked my CPU and done other things to improve my performance for VR, and this surely helps the physical sim views as well. You can see my how to (in the How Tos tab) on how I configured for VR for a guide on that – but don’t mess with your BIOS / overclocking if you’re not willing to accept potentially bad consequences (melting your CPU, for example).

    N15JG On PilotEdge

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