Showroom DX - Compact Simulator

Family is family and I am actually looking forward to our Christmas, though I know my dad will spend most of the day on my sim anyway, even without motion. I have spent considerable time and money tweaking my Prepar3D so he can replicate doing what he does as the oldest student pilot in Australia, flying a Jabiru out of Launceston airport. Dad loves it and the DK2 and will spend as many hours as you will let him flying around the accurate VR rendering of Tasmania.

Much as he loves the Rift Dad would never cope with the tech of our motion sims, though I did look at the mechanical CloudFlyer 2 motion rig for him, as all he does is flight sims. The CloudFlyer 2 just failed to make the Kickstarter goal and there have been long delays over possible design changes and manufacturing since, but I am still keeping tabs on it. It would not be hard to make one but I have been supportive of the designer Doc trying to get it done as a viable package as it would suit people like my father: http://www.cloud-flyer.com/

Dad is 84 @bsft and fitter than I am. He has only recently soloed as a student pilot, but still has some hours to complete before he gets his license, which has been a lifelong ambition for him.

Very generous of you @Pit. We are a close family and my dad, sister and brother in law, who has been my sim building TA despite hating working with metal, live just down the road. Even so we look forward to our family traditions such as our very informal family Christmas. I hope everyone else here equally enjoy their family time, irrespective of beliefs or circumstances.

So as predicted my father spent a good deal of Christmas day playing on my sim.

First up was Prepar3D, which has been highly tweaked to replicate my father's student pilot experience. We took the chance to start to refine the controls for him, with mainly rudder and throttle needing some tweaks to match his student pilot experience of the Jabiru.

Next up was dad's first experience of DCS, flying the P51. I still need to find time to tweak the controls and he did find it a bit of a challenge, but loved the realism. Dad actually plays a lot of War Thunder, which I introduced him to about a year ago, as he is really into WWII flight combat. He was really impressed with the realism of DCS.

By this time my sister really wanted to have a go, so she flew a Raptor jet in Prepar3D up and down the coast around our home town.

Meanwhile I soldered up the JRK while they were playing, so it is ready to install. At least that was some progress.

All up a pretty fun way to spend Christmas, now it is off to the beach to walk the dog and offset the huge breakfast and lunch we all got into.

Much appreciated @dradis.

I connected up the new JRK today and did the settings...it is a bit of a pain with the 60:1 as you can't move the levers by hand. I loosen the flexible coupling on the motor and move the pot instead. So the DX Racer moves again! Now I have to do a basic default profile.

There was one JRK gotcha that I think is worth noting, so nobody else gets caught out. I just went ahead and soldered the connector block and pins on the JRK yesterday in between Christmas day play, and did not think much of it. However, when I went to connect the JRK today I found the grub screw for the GRD block was not properly tapped through, so I was unable to tighten it on the wire. I did mange to cut the thread through but I needed plies on the screwdriver to do it, it was that tight. I broke the solder joint in the process and had to redo that.

Moral of the story, quickly check the screws in the JRK connector block prior to soldering it on!

True @bsft and even more so when it is an small and fragile board like the JRK.

The Jabiru has a stick between the two seats and can be used from either side. The real Jabiru creates a problem for my father as the seats are part of the cabin molding and can't be adjusted. Dad is short so has to put two big cushions behind him to reach the pedals. That puts the oddly placed joystick almost at his hip, which is awkward to use. There are a bunch of other such Jabiru ergonomic oddities.



Preapar3D can run direct to Rift. However there is a very noticeable performance hit. Also thus far I have been unable to use SweetFX in direct to Rift mode, Prepar3D crashes as soon as the you hit OK to use the Rift. However it is fine in extended mode.

The left is still considered the pilot seat but one of the major uses of the Jabiru is for teaching new pilots, so the instructors have to be able to fly from the right. Hence why there are a number of compromises and awkward controls.

P3D is an oddity in that it is a third party developer who ran with Rift support, creating DCOC, with the latest build being with 0.4.3: http://www.dcoc-vr.com/

I have been a bit surprised that DCOC has not upgraded further as development was petty rapid

Very rough and ready with much refinement still to come, but as Prepar3D is currently crashing SimTools on my rig I quickly loaded up Wings of Prey for my father to see what he thinks of motion simulation...I had to kick him out 7 hours later and he still had a grin from ear to ear.

Yes he can't wait to try it with the Rift, so I need to sort the profile and the problem I am experiencing with Prepar3D.