I started flight simming in about 1983 on my little ZX Spectrum using Psion Flight Simulator. At the same time I came into contact with the Sublogic Flight simulator on the Apple IIe. With my dad working as a Sales manager at IBM South Africa we had an IBM PC at home and I got a copy of the Sublogic Simulator for the IBM pc.
I am amazed by how far Flight simulators have evolved. There are several different offerings out there but it is obvious that there only two Simulators that lead the pack. The first, in my opinion the better offering, is X-Plane by Laminar Research, at the time of writing this we are on the brink of the launch of XP12 and I am really looking forward to that. The second big sim is of course Microsoft’s FS2020. I like MS2020 for the eye candy and it’s great to buzz around South Africa or some new country when I feel like some virtual sightseeing. But when it comes to serious simulation, my go-to sim is XP11.
I have always considered using the Cessna sim with XP11 but I would like to interface it in such a way that I can use it with either sim if I wish. I can understand that future sim visitors would much rather prefer to go for a sightseeing flight over their house and actually be able to see familiar landmarks around their neighbourhood then to practice power off stalls in a less graphically titilliating environment.
Having said that, I would also like to see the finished sim have the quality level of a general FTD that is capable of being used as an accurate procedure trainer.
Interfacing the Sim.
There are three serious contenders for interfacing the simulator,
SimVim / RealSimControl – a freeware program using Arduinos to interface all possible types of input and output devices to X-plane. the program comes in the form of an X-plane plugin and utilises an interactive configurator on the website to configure the Arduino sketch for use in the cockpit of your choice. You will need an Arduino MEGA (or similar clone) which acts as the central board, you can link other boards like the UNO to operate as stepper drivers or the like.
Mobiflight – again a freeware program written originally for the FSX/P3D and no MSFS2020 users but this can also be used with X-plane when using XPUIPC. Mobiflight uses Arduino Mega boards for interfacing the hardware.
The third option is G-Step. This is the Flight Illusion driver software for their propriety gauges. The big advantage is that the software interface can be configured for both X-Plane and MSFS2020. The downside is that the connection possibilities are limited and you can only use the Flight Illusion I/O board which in turn has to be connected to the GSA-055 interface board.
….. to be continued