Hello friends, aircraft fans and Flight Sim Community

Some people keep asking me what motivates me to carry out such a complex simulator project.

In the late 90s, I played the PC simulator game Eurofighter 2000 Typhoon with my friend. Some of you #nerds probably still remember it.

It was a EuroFighter simulator for the PC, with a flight manual that was as thick as my forearm.

Here is a link to Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EF2000_(video_game)

I have been passionate about #flightsimulations since that time in the 90s. My wife once gave me a flight in a Boeing 737 simulator. It was a great experience, but running your own simulator would have been far too expensive or technically unavailable for a real simulation experience a few years ago.

Around the end of 2022, I came across an article that parts of the armed forces of some countries are actually training to control their future aircraft using freely available simulation software.

This was about the software "Digital Combat Simulator" ( DCS ). In videos I saw what new possibilities there are for experiencing flight simulations in VR. At first I was totally excited...but...but.

Since I already had an Oculus Quest II VR headset, I built a suitable PC that I could use to run DCS via VR. Then it took ages to configure the Oculus Quest II in conjunction with the RTX 4080 graphics card. By using the Virtual Desktop software, I was finally able to fly the A10 Thunderbolt II with the VR headset in DCS with halfway usable graphics.

But what really got on my nerves was the lack of haptics in the cockpit. You have to imagine that you are sitting there with the VR glasses on your head and every movement, every operation of switches and buttons in the cockpit, has to be done laboriously with the computer mouse. Since you have the VR glasses on your head, you have to feel the position of the mouse in order to grasp it or you lift the glasses to see it. That somehow doesn't feel that great because it interrupts the simulation experience.

I was disappointed and had somehow imagined the simulation experience to be better.

I then came across the site of an Australian. His nickname in the forums is "Romeo Kilo" and this guy built an A10C cockpit himself and also shares a lot of information on his site, in forums and on YouTube.

Here are the links:
https://thewarthogproject.com/
https://www.youtube.com/@thewarthogproject

Inspired by this project, I decided to build myself a flight simulator.

I started building the SimCockpit in December 2023.

Before the simulator is finished, some technical challenges in the areas of #model building , #electronics and #computer science still have to be mastered.

If you want to know more, follow me on this page " www.warthog.ch " or on #Facebook or #Instagram .

I will continue to post details about the project so that you can follow the construction and commissioning of the simulator.

Have fun with it ---->