The homebuilder cockpit community is an exciting and welcoming place for both newcomers and experienced builders.

The Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 are by far the most popular projects, but homebuilders have built hundreds of different flight decks of varying levels of complexity and realism.

One of my favorite groups is SimFest (http://www.simfest.co.uk/). They fly a 747 (homebuilt sim) around the world, stream it live, and raise money for charity.

For anyone interested in learning more, a few resources:

ProSim Aviation Research (https://prosim-ar.com/) - cockpit avionics software. Powers flight models and avionics screens for most 737 and A320 projects. Established, respected, and popular in the community.

FlightDeck Solutions (http://flightdecksolutions.com/) - Flight deck hardware. Both individual components and turn key solutions for 737/777/787/A320

Vier Im Pott (https://www.vier-im-pott.com/index.php/en/) - Flight deck hardware, A320 focused.

There are numerous other hardware manufacturers and software developers. A few good communities to check out if you're interested in learning more:

http://www.cockpitbuilders.com/ https://www.avsim.com/forums/forum/110-home-cockpit-builders...

I feel like someone should facilitate an introduction between some of these guys and the desert bus community.

I have to ask - why go this route instead of pursuing a PPL? In many areas it would be cheaper to fly for real than building your own simpit.

Because this way you get to fly a 737/747/777/whatever you feel like.

For a lot of simmers, the driver behind their passion is the desire to fly one of those heavy jets. I have a PPL, but unless I committed about a decade for it as a career, there's simply no way I could ever find myself behind the cockpit of an airliner. Simming is the only way. You do see people make cockpits for smaller aircraft, but it is definitely the exception, and usually those people do have licenses and use it for flight training.

Also, you can find airline-quality simulators out there who will gladly rent you some time, but last time I checked the full-motion 777 simulator I had available to me cost $750/hr.

those folks normally have a PPL and do that to "fly" big planes.

Also, outside of the US, a PPL is pretty damn expensive!

and the only open source flight sim, in desperate need of more contributors :)

http://home.flightgear.org/

A friend of mine in Austria has a much more ambitious one in his basement:

https://www.flugsimulator.wien/gutscheine/boeing-flugsimulat...

A shot I took while preparing to taxi out of Chicago O'Hare:

https://twitter.com/Aschenbrenner/status/714069749597138945

Has the full 737-800 cockpit built from parts he's purchased online, plus short throw projectors outside the windows so it feels much more realistic than LCD screens. Airline pilots buy time in his simulator, and I can see why: it's so doggone realistic that it had me sweating.

There's something much, much more realistic when you're putting your hands on real metal flight deck components to set trim, throttle, etc.

This is so cool I just got chills. I’d consider time in that sim just for fun, and the prices seem reasonable.

What software does he run for the simulation?

> What software does he run for the simulation?

Microsoft Flight Simulator if I remember right, but with all kinds of third party add-ons to support all the flight deck controls via USB. He's @aschenbrenner on Twitter if you want to talk to him about it.

I have to wonder how close the flight characteristics of MS FS are to a 787, and how MS got all that information.

I once got an A-10 fully booted up and into the air. There was this immediate sense of, "I completely get what the sim community is about now" along with, "I just got out of World of Warcraft. I need to get the F--- away from this while I still can."

There's something exciting about watching other people put these rigs together. I dunno... I feel some sort of adult form of the pure distilled joy I got watching my brothers open awesome Lego sets at Christmas.

Digital Combat Simulator! The first time I locked onto a target and fired a Maverick after figuring out how to start the plane from cold by reading the 600-page manual [0] is one of my proudest gaming moments. It was a great exercise in learning how to learn. Once you've figured how to manipulate the HUD and MFCDs and program waypoints into the CDU, every real world technical topic you could possible learn suddenly seems possible. I don't get intimidated by complex systems anymore precisely because DCS gave me a huge confidence boost.

[0] https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/downloads/document...

The most audacious home cockpit I've come across is that of a flight sim enthusiast (& investment banker) who has a full motion rig & all authentic 737-800 instrumentation. He does streams of him simulating all the time, with lots of great camera angles.

Here is one: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/380056714

It begins with a montage of progress shots but there is also hours of him in the sim. It's really incredible.

I was going to mention DAL213, small world (small Internet?). It's a great stream.

The crazy part is that simulator is in an apartment, not a house. They had to bring it up with a crane.

Wow, that video seems to be showing even realistic turbulence. Impressive.

Building the cockpit is fun, but you only have room for two. The next logical step is to buy interior panels and windows from a mothballed 737 (you can find them on eBay). I have been building out both the cockpit and front cabin (and passengers have a view out their windows). For my project I am putting more effort into the cabin, since it is for entertaining friends as much as it is a flight sim.

A custome party where people can pretend to be the jet-setters of the 60's and 70's, complete with an airplane cabin from that era, would be neat.

I could even see it being something one could make as a party location to be rented out.

If you live in LA, there is a place called Air Hollywood that does precisely that:

http://panamexperience.com/our-story/

If you're alone, you could use this "one simple trick" (from 2007) to up the realism by quite a bit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw

It would look goofy for a copilot, but it would make a world of difference for the pilot.

I'm wondering if you could now achieve that same effect with an iPhone or iPad and the FaceID sensors... no good for full-size flight sims but I'm wondering if this tech is now going to get its day some time soon.

FSX has support for trackir[0] built right in. For $150 you get head tracking. It's actually quite fun and was super useful for my budding simulator hobby

[0]:https://www.naturalpoint.com/trackir/

I wasn't able to find the $ or cost words in that article. Does anyone have an idea of how much would this cost realistically? I am assuming at least 6 figures.

Also, assuming I was able to find the money, would this train a person 100% for a real flight?

I knew a pilot who worked part time running a pro flight simulator out in Townsville, Australia. I could tell it was MS Flight Simulator at the core, despite all the cockpit panels and displays. When I walked around behind it, I saw that all of the gauge clusters were each individual screens and there appeared to be several machines with multiple video cards running the output.

He told me the entire setup was over $11k, which made me wonder what percentage of that were the individual parts, versus all the development costs in making that setup.

Video of the cockpit - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz8N_22Vty8

That brings back some memories of when I was building my CRJ cockpit. Fun times.

This is a great use case for AR.

How do you mean?

All the AR use cases I fantasize about are those where it’s desirable to overlay data on what you can actually see— such as visualizing air currents and the like, while allowing your eyes to see the real world without a camera as the ‘middleman’.

Any AR flight simulator I can think of would be less immersive than what these people are building, since they’ve pretty much nailed the experience of being in an airplane cockpit. How would putting equipment on your face add to that?

I'd assume he means as a possible solution to the "crabbing" effect the article describes, where the "forward" view is centred on the plane rather than the pilot (your field of view should be a conic with you at the focus, and it's mildly disorientating when it's slightly wrong). I'm not sure if I'd call it AR, but automagic solutions could involve face-tracking, eye-tracking, etc.

Sounds like it would be a better solution for a full on VR rig rather than AR. Still put the person in the same cockpit, but the view would be from the VR goggles instead of multiple screens. When the pilot reaches in VR for the controls, there would be physical controls to match what's seen in VR. This would allow the pilot to have the correct sense of location with what they see.

Yeah, VR with either physical controls or virtual ones with force feedback (hands + arms) would work in a much smaller space / tighter budget. Technology isn't far enough yet though; it needs much higher resolution still, plus the force feedback is not there yet. I'm sure there's plenty of R&D projects in that area though, but, it's likely to remain bespoke / small volume / expensive.