This DIY Flight Simulator Puts Your Right in the Cockpit
Want to create a fully immersive flight experience? Design your own 3D-printable Garmin G1000 simulator around Arduino and SimVim.
Flight simulators can be a great way to fly an airplane without the expense of fuel and equipment or the risk of crashing, but showing surroundings and info on a single monitor has its limits. To make things a little more true to life, Ryan H (AKA “FlightSimMaker") has come up with a X-Plane11-compatible Garmin G10000 simulator based around the SimVimCockpit interface.
This customizable system allows users to place a variety of controls and indicators on an external display, freeing up your main screen(s) for actually seeing the environment. In this case, Ryan decided to go with a 12.1” LCD panel for flight info along with a 3D-printed bezels, creating a truly immersive experience.
Auxiliary include a number of rotary encoders, along with a whopping 32 tactile switches for each screen. An Arduino Mega is used to read these inputs, with the help of five 16-channel multiplexers (CD74HC4067).
Cost per display is around $250, though this would appear to not include the interface or computing setup required. Print files for the device are available on Thingiverse, and the bezel is broken into four pieces that can be printed diagonally on a small printer and glued together.
You can see it all in acton in the video below, as Ryan monitors flight data and punches in new inputs to his custom cockpit!