Sim Pit Builders

[Charlie_VFP]

I have seen a lot of data regarding controllers for sim pits and curious to see what the "experts" in the field think.

What controller do you use? What controller would you use if you could do it all again?

Now the fun part.... WHY? :)

[merchant]

Terry:

The use of controllers can become a rather personal thing assuming you are refering to flight controllers. The variety in recent years has become a very demanding business for the simulator community as can be seen from the introduction of the cougar.

If you are planning on building a homebuilt sim you will probably wish to have a flight controller like the one found inthe aircraft you are modelling your sim after.

The quality of today's flight controller is good and with a bit of work you may improve upon many designs as has been noted by the work done to improve the Cougar by some sim fanatics.

Many sim builders have gone on to construct their own flight controllers using real flight sticks and grips, the B-8 has a great following as it has been used on a great number of fighter aircraft. In the commercial world I am amazed by the work people have accomplished with a bit of plastic or copper pipe and Body filler.

If you are serious about building a homebuilt flight sim visit http://simpits.org to learn about building a flight sim.

[Charlie_VFP]

Ah, sorry, I should have been more specific.

I was more refering to the controller cards to integrate the hardware to the software.

In the old days, the EPIC was used extensivly. It now appears to be outdated and there are now multiple USB interfaces.

Thats mainly what I am looking for. :)

[merchant]

Gene Buckle wrote a very good review on the 3 most popular controller cards for the Simpits group recently, take a peek at http://www.simpits.org for information about controller cards.

The epic card
The fidget cards
The Plasma card

[PHX]

I had the EPIC card over a year ago (an older version of it), but found it more complex than I needed (or wanted). Not to mention the price was high.

A couple of simpler, cheaper solutions are the Hagstrom keyboard encoders and a new product I just found the other day called Photon (website here http://iflightsystems.com/).

As I sold my EPIC setup and I am in the market for a solution, I am looking seriously at the Photon product. Allows both input and output, has a reasonable price, and comes with a simple software config program (or so the site claims).

If anyone out there is using the Photon setup, I would love to hear your opinion on it.

PHX

[Venom]

Also popular is the XKeys matrix board. Input only http://www.xkeys.com/custom/xkmatrix.php

[Stuntie]

I work for a place that does PICmicro microcontroller instructional products so I'm going to try and put my own solutions together (stupidity and enthusiasm are a bad combination... :-p ).
If I have any luck I'll post what worked for others to see.

[Beast]

great information!!!!keep up the good work