Thank you Mr. Heinlin!

[Chris Kilroy]

My dream for the past 20 years has been to have a realistic 747-400 simulator in the house. Even when I had my previous 737NG sim, a 744 was the ultimate goal. Dream 1.1a was to do it without having to deal with Schiratti and the nightmare that is PM. Now, thanks to PSX, I've achieved that dream. Thank you for allowing it to happen!

[b744erf]

He is really a  great man.
Chris, your photo makes every simmer jealous!~

[emerydc8]

Looks like the real thing. And PSX is the only sim software I've found that handles like the real thing. Great work!

[Hardy Heinlin]

Beautiful hardware! :-)


Cheers,

|-|ardy

[cavaricooper]

Chris-

Totally brilliant! Very interested to hear about the FDS process and any difficulties in getting it all sorted. Totally where I'd like to end up when the kid graduates .

Enjoy, and please share what you believe is salient. I'd especially appreciate insight into the visual projection.

Ta!

Best- C

[Chris Kilroy]

Chris-

Totally brilliant! Very interested to hear about the FDS process and any difficulties in getting it all sorted. Totally where I'd like to end up when the kid graduates .

Enjoy, and please share what you believe is salient. I'd especially appreciate insight into the visual projection.

Ta!

Best- C

Hi! Thank you, and sorry for the late reply!

I can't say enough good things about FDS and NatVis (Nat Crea, who flew all the way from MEL to do my visuals). The ordering process from FDS was easy. I ordered in mid October and was given a production slot for delivery in early February. FDS actually beat the promised delivery date by a few days. Once I contacted Nat about doing my visuals in November, he and Steve worked together to make sure they'd both be available for a mid-February install here in Vegas. They were here and worked (with my help) from Weds through Monday getting everything set up. Both are great guys and I'm happy to now call both of them friends.

As far as the hardware, the old adage holds true that you get what you pay for. My sim arrived in four crates and the shipment weighed in at over 4200lbs. There's almost no plastic in an FDS sim; in fact, it took four people to get the yoke box and the MIP upstairs to the sim room, and 4 of us once again just to get the overhead in place! When you grab hold of the throttles, they're cold and metal, just like the real things. The yokes, seats, and a few other parts of the sim are sourced from real 747s and refurbished.

What I found most impressive, however, was that FDS is very aware of the capabilities PSX has brought to the simulator table for the first time and has updated their hardware to take advantage of many of them. Examples include:

- PSX (with the help of AdaptPSX) supports a hardware printer, so they included one
- they threw in a fully functional WX radar panel
- the MIP now has wired pots and switches to control the LCD backlighting (including dual concentric pots for the inboard LCD where one controls the overall screen brightness and the other the terrain/weather brightness.. talk about attention to detail!), source selectors, and LCD selectors
- the ACPs now have enough functionality built into them to control the basic tenets required in PSX, such as pushback, cockpit speaker, marker audio selector, etc.

I hope I'm not speaking out of turn, but all of these items (and more) were listed as "realistic representation" (which means the items are there for "show" but they're not functional, mostly because they were never supported in PM before PSX came along) in the documents I signed when I ordered the 747. The fact that FDS is on top of new software and is updating their product line accordingly (and threw these items in at no charge, to boot) makes every penny I spent on my new setup even more worth it, in my opinion.

Plus, the USD is killing the CAD right now, so I saved 40-45% just by ordering when I did as opposed to 2 years before! 

[Frans Spruit]

Chris,

What can I say..... it's a piece of art, enjoy! O God I'm jealous   

Frans

[cavaricooper]

Chris-

Thanks for the details, they are greatly appreciated.  I will research NatVis further (assuming it's a curved panel w/ (2-3?) ceiling mounted projectors....

Enjoy your sim- it's quite fantastic!

Best- Carl