How To Get A Simple And Free Glass Cockpit Layout

By Tovo Jean Michel Randria

As a fervent adept of glass cockpit technologies (especially Boeing flavor), I've been always seeking for every sim that emulates them. There are now many products that are available in this particular field of flightsimming. These range from costly solutions for the amateur (747-400 Precision Simulator from http://www.aerowinx.de is a very good achievement and even used by researchers and real pilots for home training), popular ones (Project Magenta's products are sure very good but are payware too; many cockpit homebuilders use them) and those which are free. The forthcoming OpenGC (www.opengc.org) and especially Don Lafontaine's FreeFD (freefd.homelinux.com/) cost you nothing while giving you a good experience of glass cockpit display.

The simple solution proposed in this article relies on FreeFD and a single PC:

In the screen shot at the right (click on it to see it full size), the FS2002 main window is in the upper left and shows a little portion of the panel (upper deck panel and wet compass only). This is dedicated to display the scenery outside (since you are flying instruments, this needs not to be large). Below is the Primary Flight Display from the FreeFD package (boeing_eadi.exe). Right to it is nd.exe (Navigation Display) and right to the main FS window is Eicas.exe. These 3 files are positioned manually since only nd.exe features storing and redisplaying from the last window position (the last time you ran it). Completing the layout are the FS throttle quadrant and FS B737 radio stack that are undocked. To undock them, they need to be displayed first (Shift - 2 and Shift -4) then you right click over and choose Undock Window. This makes them able to be displayed outside the main FS window (or a second screen if your have one).

The screen shot shows the default 737 missing approach over Ivato Airport RWY 11 (Antananarivo, Madagascar, my homeland) in a foggy CAT 3 day. Frame rates are still good even with the relatively old system I use to take this picture (Celeron 400 - 320 Meg of RAM and a Riva TNT2 32 Meg).

If you take a look at http://www.aerowinx.de's screen shots, there is strong similarity and this layout allows you more precise controls of the attitude in IMC approach and landing, something very essential in this case. The real 737 PFD shows very sharp image of attitude, I know it since I work for an airline that operates one.

Tovo Jean Michel Randria
rtjm@hotmail.com

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