The Finished Project

The whole set-up can be seen here.

The yoke now with extra switches to control all the lights, the flap switch is now on the throttle quadrant. The radio panel is in front of the second monitor where the radio stack is displayed. I put the GPS in a little space that is left. Sometimes I use the remaining space to display the throttle quadrant. The pedals on the floor are still the original Thrustmaster pedals. The metal pedals are my accelerator and brake pedal for use with my racing wheel. On the top right of the yoke box you can see a grey knob. This is a POV switch and there are two 2-way switches next to it (out of sight on the picture but visible on the next). I use the POV switch to control the point of view and this comes in handy when flying a visual circuit from the virtual cockpit. I use the switches to change views (e.g. back and forth between second and VC because I like to make the landing using the VC) and I can zoom in an out. I also like to fly in spot plane view.

The picture above shows the friction knob on the throttle quadrant and the flap switch. The flap switch needs to have a small airfoil fitted and then I can add the placards. The view switches are on the top right of the yoke box. The shape of the power, prop and condition levers can be clearly seen here.

Customising FS2004

To prevent having to set up your aircraft systems, views and additional windows you may want to customise FS a bit. Well, a bit? A lot!

Starting FS2004 With The Right Windows In The Right Place

This used to work flawlessly in FS2002. A saved flight would position all the windows in the right place. Now I found I had to switch to windowed mode, undock the applicable windows, move them to the second screen, go back to full screen on the first monitor, and then size and shape the windows on the second monitor. Saving a flight spared me the trouble of moving and sizing the windows on the secon monitor. I dug into the .FLT file which can be edited using Notepad. I found all the window settings, position, visible or not, etc. I noticed a parameter for undocking a panel. Simply changing a value from false to true seemed like the solution. Below is a part of a .FLT file. It stores all the variables for a saved flight. The FLT files are saved in "My documents\flight simulator files"

[Panel.2]
ScreenUniCoords=0, 1856, 8192, 4288
UndocCoords=0, 0, 0, 0
Visible=False
Undocked=False
HiddenOn=False
ID=0
ViewsOn=1

[Panel.3]
ScreenUniCoords=3080, 32, 5016, 5272
UndocCoords=1769, 134, 397, 635
Visible=True   (an indication that this panel is visible on start up of this flight.)
Undocked=True  (I changed this value from False (default) to True to start with this window undocked.)
HiddenOn=False
ID=50
ViewsOn=1

Upon Starting FS The Panels Were Not Undocked, Now What?

I fixed that by leaving FS while it was windowed, that way I would start up windowed. I found my extra windows on the second monitor when starting FS with this flight. After going back to full screen mode they were all in the right place. Now to find a nice way to let FS start windowed without having the need to put FS in a window each time I close it down. The FS9.cfg (where all FS settings are saved) is written on FS shutdown so I had to find a way to save my FS9.cfg and store it so it can't be changed. The FS9.cfg is in your personal folder in the "documents and settings folder". You will find if you search for FS9.CFG. I renamed it to FS9.Baron. I made a .BAT file with a copy command as well as a command to start FS2004. This copies and renames the FS9.baron to FS9.cfg an leaves my FS9.Baron intact. When finished it starts FS2004 with all my settings and of course in a window. This is the contents of the .BAT file (I call this one FSBARON.BAT)

copy fs9.baron fs9.cfg
d:\fs2004\fs9
exit

This way after starting FS I only have to press alt-enter and I am good to go.

You can make more of these .CFG files and .BAT files and start FS with the start-up situation, specific joystick assignments for jets or prop aircraft or an alternative way of programming your button/p>

I made a combination of .FLT and .CFG file for use with the King Air, the Baron and one which lets me use my Suncom stick and throttle when I want to fool around with an F-16 or do aerobatics.

Another reason for making saved flights is that you can make a flight that starts with all systems off. Start up FS with all the switches on your hardware in the off position and gear down. That way your hardware is in sync with FS. It can happen that a switch gets out of sync. I just flip the switch back and forth really quick and that usually does the trick. Or you can use the mouse or keyboard off course, but that's a last resort

This is a snapshot of my King Air start-up situation.

Realty XP

As some may have noticed, I use the Reality XP EADI and EHSI. I installed them in the Baron as well. The flight director in the default King Air EADI in FS is very bad, unfortunately. The Baron's artificial horizon is also not so good because it looks like it sticks when the aircraft pitches. That's the most important reason I use the Reality XP Jetline2. It makes accurate instrument flying and use of the flight director a real treat.

Panel Editing

As you can see on the last picture I edited the radio panel of the King Air to incorporate the autopilot and altitude pre-select. I like to fly in virtual cockpit mode and the second monitor is a nice place to put these. That's were they are in the VC by the way. Especially if you use two monitors editing the panels a bit can add a lot to the overall realism. Changing FS to match your hardware is easier than the other way round. Especially if the hardware has already been built.

Sound Of Multi Engine Aircraft

It almost seems like FS is never good enough for me. Well for most advanced users (I do believe I can say I'm one of them) there is always something to bitch about.

Let's bitch...

When having a prop control for each engine I want to be able to synchronize the 2 engines. In a real twin this can be done by listening and you can hear a kind of pulsating sound when the engines do not run at the same RPM. It's almost like, I'm sorry, it is like tuning a guitar or other musical instrument. Adjusting one engine so it runs at the same speed as the other and the pulsating stops. But what have they done! MS coupled the most important engine sounds in FS to throttle position. Closing the throttle at 180 kts and the engines still running at 2300 rpm will produce an idling sound, yeelch In a real piston twin this does not happen! The sound barely changes when changing the throttle, as long as the RPM is the same. From 15" to 24" MAP does not change the sound, only when the governor can't keep up and the RPM changes a bit. The sound character may change a bit, sounding a bit heavier at high power.

Enough of my bitching!

I did something about it. I edited the sound.cfg of the Baron and the King Air. These can be downloaded here: modu.zip.

It still surprises me no one wrote an op-ed on this subject. It also surprises me no add-on developer made a sound set to correct it (I could have missed it, and if I did please tell me!)

The sound.cfg uses flags to assign a sound to a certain parameter. 2 and 4 are prop variables depending on blade angle. The combustion section is the most important sound. On the Baron I needed to double the combustion section (due to the blade angles; otherwise the sound would die under certain circumstances). I changed the flags on the combustion section to 2 and 4 and linked them to the already existing prop section in the .cfg file, effectively leaving no combustion section. I did have to leave 1 original combustion section to keep the start-up sound effect transition to idle sounding right. I had to edit the parameters in the .cfg file a bit to make a nice transition to the prop only part of the .cfg file.

On the King Air I only needed to change the flags, and link the prop section to the old combustion section. Works like a charm, I just lose the heavy sound when I feather the prop. I could probably solve it, but I have not gotten around to it.

Instructor Station

One nice feature I hardly hear anybody talk about is the instructor station. With a set-up like the one I've got I would be able to let people train procedures or even some basic instrument flying, using the instructor station to track the flight. Also advanced training for FS fanatics would be a real possibility. Assessment of the approach flown is possible with the instructor station. It also provides a means for the instructor to act as ATC for a "student".

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