Framework

14th JUNE 2016 

The framework for the cockpit is the bit that will hold everything together, mostly it wont be seen, but getting the dimensions right is fairly important so that everything fits together and has the correct shape overall.

Originally I was going to build the frame out of wood. The front panel of the cockpit was wood, and wood is relatively cheap as well as easy to work. I didn't have much experience with metal so hadn't considered it at all.



I used to work for a motion capture company in Brighton, and they used to build all kinds of crazy contraptions, some of which were built out of aluminium extrusion profile. It all bolts together without too much work so seemed fairly easy to work with. A few years later the company was clearing out some of the older structures and not being one who likes to see waste, I ended up inheriting a large amount out this aluminium.

 

Aluminium Profile

At about the same time I also got given a spare office chair from a friend, and I decided that It would do as at least a temporary seat for the simulator. So I bodged together a base out of the aluminium and managed to bolt the seat to it. As often is the way with these things, a rough bodge together seems to work quite well, and ends up remaining in the final construction.

This base was perfect for mounting the flight pedals and joystick that I discussed in my last post. The groves in the profile allow me to easily re-position the pedals depending on the height of the pilot.

Pedals which can be adjusted backwards and forwards

  

I made a few attempts to plan the rest of the cockpit dimensions, but realised fairly early on that it would be impossible to get the ergonomics of the controls as well as visibility correct on paper, so experimented with the positioning of the front console by building some rough stands. Its a good job that I did this, as it really is amazing how many things can be a problem that you don't foresee. Things such as the joystick blocking the visibility of the computer screens and getting enough visibility over the top of the control panel but without your legs bashing the bottom of it when using the rudder pedals. In the end I decided on the correct position having played a few flight sims using all the controls.

At this point I got very busy, as well as moving house, and so the whole simulator ended up dismantled in pieces buried in my junk room, under lots of other junk. There was so much work to be done on it that I seriously questioned if the project would continue.

Luckily a chance find restored my enthusiasm for the project again. About 3 years ago I found a post on the RPF forum where someone, had worked out exactly what seat had been used for the original X-Wing cockpits. Turns out it was a custom rally car bucket seat made in the 70s by an British company called Terry Hunter. No one had found an actual seat, but there was a photo of one as well as an old magazine advert for Terry Hunter seats.

Terry Hunter bucket seats were used in the original x-wing cockpits

 

 



The original RPF post where the discovery was made can be found here:

http://www.therpf.com/showthread.php?t=73360

 

 

 

Although I wasn't too bothered about having the right seat (after all, you don't see it when you're sitting in the thing), I did think it would be pretty cool if I could get the right one. I checked ebay every month for over a year and didn't find anything apart from similar looking but very expensive Porche seats, so stopped checking regularly. Then, just before last Christmas, I decided to check on the off chance (the usual "classic bucket seats") and bang... first item on there.... Not only that, only £40 "buy it now". So I went up to Norfolk to check it out and was in fairly good condition apart from a few small marks. Perfect.... Turns out that it had been in a fairly famous car that had won the world rally at some point. The car had ended up in a museum for years and then recently some guy had bought it, with the intension of racing it again. Due to modern safety regulation, the whole of inside of the car needed tearing out and modern seats fitting (what!! you mean Luke Skywalker was flying in a seat that wasn't fireproof.... ).

My bucket seat from Norfolk

Having got my new seat, I couldn't wait to figure out how to mount it to my base so got everything out of storage.... Goodbye living room....

With minor modification, the seat bolted to the base surprisingly easily as everything uses M8 bolts.

That was easy

Having started building the base out of aluminium profile, It seemed easiest to build up the sides also with the same profile as it can all be adjusted easily. It also meant that the control panel and sides would be pretty strong, especially in the long term, if I ever decide to mount to a motion rig in the future. Having worked out the right positioning for the control panel, I was able to order the aluminium cut to size.

And here are some stills of my friend Wilx attempting to shoot some tie fighters in the simulator.

Now all I need to do is make the whole thing look good....

　

　

　

Controls

24th MAY 2016 


It's been a very long time since my last blog entry about my attempt to build a full size x-wing cockpit, and I've received a few messages asking me if the project has died.... In fact, no, it has come on quite a long way, its just been that my time has been incredibly tight over the last 2 years working on various films as well as other projects. Much of my spare time has been put towards building and programming for the x-wing, rather than blogging about it. However, all of the positive messages and interest I have received has encouraged me to get back on it...

Incidentally, as a side note, one of the jobs I did in 2014, was working on VFX for Disney's live action Cinderella for 6 months at Pinewood studios, the first "big film" I had worked on, which was exciting. Whilst I was there, security was insanely tight because of a certain film that was also being filmed at the studios, I'm sure most of you can guess what film. I didn't get to see that much, as the studio doors were usually shut, but the highlight was seeing the full size new style x-wing cockpit on a motion rig that was being filmed outdoors on the back lot. I noticed straight away that the dimensions were off, which gave a clue to the redesign. I won't get into what I thought about episode 7, but I don't mind the new x-wing design, although I think the original looks better overall.. Other cool things I saw at Pinewood was the top gun section of the Millennium Falcon, some moisture vaperators, a half covered up crashed tie fighter, and Harrison Fords air ambulance when he broke his leg....

　
 
Targeting Computer

Anyway, back to my cockpit...... A lot has happened since my last blog, so I need to think back over 2 years. Not long after my last post, I got the targeting computer working.

 

Original Targeting Computer

 

My Targeting Computer





I put quite a bit off effort into matching the original, even down to the slight trail on the image. For my first version, the image was being generated by a separate program that I wrote and sent to the screen using a Blackmagic video output card. The targeting data could be sent from the main game using a local network connection.

I've actually been working on the game (I mean simulator) for a few years now and its coming together. I'll do a separate blog post about it, as there's lots to show and talk about, but here's a cheeky preview:

My X Wing Game

 

 

The blackmagic card can be a bit temperamental, and also having a separate program added some unnecessary complication as well as having some performance issues. I had already re-implemented the targeting computer in my xwing game (see screenshot), and in the end, I decided that I would run the targeting computer through a standard HDMI output from my main graphics card and reprogram the main game to use a second monitor. This improved performance and meant that I can also easily program other features such as a radar, damage monitor, hyperspace computer without having to worry about complicated protocols to get the data across to a separate program.

　

Pedal Controls

I knew early on that I wanted full controls including a joystick, throttle and foot pedals. I already had a joystick with built in throttle and a twist for pedals, but always wanted the full experience using foot pedals. I looked into commercially available foot pedal game controllers, but wasn't too impressed with the options. Without going high end and spending a fortune, they all seem to be quite plasticy and not very solid. At the same time I noticed my sister had an exercise stepper machine lying around and It caught my eye. It was pretty solid and I realised that upside down, it could maybe work quite well as flight pedals. So my sister wasn't best please when she found out I had taken it all apart, but when I asked her if she had used it at any time in the last 5 years she said nothing, ha.

Stepper Machine...Or Flight Pedals?

In order to make it work, I needed to fit a potentiometer (or pot) to measure the movement. To read the pot and make a USB game device I used a Teensy 3.0 like I mentioned in my previous blog post. Originally I had quite a neat solution using a rotation pot fitted inside the stepper to read the motion of the bar that takes the weight of both pedals. In the end I decided that the accuracy of the data was too limited and jittery as there was only a few degrees of rotation being used to read the full range of movement. So I decided in the end to use a linear pot mounted externally to read the data, more ugly, but when correctly positioned, can read the full range of motion giving accurate clean data...Nice.

Pedals (Obviously still need painting)

 

Pedals + Feet

Linear potentiometer to read the position of the pedals.

Ugly but it works.

 

Joystick and Throttle
Now the main joystick for the simulator was at one point going to be a blog post all on its own. What with the time and effort put in, and the amount different things I tried. In the end, it was a mostly wasted effort as I took a different solution in the end.

I had decided that I was going to try and make my own joystick from scratch, as mounting a PC joystick into the simulator was going to look awful, what with the big bulky base they all have. There was a big bit of metal with curves in it that came off the stepper machine, and at the right angle, kind of looked like it could be the base of a joystick. So I drew up some plans and got to work.

Rough joystick design

It was going to be mounted to the base of the cockpit, which would be fine for forwards and backwards (pitch) motion, but would hit your legs for left and right (roll )motion. So in the end I went for a Spitfire style design, where by the whole stick goes forwards and backwards, but only the top part goes left and right.

Spitfire Control Stick

 

My Design

 



The base was fairly easy, I made a block out of delrin and used 2 pots as the bearings with which to mount the stick to the block. The block could then be bolted down. The center springs could be external so was fairly simple to mount, although still needed some experimenting to get the right tension.

Base section of joystick

The tricky bit that drove me mad was the top section with the left right (roll). I needed to measure the rotation with a sensor, plus also have a spring or several springs to center the stick. I got very close several times by making my own springs by bending rods of metal, but getting the right tension in the spring and solidly fixing it proved too problematic. In the end, I went for a more advanced solution, involving a geared down motor with a built in rotation encoder. This solved the problem in one as the sensor picked up the rotation and the motor itself could provide a centering force depending on the position of the stick. Again I used a teensy 3.0 to read the data as well as control the motor using an H-Bridge chip and external 12V power supply. The other neat thing is that the motor would have enabled force feedback on the stick. I got as far as experimenting with a slight jolt every time the guns were fired.

Original custom spring approach

Motor with encoder solution

The working joystick

I mounted the trigger at the back of the stick, also inspired by the Spitfire stick. There was also going to be some other controls on top.

The design of the stick was meant to represent the stick seen in A New Hope (hence the boxy block on top of the stick), but I wasn't trying to do a perfect replica. In the behind the scenes photos the stick looks quite impractical, and for me ergonomics and practicality are taking precedence over screen accuracy, especially as the stick is seen for under a second in the film, and I think not at all in the Empire and Jedi.

You can just about see the shape of the original joystick in this behind the scenes still from ANH.

Stick in use. Notice the control box bottom right where all the wires end up.

My stick actually worked ok, and I had many hours of flying time in flight simulators such as Cliffs of Dover, and Rise of Flight without the motor ever burning out (it got quite hot after extended use).  However, in the end I made the tough decision to scrap the stick, and use a commercially available option after all.


I was looking into building a throttle, and was realising that the chances of making it look great were rather slim, as well as getting the right tension and smoothness. So I looked at the best options that I could buy and came across the Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog, a replica of the A10 Warthog joystick and throttle. At £300 for joystick and throttle it's one of the most expensive consumer setups you can buy. In the end I couldn't resist due to the solid construction and sheer number of switches. I mainly bought it for the throttle unit, but I was also toying with the idea of swapping out my joystick also. The base of the stick unlike any other I have seen was fairly compact and is bolted to a heavy metal plate which can be removed. The stick is made of metal and the smoothness and accuracy made my mind up in the end.

Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog

Throttle and Joystick

 

The stick is temporarily fixed with a lot of black electrical tape.

I roughly mounted the Thrustmaster stick to the original metal base of my joystick, and realised that I could use the original forward/backward motion as a way of moving the joystick out of the way when getting in and out of the cockpit. I was originally going to have a spring and locking mechanism to keep it in place, but I now think I'm actually going to try and automate the movement with a linear actuator which would be far cooler...


Side Control Buttons

 One other input I have, in addition to the Pedals, Joystick, Throttle and Front Panel, is two button panels for the right hand side opposite the Throttle. I found these in a skip outside a film lab in London where I was doing some work. They would have been used for video switching between different inputs and would have been rack mounted. With a fair amount of trial and error I was able to work out the wiring of the buttons in order to make them individually light up as well as work as inputs. With a Teensy device in each box they both act as a separate game controller.

2 video switchers for side panel buttons. I think they look suitably 70s. 

Anyway, hope you've enjoyed this update. This project is most certainly not dead!

More to come very soon....