VISUAL AND AUDIO TRIALS.

BASIC AUDIO AUDIO SETUP.

Below is the basic audio setup that I installed into the “box” sim with notes to cover the different trials.

The “stereo in” is direct from the sound card of the computer. This feed 3 things …

1/. A standard computer amplifier sound system that had a “bass boomer” speaker

2/. A set of stereo aviation headsets. (Flightcom)

3/. A transducer with its own amplifier / filter.

Note for the purist’s: The impedance mismatch’s in the above wont matter two hoots.

Stereo system with “bass boomer”

This came with a new computer a few years back, but freely available and cheap so was the first choice to throw in the sim.. as it turned out.. a good choice.

It has its own amplifier and bass filter. Knobs to amplify the bass and the general volume.

The bass speaker is mounted below the flight yoke and aimed at the left and right of the sim and you can feel the vibs and the “booms” through the yoke and off the frame of the sim as you land or move the flaps etc. The general speakers are mounted either side of the forward monitor and as far away (forward) as the sim would allow.

This system worked great.

Transducer.

I got this out of a surplus “back-pack” thing for gaming computers. It has its own amplifier and filter thing (both adjustable)

From Jaycar electronics Australia…about $10.

I used an old seat out of a car as the pilots seat in the sim, but with getting in and out of the sim frequently it soon became evident that the seat was too soft for standing on… It was going to be buggered in a very sort time, so underneath the seat foam padding, but above the springs, I put a 15” square piece of chipboard to give support while getting in an out but didn’t really do anything while sitting on it….. It was this board I screwed the transducer to.

My conclusion ?? Very disappointed with it.. Felt like I was sitting on a vibrating chair… Got very bored with the “vvvvvv” on the bottom while everything else was “still”.... Tried different positions and mounts but ended up not using it. The “bass boomer” hitting you was far better.

Headset.

Always being disappointed with the audio mix of voice and engine noise on FS9 I tried a lot of headsets (Stereo, mono, military, junk ones, and computer ones) and finally bit the bullet and bought a stereo aviation headset and holly hell ! ! ! what a difference.

Good aviation headsets are made to pass-on the speech frequency of human voice and NOT the other frequencies so even the engine noise and the booms and bumps are not as loud as in ordinary headphones. Aviation headsets are useless for listening to music with… Got the idea ? ?

The ATC voice just jumps out at you when you are flying and there is no need to set the volume so they are louder than the other noises.

Mine has a switch for mono / stereo.. There is a hell of a difference between the two so make sure you get stereo ones.

It is intended to use the microphone side of things as an input to ATC or whatever.

Audio Conclusion

Using the “bass boomer” booming at you, you get the vibs on your body. General noise is provided by the 2 stereo speakers and the ATC gets to you via the headset.

Listening from outside the “box” sim, the noise level is not loud, if fact quite soft considering the noise inside the thing… although this will depend on the physical set-up of the sim. If it were in a room with some-one watching TV then they wouldn’t complain about the volume, only the boring repetitive noise of you flying from London to Sydney ! ! !

VISUAL TRIALS.

As I am ultimately building a moving sim, playing around with visuals has been a bit “add-hock” and limited to what I could do in the “box” sim.

I did try a few things using a single monitor that may be of interest to some-one going down that road.

CRT verus TFT.

No comparison here.. found this out by total accident… the CRT is harder on the eyes and really offers no ‘depth’… the only depth perception is in your head, where as a TFT (or LCD or whatever else they are called) seems to not project a “flat” surface that the CRT does and its easier for your brain to click over and see depth perception.

Fresnel lens.

Tried a Fresnel lens in front of a 17” CRT monitor and a 19” CRT monitor.. found it quite good except it gave me a headache with eye strain ?? after a half hour or so and the figures on the instruments were hard to read…. But it did give reasonable depth perception.

The depth perception was far better using a 17” TFT screen with the Fresnel lens but the instruments were still hard to read. Never used it long enough to see if the headache (eyestrain ??) was still a problem.

Visuals conclusion.

As I’m building a moving sim, I will wait and see what road I go down with visuals. Projectors, LCD/TFT/plasma screens are all coming down in price dramatically

and I am a while away from making a decision on this. As the screen has to move with the sim, I am tending towards large LCD’s being either 1 large (and I mean large) or 5 smaller ones (27”) for a 180 degree view.

Last updated 25-5-06