I am starting to work on an overhead now. Its time, the LCD is great but I need real buttons! The overhead, in my opinion, is one of the biggest parts of a sim builders project. I have a lot of work ahead of me.

One thing I noticed is that no matter what manufacture you go with, they don’t have realistic landing light switches.They might have white caps but they do not look like a 737′s landing light switches.

If you look in the Builders Links & Info section, you’ll see that Simparts.de sells replica landing light switches for €36 each.

I live in the US so with the current conversion rate, I’d be looking at nearly $200 for replica switches.

So I decided to look around and happened to find a site online that sells real aircraft parts. (I have a few listed already in the builders section) Turns out, they had 4 landing light switches, in excellent condition, for only $160! REAL parts, in excellent condition, cheaper then replica parts! What a score!

I placed the order today and should be receiving them in the weeks ahead! Very happy I found these!

I just learned about Aviator 90, a multiple series of video flight tutorials taught by a real world pilot, to teach simmers how to fly like you would for real!

“90 days, 45 lessons, basics of virtual aviating, ALL FREE”

Very cool! Check them out!

I just found out about this software yesterday. Its called EZdok Camera and it does all sorts of camera effects to make you feel like you are in a real plane. It does not work with the TrackIR hardware, so if you have one, don’t bother with this software.

Also I found out that I could go into the model.cfg file for the default 737 and comment out (by adding two // in front of the interior line) the virtual cockpit panels. So, I’m in VC view, but the panels and everything are gone. So, in my sim, this works great! I still have an “outside” view, with the effects… no software/virtual panels but can still pan around like in a VC.

Here are a couple youtube videos:

Recently picked up TweakFS’s Screenshot Toolbox. It has a 30 day demo, and is software designed to automatically take screenshots for you while you fly. There is “some” manual control but the main purpose is to do it for you. Along with that, it offers a lot of cool options. You can add watermarks, logos or banners to your images automatically, save them as other formats and even upload them via ftp somewhere.

You can see some of my screenshots using this software here

I received my first real piece, the FDS MIP, on July 21st 2009… In 9 months my sim has encountered an amazing transformation from this:

To This!

I just want to thank all the manufactures out there of hardware and software alike, that have spent countless hours making this dream of mine possible!