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(Image credit: Jurassic Jets Team) A group of flight sim enthusiasts is building a complete sim rig in their garage using the cockpit of an old 747 jumbo jet. The Jurassic Jets Team , whose members’ backgrounds range from construction, engineering, and aviation, bought the cockpit of an old, decommissioned Boeing 747-300, and they used it as a base to construct an authentic flight simulator for X-Plane . What makes the project more challenging is that the 747-300 cockpit is fully analog, with gauges, dials, and other mechanical instruments that require signal processing for it to understand the data coming from the computer.
The team is rushing to complete the 747 flight simulator in time for WorldFlight 2025 — a one-week, 24/7 charity flight sim event with teams across the world flying from Sydney, Australia, all across Asia, Africa, Europe, the Americas, down to the Antarctic, then finally back to Sydney. This event will feature realistic air traffic control through the VATSIM network, and the Jurassic Jets Team thought that the best way to experience this is through building a sim rig from an actual airplane.
The deciding factor for the team was the release of the Felis 747-200 add-on for X-Plane. This added a highly detailed model of the 747-200 to the flight simulation platform, which was built using original data from Boeing, as well as support from numerous pilots and flight engineers who had flown the jet in real life. From here, they then considered building a sim rig from scratch or using a real airplane as a base — after crunching the numbers and scouring the internet for used parts, the team decided to buy the cockpit from an old Boeing 747-300 and use it for their build.
Legendary combat sim enthusiast builds frankly dangerous fighter jet rig
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Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/pc-gaming/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/pc-gaming/ambitious-enthusiasts-buy-entire-boeing-747-cockpit-in-race-to-build-flight-simulator-three-month-project-recreates-gauges-dials-and-other-mechanical-instruments-for-x-plane-sim#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com
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