Beko Pharm Posted October 3, 2023 Share Posted October 3, 2023 First off: I usually don't engage in fandoms of any kind due to reason. Second: I usually do _not_ get my hands on official source material, as this stuff is hard to come by in my area for reasons we all know. So I may have some details wrong. Feel free to point them out in a constructive manner! What you see is a glorified DIY joystick controller with a LCD ('MFD') and plenty of RGB. It's design is based on a VF-1 (DYRL) and was modelled by me in Wings3D using source material from the Macross Mecha Manual (Kudos to whoever made this instrument drawing - had a good chuckle reading the inscriptions): http://www.macross2.net/m3/macrossdyrl/vf-1s-strike.htm http://www.macross2.net/m3/macrossdyrl/vf-1a-fastpack/vf1-dyrl-cockpit-instrumentpanel.png I say based because this is not an exact replica. The goal is to use it for playing PC games. Really any game so I'm keeping that part as stupid as possible. This is "just" another joystick for the PC - and am additional display connected via HDMI cable. Using all of it's features requires additional software, of course, but this is the basic design so any game could be played on the built in display OR next to it. I use it mainly to play Elite Dangerous, Star Citizen, X4: Foundations and plenty of other Space Pew Pew. I'm not aware of any Macross specific game for PC and never owned a PS 🤷 Anyway, after designing that I didn't do much with it for months. My previous version (own design) made of cardboard did the trick for quite a while. One of the final bumps to make me go was the 3D models of @Olitech Industries in the end, that I found during researching for that design. The rest is history ☺️ Important: This is still Work In Progress. I'm _still_ moving buttons around because I'm still not yet sure what I'll need but I do have a very good idea by now. This is to explain why some areas are still empty. I eventually started the build by exporting my model to STL. Inkscape made the scaling a breeze and after printing out 8 A4 papers I got the first impression how huge this would going to be in the end - and I almost stopped right there again. Next was preparing a lot of mock-up panels made from cardboard - something I have good experience with from my first version, that used my own design. When I was happy with the mock-ups I switched to wood. For this I sourced mostly from the local hardware store. Stuff they had available so I wouldn't have to pay for cutting services. The rest was done with the help of a jig saw, wood glue and staples. Wiring everything was quite a task. I did spend many evenings and sunk over 250 connectors into this - can totally recommend crimping pliers for this. I won't bore you with the details here. Next was the software part. The core of the contraption is an Arduino Mega that runs some custom code I wrote. It also controls the status indicators so whenever I get ship telemetry from games I can control individual RGB LEDs on a Neopixel string. The LEDs are not yet built on this picture but are sitting on the top as I used to have them on my first version. They eventually moved to the very retro styled orange housings. Kinda liked my own hexagonal housings too but what can I say… I'm a child of the 80s 🤷 The next step is a never-ending one as I'm tweaking and adjusting the HUD application as I go. Most of this I had figured out for version 1 already but decided to rewrite everything for the VF-1 variant mostly due to more "screen estate". The idea is to interface with games that allow that by parsing their ship telemetry data and logs and cram everything into a plumbing pipeline unifying the data format in a way that the HUD can understand without having to roll different versions of the HUD based on the games I play. This is the most custom part as interfacing with games is _hard_ - and most don't let the player do that and have to be… persuaded. Spent e.g. _weeks_ on hacking my way into X4 but I got it working in the end. So what's left to do? Well obviously building a complete cockpit around this 🤓 I may eventually go there but for now I just enjoy my Pew Pew gaming with what I have. I'm also still working on the finishing touches like deciding on the icons for the buttons: I'm still working on a walk-through demo video explaining what which part of the panel does. So… QnA time maybe? 😅 Is this a finished product? NO. Will it ever be? As well: NO. Can I build you one? NO. It's a project of passion. I'm not interested or qualified in making this my job. If you are inspired though (and I hope you are) and want to roll your own: Be my guest. I started a project page where I'm explaining all this in more detail: https://SimPit.dev - it's slow af, because it's hosted in my backyard, but ads and tracking free. I'm also steadily expanding this. Various demo videos exist also on YouTube or my PeerTube account and I foster a project page on Hackaday so pick your poison. My material is usually CC BY-SA 4.0 - I believe in fair sharing and adapting! I'm also available for questions or advice, of course, but implementing something like this to fit _your_ needs _will_ be up to you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hiriyu Posted October 4, 2023 Share Posted October 4, 2023 15 hours ago, Beko Pharm said: The idea is to interface with games that allow that by parsing their ship telemetry data and logs and cram everything into a plumbing pipeline unifying the data format in a way that the HUD can understand without having to roll different versions of the HUD based on the games I play. Pretty clever! Sounds like you've basically abstracted the HUD control to a driver, so that if/when a game is changed or updated you simply update the 'driver' and everything else still works as it had? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beko Pharm Posted October 4, 2023 Author Share Posted October 4, 2023 (edited) 3 hours ago, Hiriyu said: Pretty clever! Sounds like you've basically abstracted the HUD control to a driver, so that if/when a game is changed or updated you simply update the 'driver' and everything else still works as it had? More a service but yeah. My plumbing pipeline is in Node-RED. This allows for easy tweaking via a graphical interface and also provides the data via Websocket to any consumer interested. This way I can leave the rendering of the HUD to another PC and not burden my gaming PC with the additional display. Having the stuff on the wire allows this. It's not required though and may as well run on the same machine. My joystick daemon for example reads the values for the status indicators from this too and sends it back to the Arduino via Serial. One could also feed OBS with this for streaming. Same technique. I explain a bit more of this here but it is somewhat outdated since this is based on the preliminary testing where I still used an Raspberry Pi to develop the principle. This has yet to rewritten for the current system but the basics are still the same. My goal is to move this all over to a message broker like MQTT in the end. That's fine for now though as I am still tweaking this _a lot_ and time to work on this is at a prime :-/ Edited October 4, 2023 by Beko Pharm Fixed link to not use alias Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shawn Posted October 16, 2023 Share Posted October 16, 2023 I think I could watch TV through this thing! Incredible imagination with this build out-you are crazy!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beko Pharm Posted October 16, 2023 Author Share Posted October 16, 2023 I admit doing that xD It's just a display after all and another auxiliary screen for my PC most of the time. Yes, positive crazy. Thank you ❤️ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteveTheFish Posted October 23, 2023 Share Posted October 23, 2023 That is so cool. I'm a Linux enthusiast myself. I migrated to Mint Mate in February 2000, after MS stopped supporting Win7. I'd been meaning to migrate for a long time, and I was glad I did. A very liberating experience, and I haven't looked back since. I'd wished I'd done it sooner. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beko Pharm Posted October 23, 2023 Author Share Posted October 23, 2023 Glad to hear it worked out for you. Some don't make the jump and run back in terror 🤓 Personally my last was WinXP when I was fed up with this. I guess not much changed for the better 😆 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteveTheFish Posted November 2, 2023 Share Posted November 2, 2023 On 10/23/2023 at 4:26 PM, Beko Pharm said: Glad to hear it worked out for you. Some don't make the jump and run back in terror 🤓 Personally my last was WinXP when I was fed up with this. I guess not much changed for the better 😆 I suggested a while back to my Mac friend to give Linux a shot because he was tired of being pushed around too. Recently he migrated to Ubuntu Gnome and he likes it. I had suggested Ubuntu Mate, but I guess he's fine with Gnome. I personally hate Gnome, but he seems comfortable with it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beko Pharm Posted March 10 Author Share Posted March 10 Gave my VF-1 cockpit a good workout today 🤓 https://tube.tchncs.de/w/1nokGf66oWj34EdMvxYbSn / Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteveTheFish Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 So awesome! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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