I’m finally back at it. After several months not even desktop simming at all, instead playing Elite: Dangerous fairly obsessively instead, I’ve finally gotten back to the desktop sim project. I have had a fun afternoon with power tools, and I’m reasonably pleased with my labours.
Yes, it’s still coming. I know it’s April and so far nothing, and you’d be perfectly within your rights to assume I’d abandoned this blog, but I haven’t. Not quite. Things have gone extra-slowly mainly due to my being a bit lazy. But I now have a fully-equipped bedroom office, and in one corner of that is my minimalist temporary simpit. However, I have yet to play – or even install – FSX on it, because I’m spending most of my time playing Elite: Dangerous, and this isn’t an Elite: Dangerous blog.
It occurs to me that I haven’t actually posted since before my flat move, so you don’t actually know what’s gone on with my temporary desktop simpit. There have been a few changes. So it’s worth a brief post describing those.
This is one of those ‘sorry for not making posts’ posts that I never do.
Anyway, I’m still around, and still desktop simming. Or rather, I was, until I discovered a deep and abiding love for Elite: Dangerous (if you’re old enough to remember the original 1984 game, you will want to buy this modern sequel… trust me). Right now, that’s what my temporary pit is getting used for 99% of the time. Though having invested in TrackIR I’m curious to fire up FSX and see how it affects the game.
My house purchase has exchanged – woo-hoo! – and completion is due middle of the month, so by early September I’ll be all moved in and ready to start Version 3 of The Project.
My plan right now is to build a minimal shell-less pit in my back bedroom – probably some kind of MIP and a screen and a chair, and that’ll be about it – so I can just play a bit. Then, and this will likely have to wait until next summer now, since the UK weather will be turning to the rainy side in the not too distant future, I will look at putting up a garden shed in my new back garden to start building the new shell in. This will become the simulator’s final home. But building a sufficiently-sized shed is not a simple matter, nor is supplying the electrical power that it will need; and I already have sheds and other stuff down the bottom of the garden which will need to be cleared first.
So – the blog will remain desktop-sim oriented for the time being, and when I’m ready to start again I will archive off the old posts and start the blog anew.
My next post will probably be once I’ve moved and have started construction on the temporary back-bedroom project. See you then.
Today I received the final part I needed to get the desktop sim up and running again: a CH throttle quadrant. This may confuse you if you remember that I’m using a Saitek yoke which comes with its own TQ, and I’ve replaced this yoke with another, so I got another TQ with it. Why, then, buy yet another? It’s a complicated story, but then that’s what this blog is for, so listen very carefully; I shall write this only once.
I was planning on settling down to a good bit of simming over the long weekend – it’s a bank holiday in the UK on Monday – and to that end, I’d decided to try out the Mimo mini-touchscreen USB monitors I bought a couple of years back for The Project. At that point, the Display Link drivers didn’t play nicely with FSX, but I’d heard that the latest ones had proper DirectX support and so should do.
UPDATE: I’ve ordered replacements for everything. The Saitek Multi panel is just not available in the UK short of usury, but it turns out I can order it from Amazon US and go for expedited shipping which should have it here as soon as the stuff coming from Amazon UK – provided customs don’t get in the way. And cheaper than buying locally. Fingers crossed.
Evening all.
I said I’d come back, but I didn’t think it would be this soon. Turns out I like writing about flight simulation more than I thought. For the meantime, though, there has to be a change of emphasis for this blog. Which is why, in time-honoured tradition, I’ve re-titled it ‘The Mile High Geek In Exile’, because – for now – I’m exiled from my cockpit-building dream.
Rather than let the time between now and when I can resume construction go to waste, I decided to go back to where I started: Desktop simming. To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with desktop simming. Many enthusiasts never build a panel, attempt to replicate Korry switches out of acrylic cubes and LEDs, or use anything more sophisticated than a joystick. That used to be me, back in the day, before my crazy quest began. What killed desktop simming for me was Flight Simulator X.
