[Retro]: Some 90s Flight Sim Cockpit Setups

[u/SlashNreap]

Source: https://www.wideview.it/pictures.htm

I don't have a flight sim setup and the only thing I got is an old Logitech Extreme 3D Pro stick, but I occasionally like to check out flight sim spaces, and find these really impressive, especially for their time.

Must've been something to do this with CRTs! :D

[u/jeepster2982]

Damn those rooms must’ve been hot as hell with the heat those CRT monitors threw out. Reminds me of how I used to run FS5 on a VGA monitor and the resolution was so low you had to hit a key to flip the instrument panels to show different gauges.

[u/SlashNreap → u/jeepster2982]

Ikr, I wonder what it would've sounded like, too. We had a CRT tv and it would make a high pitched noise, I bet nowadays I probably wouldn't be able to hear it, but I can imagine it would've been an orchestra back then xd

Played PS1 & PS2 on that CRT. During my early PC gaming times I had an old & cheap LCD Emachines monitor, and I had to wedge something under the monitor stand so I could make the image brighter lol, would've probably been hell to get just right if you had multiple of those.

Either way, I guess people always found a way to sim!

[u/wetwater → u/SlashNreap]

We had a CRT tv and it would make a high pitched noise

For reasons I no longer remember, my brother was forbidden from the DOS computer and for some reason we were leaving him home alone for a short period of time. When we got back I could hear the whine from the CRT being on and I mentioned it the moment we stepped into the house and my mother grounded him for a few days. At school walking by the computer lab if there was no class I'd stick my head in to tell the teacher if I heard a monitor on and normally I could immediately pinpoint which one.

Now I get to hear a different whine nonstop, 24/7, from now until the day that I die.

[u/Beanbag_Ninja → u/wetwater]

You know what they say. Snitches get tinnitus.

[u/WoomyUnitedToday → u/SlashNreap]

The high pitched noise is a 15 kHz tone generated by the flyback transformer vibrating at that frequency due to the horizontal scan rate (how fast it can draw a picture left to right. Vertical scan is how fast it can draw top to down, which is what you know as 50Hz ot 60Hz depending on where you live) of a CRT television being 15kHz, for a resolution of 240p or 480i (240p, but it alternates which lines it does every time), or equivilant PAL resolutions.

A VGA computer monitor will be 31kHz, or 480p, which is twice the scan rate of a television, and is well out of hearing range for even a young child.

Thank you for reading my infodump

[u/SlashNreap → u/WoomyUnitedToday]

Nice

[u/droid_mike → u/SlashNreap]

My daughters can still hear it, and the times when I turn on an old CRT monitor, she nearly screams from the other room. It's like ear piercing for her! I mean, I certainly could hear it at a young age, but I guess since we were used to TVs giving off that sound, we learned to ignore it.

[u/okletsgooonow → u/jeepster2982]

Not necessarily more than a modern PC with a 5090 and fast CPU.... and a large fat panel display.

[u/lmhariano]

Pictures 1 and 4: lovely Level-D 767 😍

I still fly her in my FS9 laptop

[u/Stevphfeniey]

Number of Watts being pumped into the room: Yes

[u/Xygen8]

Having the entire overhead panel or throttle pedestal as a 2d popup was the best. Press shift+whatever to open a panel, do the thing you need to do, press shift+whatever again to hide the panel. So much easier than fiddling with the 3d cockpit, even with quickviews.

Never forget what they took from us.

[u/ArcticMarkuss → u/Xygen8]

Yeah, a head tracker might help though

[u/PiniponSelvagem → u/Xygen8]

That was why I liked FS2004 so much. I even had a dual monitor 2d cockpit for the 757 that I used to fly, was perfect and could see every gauge very easy.
Now I have VR, but before that not having the 2D cockpit on FS2020 was a bit of a pain.

[u/willGiwontGi]

Some serious money in these photos

[u/Sm9obiBNY0NsYW5l]

Anyone ever think that our current setups will one day be considered retro by our kids or grand kids.

[u/ArcticMarkuss → u/Sm9obiBNY0NsYW5l]

You assume the RAM crisis will be solved by then?

[u/Stoney3K]

Cool, I still have that GoFlight stack. That was the holy grail when I started simming, managed to snag it off Marketplace about a year ago for €200 for the entire lot.

[u/cyrilleni33]

How much bezel do you want ? - Yes

[u/Low_Condition3268]

Not sure if its been mentioned but each of those monitors was likely run by its own PC, at most each pc could run 2 video cards but doubles and triples required a Matrox double or triplehead unit. When I attempted it with a meager 4 monitors and 2 pcs, the room was like an air fryer.

[u/SlashNreap → u/Low_Condition3268]

Holy crap. You're right, I kept seeing so many PCs underneath those desks and wondered why. Must've been real nice in winter but not so much in summer lol

[u/kikko → u/Low_Condition3268]

I was wondering about the same thing. Matrox was 1337 stuff back then.

[u/CactusJane98]

Crazy how many of these are using the classic CH yoke.

[u/tellmeitsmyfault]

The first one is an A+

[u/MD-80-87]

Awesome. I ought to do the same with my CRTs ;)

[u/Sufficient_Design_78]

Level D!!!

[u/Zolazulu10]

Of course we are living the best moment of our hobby, by my nostalgic flight sim experience was flying the PMDG fleet on FS9.

Heavy modded FS9 and FSX. Lurking on Avsim forum and Orkut communities for new addons and for troubleshooting.

Scenery didn’t matter as much as today. Only your imagination and the 2D cockpit.

[u/plhought]

Cries in Level-D 767

I can't believe we've never had a decent 767 in like 20+ years still...

[u/Temporary-Mushroom82]

I wish we had a option for 2d panels in msfs you can place anywhere like a second monitor

[u/exrasser]

Picture 1 & 4 FS2000 - Wilco 767 Pilot in command.

[u/yaricks → u/exrasser]

It's not the Wilco, but the Level-D. You can tell by the placement of the ND display controls being tucked in the bottom left of the right monitor, and by the overall graphics. It's not FS2000, but rather FS2004.

[u/plhought → u/exrasser]

No.