My new flight setup

As of now I have a slightly different flight simulation setup. I began with some thinkering and with some precision carpentry and ingenuity I created a 2nd extension (the 1st was to hold and remove the flight sim yoke) to make the best of the little space I have.

This second extension basically adds an arm on my right side on the table. Now I have placed there my mouse which I can use more freely now. Most importantly I have now placed there as well my old Dell Inspiron 7500 laptop.

So, basically on the main part of the table I have my TFT 17" monitor for my primary flight display and forward view from the "captain" chair. There is the usual keyboard which is pushed back -yet accessible- when I have my Flight Sim Yoke installed. Beneath are the 5.1 speaker set for ambiance and the Pro Pedals.

On the main PC which is currently an Intel 3.0GHz machine with 1GB main memory and an nVidia 6200 video card with 256MB dedicated video memory. Here I run the flight simulator, the FS Realtime application to synchronize the flight simulator with the real time of the location being flown, including seasons and time zone changes.

The 2nd PC is actually a very old laptop (1999) which is now being put for something useful. It is connected via a router/firewall to the main PC. On this laptop I run the IvAe (The Eye of IVAO) application to monitor online flight/ATC activity around the world on the IVAO network. I can see who is going where.

Most important is that on this secondary display I can now run the IvAp application so that it does not occupy space on my primary flight display. So, in short I can now have in my secondary display a view of IvAe as well as the IvAp for textual interaction with ATC and virtual pilots in the vicinity, ATC frequency, transponder and an open view of the TCAS display.

Having the TCAS together with the main IvAp window in another display allows me to better keep track of Traffic Advisories and Resolution Advisories to 40 nm of my position.

It is only a pity that my laptop is not powerful enough to show textures on the IvAe application.

Did I forget to say I bought the FS Realtime? nice tool that keeps the flight simulator time to the real world time of the area.

Also, another change is that I have setup my simulator with another notch of realism (given the limitations of a freeware aircraft from KittyHawk). Now when I initiate the session I have a cold dark cockpit, that means I have to start the engines myself. Rather than using the FS shortcut (CTRL+E) to start both engines, I start the engines manually which is slightly more realistic. One day I hope to buy one of the commercial aircraft packages in which the whole startup sequence is implemented in detail.