Paccus lauched the Hawk joystick on the Flightsim exhibition at FSC Weston on May 14, 2011.
This show is hosted by Simon Tolley who gave us a warm welcome.
This Flightsim weekend is held at the Weston Helicopter museum where quite some extraordinary helicopters are shown. During this weekend some of the cockpits were open for the public and many visitors could sit in the pilots seat for a moment.
Highlights of the exhibitors:
Mutley’s Hangar www.mutleyshangar.com brings original cockpit instruments back to life for use in simulators. David and Jack are critical guys and they were blown away when they used the Paccus Hawk.
Spitsim www.spitsim.co.uk has realistic Spitfire controls. Combine that with an aeroplane body of www.creativecockpits.com and your Spitfire experience comes to life.
The Virtual Red Arrows www.virtualredarrows.com had an interesting setup, a large quarter dome screen with 2 projectors that create a near surround view. I can imagine a screen like that can make a simulation very real for the pilot.
Moving and vibrating flight seats are also becoming more mainstream like this helicopter chair that can tilt or the vibrating chair with the ButtKicker from www.modularsim.com
I checked out this chair and combined with the large screen and the sound, the vibration makes it very real and I noticed being pulled into the sim. For a moment the hall was completely gone. Just me flying a jet that occasionally suffered from some turbulence.
Outside the museum is a helicopter scrapheap near the helicopter landing area. Old carcasses waiting for their second life or being ripped apart to complete another heli of the same type. Here you could get into a heli and be flown around for 6 minutes to see everything from above.
Power and realism
For the Hawk joystick it was the first presentation in the producable form. Everybody who touched it was very impressed. With the hydraulic feedback switched off, helicopter pilots unanimously agreed that it feels like it is a real helicopter. It feels smooth, light and has no center point or dead area around its center position. This allows for very precise movements and comes close to the real thing. At least when the aircraft has a seat stick.
With the hydraulic force feedback active again, everybody was impressed about both the precision and the smooth feeling combined with very fierce and strong force feedback coming from the flightsim. Most flightsim pilots are not into combat flying, but they all loved the feeling of the recoil when they pulled the trigger to take down the enemy. It gave them a real sense of power and realism.
What people said about the Hawk
Nearly everybody who tried the joystick was more than happy to tell you about it on video.
The guys from Sky High Radio www.skyhighradio.co.uk gave us the 70’s and 80’s music all weekend and I loved it. Is that because of my age or is it just because the music from that time was absolutely unparalleled in greatness?? Only one drawback, it created quite some background noise that made the video testimonials of enthousiastic visitors a bit harder to decipher. (Follow this link to see the video’s with transcriptions.)
Auction
Sunday afternoon Simon held an auction. A lot of flightsim gear and related personal objects found their way to new owners. Everything was donated by the exhibitors in one way or the other and Simon auctioned his collection of framed aircraft pictures. I tried to get the Thrustmaster Wharthog, but it was sold way over my personal budget. Next time I hope to have a better chance.
Wonderful people
Well, that’s about it for now. Everybody that I did not mention, you were great as well. All the sim builders, repair and restore guys, the ‘scary gals’ who can make you look very injured, ‘sweets Tanya’ and the rest, you were all wonderful in this very nice event.
FS Weekend Lelystad
I really hope to see you all overhere at the FS Weekend in Lelystad www.fsweekend.com on November 5 and 6, 2011.
We are working hard to make a unique setting by getting together some builders and exhibitors in one large stand. It’s our dream and goal to have this simulation setup:
A cockpit from Creative Cockpits for instance, put on a tilting plateau, a ButtKicker in the chair and a Paccus seatstick in the chair. Large screens for optimum view and good speakers with subwoofers that allow all low and high frequencies to be heard and sensed. Real instruments in the cockpit and off you go. Guaranteed to lose any sense of reality and get immersed into the flying.
If anyone is interested in joining the stand, looking for lodging or someone who has things to contribute to this simulation dream, just drop me an e-mail at tjark@paccus.com.
No guarantees, but we’ll see what we can do.