the virpil panel competition has moved into stage 2 (community vote), amazingly 2 of my submissions are in the top 5 shortlisted for voting, (I submitted 6 designs in total) go to here to see : https://forum.virpil.com/index.php?/topic/929-helicopters-control-panel-community-competition-vote/
Variant #1 is my Ka50 ‘hybrid’ panel (my personal favourite)
Variant #2 is my UH-1 ‘hybrid’ panel
have a gander and feel free to vote (if you think they’re worthy) - much appreciated.
some of the others made it in other categories as well
Congratulations and thanks for sharing!
Promptly made an account to vote for your Jet panel. It looks perfect for data entry into the Mirage 2000 nav unit.
Really like the four lever axis on Option #3. I think all the options have utility, but my first thought when I saw those levers was how to use them for mixture, prop, supercharger, oil, water, cowl flaps, etc…
there are other panels for the piston and jet aircraft as well, but if you can use the one panel (helo) to cover all your flying, then all the better, it is a enviably good design, i didnt produce any rendered images of my panels, if I’d known how it presented i would have.
I wanted to do some panels for this competition, but never got around to it.
What I would totally love @vpc_virpil do is empty DIY boxes, with just the box, connectors and the electronics and the user could make their own button boxes.
They had a DIY lineup of products earlier. I hope they come back…
yup & thats one of the things that influenced my designs, they needed to be usable in both VR and 2D, so having a specific set of buttons that were easy to find & gain orientation, then reach for the appropriate switches whilst under the hood was definitely in my thinking.
It was quite interesting to look at some of the other submissions and see the similarities in some of the designs, just like when I went to build my DIY pedals and found the numerous solutions here that were like someone had been peeking over my shoulder…
it’s kind of scary sometimes, but funny to see how we all can come up with similar solutions to the same problem (with minor variations) when the same criteria are spepcified
As depressing as it is to watch the (helo) #3 solution run away with a solid lead
its obviously going to be more attractive to people who fly multiple airframes
The flexibilty to use it for Ka50 / Mi-8 / UH1 is going to be a big ticket item for its success.
…poo
But I knew that when I submitted the airframe specific panels that they were going to be targeted to that specific airframe and nobody is going to be able to justify a different panel every time they switch airframes…
…poo again
I also didnt consider putting any axis levers in any of my panels, trying to keep it to buttons and switches only.
Yeah I noticed your designs are really solid. Some of the ones who appear less optimal for most usecases seem to be going ahead of you because of the presence of axis levers. If only everybody got a chance to update their design after the first voting round… I have enough axes on all my controllers already, and the other button boxes with ‘numeric pads’ don’t have the proper buttons around them, so I am still hoping to be able to buy your Jet panel. Maybe post it in the Mirage 2000 subforum to get some more aimants de baguette on board?
I think only the winning panel of the competition in each category will be produced…
I may be mistaken, but in any case I’ve struck up a bit of a rapore with the Chief designer from all my design submissions and chatting about other ideas, so who knows…
Im hoping to be able to get hold of some blank panel cases so that I can produce an MFD panel and a CDU panel concept.
here’s hoping
)
