mock-up cockpits for SF

[delta6]

I am currently in charge of putting 4 - 6 aircraft cockpit/simulators together for the VietNam "River Rat" association, so these Viet Nam vets can play Strike Fighters and combat each other after drinking lot of booze. I am trying to find a decent website that sell pre-fab cockpits for home PC computers. I also need some tech support aon how I can rig up thes computer together so they can all fly togther. I know of sites on line to connect to, but worried about speed and performance when you have six guys flying together. Any help would be most greatful.

[+streakeagle]

Tech support for hooking up the PCs is easy...

I can get you there:

 

1. each PC has to have an ethernet port

2. each PC has to have a unique TCP/IP address on the same subnet with the same subnet mask, the simplest way to achieve this is with an off-the-shelf 4-port router which automatically configures the ethernet settings for any pc plugged into it.

3. If you are using only 4 pits, a 4-port router will do the job by itself since it can handle 4 pcs, if you are going to use more than 4, you have several options:

a. use a wireless router and make sure the additional PCs support wireless ethernet

b. get an 8-port switch and hook all of the pcs to the 8-port, then hook the 8-port switch to the 4-port router.

c. get just the 8-port switch and manually configure the ip addresses/subnet masks.

 

If you have internet, you may want to use the 4-port router so all pcs can share the internet connection.

If you don't have internet, you can fearlessly drop all firewalls/anti-virus software while playing to make connecting easier and more reliable.

 

So in short:

You need either a router, a switch, or both and an ethernet cable for each pc to be hardwired to the router or switch, possible needing one more cable to connect a router to the switch if you choose to get both.

I am against using wireless for this purpose since you want solid reliable fast comms for gaming.

If you have some cash (since this will cost a lot more than 10/100 ethernet hardware), make sure each PC has a gigabit ethernet port and that you use a gigabit ethernet switch to join them all together.

Most new PCs come with gigabit lan, so it is the switch that will cost a lot more.

 

The in-game interface makes it very easy to connect once you have all the pcs on a LAN together (i.e. hardwired to the same switch).

One person chooses to be host, the others refresh their list to find the host and join it.

If you had 6 pcs... you could have more than one host so that several different groups could be flying in separate games.

i.e. 1 guy could host a dogfight while another guy could host a coop, while the remaining people choose whichever host they want to play on.

[delta6]

Great info, thank you much!