A group of flight sim enthusiasts is building a complete sim rig in their garage using the cockpit of an old 747 jumbo jet. The Jurassic Jets Team, whose members’ backgrounds range from construction, engineering, and aviation, bought the cockpit of an old, decommissioned Boeing 747-300, and they used it as a base to construct an authentic flight simulator for X-Plane. What makes the project more challenging is that the 747-300 cockpit is fully analog, with gauges, dials, and other mechanical instruments that require signal processing for it to understand the data coming from the computer.
The team is rushing to complete the 747 flight simulator in time for WorldFlight 2025 — a one-week, 24/7 charity flight sim event with teams across the world flying from Sydney, Australia, all across Asia, Africa, Europe, the Americas, down to the Antarctic, then finally back to Sydney. This event will feature realistic air traffic control through the VATSIM network, and the Jurassic Jets Team thought that the best way to experience this is through building a sim rig from an actual airplane.
