I went to bed at 01:30 but Tim was up for a little bit more longer than that. He informs me in the morning that his last commit was 03:30. I like having found a likeminded night owl! As we drink coffee, we talk abit about Tim’s new [AS214380.net] project which he is doing in Hugo. We talk a bit about themes and its structure, and end up getting the formatting he had in mind. He scrambles to write some content, and even ends up adding a few blog posts! An aspiring writer, I like it!
Tonight we’ll be eating a cheese platter, with ingredients that we fetched from the Globus yesterday. But today I’m also making an onion soup and fresh bread to go with the cheese. Marina is so kind as to chop three large onions for me, as I have a little bit of a visual migraine coming up and I don’t want to chop off a limb. I’ve noticed that if this happens, eating some sugar and drinking caffeine helps - so I yeet an espresso into my throat and eat an R,G,B triplet of sugar aligators while hanging out on the couch for a few minutes. It’s gone as quickly as it came.
In the early afternoon we go downstairs and work on the simulator a bit and continue the story arc of Tim’s visit: getting this thing up and running smoothly. It’s not going too well yet, as the simulater is constantly crashing. Also, the flihgt instrument panels are not working at all.
After a few hours we decide: screw that, we’re going to do something more fun! Tim is an enormous LEGO fan and he has a [Lego Passport], which I quickly agree is a fun program to let fans explore the stores, discover new sets, and collect unique stamps along the way. Tim is delighted to learn there is a LEGO store in the local Glatt Zentrum, and in a premeditated act, has brought his passport with him to Zurich. As we arrive to the LEGO store, he is greeted by a very friendly chap who immediately grabs not one but two stamps, and the grin on Tim’s face speaks volumes. Good job!
Then it’s off to the store we go, for a little bit of speciality kit. Tim and I buy six cheeses that will go with our cheese plate tonight, Marina buys black truffle for our risotto later this week, and I buy a few teas from [Mariage Frères], which is my favorite tea.
Back in Brüttisellen, we decide to abandon our efforts for X-Plane 10, and instead reinstall the entire computer with Windows 11 and try to buy Microsoft Flight Simulator, which claims to have out of the box support for these Saitek flight instrument panels. Maybe it’s an X-Plane issue? As often the case, purchasing things on the internet are difficult. Yesterday, I tried three or four times to buy MSFS, but Microsoft keeps on saying that the store country is not the same as my account country. So this new install will have a new e-mail address and country which we know to match. And yes, with that new stuff, we are able to finally give MSFT their cash in return for a 157 gigabyte download. Luckily, I have a good ISP :-)
As this thing chomps along, we decide to calorie-up with the eleven different cheeses. As a quick starter, a french onion soup with toasted bread and cheese gratin. It is an absolute killer. Then, we chomp away and attack our cheeses only to find that several hours later, our bellies are round while in fact, most of the cheese is still where it was when we started. I think we’ll be eating cheese for the next few weeks, before we finally win the battle.
Meanwhile, in the lair, Microsoft has sent me all the bits and pieces to be able to run MSFS. However, it doesn’t even make it past its god damn splash screen. The computer locks up and reboots every single time. Man, this is frustrating. But, Tim has found yet another issue. One of the USB cables that connects a flight panel is shorting out, which means that the other panels on that USB hub are not detected. This is why I can only see - at best - five out of ten of the FIPs work.
I go to [Digitec] and find a sassy new video card, and nVIDIA has fallen out of graces, so we try our luck with a AMD RADEON RX 7700 XT, which has good reviews but sets me back a pretty penny. I also throw in two USB v3 hubs to rule out that the short is from the hub rather than the cable. The FIP itself works fine though.
As I’m reading up on forums on how to get this stuff to work, I complain that it should be easier than it is for us. You should be able to just plug this stuff in, install the Saitek drivers, and run a sidecar app that queries MSFS or X-Plane and renders the telemetry on the screens. But why is it so hard (that’s what she said)?
Then I find that there’s some guy on the internet who also believed it should be easier, so he went and made it easier: [SPAD.Next] is a website with a Simulation Panel Advanced Drivers - neXt Generation, shows every single one of my radios, switch panels, instrument panels, lights, and what-not. His claim: install his program, for which he gives a 14 day free trial, and your troubles are gone.
Can you believe how happy we both were, when we installed the little app, and it started up giving us like five tips about USB power management, and then boo-yah, it finds and installs nine out of ten FIPs, the radios, the switch panel, the indicator panel, the navigation panel, the yoke (which this german guy calls the Joke). But, every single one of them works, hell yeah! This guy wins the internet for the day. We proudly take several pictures of the entire cockpit lit up, and we agree that it should be doable to configure it tomorrow. Now please please please, let that RADEON card be less of a turd than the nVIDIA K2200 that I had laying around.
Pictures of the Day
