Legendary combat sim enthusiast builds frankly dangerous fighter jet rig — features three-axis motion seat, a cannon, afterburners, and a chaff launcher

An air combat sim enthusiast just built a “realistic” fighter jet cockpit that goes way beyond simulating motion. u/Ok_But_1351 shared the video on Reddit from the Chinese platform bilibili, allegedly documenting a project from the same person who built this wild three-person World of Tanks sim rig. However, the video shows a different username, so we’re unsure if this is accurate. Nevertheless, the sim rig is quite impressive, even though it doesn’t look anywhere near a real fighter jet.

The fighter jet sim rig features a three-axis motion seat that simulates the motion of the game running on the screen. While it can’t fully mimic the 360-degree motion you’d get while doing aerobatics in an aircraft, it’s still way ahead of just sitting stationary on the floor. The creator didn’t stop there, though. They also added an “Energy Management System” that accepts a container that seemingly serves as the fuel tank for the chair’s afterburner. When you push the throttle to its limits, two nozzles on the lower left and right of the seat spew flames, like how a real jet would do so when going to max power.

Naturally, there’s also what looks to be a pneumatic cannon that flashes whenever the pilot fires the in-game gun, and a rocket pod that shoots fireworks when launching missiles. And when you fire off chaff and flares to evade missiles, the sim rig does the same, filling the room with aluminum strips.

This is quite an effort for one session, especially as you can imagine that all of these must be reloaded after every use. There were also a few people saying that there’s only one display, and that it isn’t mounted directly on the chair, so the player cannot see the display when they’re pulling up. Nevertheless, this could just be an initial concept, just like how the tank sim rig was first built with separate physical controls spread around in a room.

Aside from using a triple-monitor setup and mounting them directly to the seat, the creator could also add improvements to make the experience more realistic. For example, they can use a VR or AR headset for full visual immersion, or they can use TrackIR so that the screens will show what they’re supposed to see when they move their head. It would’ve also been nice to use realistic aircraft control panels instead of the custom-made ones we see in the video. Most importantly, they should double-check the safety of their system, as we see the “Energy Management System” spew flames out the back, followed by the player spraying it with their fire extinguisher.

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