Well, we won't be going away anytime soon.
That's no problem, I think almost everyone has done something unique. Duplicating a DG (any variant) would be much more difficult, as the panels have displays of different shapes and sizes freely intermixed with controls in close proximity. If you focus on the functions, they're pretty similar, and then use your imagination for layouts.
As much as I would like to see one here, I do see that its not "free". It would be one more forum for Tex to monitor, even if one of us was a mod for it. I created the cockpits pages on the wiki over a year ago, mention it when anyone asks a question, and no one but myself has entered any new 'how-to' information or any new builds.As much as I agree with you, it makes no sense burning bridges on this forum to get things accomplished. If they don't grasp why it's needed, we can make other plans. The whole idea of a simpit sub-forum would be spreading information to others in the Orbiter community on how to make them. That'll be harder to do over at mycockpit, but they have tons more expertise in simpit building to help us out. It's not an ideal situation, but I'm willing to deal with the trade-offs involved to see this through. Worse case, just put a link to the new sub-forums in your sig to get the word out.
and that others won't know how large our group is (how much support they'll get if they want to try it). As a positive, there may be a benefit of our builds being housed on a cockpit-specific forum as we would be introducing a whole new audience to Orbiter. Interfacing addons like reverend, face, heilor, myself and others have created would still get exposure and support (and requests) here. Additional cross-linking of the sites couldn't hurt either forums page rankings, either.
I will create the forum, but I must submit my reason in denying it in the first place was because I fear there is simply not enough interest in it for a totally dedicated forum. Times in past on previous boards I have created sub-forums and usually they are used at first then die out and given the history of simpit threads here not staying active I figured it would be the same for the sub-forum.
Please understand it's not that I give addons infinitely more respect, it's simply that addons are the biggest addition to Orbiter which all can enjoy. Although simpit building threads are educational and interesting, especially for those who're looking to build one, most people will never have the time to do something like that. That said, I am creating the sub-forum now, let's see it gets used.
Best of luck!
