Building a home cockpit used to be something only the wealthiest flight simmers could afford. However, the last 3-4 years has seen a flurry of hardware builders entering the market at competitive price points. Think WINCTRL, WingFlex, Rowsfire, even MOZA with their new G1000 unit being shown off at FSWeekend. It’s become cheaper than ever to pick up a physical FCU, EFIS, MCDU and take your sim experience to the next level with a home cockpit.
However if you wanted to have your instruments running on separate displays to your main monitor, then up until recently you still needed to part with a few hundred £/€/$ to create the ultimate immersive experience.
Enter IE Sims, a new upstart hardware builder based in the U.K. that will sell you an external PFD/ND display for just £80 GBP incl. taxes (excl. shipping and local taxes outside the U.K.).
FSElite reached out to the team behind the hardware to learn more about where this new product came from.
”The project started when I originally bought a small portable monitor just so I didn’t have to squint at the instruments on my main screen anymore. It was a total game-changer for me, but it didn’t look like a cockpit. My friend (now my business partner) 3D-printed a custom housing for it, and we realised there was a massive gap in the market for a compact, affordable, yet authentic-feeling EFIS. This was all just before the Rowsfire A108 was announced.”
The unit itself is decidedly small at 235mm x 175 mm (approx. 11” x 8”) using a single USB-C cable for power and a mini HDMI port for display output. That is the point, though. This is not meant to be something that stays on the desk forever. Rather a simple plug-and-play solution that can be quickly put away when the desk needs to convert back to a workspace.
The team say this is as much about cost as it is about convenience. “As students ourselves, we know how expensive this hobby can get. Our goal is to bring high-fidelity, high-quality units to desktop pilots who might not have the space for a full-scale cockpit, or the budget for high-end professional gear. We’ve kept our pricing intentionally low to remain as accessible as possible for the community, despite the current supply chain volatility we’re all seeing globally. We want to prove that you don’t need a massive investment to get a truly immersive experience.”
Incredibly, the team consists not of professional builders but two sixth form students in the United Kingdom. For those outside of the U.K., this is full time education between 17-18 years old – after completing secondary (high) school but before going to university.
“As two Sixth Form students, we’ve had to be very strategic. We “tag-team” the workload: if one of us is buried in A-Level revision or a deadline, the other takes over production and shipping. It keeps the momentum going without sacrificing our education or the quality of the units.”
If the PFD/ND combo doesn’t satiate your appetite, the duo are also selling an ECAM Mini unit at £80 GPB. This contains the Airbus’ upper and lower ECAM displays, but displayed side-by-side rather than atop one another. The dimensions and IO are identical to the EFIS panel. And although not off the drawing board yet, plans are already afoot for a “pro” model that will be 1:1 scale and contain housing for popular FCU/EFIS units already on the market (like the WINCTRL offerings), plus a master warning/caution light.
Both panels come housed in a 3D printed plastic frame and are angled according to the expected positioning below your primary monitor. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a way to adjust the tilt angle within the frame, though I’m sure you could wedge some blu-tac underneath the front or rear edge to get a few more degrees on either side.
If all of this is sounding good, you’ll have to wait a bit to get your hands on one of these units since the duo are already sold out.
“Being 100% transparent here, we haven’t been able to keep up with the community’s incredible interest! To ensure every unit meets our standards, we are currently releasing our products in small batches. We have temporarily paused new orders to fulfill our current queue (which we hope to fulfill by the end of this week), but we have a “Notify Me” list on our site for anyone who wants to be first in line when the next batch is ready.”
Simmers looking to join that list can do so by visiting the IE Sims website.