There are several hard decisions to make when building a simulation cockpit. The toughest choice that lies ahead is about what kind of airplane you want to fly in for the next years. Somehow, choosing a dedicated cockpit enhances the sense of realism, and because you always fly in the same environment, you create habits wich are good for flying. (training is repetition). So it turned out to be a kind of generic cockpit anyway, but with a clear hint to the layout of the Beech 1900D, with a similar layout of the instruments.
The second though part is that instrumentation. Glass cockpit like in the Project magenta software or PDMG's Boeing 737NG is a good choice. I flew with Enrico's Project Magenta for a long time. But although the simulation is near perfect (I had a real life pilot fly my first project wich was a cardboard 737 NG cockpit, and he flew purely on instruments without an itch) I missed the charm of analog instrumentation. Being able to dial in the atmospheric pressure, or turn the ADF dial gives a very nice touch of reality.
But having the instruments on screen and playing with a cardboard cockpit around the dials is nice for a while, but pretty soon I received some nasty comments from my wife giving me the impression that I was like a child; making up a fantasy from paper. She was right, and I decided to push the limit with real instruments from Simkits. So I drew some plans, made several mock-ups and finally started building my Beech D1900 cockpit (table version)