metalnwood

I would say the warthog. As far as future modules, e.g. the f18 then neither stick is a replica and I imagine both is capable of mapping all the functionality so its probably a moot point with respect to future modules. The force sensing is only really used in one aircraft the anyone regularly flies for sims and no one ever had a problem flying a f16 with a hog, especially as the stick has an identical layout. The WH can be modded, extensions added. It has a much smaller base which can give you much better mounting options especially when it comes to center mounting. The throttle is a nice unit, the x65 throttle looks less so. I have never used an x65. I have used everything else though, all the CH gear, other saiteks, x52, 45 etc. G940 I bought to try it out for BS. The hog is in a different league than those other ones. It's the way to go. As far as future modules it has all the functionality you are going to need.

If you want to overclock you cant go wrong with four cores really. DCS doesnt use any of the power it could with four cores and I would be skeptical that they harness the power of six cores anyway. Games are not quite in the same realm as video or other things where you can equally divide work in to n number of pieces and tackle it. I dont see how you can go wrong if ED get nearly full usage from all four cores at this point in time.

Lucky guy!

I have stayed with AMD since they came out with eyefinity. I never looked at nvidia because of this. I have been reasonably happy but at the same time I know that most sims prefer nvidia. eyefinity is no longer a biggie for me, its supported with nvidia. I know some things have much better performance with nvidia, e.g. xplane. Things like AA shimmering are better on nvidia with fsx, xplane. I have heard the picture quality is better on DCS with nvidia. My next card will be an nvidia because all said and done they seem to give a better experience on flight simulators.

When you buy an SSD you have to live with these things. To date, you wont find much evidence of people wearing out their SSD's but you can find lots of people worrying about it. Those DCS files will no impact the life of you SSD one little bit, just play :)

I race open tops so everything I need is on the wheel and I can access it without seeing it. The OR is going to be awesome for this when the resolution is right. It is far to broad a statement to say that this is not going to work for sims. There are plenty of sims that this is going to work for. There are still questions to be answered for the other parts that tie it all together like interacting with the virtual cockpit. You know there are still flight simmers about that like to fly simple aircraft that dont have these interation issues you are talking about. Here are some common sim scenarios that there are still a lot of people around that like to do. Rise of flight - everything can be done off hotas without looking. il2, other ww2. Similar to above. Gliding - The OR would give the most awesome experience for gliding in simulators. Bush flying in something like xpx, fsx with good old stick/rudder planes. racing. Your generalisation of the technology is only applicable to a few highly interactive cockpits, not simulation as a whole.

Arghhh, my trailer is only 18M long..

If you turn off the page file you will in theory stop unnecessary paging occurring that windows does even though there may be available free ram. I was regurgitating things I have read previously so I can't speak to what performance improvement you may get. I would not image it would be a FPS improvement but may help with people who are getting the odd stutter. You have to make sure you have enough ram to support your applications without needing a page file or you will get an out of memory error. I cant remember the context that I wrote that but I would think the page file might be something you would look at if you had a particular issue like stuttering rather than doing it by default.

Also happy with my 27" LG screen. I use it for racing and FPS.

I see conrad in the UK are selling individually but the best discount (50%) is for getting 100+. $25usd for $100 Edit, scratch that. They dont have green!

Getting white acrylic is not the same as painting it white. When you get clear and paint it white you still have clear acrylic inside and that is what the light is bouncing around inside of. The light is kept inside as much as possible by its painted walls.. If you get acrylic that is already white it is prohibiting the led light from going through. What it is good for is some level of diffusion but I doubt it is the optimal solution if you plan to mount the leds within drilled cavities in the lightplate. So, how well it would work would depend on how you intend to design the lighting in the first place. As I say, I have never tried it like you are suggesting so I dont know how well it will work compared to clear. One thing of major benefit doing it that way and this could well outweigh what I just said is that the guy doing the engraving only has to worry about getting through the black layer and doesnt have to worry about not going through a white paint layer. Even better, I would suggest that lasermax from one of my first posts. Its the best mothod for either laser or rotary engraving.

looking at the page for the card it is using windows support for 128 buttons, not everything supports this though but DCS does. To get 256 buttons it shows up as two separate joystick controllers in windows with the other controller having the rest.

Only issue with thsoe switches is that they are shorter and 1/4" panel mount rather than 1/2". The price is good though. I have found that its cheaper to get the honeywell switches from the couple of suppliers there have been links to here than getting the locking toggle switches from digikey which seem to cost more.

You still have to paint the sides anyway and white is what you want for the first coat. I suppose you wouldnt have to paint the sides but I am not sure if it would have any impact. One thing the white is doing is diffusing the light to try and enable a even illumination of the panel. I am not sure that tinfoil would have the same effect but you can always give it a go. I am sure it would work but not sure how well, could be perfect, could be a bit terrible depending on how you do the front plate.

looking fantastic as usual! Down to 1 main display eh? Well I suppose you still have trackir and it is something you get used to when you go back to one. I understand about the hoops you have to go through sometimes to get it working right. No doubt you have also been having a think how nice one of those tv's would be in the bedroom and maybe another in the workshop :)

I dont know Mikes methods offhand but if it is a single piece then its probably either clear or cloudy acrylic painted black with lettering engraved on the paint. The lighting is then either behind that or placed within it, e.g. blind holes drilled in and leds placed within. If you refer back to my thread I have three pieces, frontplate with engraving, lightplate and back plate. the light plate and backplate both have holes in them in the same places for leds to sit inside the panel. The light plate is painted white although it is clear acrylic. This is to help the embedded leds have their light bounce around inside the panel to try and get an even illumination. I use a product called plexiglas endlighten to help the process but it can be expensive to get hold of. Clear acrylic will do but you may need more leds for even lighting. Here is an illustration of a panel with the frontplate, backplate, lightplate as well as all of them overlaid. You can see that the lightplate/backplate have a number of additional holes. They are for the leds and not visible from the front. When overlaid they are in red. You need to either use trial and error to find out how many leds you need to light up the text or just put more holes than required and only enough leds to get the job done.

Sure, you would get them done for that price, shouldn't be near that much at all if you are giving them the plans and just expecting cut pieces back.

I can tell you now, if you are looking to get all the panels done you wont find anyone who will talk to you for 50 euro.

No idea where to get them from in europe and when you find out, I am not sure what the price would be. there are a couple companies. Innovative plastics and rowmax both make a similar product. The rowmax product is called lasermax. The other alternative is to take opal/white acrylic and paint it black and then engrave away the paint. The cnc mill should be able to do it no problem. I havent seen a CNC mill with less accuracy than many of the homebuilt cnc routers that people are using to do the same job. It would have to be a terrible machine that couldnt maintain at least 1/10mm and that is pretty bad as it is.

The CNC mill which you would often use for metals will do fine on the acrylic as well. The idea is not to have a faceplate that you are cutting the letters out of so that the lighyplate will let light through You want a faceplate that will let light through but a surface that will not, you then engrave away that surface so the light is let through the lettering. Be aware that reactor ones plans does not include any holes for putting in leds for backlighting. You will need to modify his plans before you start making the panels. The traditional way with acrylic is really the way to go for hobby builds but you can have aluminium backplates if you want. The cnc mill your mate has will work just as well. have a quick look at one of my threads here to get an idea of how they fit together http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=107377

John, are you building your own profile for a specific reason? I ask because it is soo much easier to just go and use someone elses profile. I do see that you are using a 16:10 screen and most profiles are for a 16:9 but it would be very easy to fix that than start from scratch with your own profile.

Yes, its different than a smaller screen and you do need to change things around a bit. I had to change my track ir a lot as i was getting some strain at first. Once I dialled things in specifically for the larger area I was using I never had a problem again. I dont think a large screen is a good idea for keyboard mouse games, that will be a recipe for neck problems.

You are correct, he did ask a specific question and in that respect your answer is correct. At the same time it is also subjective because a lot of people will say the image is better because of the larger size. He did not ask will the resolution be less, will the dot pitch be more, will the blacks be worse, will the colours be off, will the screen be blurry. You took his question one way and us with tv's took it in a more holistic approach which I believe is what people want to know.

See attached picture based on a 30" 16:10 monitor and a 40" 16:9 TV. Not including bezels the TV obviously has a wider apparent/actual FOV to a viewer at those distances. I am saying why on earth would you do that? You are giving an example of taking a large screen and putting it at a distance that gives that size no advantage. Whats the point? There is no point. You dont get a tv to do that. Everyone who has a tv posted saying they like the larger size. They are not moving it meters away to negate that fact. You are likely to get that on a monitor or a tv if you are going to get it. Cite any source that says you are going to suffer more using a TV in this context. Its not being used as an everyday desktop. This is where we disagree, you keep citing examples as if there is only one deciding factor. Its preference. You cant compare something rubbish to something good and say thats what its like if you use a tv compared to a monitor. Not everyone sees it like that where everyone would agree at warthog is a better stick than an cyborg. What you are failing to understand is that people who are happy with the TV are happy to compromise in some aspects to get the larger picture that you cannot get with a monitor. If they could get TV's with triple the resolution and the GPU would run it then of course we would. No question. The discussion is not one of pixel density, its one of preference. A larger picture with some compromises or a smaller less immersive one that is crisper. It's not a scientific expedition - although you would do OK to recheck your maths re fovs ;)

Oh yeah, thats a point. My missus would have a hell of a wonder what sort of porn I was watching when it was my head bobbing up and down :lol: