metalnwood

Flight simulation is fairly broad, you like aircraft simulation and complex aircraft at that which will not be very good for the rift when you want to use the CDU. Thats not really flight simulation defined. In fact I think it has huge potential to reinvigorate a stagnant flight sim market with new people. Something as simple as flying a glider with a big glass canopy in the alps in multiplayer. It would hardly ever happen in todays sims but the actual feeling of flight you would get with the immersion. Flying is something we all want to do and this will get you much closer to that feeling.

gliders, microlights, IL2, cliffs of dover, small GA, flaming cliffs or any jet lite simulator. None need anymore than a hotas and they are all flight simming experiences. you have a very narrow view of what flight simulation is. The hardcore that need a CDU and keyboard because they cant put enough on the hotas is a minority. to get the feeling of running all the avionics, your setup might be better. To get the feeling of FLIGHT, I bet the rift will be hard to beat.

3 27" is your ultimate? anyway, I think you miss the concept, the current execution is just current gen. That will change and the implementation will shine although the concept that you miss will be the same.

I agree on you on a lot of points and I think my screens will be here for a long time. The rift concept is excellent but its got a bit more work to go before it would be my main screen for DCS. Having said that, some people cant seem to imagine what this could be like when issues have been ironed out and resolutions are at a point that its practical. It seems when we get there someone will probably talk about the peripheral vision they get from their 3x22" screens while not being able to tell what it is they are even seeing with that peripheral vision.

It appears that the horz FOV is not perfectly defined and depends on a number of things, these things can be different for different people like inter pupil distance, eyecups worn, how close to the screen you have your rift set up, eyeglasses worn etc. It seems that you will get at least 90 with other figures I have seen saying 115. I dont think vert FOV can be underestimated at all, a triple monitor is like looking in to a small lit compared to the vert fov of the rift. I think when people try it as seems to be the experience of most people who have, is that it is far more immersive than any lost peripheral vision of a third monitor sticking out the side that is perhaps 30cm tall.

Tried the new product, went from 19 leds to 6 of the same leds. I reckon I could get away with 5 and move one of the others slightly. Its doing an excellent job of moving the light across the entire face an up through the front panel. This is going to make for much easier to assemble panels with far fewer lights.

Thanks Hans, I did see that and my first thought was when I thought about using led strip which is not as easily bent and layed out. This looks good for that but the downside is having to then route out a path for it. Thinking again I guess I dont have to route, the laser could just cut a channel all the way through as the wire would be sandwiched between the front and backplate anyway. I will see of the other goes. If I can do an average sized panel with only four leds I will be happy

Thanks Hans, yes thats the product I am using. I am going to try the backlighting again with another product though. I am hoping I can get it all lit up with only a few LEDS in corners rather than a lot dotted all around near the engraved parts.

I put one mostly together. Also managed to spill some chemicals on it and ruin the black finish at the top right! Full of mistakes lately. I have decided I will re do a full set for myself anyway. So I assembled it with just a couple of switches missing and tried it out for lighting. Before I do the next lot I need to make sure that the light plate covers all the text properly. The panels I cut for the other person were based on the plans he wanted, not mine so I will have to recreate all the ones I don't already have to incorporate proper backlighting. This has come out OK but the light is not covering a couple of words fully. The illumination is very even though.

WTF? :shocking: looks like something a new age woman would make her husband wear as a sympathy pregnancy. Anyway, too much camelback and not enough camel toe for pies liking I suspect.

Great work, you are doing really excellent stuff with hand held tools although I understand you really wanting a milling machine :)

Possible to guess I have not finished the keys, got sidetracked. From time to time I get pm's to make some panel kits and I was doing one today but due to an error, the way the software works I had a setting defaulted that wasnt great. So I cant send the panels out and will have to make another set but the good news is that my own pit is something good at acquiring my 'seconds' that I dont like to give to people who pay :) I have meant to do mine for ages and now, inadvertently I have lol. picture is bad, out of focus and the panels have not been fully cleaned - you can see the enviro panel is still wet from wiping before the picture. They are actualy not bad and only a handful of letters on some panels exhibit a slight wave on parts of them. Doesnt worry me for my own pit though.

I hope your carpenter is free, if not I would suggest that for what you are going to pay him you could get a cheap electric drill and jigsaw for the same price. You would then be left with the tools that you will need for more of your build. My only critique is that its easier if you start marking out from a corner of your sheet, assuming it is square then there is less to cut and its easier to take the measurements from there. Primarily you have at least two straight edges that you dont need to do much cutting on though.

Moot point isn't it? You cant fly the DCS F 18 in an AI interactive combat environment either.

Hate it when your spelling/grammar checker mangles what you had actually typed. It leaves you wondering what you really typed.

Yeah, Palmer Lucky. Lucky Palmer is the nick name given to single guys who have to look after themselves, although 'lucky' is a bit ironic in that sense. I suppose it might not be that ironic depending on your last girlfriend/wife.

If you really dont care about the looks of the combat pedals then I would go with the standard ones and the MFD's If you are flying the a10 then you are spending your time either using the hotas or touching the mfd's. Outside of the hotas , unless in an emergency, the mfd will get most of the button pushing thats going on - once wheels are up that is.

If you are looking for good physics I wouldnt say that the default aircraft in FSX are great but throw in some vfr, or IFR, a good mission and it can be fun and have you using the navigation instruments as they should be used. If you are after physics then you need to do some research and find a suitable aircraft. From your other post it seemed that you were saying the default aircraft are crap, FSX is crap and you asked if payware aircraft will be any better than playing hawx. I think you need to spend more time than what you suggested you had done to see what the potential of a sim is. No, my opinion wouldnt change based on the information you gave me. If someone had come here saying I tried DCS, I tried the SU25. it's not really realistic, dcs sucks, flight model is bad. DCS is bad! If they had never tried the payware, eg the a10, that we know is good I would expect the same response to them as I have given to you. I dont see what so wrong with that. Perhaps I am wrong, perhaps you have tried all manner of good payware and still have the same conclusion. The problem is that you didnt say that, you just said a few one liners about FSX sucking. If thats the case then it's your fault for not explaining yourself.

Sorry, I missed the payware. TBH, FSX is no longer on my HDD. I dont do enough to bother putting it back on. I have xplane to try out its status from time to time. FSX does heavies really well but I have no interest in them. Same with the other planes with good flight models in FSX I dont have any particular interest in them to spend the $$. Same issue DCS has, not enough people want to fly an A10 even though the flight model may be good. True as well, for me, for now, DCS is doing it all.

I didnt say you were stupid at all, maybe you should re-read. What I said was that it does not appear you have spent enough time in the sim to give a properly considered opinion that it is crap, especially having not used payware aircraft. This just confirms what I was saying.

Still, your original quote of a bad flight model does not apply to something that simulates the numbers within 5%. How can that be bad? With respect to single engine aircraft, have you flown any aircraft that are known to have good flight models? The two examples you gave were either freeware or aircraft provided with the sim. We all know that good aircraft cost money and the guys I have seen on this thread say the flight models are bad have not provided any examples of supposedly good payware that is crap.

That is not right, the top third parties have excellent flight models and in some cases have custom flight models to compensate for areas where the table based flight model that FSX uses doesn't work well enough. IIRC DCS uses a lookup table as well, both in contrast to xplane which uses blade element theory. PMDG for example say that they are within 5% of boeings numbers. If this is true and knowing they work closely with boeing then I cant see how your statement about a low quality flight model could be correct. Is the a10 within 5% of the numbers, the huey, the ka50? I dont know but I do know it's not right so say you cannot have a good flight model in FSX.

If you are only talking about the basic modelled stuff, cockpit, avionics, flight then DCS currently has four aircraft modelled at a high level. I dare say between the top FSX developers, for example just naming two of them, a2a and pmdg they have at least four aircraft that have excellently modelled cockpits, avionics and flight models. As I said before, its not 'FSX' by iteself that determines what you get in an aircraft, it's the developer. Just as the default su25 doesnt tell you what level of fidelity you will get with the a10 or the KA50, neither does the FSX default aircraft. This doesnt mean you cant get those aircraft.

I will tell you what bugs me the most about FSX and xplane is great in the respect. DCS is no better but there are a lot less addons for it to be a problem. I f I have to reinstall FSX I have to reinstall everything from scratch, every addon, every plane.. grr.. Xplane is great in this respect, its self contained in its directory, back it up and then copy it on to your computer now or in the future. FSX isnt installed right now because I couldnt be bothered having to reinstall it all since I swapped out its SDD it was on.

You dont think much of it but it seems clear you have never done anything with it nor understand that the flight model is very dependent on each plane sold, or given away. By asking if 3rd party planes all behave like hawx it shows you dont really know enough to give a considered opinion. Thats just my opinion, of course :)