metalnwood

Only one stick and hand game I know that would work like that right now. I am sure that genre will be a hit with the rift too..

I thought this quote was where you were referring to FOV. When you said put a screen that is 1080 on its side, it is too narrow but a screen that is 1440 wide would have a significant difference. Only if that screen was significantly bigger, not if it was the same size, e.g. 27" but only had more pixels. It would not seem less 'narrow'. If you were not referring to FOV when looking 'at the world through a narrow window' I dont know what you were meaning. A TV I have seen measured as an example is the LG 42LD450. Should be under 500 pounds in the UK and has its actual lag measured less than the panasonic AE4000 projector and about the same as some monitors made from dell, eizo - within 1ms. If anyone was serious about tv's I would invest in this http://www.leobodnar.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=89&products_id=212 That way you can try the tv's/ projectors before you buy and see if it will give you problems.

Wouldnt it be better if you used the leap with no real panels so it wouldnt matter if you were in a ka50, a10, f18, whatever, you could use your virtual hands to flip any switch in any plane and not have a dedicated cockpit. Fly whatever you want, whenever and feel like you have a full cockpit for it.

Depends, what colour do you want?

Sitting in a chair shouldnt be a problem, just map the trackIR 'center' function to a button so that if you move out of place too much in your chair you just hit the buttons and you are placed properly in the aircraft.

If you dont have one at all then it is a great improvement to the game. I think people have even mounted the camera behind them for projectors and somehow inverted the trackir axis. I have only used one on a projector for testing for a short time. It still adds a lot but I was a trackir veteran, for a new person it might take a little while to get used to such a large picture moving about. You suckered me in to this post, hardcore and trackir. I thought it was something else.

While I am on it though.. :) Another misconception that sometimes comes up is that the resolution of the screen has something to do with the FOV. I.e. you say that the FOV will be greater with the 1440 monitor than the 1080 monitor. It doesnt have anything to do with resolution of the monitor but the size. For two 27" monitors 16:9, one having 2560x1440 and the other 1920x1080 in portrait mode, they will have the same FOV for a person sitting at the same distance. The higher resolution screen will show a bit more detail but cannot show more FOV.

I have been what you would call a real HT nut. I probably threw $80k at it before I needed to reclaim the space and had to say goodbye to it. Wouldnt it be nice if that gear kept more of its value! I had 100% light control and used various screens matched to projectors, an expensive exercise in itself. $2500 is darn god these days, it was more around $20k 10 years ago when I started getting more hardcore about it. Anyway, the point was that a lot of people seem to think projectors are better than TV's for games. Sure, the projector will look good, as much as anything it's because of the size of the picture but when you say that the resolution of a tv wont be any good on a 42" screen you have to realise that it's pixel density is much, much greater than a projector and it will look a lot better. Sorry if I read your quote wrong but i looked like you were saying you would go the route of a projector if you had the room and that seemed contradictory to saying TV's dont have enough resolution for the size of the picture.

I never understand why people who are against running TV's are quite happy to want to run projectors? You will only get an even lower pixel density than a tv without the picture quality you will get on a tv, even in optimal lighting conditions. Jay, I dont want to move you to TV's if you dont want to but you may not have had your 32" set up properly hence why it looked awful. A lot are running 40" plus, even triple 40"+ with excellent results. They look really good and certainly better than a projector. I run 3x42" screens in portrait landscape portrait. Thats a much bigger pixel density than any projector will do. Also latency is good on a lot of TV's. Latest test have shown that some projectors, e.g. panasonics can have much larger latency. The advice about not getting a 690 is good, a 680 will do just as well for DCS. Perhaps ask your son to install something like a corsair hydro unit and get your cpu overclocked to ~4.5G. DCS will like you for it with triples.

Steve, I am going to disagree with towsim on a few points but it may server as encouragement for you if your mind is set that way. I know that you are now thinking about a laser but they are perfectly adequate for cutting the panels as well as engraving. There are a number of people doing it here and the examples of what they have produced are fantastic. The discussion was had a little while ago about what would be the best single machine for panel building. A router or a laser? The consensus was a laser which I agree with. It can both cut and engrave the parts. Now, on to the CNC. The CNC router is capable of doing all the laser can do and more but where it lets itself down is with the engraving, it is not quite as good as the laser. Fred has recently been making panels and engraving with the CNC router so you can see some examples in his thread here. http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=104011 If you have uses for the CNC router outside of panel making, e.g. cabinet making then the CNC router will be a lot more useful to you outside the hobby than a laser, especially a 8x4 machine. In terms or accuracy, there is a little bit of a myth I think between ballscrews and rack and pinion. People will tell you that a ballscrew is more accurate and in many ways it should be, if you have a good one. On one of may machines I had 1610's on my x/t and 1605 on my Z. This meant for every turn the nut would travel 10mm. Theoretically at 2000 steps per revolution I could move the screw 0.005mm. I cant measure that in my workshop though so it is irrelevant. When I calibrate my machines I just do it with a dial indicator and a 200mm parallel. I use a dial indicator with marks every 0.01mm (0.0004") and on both machines rack and pinion + ballscrew I can repeatedly position the machine on the same mark. In all practical terms they are as accurate as each other. You can make any machine less accurate than the other by what machining parameters you choose, introducing flex in to the router bit etc. On my rack and pinion the other day I machined some aluminium and after it was done it was accurate at the points I measured to +/- 0.02mm over 240mm. Perhaps I could have made it better by slowing things down but it didnt matter for this piece. There is no reason why a larger machine made to the same standards can not be as accurate as a smaller machine made to the same standards. for 8x4 ballscrews are expensive and also slow the machine a lot as they whip at higher speeds. I wouldnt kill the idea of an 8x4 just yet, it would be a nice machine to have.

I am going to take a stab.. :) The buttons are def done on a 3d printer. The engraving a bit deeper than a laser and the edges are chamfered so I say the panels are done on a cnc router. Frank is certainly on a mission and will have a pit in no time, good stuff :)

Gadrocs hit the nail on the head and if you prefer to go with a CNC router over laser then you will be at a disadvantage compared to the guys selling laser engraved panels which do look better. Of course, if you just need to tell the missus some excuse then yes, one out of three people say they will buy something for you. It's not until after you get the gear you find they were all bums with excuses :)

True, there is only one focal plane on the rift. It is slightly different in that the optics are collimated and you are not focusing on something in front of you, like a close screen, youre eyes are actually focusing a lot farther out.

It's good to know what problems might crop up but as I am sure you know, ask for bad experiences for _any_ product and there will never be silence. The hog certainly had problems affecting a good number of users when it was first released but problems seem far and few these days. I certainly could not say that I have heard any instances of failure more than any other stick about. If you are thinking of going for the best stick around then it's a good choice and yes, you will hear of some bad experiences.

True, but what if you find your immersion is greater with an OR and something like leap motion which can put your hands in to the sim so you can flick all the virtual buttons by moving your arms and fingers around? Would you go back to the real pit because it is real yet less immersive? BTW, this isnt the case with the dev units and I dont know if it would be the case with the first commercial units either.

He is asking because DCS doesnt support the rift at the moment so you have to use trackir with the rift to get headtracking. Same with most other things for now.

Well, not entirely useless as you only need to buy one additional monitor to have three the same size :)

I wouldnt woory too much about picture quality from one to the other. Obviously if the larger is in the middle they will not line up quite correctly. You could fix that by using softth, that will work with dcs world but it's uncertain that it will be a fix for the future with DX11 games. Something to keep in mind if this is a deciding thing to buy the extra screens.

Oh, in that case I think they are good. You need to make sure that you have it in game mode although the exact name of that mode might vary from makers. PC mode is another possibility. If the picture looks good then you are set, just make sure that it is running at the correct resolution and that the text on your desktop is nice and crisp to confirm this. you dont want black borders around the desktop and the display. Lastly, and this relates to having the tv in game mode, make sure that there is no noticable lag, i.e. when you do something in game it actually happens right away on the tv without any delay. There will be some as there is with everything but you just want to double check that you didnt get a model that is bad for this. Something like focus on firing the cannon and seeing that there isnt a tiny delay before it happens on screen. With todays TV's this shouldnt really be an issue though. Only other comment on LCD vs LED. The LED can have better black levels and contrasts, this is because it can have better control on the backlighting and manage it in different regions, i.e. turn down the leds in areas with black on screen while keeping other areas on the screen at a lighter level. Once again this depends on the TV and if you just got a budget one for the computer you may not be missing out on a lot for LCD vs LED.

Oh I see. Yes many people have replaced that plate and bolted directly to a platform they have made. I dont think there is any commercial replacement because everyone making a pit has a different way of mounting it. Lots of people have gone for pvc piping with a flange on top, I went with square steel tubing and a flange welded on with the correct diameter to match that base, as wel as it being offset so it mounted closer to my body.

If hes adding to it no problem! I thought he might have been browsing old threads and thought it was newer. Big screens are nice, I am in that camp too.

Browsing old threads when you found this one eh? :)

All in one? That will give you some issues. There is good software about but not only will the learning curve take longer than building the box but it is all very expensive. On the cheaper side of things you can use google sketchup to to the box and designspark for the pcb. http://www.designspark.com/page/designspark-pcb-home-page I am not sure of what all in one software there is but some software will allow you to export the fully built up pcb's as 3d models in to other software like solidworks. - or google sketchup I imagine.

It could probably be done but I havent seen the inside of it to know. I doubt very much it could be commercialised as it would be expensive and hardly anyone would want it. You are the first person I have heard to suggest it.

I went from the CH gear to the warthog. Love my warthog.