metalnwood

I have found DCS the hardest thing in my rift library to get used to as far as motion sickness.. Do some other things as well and throw in some DCS but dont do it to the point you already feel sick, thats too late. A little at a time. Other games/sims I can leave for a long time, weeks/months, come back and I am fine but for some reason in DCS I have to build up to it again.. So, as others have said, dont quit!

It certainly has been a bit disappointing today hearing from a number of people that the display is not the best it can with people 68+mm IPD.. Having said that, some seem to be more tolerant of it than others. Just a few days and I can try it myself. Fingers crossed

I am happy to hear about the glasses. Mine are too wide to fit in the CV1 so I dont wear them. Every time I have my contacts on, not very often I get a little bump in clarity so if I can wear my glasses it should bw most impressive :) If anyone is keen to remove the facial interface and see how close they can move the headset to their eyes and how much larger the fov is by doing it, I am happy to hear!

CapNPenguin, I have a few choice words to say to you... Mostly because I have to wait for a rift to arrive from the other side of the world while you have one on this page and on the previous page you had not yet decided to buy one!!! :)

Windy, I read that the nosepiece can be taken out which I may need to do to let some airflow through anyhow.

Thanks Baron and some1 for the replies. I ordered one and may have it in early June. Looking forward to it. My ipd is 68 so I figure it wont be 'perfect' but all in all better than CV1. It will only be used for racing and flying so for the most part I will be looking forwards and shouldnt notice.

How is the FOV compared to CV1? One thing I want to try, that I have done with the CV1 is take off the facial interface.. its a little less comfy for sure but with the lenses so close the FOV is much larger. I imagine with the halo of the S you could take off the facial thing and get the lenses quite close but it will let in some light I guess.

come on... someone tell me... 68 IPD here and CV1... I wasnt looking at rift S but now thinking about it to give me a little upgrade from CV1 for another 12 months until better options have ironed themselves out.. How much clearer than cv1!! :)

I have been trying it a little in the last week but waiting for my warthog replacement before I can give it a good go. It is working well so far. Love the landings with motion and the prop planes are great on the ground with the wobble from the engine. I have not been using my harness with it until I get my stick fixed but put it on tonight with a couple good effects felt, like sudden deceleration in level flight had my harness pulling in to me. Look forward to more flying with it.

WMacky, I am here too!!

Hi mate, thanks for that :) I have been doing very little sim flying over the last couple years. The local group do it at a time that doesn't suit, kids growing up and all of that! It has all been very neglected, I got in to IPSC pistol shooting and must have thrown 20k in to that over the last few years between my boy and myself and not spent a thing on other hobbies.. Shooting is something you could throw every cent at and there would still be more you want to buy :) So I thought I would give the spending on shooting a rest (no more guns, gotta buy ammo though!) and spend some hobby $$ on something else I enjoy - the simming :)

I saw this a couple weeks ago and it motivated me to finally do the motion platform that I wanted. I know there are many designs about and many DIY options. I have to have heave and that leaves out a number of popular ones and when you want heave then the footprint often gets large when you want to move the whole platform. This style, with four actuators appeals to me as the additional footprint is small and it can carry the weight we might have while still being responsive and not too expensive (yeah, I know, thats subjective!) I do a lot more racing than flying these days and this does a good job of simulating the chassis of a car and the suspension movement but it also looks like it can do enough for flying. Can't wait to see what it's like putting a bird on the deck and feeling the suspension when you land. Anyhow, this is what I know, it will cost around 500 euro per actuator - 4 required. A number of parts are 3d printed though I wont do that as it's far easier for me to machine those parts on a cnc. Designs all available, free, software is being worked on and free and the api is open for people to write their own interfaces to games telemetry. Software also controls a single butkicker and seatbelt tensioner. I can see the seatbelt tensioner working well in aircraft as well.. https://github.com/SimFeedback/SimFeedback-AC-Servo/wiki

I have my hog centre mounted as well but it is on a small pedestal that matches the round base of the stick with the square plate taken off. From memory there are a few M4 screws that go through underneath and it gives your legs a lot more space.

A quick search brought up this thread as I am trying to do a snapview for the CDU. I am not sure that you need to get out of VR to make a snapview, you need to use rctrl+rshift + numpad to move around to set your camera position. On thing that you cant do or I have not figured out is how to put something directly in front of you. For instance, when I save a snapview, in VR you are always looking forward to the nose of the plane. So if I set up a postion tht is good for the cdu is saves my head position in space but when I snap to that view I am still looking forward, not down on the CDU as it was saved. I am guessing that the VR is overriding the snapview and the snapview can't change where you are looking, only where your head is in x/y/z space. So I can move my head over to a better position to look down on the cdu but I still have to look down 90 degrees which is not ideal when you compare it to the nice view that can be achieved looking at a MFD with your head looking forward.

Good point, I didnt look at his pics, they look pretty close to me as well.

It's too large but seems to be in proportion. If others are printing from the same pdf using the same scale then it is possibly a printer setting you have. the print driver might be scaling to fit page, adding borders, who knows what. Ensure that the scale in the print page is set to 100%. To test, make something in cad of, say 50mm, then print that to check it prints at the correct scale. if it does then you need to change the scale of the pdf with your panel. Measure the size it printed and scale down accordingly.

Heh, my other pistols are all black :) I was thinking about the CZ scorpion evo 3. Not quite the same punch as yours but fits in with some other multigun competition. They are all fun for sure!

Nice one :) The same santa visited me and brought a CZ shadow 2. I use it for IPSC shooting.

You might want to look at a different processor. If you are used to the atmel dev environments then maybe the cortex chips would be better and you can still get cheap dev boards to base a FFB controller around. I have used the arm cortex line from TI and I reckon it wouldnt be too hard to port code over from the mega the cortex.

A stepper should work but I would think a DC motor would be easier to get going as you only have to manage the PWM with a set voltage. If I was playing around with it I might not even worry about positioning in the first instance and just use something else like another joystick as I believe the games still send the FFB to the FFB controller. Only saying this as if it was me I would go for hall sensors and put off the positing part until I knew have the mechanics were worked out. So I would probably do some initial testing by holding the real stick in one hand while mimicking the same movements on the FFB stick while feeling the forces. I guess you only really need to see the motors turning to know its working lol. Nothing like feeling it though :)

I will see if I can get your descriptor in to an arduino sketch. I don't really do arduino either but I have used one on my OSW as a joystick controller and from memory it might not be too hard to get it set up.

@Berniyh, linear actuators that are used in the cheaper motion sims (scn5, scn6) wont work on a flight stick as the internal gearing means that the internal motors can move the actuator but pushing against the actuator will not move it. So a motor is ideal, stepper, servo, basic dc etc as you can have it give off a force while still being able to overcome that force with the stick. Mechanically it's simple enough to connect a stick to a motor. @MetalGear, I wish I had a bit more time to help with this as it has interested me over the years as well. I might have a bit of time in a couple of weeks. Have you got your descriptor running on something? arduino or some other environment? I coould at least get it running in the meantime and see if I can do something later.

I like the granite devices stuff but it is not the cheapest. For a joystick you are looking at ~$400usd for the ioni motherboard and two ioni drives. On top of that will be your servo's, controller board like a TI disco that OSW uses. The firmware that granite are looking to do will run on the simucube using the microcontroller that is onboard, not the firmware on the ioni drives. FFB is supposed to be a standard but it is not well documented, doesnt work as expected in places and can be trial and error. A number of people have got it going so it's not impossible! Just not a walk in the park either :) In some ways, taking the game telemetry and using the forces it tells you is the easiest way to go but then you are likely to miss out on a lot of effects. For example, you are unlikely to feel good cannon fire this way, as the game may not output information to do this through the stick force. Through FFB it would have been an effect. Would probably work OK for 747 etc though.

Unfortunately, the hardware is the easy part. The OSW is good, I have had one for a couple of years. It's impressive what the hardware does with the mmos firmware. The hard part for the joystick is actually making the software. I don't know of any open source projects that tackle it. I know some people have listened in on the usb bus to something like a sidewinder to get the descriptor used and gone from there to try and implement the rest of it. Sounds like MetalGear is on the right approach but it can take time to get it all going.

For them to use a 5mm cutter they would be running the machine a lot slower, it would take a lot longer and cost more. Having said that, you need them to use a smaller cutter, ideally :) I dont exactly remember the crucial areas where tool size matters but you will have to go and chisel out some rounded inside corners if they need to be square. The worse that can happen is that there is a bit of the toolpath that a 12mm cutter will not fit in so it wont do it at all. I don't know if that could happen on his plans or not.