metalnwood

Bah, at least it's only a game. I ordered something a month ago and when I was invoices it our dollar went from 80+ US cents to 74 cents. It's now at 80 cents again. I lost $1200 in the course of a single week, bummer.

All I will say is that it felt like Deja Vu.

I for one only wanted a basic sim to blow shit up in. Then after spending lots of money, what seems like a years worth of income I find I had to push half a dozen buttons before it would even let me shoot a rocket. Hopefully 3rd parties will make it a bit easier for me. In the mean time, back to hawx.

I used to leave the machine running 24hrs a day until I got an SSD and the start up times became reasonable. Every once in a while the wear/tear issue is explored but unless you are expecting to use your machine until 2020 and beyond I wouldnt worry too much about that aspect of it.

By wads you mean maybe a third of a top note that usually binds a wad of cash together :) Bet your girlfriend only fell for the line 'I've got a wad of cash to blow on you' only once. I bet her dissapointment kicked in right around the time you hit mcdonalds :)

I would not like to fly without my TIR either. Far too used to it and I feel boxed in without it. However, someone else made a reasonable point. Ut's easier to get the TIR later if you have the funds for the hog now. The hog is the best stick about and it wont be lost on you. DCS a10 is one of the least demanding games as far as panning around because there is no constant dogfighting- something that TIR is really essential for. Having TIR makes the game more enjoyable. Having a stick that maps perfectly to the hog is very enjoyable and worth significant value as well. If you have not had a TIR before I think you could live without it for a while and use an excellent stick. It's like being asked which I should get first, the car or the gas. Tough choice.

I am not sure if I understand you 100% but you cannot interface with external controls like encoders directly from lua. So, if you mean a hardware encoder that might be attached to a controller board then there is no way to do it, you have to do as gremlin has said and map that encoders output in the game controls to something.

Says the guy with 5 projectors ;)

1000mm to one meter. You must be from the states :)

I would have to assume that only millimeters makes sense.

HiJack, I downloaded it but cant see anything specifically related to psu, just vcore etc. I might have expected to see the voltages for the rails but nothing?

I did think of that but my psu was up to the task of dual 6970's so I figured a single 7970 should be OK. It's a 850 watt corsair I think. Must be getting on a few years now though.

I got the asus 7970 with the factory overclock. Only problem is that my very stable overclock of my i5 to 4.5ghz now gives me a bsod since installing the card. I have had to take off the OC to keep the machine going. Not sure whats better, the i5 @4.5 with my 6970 or the 7970 without the OC.

Thanks Tommy! Today I put the cdu panel in my cad program and cut it out from MDF to see the screen behind it and see what my buttons would look like. I did it because I have a good supply of 12mm key caps but the cdu looks to use 10mm ones. This does make it look a little more crowded and the keys are fairly close together so I think I will go with the 10mm caps to keep the look more authentic. I have aso been playing around with how to get the writing on the keys. Obviously they cant be bought with the lettering and wording so I am having to do it myself. The one in the video was done by putting masking tape on a key and engraving the letter with the laser. This leaves a pocket which I fill with paint. I will experiment with some other things to fill it in. It worked out OK but I pulled the tape off a little too early so the lines are not as defined as I would like in some places but not terrible. Once again, the camera is a bit out of focus but the screen is looking good. I have tried to position it at around the correct place for when I get my pit made. Quick vid here.

John, depends what you want. I dont think there are any arduino solutions that cater for everything or have had their code published. You can go that way and have flexability but you will no doubt need to do a lot of programming yourself. Gadroc has support through Helios for a few different boards performing different things, e.g. phidgets board for caution light panel. There is no comprehensive support for getting all panels working yet. The only off the shelf interface I am aware of that may support alll or a majority of things is SIOC. I intended to have a look at sioc but have not got around to it yet.

Gremlin is correct. You could also get a 6 output card like the asus 7970 I have.

Panthro, I have not decided on the diffuser just yet. When I am bale to get out I will get some material and try a couple of things. The screens for the CDU arrived today. I plugged them in to a dev machine and exported the CDU. It looks good, no complaints there and the TGP looks nice on it too. If I didnt have a touchscreen up front a couple of 5 screens would work really well for mfds. I think I mentioned in another post that the vertical size of these are about 5mm short of the real thing. So close it doesnt matter. The pic doesnt have the cdu export but the cdu screen from the MFD. I imagine the CDU screen would give slightly larger text. Looking at the photo, it looks blurry on the cdu screen. Thats not the case, the cdu screen was on very bright by default and has overexposed a bit. ARGGGHHH, its upside down again!!! F*ck this mac stuff, this is the only thing that constantly pissses me off with macs.

ARRRGGHH, damn iphones and mac! The pictures always look perfect on the mac until you upload them to forums and its a gamble which way they will appear!!

I played around with it a bit more today, taking the idea from pitbuilders thread to use the led panel holders. I cut out the base, center and the individual covers. You can still see where I use the laser like a router to put on the bevel for the covers to sit, its still gray. I cant seem to get rid of that from the laser process so I might try and heat it up and see if it disappears. I wont put too much effort there as you cant see it with the tops on. I wanted to see what it all looked like so I quickly assembled it straight off the laser. Everything is dirty and needs to be cleaned so the phots don't look the best but you know, new stuff, I wanted to see what it would look like :) Like Pitbilder and Gadroc have said, the camera really shows up the engraving as white. Its not really that bad and you would never confuse an unlit light for a lit one. I have some ideas for diffusers an will post when I get some material. You can see in one photo that on extreme angles you can see a mirror of the engraving. The engraving is actually on the back so it can't get rubbed off. The acrylic is completely clear and because of that it looks like it is one the surface. It all looks completely black on the front. I dont think it will be a problem but if it is I will have to back out the sides of the covers to stop it. Now, to clean them all up before assembly.!

What do you reckon, honestly, really? My 6th car was not free, my 6th computer was not free and I imagine my 6th wife will be the most expensive of all.

I think I should pull my other thread in there and keep all my related stuff in one place so it might as well be here.. So, while I wait for my CDU screens to arrive I am having a go at the caution light panel. I have seen a couple around that look very good but because I don't like painting a lot I am going to try and do it a little bit differently. Instead of painting some acrylic and then engraving the writing through the paint I am using another type of laserable material which is clear acrylic with a durable matt finish on it. It wont rub off like my bad paint job would :) It also saves me that time painting which is really why I dont like painting. Because it is clear I need to use either a green led or some green diffusing material behind it. I am thinking of placing the individual warning rectangles directly on to the main frame which is mounted to the back plate. So, only two main pieces. To make everything line up easily I am using the laser to cut out a ledge for it to sit in. They go in with a puch fit but a little bit of glue will keep them in there. Here are some pictures of the idea. This is pretty rough at the moment, I dont try and get it looking 100% when I could easily go through a few iterations before getting it right. As it is, first time is pretty good. Only thing I would do different from a finished one is cut from thicker material for the main piece to give the led room to sit and cut the actual pieces on the correct table. In some photos you can see the flashback from the laser which is caused by the surface I cut on. Once I do the final piece it should look mint, where it counts. The laser isnt the right tool to do the ledge as you can see in the photo of it. It's dimensionally good though so it works and cant be seen with the engraved rectangles pressed it. So, it takes a bit longer on the laser to do it this way but removes some manual work from the equation.

Trailers are about the most misleading. How many times have you been to a movie based on a trailer and thought that every funny scene in the movie was in the trailer - and then there was just another one hour twenty minutes..

Yes but the word profit does not have to mean financial gain, to profit can be to benefit in a number of ways which I suspect most early buyers will. At the end of the day we don't fork over this money for a tool to get us from A to B like a car or a device like a electric drill which must last us a couple of years. We buy it for the entertainment and in this case ED has shown in the past that we can get a lot of entertainment from their products whether in beta form or not. So I say we are getting our money's worth. If you don't feel you cant gain any entertainment from the beta product then I find that strange but understandable why you would not want to pay.

In fact BRooDJeRo, this scheme works out perfectly for you. You dont have to purchase it but through the forums you will get the best reviews from lots of members all through the beta process so that you can decide for yourself. As someone who wont buy early you dont often get that opportunity to look in from the sidelines before it goes gold.

I understand that you're not going to buy something this way on principal. There are a few things I don't do on principal as well but I must say I don't quite understand why you have this approach here? I had more fun with the a10 at it's price during the beta period than I have had with a lot of games that cost more over their entire life - which is often short for most games these days. My view is if you like something why not do it? The word beta is a fairly insignificant thing to get principals involved when you know you would be enjoying it. I would think most people here know they will be buying the product so getting it early is a bonus and will do it. If DCS is just a game in your library of many that is played infrequently and you would be just as happy not loading it up in favor of battlefield then I get your perspective completely. You just have to remember most people here would rather be on DCS and thats their perspective.