metalnwood

John, I think that device that Gadroc talked about, the UC100 gets you away from the parallel port. It takes USB and then hooks in to the parallel port of your BOB. At that point the parallel port is just wiring and doesnt use the parallel port interface. I use something similar called the ethernet smoothstepper on one of my machines. So mach3 has a plugin and talks to the cnc via ethernet. It also gives me the total output of 3 parallel ports if I want to do a lot of extra stuff. Like you, if it aint broke. With my machine setup I dont want to change it unless there is a good reason to.

Mr Burns, you and I will have to disagree on your last sentence :) One CNC I built, using ballscrews on all axis was able to reposition to 0.01mm, or 0.0004". Thats all I bothered calibrating it to because thats what my dial indicator had. Under load, < 0.1mm. Usually better to cut .1mm oversize and do a clean up cut to size around the profile . If your machine is not rigid enough to give you the accuracy then the above step might help. If you cannot position with no load <1mm then something else is wrong :) I met a guy who has something like the one the OP is looking at on ebay. It was using ballscrews and if they are your average ballsscres coming out of china then they should be OK for doing PCB's. For myself, if the price was right I could get one for PCB only work knowing that the machine under the light load of doing a pcb would be ok. It would be similar to something I would build myself if it was for only that purpose. This guy who has one, when he puts it under load it vibrates like nothing and the piece of aluminium plate on the front of the gantry turns in to a soundboard amplifying everything. Not good to be around for a long time. Edit, last sentence should read heavy load. IT can cut away lightly all day somewhat quietly but as an example, he cut a piece of aluminium for a motor mount and it took three hours, hard on the ears. I am now cutting all the parts for his new CNC machine, that three hour part is about 4 minutes on my larger machine.

You are correct, it can be viewed as subjective but you know that one person doesnt make a statistic. Oculus and others know that this platform will fail if they dont get it right and the few people that dont mind low fps, like yourself, are not enough to sustain the platform. So you can call it subjective but they have the information to know that the good majority of people cannot handle it how you can.

Hopefully with dcs and optimisations it will be good but I wouldnt say that DCS and a 980ti currently slays the DK2 with less resolution ans less framerate. The cv1 is going to require an extra 77 million pixels/second on top of dk2.

The only advantage less SDE has is because of a larger pixels The resolution is the same but it is possible that 3 pixels on a screen with lots of SDE is not as noticeable as 3 pixels on a screen with less SDE. Chivas could probably spell that out better for people who might not know :) At this early stage of VR with low resolution, I dont think that one will have the leg up on the other. One may have slightly less SDE than the other but I think at this stage, what will make far more difference is the software catering specifically to these devices and rendering far objects a little differently.

I dont know much about the vive api and had assumed that it was based on steamVR and therefore you need steam. I dont know though. I agree that for most people around here the vive doesnt offer anything above the oculus for our kind of simming. The cost without the controllers is welcome and who knows, maybe I will buy some in the future depending what experiences come to VR. What I do like about the vive lighthouse, which I may have already said here is that I have two pits side by side, one racing and one flight, both powered off the same machine. I currently have to move the camera to use each one. I really like the idea with the vive that I just sit in either and it works with no changing of camera positions etc. I think I have seen that you will be able to buy an extra camera for the CV1, I think it was primarily for the hand controllers but if I could put one camera on each pit and it would work the headtracking as I go from racing to flying then I will be very happy.

I bought CLOD with such hopes it would replace il2. Never really happened. I nearly bought BOM because of the oculus support. glad I didnt for so many reasons, let alone no rift support. They are really relying on the modders to do a lot of what they promise.

Were you meaning appealing or appalling? :) Of course a company cannot be condemned for not producing something for a market that cannot sustain it. Hall sensors are great things considering pots often fail before the rest of a stick does. Also, considering this is the DCS forum and the bastion of the A10 simulator its no surprise that there is a good following for the TM warthog around here. That may not be the same on other forums.

Has anyone seen any FFB projects based on controllers that are not from an old msffb2 etc? There are a couple of them around for racing wheels using servos. These do a fabulous job and if you have used one and felt it's damping, it is so close to moving something using a fluid damping system/hydraulic etc. Even without using FFB these have a nice feeling that I can see would transfer well on to a joystick. I understand from people who have looked at it that it can be difficult as the specs were not well written and I think on the racing front people had snooped the USB data and copied information required to make their own controllers register themselves as FFB controllers. I guess there are other ways, like game telemetry to extract some information, depending what the game offers. It would at least get you some information coming from the airframe which could come through the stick.

Like any piece of consumer electronics I have had, it will be replaced for a newer model before the suns UV has any chance to break it. There is not a lot of UV in a house, most doesnt get through the windows.

I used to use the rift in the lounge where my racing sim was. I dont know how it deals with extra sunlight but I do know that in the same room I had to put up things to block light for TIR to work without some grief. I never had to with the rift. Perhaps it's because the rift has so many individual light sources at known distances/points that it is able to ignore erroneous light.. Dont know..

Yep, I have been running simvibe for a while with four shakers. It's probably something that has not made me in a rush to spend more money on another solution.

Ah, yeah, if you had said tactile transducer I would have known exactly what you were talking about :) With the talk of gloves and all sorts of things in this thread I was lost.. Yep, it certainly adds to it, I use simvibe and four buttkicker mini LFE's. They do a great job but I am hoping to replace them with a dbox like configuration, something that is very fast but with some movement, not lots but enough.

I am not sure what you are referring to as tactile feedback? Are you talking about real switches? If so, I dont see how the two are related? Similar if you are talking about gloves to interact with a VR cockpit that also have tactile feedback in the gloves I dont see how they are related? It would be cool for sure! If I could only have one and not the other then it would be hard choice, I would really like some glove that allowed me to interact with the VR world and have some tactile feedback. I would probably take that over motion if it was a choice of one over the other. They would all compliment each other fantastically. As Derek points out, $$ is usually an issue for a lot of us and all these things are not cheap. @Derek, I dont know why tactile is more optimal way to go? I say this only because I dont see a direct comparison between the technologies, they are complimentary. One can work without the other but I dont necessarily see why a choice has to be made between them. If the only comparison is that you would rather throw some $$ at switches rather than lots of $$ at motion, I completely understand that and that answers my questions above. I havent thrown the $$ at motion either, I have not found a suitable way to do it yet.

yep, often called 8020. Depending what suppliers in over there, it's not cheap and some areas getting similar stuff is not easy. If you can get it at a good price, it's what you are after.

I have tried the oculus on a sunny day where trackir would glitch and become annoying but I never had the same issues with the rift. I agree the technology in the vive for tracking is pretty cool and gives it a much wider view for the 5x5m space it can use but if you dont need the space, like cockpit games, then that technology doesn't give an inherent advantage in terms of performance.

This is the rift thread, there is no way I am using projectors in the future. If a racing game doesnt support the rift I wont be playing it :) There is certainly a need for two rigs, it depends on what you have. For what I have, there is no easy changing things about to go from one configuration to another. In the past I did that and all I found was that if it was setup for flying it would stay that way for a long time, then when it got set up for racing the same thing would happen. You didn't change over for a quick fix with the other equipment. With the controllers/seating position I have now, no chance. Things are bolted to steel frames and have to be that way.

Even if it was 1/8th the price I wouldnt be buying a card that only benches just over half of what a 980ti does. Thats what I call false economy. Save money is good but it has to be fit for purpose. I would certainly wait and se how it performs if you want it for DCS, don't go and buy it early in anticipation. edit. hah, I see Derek was replying at the same time..

I think that is true. I had wanted a 6dof sim for some time but the problems were many. One was I needed two of them, one for racing and one for flying as I use different setups for each. Secondly was using anywhere from 3x27" screens to 3x42" screens to the payload was large, they weight quite heavy. That added up to space and money x 2. With the rift my rigs are very slim now and a space saving config similar to dbox could be mounted around my aces ii replica seat and give good pitch, roll and heave with good response. One for each rig. Like you I think these things will become available. It's only now with the rift that I can start to give proper consideration to building something I know will work for me.

I know with modifiers you can get lots of buttons, thats pretty much the same as most sticks from TM, logitech, saitek etc. Just look at one of the button maps for the 940 to control the A10 and you can see it's not ideal when you have to go through different modes to share the two hats on the stick between different functions.. With modifiers, it doesnt lack the number of programmable buttons but I wouldnt trade my hog for FFB on a 940 with the button compromises and def not in VR.

OK, I wont argue with you on this point because on reflection, they are not useless in VR. I made one myself specifically for FSX to tune the radios and when you know where it is, it is not such a big issue. I can't go directly to the buttons I want but it's a bit like brail, you get to the box without thinking but have to have a slight feel to read where you are with respect to the buttons. My statement is probably better qualified saying that I would rather have a hotas supporting many functions than have one with many less and supplement it with a button box. While I am not a customer, I can say from what I have heard, Derek does make great products if you are looking for one.

The 940 doesnt have enough buttons in a VR environment! Thats really the topic when included in this thread. Buttons boxes dont help you a lot in a VR environment. HOTAS was made so you dont have to look so a hotas with a lot of buttons is ideal.

@Frusheen, nice work. Yes the discussion is a little relevant to VR because in VR we need a FFB stick that has all the controls a modern HOTAS has. FFB,if done right can definitely add to the experience, I would not argue that point. It adds immersion, I wouldnt argue that benefits most of us in any flight related way. You can almost guarantee that when some guys kills you time after time and you have no answer for him, he is not using a FFB stick. FFB sticks just dont add cues that are absolutely required. If the warthog had FFB, I would buy that version. No doubt, but current FFB sticks have too many cons to consider FFB enough of a pro to choose over other sticks.

MrTheOx you quoted agrees with a post of mine a little back. He finds it hard to say FFB is an advantage over a modern hotas because of the lack of buttons on FFB implementations - for modern aircraft. Add the rift, the topic on conversation, and lack of buttons on any current FFB stick is a killer. It wasn't a single individual that talked to companies and killed FFB. It was the collective audience across all users. Most people are only buying $20 jopysticks, no room for FFB there.

The trouble with a 940 for VR is its serious lack of buttons compared to other offerings and it's limited configuration in a pit. Centre mount is all but ruled out because of the large base. If FFB was on the 'pro' column, there wouldn't be anything else when compared to the other sticks about. I know what you are saying about the wheel and disabling FFB but flying is quite different imho. Getting the feedback in racing can be important, I use a DD servo wheel and wouldnt want to be without it. There is valuable information sent back. In flying the only really valuable information I miss is from trimming some aircraft but it's nowhere nearly as big a deal as feeling traction loss in racing.