BHawthorne

Even with knobs I'm more apt to subtractive CNC a mold to pour resin into. I'm used to that kind of thing with composite knowledge though.

Subtractive machining is more cost effective than additive machining. Laser cut or 3-axis CNC cut panels are the way to go. Look at it purely from the cost per 1 inch^3 to manufacture and laser cut/cnc always will come out on top as more cost effective and better suited. As a machinist always use the right tools for the job. Additive machining is not the right tool.

I heard you're moving to Dallas/Ft. Worth area. Someone mentioned it in another post I think. Me and some friends often participate the Alliance airshow every summer in Ft. Worth with their B-52 and F-4 simulators. A lot of Viperpits guys around that area too. You should ride up with them to Wichita in May 2013 for the next Cockpitfest USA. 11 of them went last show. They had fun. Would be cool to see one of your simpits at the show too. :thumbup: No progress on the Rift yet. Still in limbo mode waiting on Oculus to manufacture them and ship in December.

Think it's negligent to pass judgement on something not available for proper peer review yet. Why do people think 3rd parties are incapable of maintaining consistent quality control on their add-ons? We have no prior history to come to that conclusion yet. Let things fall where they may and give them some time after it hits the wild to be refined and then pass judgement IMHO. Get back with us 6 months post-release. One constant on developer forums is unknown translates in to blind conjecture made up to fill the void of detail people hunger for. There is nothing worse than an idle audience waiting for something. It'll thoughtlessly say things to bite the hand that feeds them out of misguided angst.

Small update on my motivation to further pursue this. Cockpitfest USA 2012 is done, so I can shift focus back on another screen build project. I currently have 3 Optoma GT720 and 3 Optoma EX525ST. I'm in the process of updating my video card from two AMD 5870 E6 to either an ASUS 7970 DCII or an MSI 7970 Lightning E6 card. I next need to sell the Optoma EX525ST's on ebay and get two more GT720's from the proceeds. That'll have me in proper shape for the build. I suppose I could just mix and match the GT720's and EX525ST's but I'd prefer using a common projector type to keep things simple. I'll use Rose Brand Tendo stretch screen fabric for the rear projection. It's not good gain but it's a known quantity to me from previous builds. My personal to-do list is: 1: Sell the Optoma EX525ST's for around $350 each. 2: Get the 7970 E6 card. 3: Pick up about $300 in screen materials.

Looks sexy. Just wish it was a F-84F-25GK. So much is common between the aircraft instruments. I guess I can dream. Noone has done a good F-84F on any platform.

Is this you "publishing" them? If so, how did you get the OK from Eagle Dynamics to earn money on their IP?

Adobe Illustrator should be able to export it in those formats. Just download the 30 day trial to convert them.

Steve Cannaby just posted this video of the show on YouTube. The next show will be May 2013. :pilotfly:

They're all different target audiences and they're all not mutually exclusive, so all win. The only thing the unscientific poll shows is a predictable bias towards the sim this forum centers around.

Milviz is very aware of DCS third party options now available. It's been brought up multiple times on their own forums. I get a vibe that they have enough on their table as is developing for FSX and adding another platform isn't a priority. I also get that vibe from VRS who make the superbug. Mostly at issue is manpower hours required to do a quality aircraft. There is no cut and paste translation between FSX and DCS. Personally, I'd liek to see several more MSFS add-on devs also adopt DCS, but it's too early in the game I think for some devs to bite on the idea. I think we'll find more devs receptive in 2013-14 than now. It's a lot of manpower and effort needed to develop a DCS or even an FC3 aircraft. I don't doubt someone will do an F-86 sometime in the future because it's a classic and a prime canadate to be done. My totally ignorant guess is that it's not on Milviz's to-do list right now though.

Some games are better suited to 1680x1050 or 1920x1080 resolutions because of user interface layouts. 1280x800 a game interface can be obstructive to gameplay depending on what game it is. There are many games that have UI scalers in preference though, where i can set the UI to something like 66 or 75% scale if I want to. The games that do not have that option and have a cluttered UI I use a scaled resolution on. For example, many of the MMORPGs I play have really cluttered UIs that work much better with a scaled resolution.

You'll find the keywords to look for in projector specs is "native resolution". Projectors all have scalers built into them that allow non-native resolutions over the native one. Some retailers will even falsely advertise projectors as 1080p when the real native resolution is often 1280x800. I'll often run my projectors in 1680x1080 or 1920x1080 mode but they're scaling, not native at those resolutions.

The lens throw is good, the resolution is the minimum I'd use. My first build used 1024x768 native resolution projectors, but I moved onto 1280x800 projectors. The price seems ok I guess too. I prefer to stay around the $500-700 USD range. The S3D capability is handy on them, but not a crucial selling point. This isn't a projector I've seen others used on builds but strictly speaking, the lens throw is within the range of usable projectors. If it was readily available in your area it would be an option.

I really like what de-bezeling does for triple-head setups. It's still surprising to me just how much a plastic casing can add to the bezel size for panels. In most cases it at the very least doubles the bezel size. One thing I've pondered but never really seen anyone do yet would be to mask off the panels and have them painted matte black to mute the high contrast metal casing the panels end up having once de-bezeled. With how the panels need to be custom mounted the warranty is gone on them so no real limitation there worrying what paint would do to a warranty. Only real consideration I'd have was to ensure they were masked off really well before painting so no electrical components were inadvertently sprayed in the process. No clue what the conductivity properties are of spray paint, but it would be eliminated as an issue if properly masking off everything.

Be mindful that going 1080p projectors means adding complexity to the design. You're most likely going to have to creatively bounce the projections off of first surface mirrors to regain that lens throw range short throws have. There are no short throw 1080p projectors in the consumer price range. By short throw I mean between 0.72:1 and 0:49:1 lens throw ratio. That is the sweet spot for projector specs to do this kind of stuff. I don't think you'll find a 1080p with a lens throw less than 1.32:1 which is almost double the maximum lens throw limitation. That really screws up designs with mounting limitations and forces you to get creative with mirrors. It's also the main reason why 1280x800 projectors dominate multi-projector builds. I'd be using 1080p projectors already in my builds if I could find any with 0.72:1 or shorter lens throw. I don't want to mess with mylar or plexi based first surface mirror configurations to add complexity to the design. The simplest designs are often the most functional. Adding mirrors to the design create new sources for calibration headaches.

Do I work for ED? No, your question is combative and rhetorical. Do you have a true interest in knowing who I work for? A few around here can tell you and it's relation to FSX. Have I compared the source code between FSX and DCS? There is no need to. Real world performance is a functional baseline to make quantitative statements on CPU bound performance. Because you may seem very resolute in your ideas, but to me is just something like could have been copied and pasted from the internet. Not sure what you're getting at here other than to insinuate I phoned in my answer without knowing what I'm talking about. I have years of experience with FSX so I call shenanigans on that. Why make such a statement when you have no idea of my background? I just find it funny that people like to spout about things they don't have a clue about. If you have a better idea of how to make a simulator of the FSX or XPlane scale run better, maybe its time to write a paper about it? You are aware of how the FSX process pipeline works correct? FSX is quite a bit more CPU bound than FS9 is. It has always been that way. Prepar3d is working on many of those shortcomings though. You can choke FSX with the latest hardware out there depending upon the settings used -- none of which have to be maxed out. These are not GPU bound choke points. If you don't understand many settings FSX can turn into a total slideshow and the settings are not intuitive by default. Not to say the lack of appreciation for the hard work of those people. I wonder what would be your reaction if someone said some work you done was utter crap without presenting any constructive arguments. I've used FSX for years longer than I have ever used DCS based sims. I'm well versed in multi-display integration for FSX. I do know FSX and how it behaves quite well. I also am used to people like you that go off flinging feces at anything it'll stick to if it's a post that doesn't agree with your flavor of personal opinion. People attack my work all the time in relation to the NTHUSIM product line and Immersaview. I'm used to people being arse hats on the internet because they hide behind anonymity that allows them to grow a set of balls stating things they'd never say in real life. Be mindful that very few people will give you any courtesy if you can't be courteous to others. Write a paper about it? I assist with third party software development and customer support for FSX related utilities and have maintained multiple FAQs for years now. Tell me another flight sim that had a detailed ATC, weather, AI traffic (not only air, but on roads and sea), and the drawing distance and ground detail FS had. And that don't run like crap. The problem is some people made their objective to MAX OUT all sliders and install all the possible add-ons and still wanted it to run like butter, instead of enjoying the experience of flying in a simulated environment. OK, how about FS9? It is a heck of a lot better optimized than FSX is. FSX is a half-finished product that lost development support due to bad marketing, budget and design decisions. It thrives despite those things, not because of them. Both FSX and Flight suffered from terminal spaghetti code that occurred over years of development. Things did not get better over the lifetime of MSFS, it got worse because of a mature codebase that was extended instead of being periodically rewritten and optimized. Digging through the orphaned unimplemented variables in MS Flight cfg files show the final terminal disease of that. At least LM understands that now with Prepar3d and is going through and rewriting a lot of the choke points in the ESP codebase in an active effort to improve and maintain the engine. Sliders? I edit cfg files directly in a text editor. tl;dr Logical Fallocy: When you don't like the message, attack the messenger? That is a really bad habit you should get over...

Immersaview's standard consumer pre-warping utility is tailored for up to three projectors. If you have a specific need for something over three projectors Immersaview can arrange for use of their professional version under a non-commercial license on a case by case basis for the cost of NTHUSIM Plus. This is not regularly done, but if you are going to do something exotic -- such as 4 or 5 projectors -- Immersaview is accomodating as long as you are good about documenting the build on the internet to help others. The link in my sig is from late 2009/early 2010. Back then I was using 1024x768 projectors with a projection height of 60". I have gone up to 84" on 1280x800 with a preference of 60-72" for pixel height on projectors that do 760 or 800 pixel height maximum. I would suggest no more than 72" and prefer 60" projection height on those resolution type.

Rounding the corners will change the geometry of the projections making pre-warping a requirement. Personally, I have no issue with that idea because I'm well versed in it, but it's a bit more exotic than just using flat screens though. The sooner 20,000 hour LED 1080p short-throws are available the better. I like dreams like this. :thumbup: [things to ponder] But even if they're not short throws, if they go LED it means the thermals on the projectors are managable to do portrait. 1080x1920 is a sexy concept for pixel height. When you put a regular throw projector on end it turns short throw to begin with because it's throwing almost 2x more pixel height at the same distance. Force a custom resolution of 1920x1920 on the 1080x1920 projection and use a mirror to force an anamorphic effect to make the projection square. [/things to ponder]

That is chalking up FSX to be as efficiently designed as DCS. FSX is inherently flawed because it processes things in a very CPU bound fashon. No matter how beefy your machine is it can be brought to it's knees and still look like crap in-game. FSX was designed in a pre-GPU-compute era where single core CPUs dominated the marketplace. FSX runs like a turd even on the best of hardware without using obscure voodoo on it's preference files. In fact it's so bad that many people still use FS9 in preference to FSX. Prepar3d is one way of addressing many of those issues, but at the core it's still flawed without extensive rewrite.

Both the KC-135 and the FedEx 727 cargo areas would make great lan party rooms. I'll be on Justin to do at least one for next show. I was thinking one aircraft LAN for DCS World and one for Falcon BMS because of all the Viperpit guys that came. :thumbup:

Here is a link to a few panoramas I took Saturday with my phone. All my detail cockpit photos are on my Canon t2i. I can't upload them to a gallery until I get my main rig back from running a sim at the event Sunday night but I thought I'd post these first. To view the full 180 degree panoramas click on each photo in the gallery to expand them. :) https://www.icloud.com/photostream/#A4JtdOXmJtejEB

Ask for Justin or Brad. Both of us will be running around. If I'm not there, Justin will be. He's the one organizing the event. We're both volunteer staff at the museum, so regular staff there should know us and point you in the right direction. :) On Saturday and Sunday I'll either be with the F-84F's in the center of the ramp or with the flight simulator inside the terminal building on the second floor main area.

A mad dash to the finish line for today. I've still got to mask off and paint my cockpit interior today between the weather. It shouldn't be hard, because it's just like the one I did for the KAM F-84F. This afternoon I also setup the projection setup for the sim above. It'll be 90 degree circular single projector. Not anything like I normally do, but should still be fun under the circumstances. My aircraft while it was stationed at Sheppard AFB in Texas as a ground training aircraft. Before restoration started. It's currently 100% fog out atm hince the condensation this morning in the pics. The U.S. AIR FORCE senciling goes on also later today.

A quick iphone pic of the Thunderbirds flying over the museum while practicing thier routine today. Lots to do still to get ready for the show. Tomorrow is going to be buisy. :smilewink: