BHawthorne

Immersaview just updated me with the latest SimVisuals and Sol7 builds to assist with pre-warping with the setup. I've been in contact with the Hong Kong manufacturer of the PVC balls and we've been talking about using rear screen projection PVC material for the ball.

I wouldn't mind doing KIAB and Smokey Hills Gun Range, but without tools I'll only be toying with USGS photo scenery and elevation data without a way to add it in as a TheatersOfWar. I do suppose I could dig around the file structure of the beta 2 Nevada folder, but that's not EDGE and I'm not that intuitive at reverse engineering things. I'm the one that drew KIAB for openstreetmap.org. http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=37.6231956481934&lon=-97.2653102874756&zoom=14

I think some people are distressed about fidelity are not accounting for the learning curve. I've seen several posts specific to IRIS that clearly state that they need to start out simple and work up to advanced. Got to crawl before you walk, and got to walk before you run. I think it's unrealistic for people to expect 100% advanced aircraft from third parties immediately until they work through things and begin to understand the mechanics to get there.

Most of the projection stuff I do I have to resign to the idea of $1k+ no matter what for a project. The math simply doesn't make things inexpensive yet on most options. As is, it's $500-600 per projector. Everything is relative though, because the pre-warping software is available now and 5 years ago the stuff I've been doing would of cost $100k. I look at the cost of the ball to be a price to get things done. I really need one or two more Optoma GT720 though. That's another $1k right there. I have three GT720 right now, but need 5 if I'm to get full coverage on a screen that would mimic the ball dimensions. The only thing really painful I see is I know it'll end up costing as much as the simpit will. Visuals make or break your immersion though.

I have an odd idea for the initial screen mold. Thinking on pulling the mold from one of these: http://www.ebay.com/itm/3M-Walk-ball-Water-walking-ball-Zorb-Zorbing-PVC-1-0-mm-/120545572890

Transportation for nations are targets or things to defend depending on what side of the fence you're on. Conflict is not always military on military. Civilians also exist in areas of conflict and play a part in combat tactics. It's pretty clear infrastructure are things of importance to a combat simulation.

What's wrong with a target rich environment with diversity? I don't think I'd do train sim but I definitely see the scenarios that would benefit from a fleshed out rail simulation. FSX is dead as a core, Prepar3d and X-Plane is the only thing alive on the civilian side. There is a lot of parallel content out there already from other sims that can be re-envisioned for DCS. :smilewink:

Ever pondered doing an F-84F? Noone has done the F-84F justice even in MSFS. I can give you all the detail photos and technical information you'd ever need. I own the manufacturer's technical drawing 50 roll library on microfilm, I have the flight and maintenance manuals, I maintain 52-9089 at the Kansas Aviation Museum and I own 51-9345 and plan on wiring it up as a simulator. A first generation fighter would be a good starting point because of the lack of complex systems. Just a thought. ;)

I've had trouble following the logic of some of the worries people have. People will buy and fly what they feel meets their standards and pass on those that they feel don't. In the context of squadron, it'll just be a multi-player extension of that mindset. The importance is that everything is on a common core and you choose what you do and don't care to use. If DCS remained fractured, Eagle Dynamics would have ended up spending longer and longer on each successive project and would have ended up with a really fractured logistical mess for maintaining support on all the separate titles. Frankly, Eagle Dynamics shifting to a core platform and allowing for 3rd party development is the best thing that has happened to DCS. It ensures a healthy and busy release schedule of products that ED might not otherwise be able to do on it's own. It's a win-win situation for both ED and us as users. We all have the capability to vote on what aircraft meet our standards with our pocketbooks. Nothing worrisome there imho. I think the idea of change scares some people though.

Composite layup requires constant vacuum until the part cures to make a high quality part. It's standard to vacuum bag composite parts. You should maintain at least 24 in.hg constant vacuum to ensure consistent coverage and draw off of excess epoxy resin.

Looks like it's here: http://www.shacknews.com/file/22033/digital-combat-simulator-a-10c-warthog-beta-v20# Not a torrent though.

Ah yep, I forgot about that. What originally bothered me about the dishes were the depth of the dish. I'm wondering if a single dish has the proper depth to be able to do a portion of a full sphere? Keep on doing vacuum bag layout of segments and popping off that area and shifting the edge of it to where you could resume another portion if it off the dish until it is a uniform area of sphere that you need. For me I think in terms of room temperature wet layup of 1 or 2-ply fiberglass composite vacuum bagged to remove any un-uniformity or excess resin. I got my manufacturing engineering degree in 2010 and it would be a fun use of my composites training. I'd need to spend about $500 though -- half on materials and the other half on the continuous duty cycle Glast vacuum pump. I do like the idea of vacuum forming too though but I think it might take even more material cost than wet layup would.

I'm still trying to work through the method and materials I should use to make the screen segments. I have a bit of left over Rose Brand Tendo that I can rear project on or I can make a tooling mold and form a segment of the dome and vacuum RTM make composite parts. The difficulty is forming a uniform spherical surface to pull the parts from.

With every projection being a uniform size it shouldn't be a problem unless the above render is handled differently than the forward and side views as far as camera. The pre-warp should take out all projection variation, but it's going to require some decent work on calibration.

Given PeterP's 5x1 monitor lua I think this is plausible with a quadrilaterized spherical cube map of 800x800 per display. My projectors can lock 1280x800 and the NVIDIA control panel shows and renders 800x800 as a custom resolution. I can prewarp 800x800 into the geometry shape using pre-warping software. Here is what I'd need to pre-warp the displays to for a 4000x800 Eyefinity 5x1 quadrilaterized spherical cube map. I think I've worked it out enough that I could do a proof of concept build.

Forget 120 degree screens (I got bored of that years ago), if it can do geodesic dome by projecting onto 5 or 6 different rear projection panels I'm sold on this idea. I have the hardware to do it if the camera code is capable on my Eyefinity 6 system. I do have 6 projectors sitting around too. I've been wanting to figure out how to do what you posted for awhile now with monitor scripting example. If you guys can help me, I'll get this working as a proof of concept. I have DCS: World and DCS: A-10C installed on my projection computer at the moment. I also have soem rear projection screen fabric sitting around for experimentation. What I have in mind is simular to pre-warping the camera views to do penta-division alignment like this link: http://pineappleware.com/sub/stitch.html

The more, the merrier. Let the server ruleset sort it out. My vision of what DCS would be would involve all sorts of land, air and sea vehicles. If certain vehicles don't meet the fidelity you want, limit them to AI only on the server.

Mine is in a warehouse. The B-52 and F-15 are in an aircraft hanger at an flight instrumentation business. They're all mobile though with their own trailers, so they can be driven anywhere. The B-52G is mostly just plug the power in and boot up the computers. Neither the F-84F nor the F-15A have been interfaced yet, so that'll be an adventure in the future. There is also a single seat Navy F-4 simulator, a T-33 simulator and a USAF two seat F-4 simulator that they have. A few of us have been batting around the idea of a simpit gathering in Wichita KS at the Kansas Aviation Museum in the future. We're all ramp staff there so we have full access to all the aircraft there and maintain them. Having a bunch of real cockpit simpits there for people to hop between for networked flight would be fun. And while not flying we could tour people through the real aircraft on display.

A quick question, are these to proper scale for DZUS rail spacing?

I don't have any recent pics of it, but I do have pics of it the day it was delivered. It was an instructional airframe at Langley AFB hence all the battle damage patch training on the side. It was demiled by being chopped up into 4 major pieces -- nose, tail and wings. None of the sections could be purchased together, so it went to four different salvage operations. This is just the nose part. Demil for instructional airframes are handled differently than active inventory aircraft. Even so, they're stripped pretty bare. It's essentially a shell, with the canopy, main instrument panel and hud only left. Even then, it makes for a good simpit project with the right surplus connections. A year from now it should be a very cool display. Just imagine when DCS World really starts going and third party aircraft start showing up. His F-15, B-52 and my F-84F could all be running DCS World using real airframes and add-on aircraft. :pilotfly:

I'll have the US region covered shortly. Currently reviewing contract details. It will be bundled with NTHUSIM Plus if purchased through me in the US region.

I know who got it. I'm the one that showed the new owner the ebay listing. I pondered trading my F-84F cockpit for it, but mine is way more complete. They ended up trading a few things for it. I'm helping the new owner with it. He lives about 15 miles away. He's got air intakes for it now, an ejection seat and a few other new goodies. It was lifted up off the trailer a few weeks ago to check out all the access panel areas. I expect he'll be repainting the fuselage in the next month or two. The owner also has a complete B-52 cockpit interfaced to FS9.

Corel Draw should be OK since it's vector based. A thought on any solid black areas of labels. Run them rich black. 33% C, 33% M, 33% Y and 100% K. It'll keep from streaking occurring in the black solid areas. If you only did 100% on black you can get streaking and variation within solid areas. That's an old pre-press trick most pros use.

I used to work at a label printing plant in the pre-press department. Is there anything specific you want to know about layout of labels or pre-press specs standard to the industry?

The depth of the dish is not deep enough. That's why it's called a dish and not a dome. ;)