tjhowse

If you're somewhat handy you could have a crack at building a freetrack setup. It's what I use for flying the A-10C and F-15C and it cost me a grand total of one second-hand wiimote ($20), a coathanger($0.10), a USB bluetooth dongle ($5), some infra-red LEDs ($1) and a strip of retro-reflective tape cut off my high-visibility vest. http://free-track.net/ I've since used an adhesive hook to attach the wiimote to the wall behind my computer, for greater stability. As of 1.1.1.1, ED made an interface to talk the open freetrack protocol. Samtheeagle implemented it in a DLL which enables seamless integration with all DCS modules: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=75917 Additionally, Naturalpoint are complete turdburgers, and any money given to them is money given to Hitler: http://naturalpointofview.blogspot.com.au/p/trackir-anticompetition.html

Such a thing wouldn't be too hard to do, just a matter of interpreting the exported data and sending it to the teensy in the form of a servo angle.

Not quite. You must set the type of USB device as which you wish it to appear, and map the physical inputs across to values to be delivered by the buttons and axes.

http://www.openjoystick.com Gone quiet on this project for the moment, as I have a few others on the boil (including a new human), but openjoystick uses a teensy++ 2.0 to map the axes, buttons and hats through to a standard windows joysticks.

A lot of info came out of this year's CES on the subject of the rift: http://www.2d-x.com/ces-2013-gaming-tech-set-to-wow-you-in-2013-and-possibly-beyond/ http://www.theverge.com/products/oculus-rift-developer-kit/6741 http://www.mobilenapps.com/articles/6289/20130108/ces-2013-oculus-rift-next-generation-virtual-reality-gaming.htm http://www.ausgamers.com/news/read/3265914 http://www.technologytell.com/gaming/105520/o/ http://www.pcworld.com/article/2024445/oculus-rift-vr-headset-prototype-works-so-well-it-s-a-little-scary.html http://au.ign.com/articles/2013/01/10/rift-a-glimpse-of-gamings-future

I've done a lot with teensies, both input and output. A teensy can be programmed to show up as a USB HID device with axes and buttons, or drive outputs. The Teensy+ 2.0 has 45 I/O. All can act as digital I/O, nine of them can drive servos, and eight others can be used for analogue inputs. They're cheap as chips, too.

Just adding my voice to the clamour: Flying DCS with the oculus rift would be damn sweet. It's the main reason I'm going to get one when they come out.

Thanks for the attempt Heretic (That is a very well-written guide), but you did not read my post, nor did you watch my video. I am trying to send the MFCD screens to another computer. Not simply another monitor.

Hmm. I had feared that might be the case. If you have a look at the video, you'll find why I don't just put another monitor on. My video card is quite occupied as it is.

This is a repost, since the tech support forums are a bit quiet: Simple question to which I could not find an answer: Is it possible to export the MFCDs to another computer's screen, in my case a laptop sitting next to me, over a LAN? I know it's possible to export gauges, using DCS' network data interface with helios or hawgtouch, but I'm unsure about the MFCDs. This is why, incidently:

The purchase is now tied to your steam account. You can install steam anywhere, anywhen, log in with your account, download and install the game, as many times as you like. The only limitations are that you A) Must have an internet connection to start it the first time and B) You can only be logged in at one location simultaneously. I don't think DCS has any DRM on top of steam, but I didn't buy my copy through steam, so I'm not sure.

Actually, I'm reasonably sure it does. Smoothing works by taking an average of the last n position samples. For exmaple if you have a very large n, say 120 (matching a 120Hz sample rate), your detected averaged position will be about half a second behind reality. In order to make it less jittery they have to stop it responding to small movements, however the software doesn't know if any given small movement is just a jitter or the start of a bona-fide movement. The trick is finding an acceptable middle ground. As for whether Kinect will replace TIR/Freetrack, time will tell. I'm not sure if the 30FPS is a limit of the IR camera, the visible camera or the software. If it's sampling a simple, 6-DOF model (A head), rather than a large, complex 120-DOF (Two people) model it may be able to achieve higher throughput. If it can only manage 30FPS I'm very skeptical it will be of any use to us.

My X52 non-pro served me well for a long time, but eventually I tired of performing the mental arithmetic required to get all the shift keys and hats worked out, so I bought a TM warthog.

Mumble is a great, open source, alternative to the likes of Teamspeak and Ventrillo. It's lacked any integration with DCS games until now. I've started work on a plugin that does stuff similar to TARS, but for mumble rather than teamspeak. At the moment it only does UHF radios, and it's totally untested. I'm hoping to get some testing done tonight. It's available here: https://github.com/tjhowse/MumbleDCS , along with all the source and setup instructions. This is version 0.1, I'm planning to continue work on it until it's comparable to TARS in functionality. Donations welcome.

His (valid) point is that nerfing the CBU-97 doesn't make sense. There's no reason to do so, as it now resembles the actual lethality of the CBU-97 much less authentically. Sure, the real deal is coming soon, but there was no merit in making a change until then.

So guys, I have some good/bad news; I proposed to my long time GF the other day. I'm accustomed to having all the time in the world for flying my sims, and not having to justify my purchases to anyone but myself! I'm glad I bought my TM Warthog :joystick: the other day, because I'm sure there's no way I could sneak that through now. :( I'm wondering if any of the more experienced married men around these parts have any advice for someone in my position? Any clever tricks for sneaking things past the 'ole dungeon keeper? LOL! :D

I have the pinkie paddle set up as a shift key that changes roll into yaw. Works well because you rarely have to use the rudder and ailerons at the same time.

It's an infra-red camera, actually. It does clever sub-pixel interpolation and blob sensing inside the wiimote, so your computer doesn't have to do the heavy lifting. Here's a video my my wiimote setup:

It is as good as, if not better than TIR, but it requires more work to get set up. That's what it comes down to. If you want something that's plug and play, get TIR. If you want to save some money and spend some time, you can't go wrong with freetrack. Quality-wise they're the same.

I concur with the other posters in this thread. Each of the three positions has about 2-3mm wiggle at tip, and the force required to move it from one position to another is much less than the other switches, but there's little chance of my accidently switching it.

The explaination is that ED are using an utterly ineffective method of creating recordings of missions. It needs to be thrown out and rebuilt in a manner which works. There are a dozen hazily-proven methods for ensuring track integrity, from ensuring the DCS window doesn't lose focus when recording the track, to not switching views whilst replaying one. The only constant seems to be that the longer a track runs for, the lower the chance of it being accurate.

I use a wiimote via bluetooth and an infra-red LED array. Some reflective tape wrapped around my point model wires does an awesome job of it. Video here: I've since improved the point model a bit. Less fragile and a wider angle of effectiveness. The wiimote does all the heavy lifting, I have almost zero CPU impact from running this head tracking setup. Snappy as hell too.

I have two monitors, with my MFCDs set up on the left one with hawgtouch providing OSBs. Having bigger, more details MFCDs is brilliant. I wouldn't split the cockpit view over two monitors though, the bezels would ruin it.

I made another series of videos, this one includes combat! http://www.youtube.com/my_playlists?p=660F1B9D27C339F6 --Tjhowse--

I recorded a mission from takeoff to landing, explaining a lot of stuff along the way. I hope it would be the kind of thing that newbies would find interesting and maybe tempt them to start reading more about the game: --Tjhowse--