xgibbousx

Hey Everyone, I stand corrected. A gnarly and highly capable F/A-18 Hornet pilot, from the carrier break video on page 17 of this thread, responded to my question on his video that this is how he lands his Hornet on the carrier: "Throttle for angle of descent. Stick for airspeed." I think we can put this thread to rest now finally! Sorry for the contention and argumentation that I caused and I will make sure to practice doing this the correct way from now on. Thank you!

I just posted a comment on the video asking the pilot himself. Let's see what he says.

I don't understand. There's a video of a real hornet pilot modulating his real hornet's airspeed/AOA with his throttle on final approach to a real carrier and you state that my assessment is incorrect. You state that turbulence causes the VV to move around and the AOA bracket height represents a 2 knot variance. But, you make no mention of what the real hornet pilot is actually doing in the video. Like I said, this is inarguable. Just watch the video. You are not arguing with me, you are arguing with that real hornet pilot flying the real carrier operations in the video. That real hornet pilot seems to be pretty experienced too.

Please look on page 17 of this thread at the video named "F/A-18F Carrier Break". That's a real hornet pilot, flying a real hornet, on a real carrier approach, to a real aircraft carrier using his throttle to control airspeed/AOA. It is unarguable and the pilot in that video nor I are trolling you. Simply watch his HUD in the left DDI while on final approach. He is at a steady 5 degrees of pitch. When his velocity vector starts going low on the bracket, he adds power. When the velocity vector starts going high on the bracket, he reduces power. He clearly is using his throttle to control his airspeed/AOA.

Guys, If you are flying a fast jet on approach with proper glide slope, altitude, and airspeed/AOA; your airspeed starts to drop off due to wind, drag, etc.; don't pitch your nose down to get your airspeed back... think about it. You'll plummet to the ground like a brick, still slow, and be in a far worse situation (just try it out in the sim and see what happens). Use your throttle to get your airspeed back in that scenario. In reality, you need to use whichever controls make sense at the moment. Generally, you always need to make a correction on both stick AND throttle to correct for altitude and airspeed deviations. In fast jets, it's much safer and easier to use throttle for airspeed as a rule of thumb on approach due to weight, drag, spool delay, lift-to-weight ratio, etc. Those who tout pitch for airspeed, throttle for altitude took some lessons in a Cessna (slow, light and floaty) at some point and think it applies everywhere. It doesn't. Either way, try out both methods and see which one works best for you. BTW, in the recent video of the hornet landing on the carrier after the fast break, you can clearly see the pilot using his throttle to maintain his flight path marker within the AOA bracket (i.e. throttle for airspeed/AOA). He doesn't even touch his pitch because it's already optimal. Just look at his HUD in the left DDI. Good luck!

Here's an amazing video: And another one by the same guy: The videos above are interesting in that although they are "amateur", they have a very professional feel to them.

Yeah, it could definitely be with the CV2 if it takes some years to come out. Here's a really interesting read: http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4123 It's Palmer Luckey's (the creator of Oculus Rift) first post on the MTBS3D forums. If you read through everything, you can experience how something like the Oculus Rift actually comes to life from the roots. He's basically looking for some kind of immersive 3D experience back in 2009. He's interested in either a 3D monitor setup or an HMD. People guide him in the right direction and he gets introduced to stereo 3D HMD's (LEEP 3D). He hangs around on the MTBS3D forums for a while modding other people's HMD's and finally decides to start creating his own. This ultimately results in the Oculus Rift.

You still have to lean in to see small text clearly. There is still a ways to go before we get to high-clarity resolutions (probably the CV3 or CV4).

Every time I hop into the cockpit I am totally amazed even after a dozen flights. It just never gets old. Yeah, the resolution still needs to be greatly improved. I'm already excited to see what the next iteration produces. I wonder what kinds of tech they are working on.

Yes, I have the OR running directly into the HDMI on my video card. I also have my monitor running into a DP2 on my video card through an HDMI to DP2 converter.

I will never play on a screen again. I was able to successfully complete the A-10 Weapons Practice instant action mission yesterday without issue in the Oculus. Therefore, I should be able to handle any other missions including MP. The biggest "problem" with the Oculus is that the resolution still needs to go up a lot. There is still a general blurriness factor evident especially with distant objects. However, I believe we are at the threshold of what would be considered acceptable blurriness given the sense of immersion. This means that most people (probably 75%) can spend 100% of their time simming in the Oculus at its current resolution. I see the resolution being the main selling point with Oculus versions moving forward in the future.

Just jumped in with my original settings at high/medium. I saw the "jitter" that people are talking about (where the in-game frame rate doesn't match the 90 Hz refresh rate of the screens) but it was still insanely immersive for me. I went down to low settings and it removed some of the jitter but it was still present to some degree. I figured the reduction in jitter wasn't worth the reduction in visual fidelity so I put my settings back. I might try to do some performance tweaks later though.

I just got my CV1 last night. I didn't want to wait 3-4 months to get one so I picked up a brand new one off of Craigslist for $900.00 (pretty good deal considering they can easily go for twice that on Ebay). Just had to drive 15 minutes down the street and done. Then I ran to Best Buy and got an Nvidia GTX 980 for $500.00 to go with it. I found the Craigslist post at 7:00 PM and was home by 8:00 PM with both the Rift and GTX 980 in hand. First off, I have to say that this thing is not some gimmick, fad, novelty, etc. I've been literally blown away from the first moment turning it on until writing this post. It is truly revolutionary and amazing. I've had visions of my life going to waste as I spend endless hours neglecting real life and immerse myself in this virtual world. I quickly realized last night that you need to have your normal monitor and Oculus Rift plugged into your video card at the same time in order to play 3rd party software like DCS (you also need to enable 3rd party apps in the Oculus Home settings). The video card I got only has one HDMI port and three Display Ports but both devices require one HDMI port each. Therefore, I was only able to have one device plugged into my video card at a time. Because the Rift was the only thing plugged into the video card, I was only able to play around with the Oculus Home stuff last night which was still truly amazing and oriented me very well. The Oculus Home demos (e.g. Dreamdeck, Lucky's Tale, Invasion, Lost, and the home screens) showed me what it means to have stereoscopic 3D and full environment immersion combined. I wasn't expecting how incredible this experience would be. The other thing that blew me away were the cheesy looking headphones on the Rift. They actually sound incredible and fully complete the immersion factor. I also like the XBox controller and realize how well the entire package was put together. I woke up early in the morning and went out and bought a Display Port to HDMI adapter from Fry's Electronics. This allowed me to have both my monitor and Rift plugged into my video card at the same time to get things like Steam VR and DCS running. I finally got DCS running and have to say that I wasn't prepared for what I was about to experience. The first thing I played with was the full-scale Su-27 in the hangar at startup. It's literally life size. I was even able to move around it quite a bit and check out the engine intakes and landing gear wells. I kept saying "Oh my God" over and over again with a massive grin on my face. Next, I did the F-15 cold start Instant Action mission. This just floored me. The cockpit looks and feels completely real. You actually see/feel the full scale of the jet. You actually feel like you are sitting in it. I literally just sat there in awe and looked around the cockpit for about 15 minutes. Just admiring the knobs, gauges, instruments, scenery, and other aircraft. I was peeking around corners, around the seat, over the side, over the nose, and over the wings. Then I started the damn thing up, taxied, and took off. Every part of that was done slowly and savored. I was going so slow and in such admiration that it took me 10 minutes just to taxi out. I enjoyed every second of it (I usually try to get out to the runway as quickly as possible). I could go on and on about this. There was a sense of exhilaration and speed that I've obviously never experienced before in a flight sim. It's amazing how easy landing and flaring is with depth perception! All in all I would give the experience 10/10. I am now downloading a bunch of other games to try out like Climb, Elite Dangerous, and Project Cars. I would recommend this product to anybody and I'm glad that I've had the pleasure of experiencing it early on. Feel free to ask questions and I will be happy to answer them.

New Video Hey Guys, Here's a pretty neat video that shows what allBST is all about. Please check it out and let me know what you think:

Sure, but I think allBST offers some major advantages over the current HW section: 1. Seamless one-click buys using PayPal. 2. Group creators get 2.5% of all sales within their group; instantly transferred to their own PayPal account. 3. Integrated shipping tracking and product returns backed up by PayPal. 4. Frictionless onboarding with Facebook sign up and login. 5. Easy group and product promotion with integrated Facebook sharing. 6. Private message sellers and comment on their offerings. 7. Visually browse with pleasure on desktop as well as mobile devices. 8. Comprehensive account features for managing groups, products, and purchases. 9. Powerful group admin features like creating admins, banning users, and deleting products. Anybody can easily create a group around any interest. Anybody can easily post products within those groups. I think its the easiest way for people to quickly create a buy, sell, trade group right now and start doing commerce with each other. It has tons of commerce related features missing from forum platforms.

Because this is based around a group of people with a common interest/hobby buying and selling stuff with each other within that interest group. There is community focus on allBST. Ebay is based around one person selling to many in a bidding format without a focus on an interest group. There is no community focus on Ebay. In other words, allBST is setup more like a forum (with cells of interests called groups) with a focus on buy, sell, and trade.

Just created a buy, sell, trade group for flight-sim stuff at the following link: http://allbst.com/FlightSimStuff I posted a few things for sale in there to give you an idea of how it works. Really easy to use. Just post any used or new flight-sim related stuff for sale there and anyone else can buy it from you. Is this something you think we can use here?

Solved by disabling force feedback in options. Technically, I think ED should make this not on by default so it doesn't cause other people issues.

Just upgraded to latest 1.5 Beta version and it seems that the all SU-25T trim commands are not working from keyboard or joystick. Anyone else having this issue? Any ideas on how to solve it? Thanks.

I'm using Windows 7 x64 SP1, GTX 960 with 355.98 drivers, Core i7 2600K. Problem was solved by turning Flat Terrain Shadows to ON. What is the upside/downside to having flat terrain shadows turned on? Clearly, one upside for me is that tree shadows now work at any distance which adds a very nice depth to the terrain.

Is it just me, or are the tree shadows only visible at higher altitude? For some reason, tree shadows only fade in when over maybe 3,000 ft. AGL. Is there any way to turn these on for every altitude? Thanks.

A good friend of mine flies Vipers. We went to elementary school, high school, and college together. He was a business major (because it was relatively easy), partied like crazy (you don't even want to know), disliked the ROTC crowd, and did a lot of flying and skydiving. In other words, not your prototypical candidate. The bottom line: Find a healthy balance in life (e.g. don't get addicted to drugs) and after school, just sign up and do it. If it's meant to be, you'll fly Vipers, if not, where do you think the control tower guys come from? Side Note: This guy was the best pilot I've ever met. He was gutsy and brave (low level through canyons, hammerheads in a Cessna, etc.). He also achieved his Private, Instrument, Multi-Engine, Commercial, CFI, and CFII licenses in the course of his college career. <- I'm 100% sure that this is how he got his flight slot in the end (probably > 1000 hours of flight time).

Hey Eveyone, I made a website called SimBites (http://www.simbites.com) and launched it a few weeks back. It's basically Hacker News / Reddit for the simulation community. I figured we needed something like that to centralize all the news going on in this industry, so I went ahead a programmed it up over a couple weeks. Long story short, I was spending way too much time on it and almost lost a very large client of mine. I had to redirect my efforts back to that client and as a result, SimBites has just been sitting around for the last couple weeks. I figured I would reach out to the community to see if you would be interested in taking over the content contribution. Maybe you could also spread the word a little to content consumers. I'd also like to hear what people think of the website/concept. I'm hoping it's something people want :] Thanks.

Outerra helicopter blade flex: Found the news on http://www.simbites.com.

Thank you for the excellent analysis guys. I agree it's best to wait given the $350.00 price tag and the fact that CV1 is probably due out within the next year. The good news is that the current users love their DK2. Great to hear that!