VO101_MMaister

Well I keep being amazed by the details of DCS...

Well, as a non native english speaker it is always a pleasure to be educated by knowledgeable natives about the right expressions ;)

Well, icing rarely happens at clear blue sky. But it makes sense regarding the shympthoms. If the dinamic intake of the pitot freezes then the speed indication can reverse. The trapped pressure in the dynamic intake will be relatively lower compared to the static when you dive so the speedometer will function reversed. The counterside applies when you climb. Anyway, I hope that the developers can have a look at this one and confirm that it is a coded feature of an instrument failure.

Can be! I wasn`t hit and I wasn`t in any extraordinary flight situation when it came up (3000m, about 600km/h), that is why I thought that it might be a bug.

Hi, I was in an online game, low on fuel and on my way back to base when a strange speedometer behavior came up. The instrument started to act reversed, so when I gained speed it was indicating sinking speed when I dropped speed it was showing increasing. Very strange. My plane was undamaged. I was afraid that it wont be shown on a track, so I reached for my phone to take a video. Here it is: ]

As far as I know ( and it is purely based on information I have read on this forum) this sheet shows an engineer calculated benchmark of the k4's climb rate , and not actual test results. Yo-Yo checked this, and he claims that the ramjet effect was probably not taken into the formula, therefore the sheet shows a somewhat lower climb rate than what he calculated and used in the FM.

And according to Yo-yo, the exhaust thrust's effect is probably not included in these calculations. Hence the ingame climb rate is slightly higher.

I don`t have the 2.0, but for me it looks like this topic went a bit off from the original question. Is it approved by proper tests that the FM changed in 2.0 compared to 1.2 or not? If it didn`t change then you guys are questioning the original D9 FM, and it is another topic. If it did change then the question is why and how did it change? Was it intentional or not? If it is an intentional change then what is the reason of it? If it is not, then how can it be recovered to the original? I think you should concentrate on these questions. MM

To be honest I am also very skeptical with your business model, making everything in-house. Outsourcing the different manufacturing processes exists not because for example BMW could not make the single smallest plastic part by itself, but because it is not profitable. Running a casting, a painting or a packing workshop each cost a hell of a money and it is only worth it if the expensive machines running around the clock. Now what you are planning to do is just the opposite. Investing a lot of money and energy into manufacturing capacities and hoping for big, continous order one day to keep these machines busy. When you buy a Saitek product the manufacturing cost`s share in the whole price is not more than 20%. You are right of course about the low quantity high quality products like Slaw`s or Milan`s. They sell in low batches hence the production is expensive ( I am not sure about Milan since he is utilizing an existing family owned fabric). But the serious flight sim market is damn small. I guess you made a business plan calculating the risks, monitoring the market and figuring out realistic minimum quantities to sell to keep your manufacturing profitable. When you spend a lot of money on machines it needs to be returned before you see a penny of profit. Do not misunderstand me, I wish you a great success, but it is a very unusual plan for a business. By the way I would love to see some pictures of your machines, it should be really interesting. Best Regards

Yep it was a control stick & pedals I built for myself a few years ago. The dampers can be expensive ( I bought them for peanuts on e-bay) but the control feeling is day and night compared to the spring only systems. Here are some pictures: https://flic.kr/s/aHsjR2V5gH Here is a small clip with the damper effect:

:P

There are other non patented Force feedback systems available like the BFF. These are great diy kits and with some knowledge one can build very good ffb controls. The problem is the support. These are supported by X-plane and FSX but not by DCS or other combat sim. If it changes then there will be plenty of possibilities.

I bought these on ebay.

I used high quality adjustable rotary viscous dampers attached to the pivot shafts.

I need to comment this, because I am on a very different point of view. Damping is the best thing you can do to achive a more realistic stick behavior within a acceptable price range. A ball bearing hinged, steel spring loaded stick will wobble and literally have no friction at all, hence it is very easy to over control. in real planes: The air pressure on the control surfaces gives a very different feedback on controls, there is a lot of friction between the airstream and the control surfaces therefore there is no wobbling at all on the control devices if you release them. In addition the mechanically connected controls have a lot of internal mechanical friction which is an important addition to the control feeling. All in all if you move a flight stick during flight what you feel is the dynamic air pressure and the friction of the air stream and the mechanical friction. If you deflect a flight stick and then release it, it will never wobble but will slowly return to center (if it returns at all!!!, sometimes the friction is higher then the returning forces). The friction helps a lot to avoid overcontrolling. The only cheap and good way to simulate it (at least to my knowledge) is the damper. Of course setting it up correctly is crucial, it should not be the dominating resistance element. It should only supplement the spring load and eliminate the wobbling. Here is a video of my flight stick`s motion with viscous dampers and steel spring load. I could not be happier with it. You can never achieve a similar result with springs only.

Having a full scale flight stick , designed after the exact measurments (regarding length and travel) of the 109`s control column (with much lower load than the real one ) I can tell you guys that it is still quite uncomfortable to fly with a continously out of trimm aircraft. So it is not a solution itself. Longer column means longer distance where you need to hold the stick to fly straight. What is more important maybe is the fact that the warthog has center detent and a relatively high load around it. What can make it a pain to hold it out of its center. Keeping it in focus, even a short stick with a higher quality gimbal can offer a big progress.

hmm just guessing, but when you adjust the horizontal stablilizer it should not recenter. The stick is connected to the elevator, but when you trimm in a 109 you change the angle of the whole stabilizer, so the elevators angle compared to the elevator is not changing, hence the center remain the same.

Very nice, robust design. Can the gas-springs do a proper centering in this layout? In my experience the gas springs have very flat characteristic and it can be a problem to achive a proper centering when they work agains each other.

Sorry, it was misleading. I meant that the stick position for neutral flight is changing with the airspeed. It is normally compensated by trimming.

A few years ago, a dedicated french team, the "Tarmac Aces" came with a control stick for airplanes. It had hydraulic damping but no return springs. They meant that it is more realistic than a continous centering force and stationary center point. In real life both the control forces and the center point of a control stick change with the airspeed. They were way too expensive and they quit, but I think they had a point. When I made my own design I started with high centering forces, but I found it very unconvinient and unrealistic. What I found as sweet spot was a relatively high damping effect combined with low centering forces with a relation between pitch and roll forces about 2:1. So I would not give up on these controls for aircrafts.

I am not trying to protect ED or to state that the 3D modell is flawless. Just wanted to show why one need to be carefull when making such comparisons.

Just a little input about this issue. You try to match a 2D blueprint with an in-game screenshot. They will never match. Why? Because on blueprints uses othographic projection. It means that these drawings are nonperspective. Objects behind wont look smaller, and objects close wont look bigger. Every point is drawn like they were on the same plane. This is unnatural to our eyes, but this is the method for technical drawings to show correct measurements. Now if you match a drawing like that with perspective picture, you will experience huge differences. (just look at the size of the vertical stabilizers) In addition comes the focus point where the perspective picture was taken. The fish eye effect will further distort what you see.

Yepp the charts I saw was about E model indeed. What is the best sustained turn rate speedfor the K then?

Hi, I was flying around today to get myself more used to the DCS 109. I was quite surprised when i was trying its sustained turn capabilities. Acc. to charts the 109 best sustained turn rate should be around 270km/h. Well I am totally unable to hold a sustained turn at this speed, or anything under 300-320km/h even there it is very much on the stall edge. If I try to come below this speed the airframe starts to buffet and enter into a spin or if I loosen the turn the airspeed will increase. Ball is in the middle, stable horizont. Can you confirm it?

You guys who think that we should have 1:1 stick motion regardless the control forces what do you think about the black out effect in simulators? I am asking becouse it is exactly the same thing. Putting the limitations of the human body into the simulation. Aircraft designers make aircrafts for human beeings -considering all the ergonomical factors of the human body- and not for supermen able to pull 200kg constant. In a real bf109 you cannot pull more than 2-3inches on the column when you are flying 4-500km/h, becouse you are not supposed to. It was the designers intention. He could have installed a linkage with bigger ratio between the column and the elevator so the pilot could use full deflection at the highest speeds but it would have been chatastrophic. This is what simulation creators try to give us back. Let`s go back to the black out. You accept that you cannot pull more than 9G in a sim becouse you get black out. You understand that it is becouse the limitation of the average Joe`s body and it has been modelled in the simulators since 1990. You don`t claim that it should be not there. Even if it is optional probably you never switch it off. Well we finally came to the point where other human factors can be implemented in the simulators. I think it is a good thing. Until we all have realisticly loaded FFB controls and super 3D motion cockpits which can black us out we need to live with to find other solutions. Is it a compromise? yes of course, but not a bad one i think.