scatter

Airdog was right on the money - running a non-aero theme in windows seems to slow both 'overlay' apps right down. Changing to an aero theme made a huge difference for me. Now my FPS are pretty similar to when not running hawg touch.

I'm currently running 2x 1920x1080 monitors. On the first easy instant mission I get around 65fps while exporting MFDs (res 512) and designating a target with the TGP (it's a pretty quiet mission). I had been using the cougar MFD's with the second monitor and was perfectly happy with my FPS. I'm going to hawg touch in order to get a UFC. The moment I run hawg touch (or helios) my fps plummets to around 25fps. It affects both, so I'm going to try changing drivers etc. I've already tried running the 32 bit A-10c exe instead of the 64 bit version but that had no effect.

Actually, that's not necessarily the case. I get 65 fps when displaying MFDs on a second screen, but that plummets to 25 fps when I run Hawg touch or Helios. It's quite weird and I'm really interested in sorting it out as Hawg touch is such a great idea. I'm running a gtx560 and an e8500 dual core system.

Unfortunately not, only ED can fix this (and they should). All messages should go the the "camera1" screen exclusively. BTW: I edited the wiki and copied the options.lua location warning to the top of the vista/win7 section. I'll check with the person responsible for the vista/win7 section (I use XP) to make sure that I didn't make a mess of it.

Doesn't hitting "x" or "z" get rid of rudder trim? Why not just have your trim button perform a macro that involves sending an x or z to the sim as well as trimming? Oh sorry, just read more of the thread and saw that the prob is with the new trim method and the requirement to centre all axes to return to normal. Can you program your axes on your joystick and for the rudder analog value to 128 (middle) after the trim button release?

I'd love the RCTL ENTER overlay to also show the autopilot inputs (perhaps in a different colour). Actually it'd be nice to have additional autopilot data (like current mode) on it as well.

I found early on that my survival rate increased dramatically after I removed "autohover" from my HOTAS. In the sim it's not worth it in my opinion as I need to be pretty much hovering first, and then if any of its "disengage" parameters occur it actually switches stabilisation off which is suicidal. Hovering manually is pretty easy - in V1.0 I trimmed my cyclic slightly forward after take off to maintain a hover, and then tried not to touch it again. From then on when I release the cyclic the aircraft would go to something resembling a hover (depending upon wind). In V1.01 it seems to be a bit more difficult but I'd still avoid autohover like the plague.

What'd be great would be for the "rctl enter" overlay to show (perhaps in a different colour) what the autopilot inputs are as well as the controls and trim. It'd help to be able to see at a glance why the aircraft seems to not be flying the way that you'd expect. I am also having issues with the autopilot/trim in 1.01 - During an online mission on ingress, I had it suddenly pitch me up into the air and then spiral me into the ground - not what I was expecting. Being able to see why from in the sim would help to avoid such situations (or might reveal any sim error if repeatable). I've resorted to adding an extra cyclic trim method using a hat on my Fighterstick Pro - one tap engages "t", moves the stick slightly, disengages t, and returns the stick axis back to normal. Hitting the switch seems to move the cyclic trim about in a more predictable manner.

That'll be a "real" dedicated server as opposed to just a copy of the game with no-one sitting at it. Real ded's usually can be run in server farms as they have no graphical interface requiring a monitor attached - they also don't tend to have DRM. It's just a networking box. This makes it a lot cheaper to run a ded with good bandwidth. Pretty much all of the really popular multiplayer games have ded servers which are then hosted by large ISP's and gaming groups. They also have a lot of management functions eg: mission rotating/voting, kicking & banning accounts (as opposed to names/IP addresses), voting on difficulty settings, limiting connections based upon ping, etc.. Acedy's done a great job with ServMan which provides some of the services typical of a ded server for BS, but there's a practical limit as to what can be done by third party LUA plugins.

It's just a separate machine with BS on it that acts only as a host (no-one is playing on it). It's typically a machine with a good network connection that's on 24hrs. With BS it'll also need external software like ServMan to do the typical server management tasks - this is required as there isn't an actual dedicated server package for BS.

You can play op-for in ArmA multiplayer, it's just that it's not that popular with the community and so most servers were co-op only.

ArmA co-op is something else, isn't it? (don't have ArmA II yet). The feeling when working with a decent group using voice comms in such a huge world is so atmospheric it can be amazing. My best experience in ArmA was in a "Vietnam, the experience" mod server (it was a theme night). Our 2 squads of 8 were dropped in a clearing in the jungle and were tasked with "search and destroy" mission with a route set by command. There were a couple of regular squads playing and their senior members took on the role of squad leaders, co-ordinating our sweep. Due to their leadership( and good team co-ordination) almost every firefight was in our favour with allied casualties being few and far between. Even so, it was a tense, multi-hour operation - fantastic. As for the flight side of ArmA - I've never really gotten into it except for using little birds as transport. Unlike OFP, I found it's helicopter controls to be most suited to a joypad as the simplified collective "neutral" (no up/down) occurs when the collective control is centred. Of course this scheme also works for a CH HOTAS which can combine all the axes together into one virtual stick (just remember to keep "centering" the collective).

Over at SimHQ, Para_Bellum has written a great tutorial for new flyers: How to take off and blow up stuff I used it to work out the most important controls to assign to my joystick.

The earlier catalyst drivers/software didn't have the option to "stretch" the desktop over two screens. Also, I believe that they don't do it in Vista either. The earlier software only had dual screen (as opposed to stretched).

Does SoftTH work with dual monitors without a third "phantom"? The last time I checked I could only get dual head working by pretending that there's a third monitor and that makes multiplayer unusable (all the buttons on the multiplayer GUI screen are not accessable with a phantom monitor). Man I wish that kegety would release a "SoftDH" as well.