Callsign.Vega

I hate millions of computers in offices idling all night long. What a massive waste of energy on this planet. Computers life cycle isn't long enough for "power cycling" to mean anything. In the US Army, our computers are replaced every 3-4 years. Most failures are from dirt/dust caking the inside from running them 24/7, not power cycling it on and off.

You have a decent system. I think an SSD would be the biggest bang for the buck upgrade. Once you go SSD, you never go back!

^ - That a slow booting computer you got there! Time for a SSD. Plus web browsers like Chrome save your open tabs when you close the browser. ;)

Hmm, so thats at least a couple of reports of people having throttle issues after applying the updated firmware. Not good! Hopefully TM will address this as I am sure they will grow tired shipping peoples throttles across the Atlantic in short order.

You positive you had the newest firmware installed before the throttle stopped working? I haven't heard of any throttles stop working after the newest firmware patched. Once your throttle stops working you cannot upgrade to the newest firmware. That is where 99% of the people are having issues.

I think the "stiction" is relatively the same for all the sticks. It's just that some are more sensitive than others to it. That red grease TM's uses is definitely too thick for the application. I changed it out with Dow Corning Molkote EM-30L plastic lithium soap and it's noticeably smoother. I can now make the smallest almost imperceptible aircraft movements with one finger.

Ah, the key is to flash the firmware before the throttle goes belly up. Did you not see the firmware release? You will have to ship out your throttle.

Oh wow thats cheap. Converts into only $313 US. Warthogs average like ~$450 in the US. Nows definitely the time for the UK buyers to snatch them up.

For Helios, each touch screen needs a dedicated graphics card output correct? I run my system with nVidia Surround which already uses 3x video outputs and when surround is activated, you cannot use any other outputs. Is there any way around this for Helios? Can helios work over USB output displays? What about over a network to another computer to use another computers video outputs for the touchscreens separate from the main sim's surround setup? So many possibilities I hope. ;)

That's a good point. Increasing the leverage a great deal and you dramatically increase the pressure and wear rate on the ball/cuff and especially the travel stops. One large overzealous control input with a 30 cm long sick extension and I could easily see you damaging the plastic internals.

Ah, that's why I like military date format of 11NOV2010. Makes it so no confusion between different countries. ;)

Nothing to see here.

^ - That is going a bit extreme as seeing just switching out the grease to something proper fixes the stiction issue.

I just got done removing the stock TM grease and adding a light coating of Dow Corning Molykote EM-30L lithium soap designed for plastic on plastic. What a world of difference. Now I can make one finger joystick movements with no stiction. I went through tons of rags and alcohol to get rid of all that garbage TM puts in there. That stuff is so thick and gooey and they use too much of it. That is what is making all of the problems. I would stay away from anything thick like wheel bearing grease or any petroleum products. I put a thin layer on all of the contact points. The main rotator cup, the half sphere. I removed the two pins holding the inner lower half sphere and lubed those up as they are just bushings. Another thing I noticed is they didn't grease the main spring pressure plate at all where it actually contacts the top of the rotator cuff. Anyways, if you do get inside to change out all of the lubrication be very gentle. Those little wires and connectors are super fragile! Let's just say I had to break out the soldering iron. ;) http://www.dowcorning.com/content/news/molykote_news_EM30L.asp http://cgi.ebay.com/DOW-MOLYKOTE-EM-30L-Synthetic-PAO-Grease-Plastics-/270666662674?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3f04fd8312#ht_2266wt_1144

Updated to the 06DEC10 firmware, everything works fine. Well, except I still have a fully lit throttle when computer is put into standby.

I have found A-10C in it's current beta form to be much more CPU limited over BS. Even on my 4.55Ghz system all I have to do is turn down the graphics to unload the graphics card(s) yet I don't get much of a FPS boost as I just run into the CPU limit wall. Heres another test for you. If you say your GPU's are only being used 50% load, turn on like 4-8x or even 16x AA. That will stress them a lot more and your FPS should stay the same until your GPU's max out. If your GPU's scale up usage with the high AA then that confirms SLI is working properly and your CPU limited.

Your SLI is working fine. If there was a SLI problem your FPS would tank. I bet your single GPU goes almost to max usage and drops down to ~50% each with two cards like you said for virtually the same FPS. Your just CPU limited is all. I take it your using Win 7? You will not show 100% CPU usage in Win 7 as will dynamically load the main sim thread between the two cores and a little bit extra one core for the sound thread. I also get CPU limited when view distance is set too great and theres tons of buildinds/trees. GPU utilization drops and FPS drops hard even with a i7 @ 4.55Ghz. It's the sim software crapping out and not taking advantage of available hardware.

What drivers are you using? What are your A-10C settings? What FPS do you get with one card, and what FPS do you get with both in AFR2?

I don't have any special profile to get SLI working properly. I just select SLI rendering mode at the very bottom of the SLI category: SLI_RENDERING_MODE_FORCE_AFR2 in nVidiaInspector, hit apply and it just works. What kind of hardware setup do you have?

It's plastic on plastic, which is why I am trying a plastic only lithium soap designed specifically for that. Hopefully it is not too thick.

nVidia will be releasing GTX 595's which should allow quad-SLI out of 2x PCI-E slots just like the GTX 295's mentioned here. Hopefully they have fixed some of the scaling issues with quad SLI as I need it to push some serious pixels.

I would think a lighter/thinner not heavier/thicker lubricant would be called for. Hopefully this lithium soap product will arrive soon and I'll give her a test.

If there once was a SLI profile for DCS:BS, it's not there anymore. I've checked nVidia's latest drivers and it is not there. There are no driver level fixes that need to be done. All you need is a correctly setup SLI profile utilizing AFR2 which you can simply make yourself. SLI is working great in both DCS titles and maxing out both my 480's. Yes, portrait mode. With the plastic bezels removed and with bezel correction to compensate for the remainder, I run 5090x2560 resolution. I have 3x HP ZR30w's clamped together which have a stand tall enough to rotate portrait. As a matter of fact I even have about three centimeters clearance from the desk. My machine is a i7 @ 4.55Ghz, 6GB DDR3, SSD and 2x 480's (soon 580's).

Do you guys think those four small springs will hold up over time with this mod and the big spring removed?

Confirmed. You need to force only AFR2 to get SLI to work properly with DCS titles. You get a nice performance boost with AFR2 single monitor! AFR1 and SFR both tank performance. There are no DCS SLI profiles so you need to make them yourselves or change the default SLI profile. I use a handy tool called nVidiaInspector: http://majorgeeks.com/NVIDIA_Inspector_d6630.html The only downside to AFR2 is you cannot use D3DOverrider to force triple buffering with VSync on. You might have to live with some screen tearing. Triple buffering with SLI only works in SFR. I will test nVidia surround SLI performance tomorrow and report back.