Reticuli

Not sure if anyone's tried this, but it works well if you're sick of asking your wingman if it's o.k. to kill targets. There are apostrophies between some of the quotations, by the way. Yes, they're kind of hard to see below. I think of it like Gulf War-era IR beacons. -- Label parameters -- Copyright © 2004, Eagle Dynamics. AirOn = true GroundOn = true NavyOn = true WeaponOn = false -- Label max distance depends on graphics visibility range option value -- For low E40000.0 m -- For medium E50000.0 m -- For high E80000.0 m --------------------------------- -- Label text format symbols -- %N - name of object -- %D - distance to object -- %P - pilot name -- %n - new line -- %% - symbol '%' -- %x, where x is not NDPn% - symbol 'x' ------------------------------------------ -- Example -- labelFormat[5000] = "Name: %N%nDistance: %D%n Pilot: %P" -- up to 5km label is: -- Name: Su-33 -- Distance: 30km -- Pilot: Pilot1 AirFormat = {} AirFormat[10] = "'" AirFormat[5000] = "'" AirFormat[7000] = "'" AirFormat[20000] = "" AirFormat[30000] = "" GroundFormat = {} GroundFormat[5000] = "'" GroundFormat[7000] = "'" GroundFormat[20000] = "" NavyFormat = {} NavyFormat[7000] = "'" NavyFormat[20000] = "" NavyFormat[40000] = "" WeaponFormat = {} WeaponFormat[5000] = "" WeaponFormat[10000] = "" WeaponFormat[20000] = "" -- Colors in {red, green, blue} format, volume from 0 up to 255 ColorAliesSide = {70, 225, 70} ColorEnemiesSide = { 100, 125, 125}

My Z800 is high contrast 800x600 OLED HMD with built-in IC-based micro gyros. I've mildly helped a couple people over the net get them working for their RCs with built in cameras, as well as one helo flight training school in Europe who wanted to pair them with X-Plane. I personally just use it for flight sims that will work with it. But I love what you're doing with the HD cameras there. We had a Panasonic Vericam in film school I seriously wanted to mount inside a UAV, but they're like the size of old VHS video cameras. Had a nice shutter and speed adjustment on it for undercranking, though. I guess the d4 now, though expensive, would be about the right size to do it. 4000 line RC photography...hmm...gives me butterflys thinking about it. I think eMagin is finally about to come out with a 1600x1200 HMD, but I'm not sure what the price will be. They already doubled the price on the 800x600 model over what I originally paid.

I think he just means we are making due with different HOTAS and situations that we find at home, compensating and adjusting as needed. Since you already have to manually trim in the real helo, there's really not much reason to not have the three channels fully into their attitude hold modes when flying the real shark. That makes sense, as it's an additional advantage and works with you in that situation. Having Flight Director on and the three channels into their rate dampening-only modes seems to be a great work around for a lot of people without forcefeedback, which makes a great deal of sense to me and parallels human factors research that's been done on the subject. The next evolution tends to be a desire to have the joystick simply command the attitude hold dynamically, but I digress.

I'm assuming the A-10's eventual Russion counterpart in the sim will be the Su-25T carried over, right? Sounds reasonable. I like 'em all, but I wouldn't mind an 80's or 90's-era Cobra instead. I think the Apache is in another class than the Ka-50 and the Kamov won't be much of a match on the multiplayer battlefield. Plus, there are navalized sharks and navalized Cobras, so marine and boat ops would be nice with both. Then I'd recommend the Hind and weaponized Blackhawk versions with rockets & stuff. Troop inserts, SAR, and transportation are such an important part of what military helos do. Certainly the Hind would be easy to get info on considering how old it is, and there is already a publically available flight model for the UH-60 called GenHel from Ames/NASA/USArmy written in FORTRAN. If ED promised to give them a copy of the converted flight model code in C (or whatever language ED uses) back to the US Government and research establishment afterwards, I don't see any reason why there would be a problem. Canada, Australia, and a few other countries use it frequently for many of the academic and military simulations and research. The language conversion and flight performance verification process should be pretty doable for some code pros like ED. Otherwise, they'd need to use an intermediary like Penn State and University of California have done to have the flight model code communicate with an external flight sim for the interface, graphics engine, and, in this case, battle simulation.

Agreed, but they're already making it for the military. They have to make their real money. I don't think it's going to be a huge leap in flight modeling and difficulty, since X-Plane's Warthogs are all very well behaved, even with art stab and yaw dampening all off. Nice, classic airframe design. So it will be a big leap in systems modeling and switches over lockon. Not gonna complain, since that will be two DCS flyables.

Isn't it off in F4AF? How do you get it on? I would be totally happy if the only IFF in shark was just like little colored dots next to all friendly units, like IR lights, or something. Hmm...that's got me thinking.

:notworthy:

Really, I think probably all you'd need is a stick with rotation axis in both the X and Y like the X52 throttle. You move it and it stays put just from friction. No force feedback or trim key needed. But I guess that would be worthless for most other sims, heh heh.

The Ka-50 doesn't do automatic coordinated turns, so you should be using pedal when turning to assist the bank. Otherwise you get more sideslip and less nose rotation than you want. I also think the ED shark model right now is a little too squirly. It's so bobby and wobbly that the 20% dampening authority when in FD mode with the 3 channels on seems very weak. Possibly insufficient aerodynamic streamlining modeling? The air itself around the airframe and disks is a moderately stabilizing force enveloping the aircraft in forward flight. Even with all 3 hold channels off it seems like there's a little too much crazyness going on. It could also be that the flight model is tied to frame rates. Not sure, but X-Plane's real-time derivative blade-system certainly is. Maybe the dampening and autopilot hold channels function better at higher fps? My original assumption was that ED modeled it, as one of the posters above put it OHSOREALISTIC, as in exaggerated attitude instability and difficulty, like IL2, WWII Fighters in Wicked Mode, and Janes F-15E (at least the bobbing). But the ED devs took offense to that and quickly shot it down. Considering yaw is simply a function of the difference in rotation between the two rotors, right, I would also agree you should seemingly have more yaw authority. Plus you get a tail rudder assist. In forward flight, I've seen footage of Kamovs doing flat yaw-turns at speed and they did them faster than we can in the sim and without bumping rotors. But hey, I didn't program this beast, and considering the detail the devs put in they may or may not have achieved the intended flight dynamics results in the performance validation process. In the mean time, you can be more gentle at the controls...which is always a good idea. And we can continue the civil discussion ;-) By the way, what kind of lcd goggles do you use? Ever tried integrating the eMagin Z800 into what you use? Do you actually do professional camera footage with it or is that separate and the UAV stuff is just recreational?

There's a plug-in for X-Plane that does the same thing. It's used on the Eurocopter and Apache D, but you can turn it off so that you get a blur. Basically it's to similate what it looks like though a non-still camera and will change depending on your framerate and the rotation rate of the rotors. I don't really want it to look like that, either, since my eyes do not have a shutter and capture rate to them ;-) On option to switch "movie rotors = off" would be nice. In real life, you can also change the rotor appearance through a film or video camera using the shutter angle, which as you lower it will capture motion more sharply at a given capture frame rate, but increasingly introduce strobing and disjointed motion: the Gladiator and Saving Private Ryan effect that seemingly every episode of CSI: Miami and Battle Star Galactica seem to overuse. Heck, even Star Trek starting using it.

Really nothing to get messed up. Nothing in it changes your sim installation or permanantly will damage your computer. The LUAs are just internal Blackshark stick PPJoy and X52 profiles, which you save and load within the sim. GlovePIE does not install and is only active when you hit "run", communicating directly with PPJoy. It's just a little background utility. You just run it wherever. Only PPJoy installs, and that's a totally benign piece of software that I've never heard of anyone having problems with it corrupting their computer. The Vista compatibility is something I've just heard about. Maybe the original creator could be convinced to fix it a little. I heard he got miffed about people not appreciating his work, or something. We love you, dude! Come back! This should take you less than 10 minutes to get up and running to at least try, after you've read my wordy instructions. I recommend you always cycle through the modes when you first get in to the helo. Have the control panel red thing up so you can see where you're at in the trim state. And unless you are using the Route flying or need the autopilot to hover for you, use flight director. Oh, and never turn the hold channels off when in FD. Occasionally you may need to look over to make sure they're still on if things get squirly.

Yes, that's essentially what I do myself, except with the autotrimming GlovePIE script and it set to the FD mode by double tapping and cycling to it. No manual trimming necessary ever. The only time I have FD off is when I need the autopilot to hover for me, but usually I do that by myself. I like to bank left and not have to hit trim in order for it to hold the bank. What surprises me is how weak the rate-dampening is in FD mode. There's still a lot of drift. Certainly an improvement over the channels being off, though.

v13 of the pack is up. Mostly just corrected instructions.

I have everything at or below low graphics and am mostly in the no-cockpit view, only going into the pit for switches. The only thing I miss is the RWR, but I usually have a good idea where the bad guys probably are shooting from with the ARBIS. I only use time accelerate when there's not a lot of stuff going on, and then only 1 or 2 notches of it. And I try to keep my cool when things become really sluggish and just try not to crash until the action calms down. And I stay away from playing "Battle".

Heh heh. I was trying to think what that term was they used in X-Com when your squadies pooed themselves when the aliens started shooting at them and took off running. Now THAT's AI. X-Com was fantastic. I got through many a sick days playing that on my playstation. One of the few things on that console I miss...that and Armored Core's pin-up paint jobs I did. And Wipeout 2. And Grand Turismo. And...well, now I'm just gonna get sad. Oh well, they gotta have something to fix in the patch, right? It'll be a nice way to up the difficulty later on and keep the replay value going. I did just down a Hind with a manual gunshot a couple minutes ago. For what it's worth, he did seem to try and out turn me, but that might have been him just running in to kill my tank columns. He took a while spinning out of control before hitting the ocean with no tail boom.

Other than shooting back, are they programmed to be able to maneuver, head for low ground, or get behind a building and find cover? They all just seem to stay put or continue on their way (if going somewhere to begin with) and seem robotic...like I'm shooting at Disney anamatronic things with guns at It's a Small World After All, though clearly less disturbing than that would be...heh heh. Do advanced missions and campaigns have them doing something other than their preassigned mission when engaged or under threat? So that's about ground vehicals; what about helos? If I'm shooting at an Apache, they seem to just fly away strait even when I'm right behind them. No turning to use their gun. No one comes to their rescue. They don't even fly back into their friendly SAM area to get help that way. Nada. Enemy Engaged certainly has issues with vehicals congregating at intersections or helos apparently not seeing you even though you're close, but if they do see you, they seem to take evasive action in a definite way other than just pointing and shooting. Puff smoke. Drive perpendicular to me, etc. Is it really that hard to code AI to do some basic things? Can I offer some ideas? How about in addition to the things I've already mentioned, a berzerker mode where their morale goes out the window and they just head off at high speed in any direction or back to base. Coward mode, or something. Or helos that really attempt to aerobatically get behind you and dogfight to set up a gun kill if you're trying to do the same to them.

I use an original X52 with the original dat-using software and my GlovePIE trim management scripts.

Run Snatch ak from corpse Start hunting infantry Use a radio/beacon to call for SAR a sim within a sim

bumpity bump for the other dude

do a search. there's a thread on this already, though my link to it is on the other computer. you easily mod it. There, I bumped that thread for you. Should be nearby now.

JOY! Skins! The only sim I ever thought needed new skins was Enemy Engaged, but that's entirely because the gound is so muted looking (rather dark, now) and the aircraft look a little too vibrant and almost cartoony by comparison. Alas, there really are no good ones for it. I have zero special paint jobs for flaming cliffs or blackshark. Never built any model airplanes, either, so maybe I don't quite get the whole repaint thing. All I've got is my little trim thing and the graphics mods you do yourself in the config files to boost fps.

I wonder how detailed ED's info on the dynamic range of the shkval at night actually is. That's pretty difficult information to translate between aviation people and computer programmers, especially when we're dealing with contrast curves and optics...neither of which has anything to do with aviation or programming. It's certainly possible in practice the tv sensor at night might actually give better light amplifying capability than is represented in the sim. Increasing the resolution and using a CRT for that when you're flying might improve things for you. The former, however, is going to lower fps unless you use a dedicated video card for that monitor. When I fly at night, I turn off the standard pit lighting. I turn on the NVG cockpit lighting. When I'm going to be using the no-cockpit view, I just turn the brightness on the TV sensor down a little and the contrast all the way up. I leave the ARBIS at its default. If I'm going to be in the cockpit, I turn the brightness on both the TV sensor and ARBIS way down since the NVG will amplify their light. The HUD at night I always turn to the yellowish night mode and turn down a bit. With all this, the cockpit looks just as readable at night as it does in the day, just monochrome. You can adjust the NVG brightness, but while turning it down usually helps the cockpit a little, you lose some contrast ability on the outside if it's really dark. So if the pit is still too bright, turn the purple NVG lighting and the HUD down more. If there's a lot of external light and the goggles are getting bad banding and way too much grain, that's when I turn those down a little, too...or switch the NVG off completely when parachute flares are present in the battlespace. Be really, really patient when flying. Use hover when necessary. And realize you may or may not be able to lock onto things. That doesn't mean you can't shoot them, though. In the worst cases, just switch to manual boresight mode and use gun or rockets.

The new pack is out with the updated numbers. Only a slight change. More importantly, the EECH GlovePIE scripts are done.

I got it from Austin Meyers.

What was wrong with saitek's original software?