Reticuli

Are there developers on here who can answer the eMagin question?

That allows you to pan as much as you want inside the cockpit? Still, that's only a half measure and won't fix the drift issue. You need Lock On to be able to use the orientation/compass-North data from the headset to work the way it was intended. Why couldn't ED put native support for the eMagin in 1.12? The SDK has been out since December and is suppose to be easier to use than TrackIR's.

http://www.3dvisor.com/support.php

The eMagin Z800 Head Mounted Display is not supported by Lock On natively, that is, using the coding from the SDK off eMagin's website. It is currently just through mouse emulation. Both eMagin and ED advertised the support for the Z800 in Lock On to be something special when in fact it's no better than Gunship! or World War II Fighters. Right now mouse emulation is not that great, with significant drift that requires frequent recentering...after all it is just emulating the mouse movements. Lock On's FOV cockpit limits actually makes this worse than in WWII Fighters, since head movements no longer have an effect after a certain amount of rotation. So, my questions still remain: Will Blackshark have native SDK-derived support (both motion and orientational data used) for the Z800 HMD, and will Lock On Flaming Cliffs have a future patch to add this capability? P.S. 800x600 looks fine on the eMagin, especially with anti aliasing turned up.

Will Blackshark have native tracking support for the eMagin Z800 HMD, and will Lomac have a patch to change its support from mouse emulation to native SDK-based eMagin support?

Of course. Tracking works, but it's just an emulation of the mouse tracking. Big deal. You can get the exact same thing in Flanker and WWIIF. Anything with mouse viewer can do that. So what, ED's idea of "native" support is adding an 800x600 resolution? You can already do that in the config file. There isn't even any head roll (side tilt) axis in Lomac with the Emagin. Didn't they have the SDK? And if not, why don't they utilize it now?

All the hoopla about Lomac supporting the Emagin has turned out to be hype. It doesn't support it anymore than Jane's WWII Fighters, F-15, or Flanker 2.51. It works, but there's no native support of the headtracking. Do you know that there's an SDK out for the Emagin? Are there plans to make a small patch for this? Certainly Blackshark will have native support, right?

It wouldn't need to be in an "arcade" or simplified flight model. You guys are talking out your asses by suggesting either that's what I'm asking for or what it ends up giving you by having that option. Real choppers that don't use it have pole cyclics. Choppers with joysticks like 99% of us will be using have auto trim update. Iguana, you don't necessarily need pedals. If you're transitioning from a real one I can understand certainly, but if there's a sticky pitch on ED's Blackshark you can also use a twist rudder without sacrificing general realism (as opposed to the specific realism of the Blackshark itself). The US Army Air Mobility Lab and Sikorsky's in depth tests found that when using trim update in a helo AFCS, a side joystick with a twist axis was actually more effective than pedals. The Apache, Chinook, and Blackhawk updates will all eventually inherit that from the Comanche. Just a thought. Krendel, if the real chopper has trim update then all is well with this issue since we can expect ED to model it. And if the real one didn't have it people would be bitching like crazy for ED to put it in after the release. So yes, they would need this suggestion to prevent people from spending five minutes with it and then uninstalling the sim claiming ED wasted what could have been an new hornet add-on, or something. This'll be the first truely realistic attempt at a combat chopper sim in, what, 8 years? Two forums later I finally get an answer after putting up with a ton of crap about how it doesn't exist in sims or in real life so why even ask about it, accusations I wanted a simplified flight model, and zero appreciation from a clueless chopper sim fan base. My work here is done.

Yeah, I don't see any country ever producing a manned fighter that will reach its capability, let alone exceed it...including us. The JSF is a cheaper, less capable aircraft (forgetting the VTOL), though improvements in the F135 engines during its development will eventually be included in the F119 engines on the Raptor. So there will be some nice exchange between the two. The next step is really UCAVs, transorbital vehicals, lasers, thermoplastics, and composite polymers like Starlight (to defend against lasers and protect against hypersonic heat and reentry). The F-22 might be the last great (as in best of its era) manned jet fighter in human history. Let that sink in for a moment... But as others have stated, there's still the threat of a car bomb from some religious fanatic that makes all this technology kind of moot. That's the reason they canceled Comanche: to pay for more of our current helos and to upgrade the one's we've got, including with digital fly by wire and trim update...really one of the most significant advances that was on the RAH-66 which they realized was such a big deal. All that stealth shiit is a lot less important for choppers, and yet choppers are very useful in urban combat and terrorist situations. So we get more Blackhawks, Chinooks, Apaches and improvements that have an obvious effect on performance and mission success. That's not something you could say about the Comanche, though it was sexy as hell and would be great to have if the money was available.

I mean attempting to implement Trim Update in a realistic manner compared to how such systems (i.e. Trim Update) work, regardless of whether the Blackshark has trim update, or not. I know that seems contradictory, but bare with me. The real Blackshark does not have a digital side stick, either, but 99% of the people who will buy it will (though they might put the stick in front rather than on the side). Digital side sticks are used in such systems, and if you think of it in the opposite way: if you own a standard style joystick (as opposed to a pole cyclic) Trim Update will be a necessity. Have either of you ever flown chopper sims before? You act like me thinking standard joystick users shouldn't have to keep the stick pushed all the time is something new. It's not. That's the standard method in combat chopper sims for the consumer market and it's been like that for over a decade. I certainly understand why ED would want to include a conventional pole cyclic pitch function. X-Plane does the same thing. But even Austin Meyer knows most people are using a standard joystick. Please take the time to try Longbow 2 and X-Plane before assuming I'm full of myself on this. I really think people will be much happier if a Trim Update option is included. I am the only one who's mentioned this on either this forum or SimHQ, but I'm also the guy that helped Austin Meyer figure out how to impliment Trim Update for the non-professional crowd. The same guy, me, is the one bitching about this both to Austin and ED, and while every prior sim has it, few of the actual choppers being simulated actually do, yet none of the users seem to have any clue what I'm talking about. I don't mean that to boast, it's just this is important but that's how few people actually think about this thing. Right now I might be like the only one on the planet thinking about this topic in consumer sims; who knows? Like I said, I think chopper fans just take Auto Trim Update for granted, possibly because it's usually not implimented correctly in the first place (HUD symbology, trim limits) and because it's often not an option, but rather turned on all the time. In the process of making Blackshark as realistic as possible ED might leave it out completely. I'm just trying to make sure for the good of both ED and the people who will use it...including selfish me. And if you don't know what I'm talking about or see the utility of it, I urge you to get a chopper sim and try it out for yourself. For the record, I use the Saitek X52. So hopefully that will clear up any misunderstanding that I'm using just one stick and no collective/throttle.

The Su-47 will never become combat operational, so you can't really expect an aircraft that doesn't even have radar to stand a chance. Putin said the 37 would be the next mainline Russian fighter, but now I hear they don't even have the money for that and they never had any intention of ever selling those to China. Russia also heavily exagerates both their stealth and supercruise performance. The 47 only gets a little extra manueverability over the Su-37 due to those forward swept wings. The Super Fulcrum was an interesting design, but they never even finished the prototyping phase. They claimed they made it capable of supercruise, stealth, and an internal weapons bay, but it was mostly just an unworking show piece sitting on the runway and a lot of hot air. If you look at the design the weapons bay stuff was total B.S...there was barely enough room for two 73's in there.

I think that was early when they were still perfecting Raptor tactics. They've had over 20 years to develop Eagle tactics.

Are the D's the experimental ramjet models or the upgraded C?

Raptor's top speed is classified, but test pilots have implied it is capable of 2x the speed of sound. Most high end jet fighters have speed limits that are thermally and/or structural based, rather than a fault of the engines. This aircraft's airframe and engine efficiency would probably allow it to go at least as fast as an F-15 if you didn't care about expensive damage, especially to the vectoring nozzles in the back. You don't want to spend much time significantly above mach 2, whether it's an F-15, Su-27, or F-22. In real life you'd cause a severe amount of stress on a Su-27 flying at mach 2.3 for 60nm. Suddenly its low servicing requirements go right out the window, not to mention in real life your fuel is vanishing. The F-15 has soft limits implimented to prevent pilots from doing that. That was likely one reason why Boeing had such a hard-on for making their JSF out of thermoplastics, that and a bunch of other classified stuff they'd like to do with those materials. And the fact that Raptor could accelerate with afterburner to get above the tropopause much faster than you could (much better engine response and climb efficiency) and then sustain mach 1.5 at much higher altitudes than you could for essentially indefinite periods means its ground speed and range values are far exceeding any other aircraft, including your lowly Su-27. And like I said before, its top speed is a secret. Mach 1.52 is simply the the ratio to the speed of sound its airframe and engines perform at their most efficient at around 44,000 ft. Thats a true speed of over 915kts that it can continue with for 5000nm of flight without ever refueling. Add refueling at some point prior to the engagement or on the way back after its killed you and that's even longer. It can sustain level flight with MIL power at even higher alts, and with AB even higher still. With just MIL power alone it can reach mach 1.9 and semi-sustain 50,000 ft. That's 1150kts without any AB still. If you compare true airspeed (ground speeds), the Rapter is not at any disadvantage speed-wise even based on public information. Even with a very conservative top speed with soft limiting of, say, Mach 2.1 (it probably just can't reach 2x the speed of sound without AB)...or just under that, Raptor can still semi-sustain that with afterburner, some mild zoom climbing, and significantly exceed 50,000ft. That's over 1250kts TAS, and with its altitude the kenematic-induced range of its weapons, things do not look good for your lowly Sukoi. And adding the efficiency and sustaining ability at slightly lower flight level & TAS makes its capabilities just plain mindboggling. Like I said, try comparing the aircraft performance of Total Air War to Janes F-15. Both are very accurate representations of each aircraft and you can see just what an advantage it is. Oh, and that difficulty for a conventional fully loaded jet fighter just to sustain mach speeds above 20,000ft is realistic in the Janes sim. All that drag turns the F-15E into a pig, making it difficult just keep up with a tanker. The C and the Su-27's with AA loads are certainly an improvement, but no where near what a Raptor can do. And a Su-27 loaded with a strike package starts encountering some of those same issues as the Strike Eagle (E). Oh and the difference between mach 2.3 and mach 2.1 (again, a conservative top speed) is only 133kts. So your aircraft would only get a small lead, then would have to drop its speed and altitude way down. When you throttle down, the F-22 only has to drop to 44,000ft and mach 1.5 to get the best fuel efficiency possible for it and will easily overtake you kenematically. And that's with a conservative top speed based on public info. Even if it's capable of it, though, there's really no reason to stress the aircraft beyond mach 2.1. You're just as dead either way and there's no point increasing the post flight servicing costs on our Raptor tailing you. Hence the soft limits that test pilots said are in place on the F-22.

That's a completely different subject. Have you ever flown choppers in X-Plane or Longbow Anthology? I've been flying chopper sims ever since Gunship 2000. It’s hard to describe what I’m talking about unless we have a more common reference. Allowing for "trim update" is something practically every chopper sim ever made has done. Of course you still have separate cyclic, collective, and rudder/anti-torque/yaw controls. What I'm talking about is a way to prevent you from having to keep the stick forward all the time, without requiring manual trim settings in the pitch axis. Some real helos have this, but regardless of whether the Ka-50 does, the sim on it needs this available for people who wish to turn it on. Allowing a keypress to turn it (and the HUD cue) on in game would be even better. In X-Plane, this feature is called Auto Trim Pitch Loads. In the actual RAH-66 and a few other aircraft that have it, it's called Digital Trim Update. Without this option, it will be extremely difficult for the average simmer without a pole cyclic to fly the Ka-50. In the above post I also outlined how ED should go about implementing it, including a cue in the HUD that no other sim has allowed before. I know I am doing both ED and chopper sim fans a favor by posting this, though it might sound acerbic or cryptic. If there are any ED programmers or beta testers, I'd appreciate a response. Thank you.

The aircraft is pretty damned impressive. Those engines and that airframe together are the most amazing synergy of aircraft technology ever. Compare the fairly realistic capabilities of the 22 in Total Air War to those of the the very realistic depiction in Janes F-15 and you'll see the difference. It's a mindboggling advance over anything else out there. Its optimum cruise altitude is over 40,000ft at mach 1.5, with a 5000nm range with just internal fuel...and the thing can actually maneuver up there as if it were flying much lower. The kenematics of its weapons with that capability, combined with stealth...my god, we are going to be so spoiled by it.

I find it odd that Fighter Ops is using the X-Plane programming interface, but replacing the flight modeling. Actually, I find it odd that they'd use X-Plane at all. The core of X-Plane's realism comes from its derived realtime flight modeling. As jabog said above, it's capable of being used to test a prototype airframe design. Mentions by XSI that it's not very good at high speed aircraft modeling are erroneous. It's excellent. The best jet flight model elsewhere is probably Janes F-15 (minus some hidden glitches). The primary issues with X-Plane and high speed jets are 1) the aircraft design itself, and 2) X-Plane's simple feedback-based fly by wire flight control system. If the aircraft is not extremely painstakingly modeled and test flown to ensure you got it right, it will perform more and more inaccurately the higher speeds you fly at and the more extreme stuff you attempt to do. Austin's F-4 is excellent. Barry's FA-18's are awful (a mach 4 superplane). Yet if you compare the designs within Planemaker they seem o.k. The attention to detail required is huge, but the F-4, F-15's, B-1's, and a few others are proof it's possible Next, the X-Plane fly by wire sytem is mostly positive feedback based. There is some limiting available, but it it is in the form of very coarse, large limits & corrections. Most real flight limiting is done with a combination of large, infrequent alterations of inputs, combined with frequent, small alterations. The feedback system in X-Plane can do this, but not the limiting system. As if this wasn't basic enough, flight laws are even more simplistic: which control surfaces do what at a given speed/AoA/alt. So in X-Plane (assuming your FPS is high enough) you can keep the aircraft reasonably stable, prevent yaw/pitch/roll over a certain amount (albeit in sudden constraints), and similar simple methods of artificial stability. But it will never allow an F-16 to fly like an F-16 with its full computer control system. It can feel like an F-16 with a more basic fly by wire, or an F-15 E with something resembling the real aircraft, or better yet, an F-4 with no FBW FCS at all...assuming the designs are to a high enough fidelity. Now, it thus makes sense for fly by wire aircraft you might want to not use the X-Plane flight modeling system. But for the trainers, you'll have a better flight experience in the actual X-Plane. I have a payware Texan, and it flies fabulously. O.k., but as stated above, I can see why you might not want it. But if you did use it for combat, guess what...it wouldn't even work in the first place. The CPU speed/cycles required to do the X-Plane flight dynamics are enormous. It's so taxing, in fact, that with version 8 scenary running (the new global stuff is no more no less taxing than standard v8) you can't even have impact caclulations for all the buildings and objects, including other aircraft. They're all ghosts you can fly through in v8 because of this. X-Plane cannot be converted into a combat sim unless our computers becoming many times faster than they already are. There is one dog fighting patch for X-Plane and all it boils down to is a sort of Top Gun type laser tag system where you don't even shoot anything at the other guy. It keeps track of when hypothetically he would be hit if you were shooting...but of course you're not. So why have I explained all this? Because, so what's the point of Fighter Ops using the X-Plane programming interface, advertising that fact, but not even using the flight modeling system...which is impossible at this point with the current power of computers in the first place. What's the benefit to the user? Sure there's great modeling for tire friction and lots of other non-aerodynamic stuff, but the primary reason X-Plane beats the hell out of other sims (flight modeling) must be eliminated from it for conversion to a combat sim, let alone one with radar modeling, AI, and enemy vehicals, too. It may be that X-Plane has enough stuff going for it that even without the flight modeling it still beats the pants off of other code foundations they could be using. Their FAQ, though, with all the talk about the FAA and such seems kind of dishonest. Just because they're using X-Plane's interface doesn't mean the project will inherently be superior, and the fact that the real X-Plane flight modeling must be removed for you to even run it on your computer (they attribute it erroneously to deficiencies in it) means it's still in the same boat as nearly every sim ever made. Lomac, Falcon, and Janes/EA had real pilots and weapons/avionics experts contributing to their products and said the same thing about getting it as close to realistic as possible. And yet there's still a big variation in all those products.

I'm assuming there will be a standard cyclic option for Blackshark for people who have pole cyclics, so they are required to keep the stick forward for forward flight. However, will there be a digital trim update option for people with a standard joystick? This option is also known as automatic pitch loading or, as I like to call it, sticky cyclic. Essentially, you are not only temporarily adjusting the pitch, but the trim as well, which is updated automatically. This is a system used on newer fly by wire designs, but is something that has always been available on consumer flight sims to make it easier to use a standard stick...this is also the reason why helos with this type of system use side joysticks instead of a pole cyclic. The two go together. So anyway, I was wondering if this was planned or not for Blackshark. If not, it certainly needs to be. I would also remind the designers that real trim update has a limit to how far you can pitch forward...obviously. So if you already have the collective high and the chopper flying at a high velocity, you may not be able to pitch forward any further. In the RAH-66 and similar FBW systems, a simple pitch trim cuing system is used in the HUD to give a visual of what the current setting is...usually just a simple vertical line with a center mark, end marks, and a moving caret along it to show that setting. I don't know if the Blackshark has a continuous trim update option, but since this sim should have it available and ED wants to make it as realistic as possible, a trim update option should be done in a realistic manner as well, whether the real aircraft has it or not. Thank you for your time.