BudgieSmuggler

Took this on the weekend.

I took male and female PS/2 connectors and cut the centre tab and extra pin. It also needed some filing to fit the connector inside the hose extender hole.

Agreed this really requires a PCB and probably custom controller with custom software on the PC end as well. Is there much demand for this kind of custom PCB by the way? I can easily do this but I was planning on doing the simpler I/O and panels (ie. buttons and switches) first since this kind of panel is quite a specific purpose design (ie. small market) with complex software requirements. Plus as I said, finding time is a problem right now. By the way if you are serious about doing electronics for this kind of complex panel I would look into something like this eval board from ST http://www.st.com/internet/evalboard/product/252419.jsp - it gives you plenty of I/O but you will have to get your hands dirty up to your elbows to get it to do what you want.

I was planning some boards like this. I have boards for KA-50, metalwork panel designs and controller boards in progress, but it keeps getting delayed because of real life getting in the way. My plan is when I am done it will be one usb master presenting as HID joystick/mouse/keyboard (possibly multiple joystick devices), or custom USB peripheral to a driver, or just ethernet in to PC talking direct to DCS / whatever. The slave I/O boards (either generic breakout boards to buttons and LEDs or custom board for eg. KA-50 PVI or A10 CDU) will talk CAN or SPI back to the master controller, so you could wire up a whole cockpit to one master USB/ethernet board. I didn't have a plan for full graphical displays yet but CAN/SPI at >1Mbit/s should be plenty for text. I was just about to push to get the various PCBs finished, but I have been called away to the US next week for nearly 3 months so I expect some more delay. Not sure if this answers the question you had, and no I don't know the dimensions of the A10 CDU. You should be able to estimate pretty accurately from a photograph if you have the length of any other element in the cockpit. Or just make it up, so long as it is functional and fits in your cockpit who cares..

I learned some things tonight: 1) P51 wings are made of fire, with a thin sheet of metal-like material to keep the fire in. I was pretty sure of this already but this video proves it. 2) Ctrl-F11 camera is awesome. 3) Apparently flaming pieces of P51 can be used to trim power lines. Would someone consider doing me a custom skin? I'd like to name my bird "Fireball", with some flames on the side etc. It doesn't have to look too fancy, just like a big messy flaming ball of wreckage; it's sure to blend in with the actual flaming ball of wreckage I will create shortly after grabbing the controls..

A couple of comments. The previous corsair system I had was definitely louder than fans. Basically it sounded like an aquarium .. This time I got a large radiator with low velocity fans and a pump with adjustable speed and it is definitely (a bit) quieter than separate fans. Plus no more graphic card fans to wind up to ludicrous speed each time I run a game. With regards to heat efficiency, the previous setup I had turned out not only to be noisy but not really any better temperature than separate fans. My current setup is much better though, it was getting to the point my graphics card would regularly hit 100C (thermally limited by the driver) in summer even in relatively light load. With the water cooler it is about 30C cooler most of the time. I would def. recommend water cooling for graphic cards these days especially if you can get a decent integrated water jacket (eg. EVGA). Not so much required for CPUs now, they tend to be more efficient these days and usually not as much of a performance bottleneck compared to GPU. If you do water cool, I suggest check for leaks occasionally. My previous one only leaked a few drops onto the graphics card but it was enough to cook it.

The AI is a tard. And what are you doing letting him get behind you anyway! :)

Having flown a little bit (aerobatics plus some circuits), I think I would suggest stick to coordinated maneuvers (loops, rolls, barrel rolls) for a while until you get a good feel for flying coordinated. Then less coordinated maneuvers (stall turn, wingovers and combat loop). Uncoordinated maneuvers (spins, lomcovak etc.) are not going to help you learn flying, are to be avoided at all costs during combat flights and normal operation and will teach you bad habits so learn these last. Above all, step on the ball!

I had a system from Corsair a few years ago, the radiator was OK but the reservoir was crappy plastic and eventually developed a leak. This time I setup a water cooling system (mainly to avoid serious overheating issues, not for overclocking) and got separate reservoir, radiator and pump from Amazon and Danger Den (plus that sexy EVGA 580 with integrated water jacket) and it seems a lot nicer. Not to say the options from Corsair etc. don't look OK but I think discrete components is still better for cooling performance as well as quality at the moment ..

It seems pretty clear to me that the AI does not have the same damage model. As you say, a minor hit tends to cause some drastic failures to my aircraft - not quite as bad as the first beta where one hit tended to cause a wing to fall off, now it usually ends up with systems failure ie. engine or governer failure. On the other hand I can turn the AI into swiss cheese and he just happily keeps flying with the same performance as me. I have a track somewhere with him pissing fuel out of every wing panel just happily flying away. It was a bit annoying in first beta when I had a lot of trouble killing him, now it's just amusing reminder that if I want realism I should fly against meat based lifeforms :)

Braking will be worse in any wheeled vehicle on a wet surface since friction is reduced. Plus the pilot needs to be more careful applying brakes since the surface may not be uniformly wet. An important thing IRL is plant the wheels firmly, not gently. You need to break the surface tension and get the wheel on the runway surface otherwise they can aquaplane, which can generate enough heat to cook the tires. Other than that it probably depends a bit on the weight of the aircraft and surface area of the tires as to precisely how it reacts to water. You probably don't have to worry about any of this in any simulation except maybe reduced friction (ie. less effective braking and possibly aircraft skidding) when it rains.

X-plane wins on flight model, FSX wins on available aircraft/scenery modules. X-plane graphics is getting much better but don't expect real life scenery except if you can find a third party scenery pack for the area (rare), the scenery is automagically generated. Also compared to DCS and real planes, I think the X-plane aircraft feel a little off - like they are too light weight or something similar? In particular they seem to bounce around a bit too much in rough weather conditions, and helicopters are quite hard to fly without heavily damping the joystick sensitivity or using a long pole type controller. You can definitely do custom aircraft with custom dials in X-plane but it is a lot of work. Not sure about ATC.

Umm not sure your question but yes, I find my laptop and use it out and about with other books and files. I used an older model full time as my main PC for development support in the US for a couple of months with no problems and bought this to replace it. Most of the development I do is pretty CPU hungry and the 17" screen helps as well. This is the first laptop I have used with graphics that can approach running DCS at full screen resolution without too much slowdown. I had to give up flight training for the duration (stupid US flight training VISA and security requirements) so newly released DCS P51 was the only thing that kept me sane :) And yes it is a bit heavy, the laptop on its own is OK but with a couple of books etc. the bag gets a little heavy. But I carry it back and forth to work by car all the time, it's not too unwieldy just gets a bit much if you have to walk around with it on your back for a long time. I guess laptops are always a tradeoff between weight, battery life and performance. Oh, and protip - you won't be able to use a high performance laptop running from airplane power, the socket disables itself if your laptop power supply is too grunty. Make sure you charge it in the terminal!

I bought a set of those, mainly for flight training practice. The extra sensitivity is good, esp. for small helicopters in X-plane but is not so much required for DCS BS. I had lots of problems with build quality though, mainly related to cheap potentiometers - they had to send some replacements and I already used three of them. Also the pedals resolution isn't good, they only move through 30% or so of the potentiometer travel and the centre position jumps around a lot. Lastly the whole thing is a bit light so the base plate moves around a bit. I ended up disconnecting the pedals and using some saitek pedals mounted to a steel plate. That solved most of the problems. I haven't really used it much yet though, I started fixed wing flight training and the only heli sim I play for "fun" is BS, which is fine on TM Warthog or Logitech G940. For reference, G940 FFB is quite good, the joystick holding trim centre in BS helps a lot. People here seem to complain about build quality issues but so far no problems here, maybe I just got lucky. The pedals have a v. strong centre notch though, yesterday I opened it up and removed the spring and that seems better at least for P51. Haven't tried BS yet. PS. I worked out a way to justify the cost of expensive controllers. Just look seriously into real flight training, suddenly controllers don't look quite so pricey. Especially down here in .au!

I find ASUS G75VW-AS71 is good for DCS at full resolution (1920x1080) and fast enough CPU for my development needs (mostly programming, CPU hungry FPGA tools and PCB design) but it is 17". You can probably get a similar 15" but I doubt it will weigh < 3.2kg..