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..

Does this count?

I can demonstrate: setup takeoff from Sukhumi, wind sea level towards 040 at 5m/s. Tower reports wind from 220 at 5m/s (close enough). In this video I take off runway 12, stick straight back and it rolls right (towards the wind). Then turn around, land and takeoff runway 30, again stick straight back and it rolls left (towards the wind). Note I have flaps 20 and am taking off early, the effect is most pronounced when you 3-point takeoff and doesn't seem to roll nearly so much if you lift the tail and pick up speed first. Mission and track attached. P51 circuits 1.miz xwind2.trk

Is this with full flaps? The P51 engine seems to not like low power settings, it tends to run rough for a few seconds when you try to increase power. The solution is to avoid low power settings, hence full flaps which increase drag and allow you to keep more power on. A similar trick is required for jet engines, the solution is similar. More flaps and/or speed brakes. For the rest yes you have to anticipate a bit of lag changing power settings..

You shitting me? Real pilots do whatever it takes ! You better believe if they had worked out a way to drop an anchor to turn faster they would have.. In fact I'm pretty sure those redbull air race guys do this, next time look really close for wires when they round those pylons :lol:

Having flown a little bit fixed wing and one trial flight in heli, I would say for fixed wing it is definitely a combination of both. A very small movement of TM stick equates to relatively large movement of the control surfaces compared to the long pole stick in a real plane, to paraphrase Yo-Yo you need ultra super silky hands compared to a normal pilot. I think for heli the difficulty is mainly short throw plus incompatible trim mode. In the old heli I flew for trial flight, the stick feedback was not so useful - there was strong vibration through the rotor travel (ie. the stick wanted to rotate in sympathy) but regardless of the force on the stick you have too keep an accurate average position. That is definitely easier with longer stick travel. For what it's worth I tried logitech G940 and it the FFB seems to work pretty well now for DCS P51 and KA-50. The heli compatible trim is a big plus, but the stick itself is a bit loose in the centre (non-FFB region) so you can't really trim hands-off. Oh plus the rudder has a strong centre notch, much stronger than Saitek pedals. Pretty annoying, all you can do is turn the spring strength right down or maybe open it up and "correct" it ..

You forgot the celebratory shower of rotor-confetti. I imagine it to be like a birthday party with extreme spinal compression. Plus you get to walk home. I guess it beats the alternative.

How many times do you have to pull sunroof lever to become specialist? :)

Hi, I notice there is a strong tendency for wings to roll into the wind on takeoff when a crosswind is present - is this a characteristic of the real aircraft, or a "feature"? I am expecting to need some stick into the wind, but instead it requires much stick away from the crosswind direction to successfully take off. I've noticed this since the first release beta, but I haven't seen anyone else complain specifically about it. Any crosswind component and the plane will yaw into the wind (ie. weather-vane, as expected) but also roll into the wind. I would expect the rolling motion on takeoff to match the normal slip-roll coupling, ie. when the nose is yawed right (or crosswind from the left on takeoff), the plane rolls right..

Hi, This is basically because the stick travel is so small compared to the real stick, and there is no direct feedback in the stick/cockpit so you only find out when you are in trouble right at the edge of stall and the whole plane model starts shuddering. It's a little easier with a FFB stick but I find it OK with the TM stick even with full linear curve, you just have to be a little gentle and back off stick pressure as soon as you get buffeting. Just remember if you use a non-linear joystick curve you need to keep it trimmed correctly, it makes it easier to control around the centre of the stick travel but much harder to control around the edges of stick travel. Caveat flyor :) Also it's a really good idea to always fly coordinated (step on the ball) otherwise as soon as you start to stall one wing will drop violently. It's quite noticeable in the P51 and it tends to start rolling and enter a spin very easiler, I assume because a combination of weight distribution (fuel + machine guns in the wings), laminar flow wing, low stability airframe and strong propellor torque.

Much easier to kill AI now. It still jumps on me if I make a mistake, but if I fly clean and don't mess up I can get it close to 100% now :) Now just have to learn to shoot accurately. PS. the 1.2.0 patch was a bit of a shock, suddenly finding if I pull too hard out of a high speed dive the wings fall off!