doveman

If he has 13.12 installed, there's no need to copy the 13.12 dll from the system folder to dcs world/bin. He just needs to delete any atium64.dll he might have put in bin/ and then DCS will just use the installed driver.

I can't help thinking that I'll miss being able to have a second monitor running Helios when using the Rift. Sure it will be great and immersive but it still takes time to look around and focus on the various controls and having the important ones all on one screen is great and if I have the second monitor under my main one, makes it feel a bit more like I have a real cockpit/dash in front of me. I guess this could be fixed by having a command that switches the Rift display instantly from in-cockpit to Helios (or whatever else you might normally have on a second monitor). I imagine this would be fairly simple, just having a video buffer that stores the Helios display and then overlays that on top of the DCS World output when toggled but it might be more tricky than it sounds ;)

Sorry but I've got myself completely confused with all these different mods/versions and need some help untangling myself please. I've downloaded Rocky's DTAC Terrain & Trees in JSGME format from http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=1921602&postcount=21 and extracted it to my JSGME folder as "DTAC Terrain & Trees". That's 1.08GB and in each of the four LandTexturesSEASONother folders there's noise_1.bmp.dds, r_for.tga.dds and r_for_t.tga.dds. Then I've also downloaded from the first post DTAC2013 v2Hires.zip (113MB), which is the "DTAC Hires Trees with no grass textures" and which only contains a r_for.tga.dds file for each season and they appear to be the same size as the ones in the above mod, so I presume I can delete that and that I don't need the DTAC Ground Texture torrent (DTAC Ground Hi-Res.zip) either? I've also got a mod I've extracted to "Enhanced Terrain" which is 436MB and each of the four folders only contain noise_1.bmp.dds (much smaller than the DTAC ones though) but there's also four matching zip files containing a large number of files. I believe this is PeterP's version of the mod but I'm not sure. I've also got Highwayman's Villages mod, which contains some of the same files (noise_1.bmp.dds, r_for.tga.dds) but also a number of village_x.tga.dds files in each of the four folders. Obviously I can only use the conflicting files from one of the mods but I wonder if it's possible to (or if there's any benefit from) combining them? So if I install "Enhanced Terrain" with JSGME first, which will put it's files (mainly zips) in position, then install "DTAC Terrain & Trees" which doesn't use zips but loose files, will the "Enhanced Terrain" zips be used but the loose files from "DTAC Terrain & Trees" be used on top of those? Similarly with "Highwayman's Village Mod", if I delete the conflicting noise_1.bmp.dds, r_for.tga.dds files first, then installed it, will I get the benefit of his villages together with the other mods, giving me the best of all three mods? EDIT: I've actually got another mod "new seasonal vfstextures without fields and buldings.rar" which might be PeterP's one, which just contains the noise_1.bmp.dds files, which are the same size as the "Enhanced Terrain" and "Highwayman's Villages mod" ones (10.6MB) but a lot smaller than the "DTAC Terrain & Trees" ones (85.3MB), so I presume the latter are better?

Thanks but I already use TS3 for ArmA, so have a good understanding of it. I don't know if any of the servers tend to use Aries Radio (I think that is meant to be a bit more stable, if not feature-rich, than TARS at the moment) but I can set that up quite easily if needed.

I wouldn't describe Helios as "casual user friendly". Maybe if just using ready-made profiles that's true but whenever I've attempted to modify or add anything, I've found it extremely hard to understand.

Cool. Look forward to seeing it in due course :)

OK ENO, you've convinced me. Next time I've got a few hours spare I'm going to get myself onto a server and look for some kind souls with the patience to mentor me :)

OK, thanks. At least it's not just me doing something wrong then :)

I made a suggestion for an alternative trim method about a year ago, which would avoid non-FFB users having to do this annoying re-centre stick dance constantly when using trim, here: http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=1661763&postcount=76 "I still think it would work better if stick movements away from the centre were still registered after clicking Trim (which would emulate the real behaviour, where after the pilot clicks Trim he can still move the stick further and click Trim again (or not), without any timeout or having to re-center the stick) but stick movements towards the centre were ignored until the stick had re-centered, which would allow us to release the stick, as is necessary when using a non-FFB stick as we can't hold it in position all the time, without any unwanted input." In part this was prompted by the fact that it seems impossible to use trim the "proper" Russian way of repeated short-clicks, as it oversteers like crazy every time I try and so I've been forced to use the American click & hold method, which irritates me seeing as this is meant to be a sim. I do wish there was a decent affordable FFB HOTAS but there isn't and so it would be nice if ED could explore some ways of making the Trim work properly for non-FFB users.

Got it working thanks. It was working in the A10C but not the KA-50. I ended up disabling all mods, repairing DCS (it did create a _backup000 folder with a few files in but it still left some extra files in bin\ , so I'm not sure it worked entirely right), Clearing the keyboard bindings and reloading them (I see the kneeboard keys have changed from RCTRL+Left/Right/Up to RShift+[/]/K). I can't change the kneeboard bindings at all, which seems strange but I don't really want to now that it's working. Had a weird episode in the UH-1H which crashed when I pressed 2 and said "Could not load file debriefing" on the debriefing screen. The kneeboard mod was the only one I had installed at the time but it could have been a bug in the mission I guess.

Thanks, that's useful advice. I should really print out the charts to refer to as well. I guess if there's a real person acting as ATC or other players nearby, they'll probably be able to help with directions as well if they're not too busy. EDIT: Maybe if the in-game airports/locations were exact replicas of real-world places, it might be possible one day to have some sort of utility that interfaces with Google Maps/Earth to show your current position and similar navigation assistance as with the Microsoft sim. I know that X-Plane has a utility for it to do this, with Google Earth running on a second monitor, although I think it was quite laggy in updating your current position when I tried it.

Interesting that the stick appears to detach from the base quite easily. I wish Saitek (or someone else) would make a long helo style extension that would attach to the base, with a connector on the other end to attach the stick, that would be awesome. Also slightly worried about the apparent plasticy-ness of the X-55 but as long as it's accurate enough to fly helos, it's probably the only option in my price range. Even if I could afford the X-65, I'd be too worried by the ending of support and I don't think the throttles very nice either. The T16000M http://www.thrustmaster.com/en_UK/products/t16000m would probably be an option to pair with a separate throttle if only it had more hats on it. It might be interesting to try using a FFB stick as throttle/collective, as it will hold it's position until releasing the "brake".

Some great advice here. I really should get up the courage to jump on a MP server one day but I'm slightly embarassed to admit I never can tell which way I'm meant to taxi to the runway (well unless I start in a corner with only one possible direction I can go!) In SP it's not such a problem as I can F2 cheat to get a bit of situational awareness and see where the runway is in relation to me and any other runways or roads I'll be crossing on the way that I need to take care around, so then I go back into the cockpit and I know where I'm going but I think most MP servers disable the external view don't they?

I'm sure I saw a thread recently that said it isn't necessary to put the files back into the zips anymore and we can just put the loose files alongside the zips and they'll be found and used instead. If this is the case, I imagine it should allow the size of the download to be reduced, as well as the complexity of installing it?

Hi PeterP Just to let you know that the "KNEEBOARD_MOD_for_Ka-50" seems to be incompatible with 1.2.7, as when I have it installed, the UV-26 switches/covers on the Aux Panel don't operate in response to mouse-clicks or keyboard shortcuts, leaving me with no countermeasures! With just the base part of the mod installed this doesn't happen. I haven't actually tried disabling all my mods and just testing with the two parts of the Kneeboard mod, so it's possible there's some state that only happens with this mod and some other installed but I didn't have this problem before with 1.2.6 with the same mods. EDIT: Seems I have an old version, dated 6/2013, so I'll try this one from 9/2013 http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=1872190&postcount=136

You might be right. I notice it has some mounting holes to bolt it to something but I guess if the surface you want to attach it to doesn't have matching holes and you can't (or aren't allowed to) make any, then the Velcro could be used. I've got a piece of wood I was thinking of attaching them to but I suspect that will still slide around if it's not secured down itself, so that's why I thought maybe the velcro was meant to go on the pedals or the underside of whatever non-bolted down surface they're attached to. Thinking about it, I don't think velcro would even latch onto most carpets, so I doubt that's what they're intended for. It's only because I've got very shortpile carpet tiles that it might work :)

Thanks, I'll try them out :)

Yeah, thinking about it like that I'm sure it would get confusing mixing L & R up for different functions! I've got the same pedals so I hope they last a reasonable amount of time. Thanks for the axis curvature tip, I'll try it out and see if it feels OK :)

It's probably meant to be obvious but the manual doesn't say anything about where I'm meant to stick the four velcro strips that came with the pedals. I presume they're meant to be fitted so the velcro side "sticks" to the carpet? There's only enough room on each side for one, so are the other two meant to be stuck on the underside above and below the tension dial? I didn't bother installing the driver software as Windows 7 detected and installed them anyway. I installed the Saitek Programming software but there doesn't really seem much need to use it with the pedals (if I get a decent stick then it will be useful). Can anyone recommend any in-game axis settings for the pedals for the KA-50, UH-1H and A10C or will they be fine on the default settings? I just don't want to hamper myself by learning to fly without having them setup correctly (it's bad enough having to make allowances for my stick!)

Are you running a 32-bit version of DCS or was that just a typo? For the 64-bit DCS you need to put atiumd64.dll in \bin, not atiumdag.dll, so I'd be surprised if it made any difference putting the latter in there. Anyway, you're not the only person to note that the 13.12 drivers don't work as well with DCS as some earlier drivers. I've always understood that once a graphic card is of a certain age, newer drivers don't tend to contain anything that benefits them, being focused only on the more recent cards, so with my 6950 I don't bother updating much these days, unless I hear about something particularly special in the latest driver.

Can't say I have. I still get the flickering white dots with HDR enabled unless I use PeterP's HDR fix for that and I still get low fps quite a lot, so I'll probably go back to 13.9 like txmtb. The nice thing about this method is that if all my other games run better with 13.12, I can install that so that they can use it and just use specific older versions for things that I need to, like DCS World or ArmA. :D

It's hard to imagine how it could fail. If DCS World sees the dlls in it's /bin folder, it will use those and if not, just use the currently installed ones as normal. I currently have 13.10 installed but I'm using the 13.12 64-bit dx9 dll for DCS World and the 13.12 32-bit dx9 dll for ArmA3. It's quite surprising what a small part of the driver package the actual dx9 driver is and made me think "how can it be so hard to properly program such a small thing?" but I'm sure it must be quite complicated really :smilewink:

I highly recommend just extracting the necessary dll(s) from the driver package and put them in the DCS World\bin folder rather than installing the whole thing, as it makes it a darn sight easier to revert if it causes problems. It's explained in the link below but assuming DCS World is dx9 only, which I think it is, all you need to put in \bin is atiumd64.dll or if it's dx10, aticfx64.dll + atidxx64.dll. Then to revert to using the installed driver, just delete or rename these and that's it. It makes it so easy to try different drivers and when you're sure it works better than the old one, then you can install the whole package if you want. http://www.kn00tcn.net/site/how-to-extract-dlls-from-amd-catalyst-driver-packages/

This is looking great. I'm really looking forward to the Andorid interface as well, as I currently have two monitors, one for DCS World and one for Helios and so I haven't really got anywhere left to display anything else :)

I'm not sure we'd like a HOTAS designed for space sims for our DCS World aircraft as I'm sure it would be rather simplified and have less controls than we need, if only to keep the cost down as space game players are less likely to be willing to spend as much as the average flight sim fan. So be careful what you wish for ;)