doveman

You mean to use as-is or to dismantle and use to build rudder pedals? I'm considering the Saitek or CH pedals myself and note what CaptainPecan said, which hasn't really helped as now I have to decide if I want better pedals or comfortable ones!! :huh:

Hmm, maybe I should rollback to 13.9 then (currently on 13.10) although you never know if that might have negative effects in other games. Actually I remember that we can just drop the dll in the game folder to use a different version. For 32-bit games using DX9 it's atiumdag.dll and for 64-bit atiumd64.dll . I'll try that with some different versions sometime and see which works best. Perhaps we could get a sticky somewhere prominent where people who've done this can report which driver gives the best results with their GPU (I've got a 6950 (unlocked to 6970) so my results won't be of much use to people with other cards)?

Don't give them ideas, this sim'er is going to find it hard enough to spend $300, lol. I guess if they're only going to do a "low" res version anyway, then there's no harm in asking them to also do a high res premium version but I'd rather they just made a single high-res model and sold it to everyone (including me) for $300 :)

I recommend Razer Surround sound, which is free software. This will let you buy some good quality Stereo headphones that you like and still get decent surround sound, as well as not having to worry about whether the soundcard you want to get does CMSS-3D or Dolby Headphone. You can try it out with whatever headphones you've got now to see if you like it. I think the sound does lose a bit of quality but I understand that's just an unavoidable side-effect of virtual surround sound algorithms and from what I can recall, CMSS-3D is much worse in this respect, although it does have good directionality. What would be great is if some users of CMSS-3D and Dolby Headphone could try Razer to compare and share their impressions.

Nice, this is really in the spirit of Christmas :) I'd quite like the DCS Su-25 Flaming Cliffs module.

+1 for this as well. I don't know how many controls are common to two or more modules and how many would still have to be set for each module individually but I imagine there's quite a lot of crossover and where a control does the same thing in different aircraft but has different names, perhaps it could show all the names or just show a more generic name for the control. Probably the axis would need to be set differently per module though.

Thanks Korn, that's helpful :) I wasn't aware that the 16000M build quality wasn't as good as the CH. That's a shame that CH aren't selling spares anymore but if it's as well-built as you say, hopefully if it doesn't fail in the warranty period it should last me a good few years. It's not going to be used excessively anyway, as I don't fly that much at the moment but probably would do so more if I had a decent stick ;) One of my main concerns with getting the Fighterstick is whether it's accurate enough for the fine control needed to constantly balance helos, which the reviews of the 16000M seem to suggest is great for with it's hall sensors. If the Fighterstick's not great for that, it's probably best for me to wait and see if the X55 is as good as the 16000M for that and if I can afford it. I don't really use the twist stick on my Hotas X as it doesn't work well for me with trying to move the stick at the same time. I use the rocker on the throttle for rudder at the moment but it's not great and I'll have to look into getting some pedals sometime but I could probably manage by mapping a couple of buttons (or using the keyboard) for rudder in the meantime. Whilst I could probably make do without all the hats and buttons, by using my Xbox360 controller for things like DMS, CMS and voice commands for other stuff, the two things that I absolutely need are precise and usable stick and throttle/collective (and no I don't have the time or skill to build myself one, even though I'd love to). Even in ArmA2, which hardly has an accurate FM, I have to use my M&KB as that allows me to make very fine and accurate adjustments, whilst my Hotas X stick is so rough and has such a large deadzone that it's impossible to use for helos.

Ooh, this might be a good options when it comes out, as it's got hall sensors and a proper throttle http://www.saitek.com/x55/ No idea on price at the moment though, so it might well be out of my price range. I'd still like to hear opinions from anyone who's compared the CH Fighter Stick and the 16000M though (surely there's some of you out there?)

Yeah. It has to be exposed, developed film as I understand it though, so you need to buy a film, pull it out to expose it to the light and then get it developed.

The point is PeterP's mod "Unchain Rudder from Trim" resets the (virtual) Rudders to centre when pressing Trim. This means the player can't "dial in" the pedal position and relax their legs but has to readjust them back to where he wants them every time he trims the cyclic. ddahlstrom describes the problems with the mod better here http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=986036&postcount=5 With my suggestion, the virtal pedal position would stay where it is when pressing trim and set the current position as 0, so that any user-input would be treated as +/- from that position and not add the additional offset (e.g. +50) from the centre to the current position to the virtual input.

@eXPeRT Whilst that's all almost true (my read speeds only boosted about 5x, from 100MB/s to 500MB/s), it also applies to RAMDisks and I was running DCSW from one of those before, so I'm quite surprised to see an fps increase like this. Anyway, as I said I'll need to do some more testing to compare to check I'm not just imagining things! Something went wrong last night as it was back down to 19fps when looking left out of the cockpit in the same situation and looking around (with FTNoIR) was very jerky, whereas earlier it had been nice and smooth. I noticed the sun was going down so there was a lot of glare from that, so maybe that was having a negative effect, so I'll have to ensure that any comparisons are done at the same time of day as I'm not sure that "Cold start at Mozdok" always does or if it using random times.

Thanks Falki, your settings have made a massive difference and it's no longer "floating" and is quite accurate with Yaw and Pitch now :) :thumbup: However, I can't enable Z as it's generating a lot of that when Yawing, so in the cockpit if I look left it zooms right in and if I look right it zooms right out (obviously I have Z mapped to Zoom in DCSW). I don't think it should be, as although the LEDS clearly do get closer to the camera when turning left and further away when turning right, FTNoIR should be able to tell that the LEDs are also moving on the Yaw axis, unlike if I was leaning forwards/backwards as I would if I was trying to zoom in/out. Then again, it needs to be able to zoom in when I'm not looking straight ahead, so I'm not really sure how it's supposed to detect when I want to zoom in and when I don't. Roll isn't really usable either as it Yaws and Pitches too much when trying to roll my head. I've got the camera lens on the turned left setting. Do you use that or the turned right one (sorry, can't remember which is zoomed in and which is zoomed out)?

Sounds interesting xcom, look forward to trying it :)

Whilst this looks nice http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=116764 I'd like to suggest the height of the window is increased. It's a bit annoying when we're forced to scroll down to view the end of the Description when this could be made unnecessary by just making the window larger and using the available space. The same goes for the other windows, like the Briefing screen, so perhaps whilst you're doing the Mission GUI screen you could adjust those as well?

Whilst I don't think dumping the entire memory allocated to the sim would be sensible (like 5-6GB savefiles), perhaps it wouldn't be too difficult to separate the memory that's used for graphics/terrain from the memory that's used for variable data (aircraft positions, equipment status, etc) and dump that, then load all that data back later to resume the flight. You wouldn't need to identify what data actually needs to be saved, just what isn't (i.e. graphics/terrain). It would probably still result in larger savefiles than if a proper save feature was coded and would take a while to load the data in and allow the sim to process the data and get itself ready but it might be a feasible quick workaround until ED find time to do it properly.

I know, I wasn't expecting it, only faster loading times and less/no stutter due to loading scenery whilst flying. As I say, I'll have to do some more comparisons as there's been updates and I might have changed mods since my previous results with the HDD on that mission. It's easy enough to run the HDD install and then the SSD install to compare, so I'll do that when I get a chance and also try booting Win7 from the HDD instead of the SSD and compare the two DCSW installs like that as well.

I got my Samsung 840 EVO 256GB SSD now and from a quick check it looks like it's given me about 5-10fps extra when looking left or right at the start of "Cold Start at Mozdok" Whereas it used to go something like 40-21-23 (Forward, left, right), now it's more like 40-30-28. I'll have to do some more testing to confirm though.

I got my Samsung 840 EVO 256GB SSD now and from a quick check it looks like it's given me about 5-10fps extra when looking left or right at the start of "Cold Start at Mozdok" :) Whereas it used to go something like 40-21-23 (Forward, left, right), now it's more like 40-30-28. I'll have to do some more testing to confirm though. EDIT: Even with the SSD, I'm still getting drops to 16-19fps when flying towards targets and the objects count increases, so it's still not playable and all the SSD has really done is improve my loading times :( http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=107551&page=6

Yeah I tried that first but my current filter seems more effective. As you can see from this chart (blue line) the floppy material isn't ideal as it blocks a lot of IR as well as daylight http://forum.free-track.net/index.php?showtopic=3205 Nice setup you've built yourself. It might inspire me to sort myself something out. If I understand, you're using a camera on top of your monitor (in the middle) with a side-mounted clip, so it appears I shouldn't have any problems doing the same.

Thanks. Nice setup you got there, if only my space was so organised I could have the camera below the monitor no problem but as it is, it'll tend to get obscured by coffee mugs, papers, not to mention my joystick. I'm working on sorting it out though, so many plans :) So after you removed the entire IR-filter, did you need to do anything to fix the focus issue? Maybe that doesn't actually matter if using the camera only for IR tracking (which is all I intend to use it for as the only video chat app I use, Jitsi, doesn't even recognise it) but I got the impression it did. Are you using a cap or clip? I only ask as I understood it was best to have the camera off to one side in line with the clip, so as you have it in the centre I'd assume you use a cap but if you use a clip and it works fine, that'd be interesting to know.

Thanks Falki, I'll see if I can get it working well with your settings. As you also use a PS3Eye, perhaps I could ask you a couple of questions? Did you completely remove the IR-filter lens or just scrape off the red dot? If the former, didn't you find that it made the camera go out of focus and if so, what did you do to correct that? Do you have the camera on top of or below your monitor? Obviously it's more out of the way on top and is less likely to be obstructed by stuff on the desk (including the joystick) so if you have it on top, it'll give me hope that I should be able to use it there too.

It's wasn't really that hard to add a daylight filter (I used 3 squares of red, green and blue plastic, which I bought in A4 sheets from an art shop for a few quid) but it might be worth trying a different camera. The one you recommend is a 30fps one though, so that wouldn't seem to be as good as the PS3 Eye, as far as fps goes anyway.

No rush, I'm off to bed soon anyway :) I've made a visible light filter for the PS3 Eye and it seems to be tracking reasonably, although obviously the blobs would be a lot brighter without the IR filter. Some people have apparently opened it up and removed the filter but from what I've read, that then makes it go out of focus and become unusable without some further remedial work, so that's not something I plan to risk. I'm running at 640x480@60fps (or 75fps seems to work in FTNoIR). I'm guessing it's just the settings (Curves, etc) that I have wrong that are causing the problems I mentioned but I could be wrong.

Thanks. I hope I'm just doing something badly wrong and it can be greatly improved ;)

For about a year I've been trying to get Freetrack/FTNoIR working with my homemade LED clip and PS3 Eye. I've got it to the point where it picks up the LEDs OK but I've found it tends to lose them if the cam is on top of my monitor when I'm turning right or looking down at the panels especially (clip and cam are on my right) and it works a lot better with the cam underneath my monitor angled up (which is tricky as I have a clip designed to hold it on top of the monitor but underneath, the cable makes it hard to set it in any position other than flat, so I'll have to make some sort of desk mount for it). I set the pitch offset to 25 to compensate, which seems to be enough to stop it pitching when I'm yawing. I was testing in FaceTrackNoIR as it's easy to disable the different axis in that and found that if I enabled the Z axis, that would output a lot when I'm yawing, so I'm not sure I can use more than Yaw and Pitch for now, although strangely with the same model settings in FreeTrack it doesn't seem to zoom when yawing (great as it is, that programs too buggy, with my cam at least, requiring me to faff about changing the camera settings every time, so I'll only be using FTNoIR for anything other than testing). A worse problem I found though with both programs is that it feels very sluggish to follow my head, almost like pulling a piece of wood with a string on a lake, where the water acts to resist the movement and it also tends to float, so after I stop my head it continues to move a bit further, making it overshoot where I wanted to look. Is there any way to get rid of these issues or is this the best it gets? As it is, it seems easier to use snapviews to look out of the L/R windows to check my surroundings, as I can do that in an instant with the hat switch on my joystick and it goes straight to the correct view and back to where I was looking (dash, HUD) as soon as I release it, whereas with headtracking, it's a slow struggle to get it to look exactly where I want and then another slow struggle to get back to where I was looking before! I've done the fix to add the following to autoexec.cfg and don't have Force Feedback. if not input then input = {} end input.use_read_thread = false