doveman

You continue to amaze me Capt. Zeen, each profile being more impressive than the last. Many thanks.

Whilst a bubble system would seem sensible for a SP DC, it's not so straightforward for MP where you might have players all over the map and few or no areas where you can dumb down the AI without it being noticeable and affecting players.

Admittedly I don't know how many AI DCS can currently cope with on an average PC but perhaps there are ways to increase that so that a bubble system isn't needed. For example, ArmA3 is a single-threaded program like DCS that can only use one core for AI but it has something called 'headless client' which runs on separate cores to the server but is synced to it and offloads some AI, allowing for more AI than the server could otherwise support. Admittedly I find it all a bit convoluted and don't know why they can't just make it run this extra process and offload some of the AI to it automatically in both SP and MP (unless a command-line switch is used to disable it in cases where the server doesn't actually have any spare cores), rather than it having to be run manually and missions designed specifically to use it (that's actually not complicated and just involves setting a couple of parameters but it still means that missions that don't have those set won't make use of it) but it's better than nothing. So perhaps DCS could do something similar, in SP running a background program that syncs to the main program and runs on a spare core not used by the main program to enable more AI. I think DCS only uses 2 cores at the moment, so on a quad-core system there could perhaps be two instances of this background program running on each of the unused cores to enable even more AI. Likewise for MP, where the server has 4 cores available the same thing could be done. It might be more complicated in MP, as in SP it doesn't matter if the AI in areas where the single player isn't present is slightly out of sync with the main process as the player won't notice it or be affected but ArmA 3's AI running on the 'headless client' has to sync properly with the main server process and the clients, as players can be spread over the map and encounter AI running on either the main server process or the headless client one, so it doesn't seem to be impossible.

I don't really understand why a DC would even require a bubble system. If I fly a mission then DCS has to do all the necessary computations for the enemy AI so why shouldn't it be able to do those same calculations when I'm not flying and show the various units moving on the map? Sure, it would need to do some extra work to have an AI control "my" aircraft when I'm not piloting it but that isn't a significant extra load. Likewise if you have a MP scenario with 20 friendly pilotable aircraft. The enemy AI have to be computed anyway if people are piloting the friendly aircraft, so it's just a matter of doing the extra AI calculations for however many of those 20 friendly aircraft happen to be empty. I'm not trying to underestimate the work needed to bring a DC to DCS as you also need a way of auto-generating appropriate tasks/missions to assign to each side's AI depending on what is going on or has recently happened and then there's all the GUI work, it's just this talk about the need for a bubble system I don't understand.

Or this one, which explains how the size of a person's head and external ear affects the frequency profile of sounds coming from above, behind or in front of them and how their brain will have learnt to decode this into directionality http://knowingneurons.com/2013/03/15/how-does-the-brain-locate-sound-sources/ So it may be that there is a fairly common head and external ear size such that a virtual surround algorithm will work for many people but for others that algorithm will produce results too far from what their brain has been tuned to for it to work for them and only an algorithm based on their specific head and external ear size will work. Maybe that's something for Rift mk.2, a laser that scans your head and ears and creates an individual profile for each user [emoji4]

Probably but it should be noted that whatever Oculus uses may not work for some people any better than current virtual surround does and they may need to use a real 5.1 speaker system. If the current solutions work well for you on the other hand, then I'm sure Oculus' implementation will be even better.

Indeed. If IRL someone behind me shouts I know they're behind me without moving my head around and can even tell roughly how close or far away they are. Likewise if someone shouts from a window above me or if I hear a helicopter flying above I know the sound is coming from above, or if I'm upstairs in a building and hear someone on the street outside shouting I know they're below me. Personally, I don't get any of that with Virtual surround. It's better than plain stereo and gives a wider soundstage but it's nothing like IRL and whatever they're doing just doesn't work for me. It may be because all the sounds are coming from a driver right next to my ear, whereas IRL the sounds come from different places in relation to my ear and bounce off different parts of the ear to give the directional and distance cues. Either way, I have a much better experience using real 5.1 surround, which is so immersive it often makes me think I'm hearing stuff from outside when it's actually coming from the game.

Virtual 3D audio like Razer never works for me, it seems my brain just isn't compatible with it. I can easily tell if a sound is above or in front or behind me IRL but not with these virtual 3D audio techniques (I've tried the Dolby version as well) but other people say it works for them, so I doubt the Oculus version will work for me either.

It might be worth looking at Capt Zeen's F15 Helios profile, as I believe he used some tricks to export more than is normally possible with the FC3 aircraft http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?p=2307634

There's absolutely no grounds on which they could "go after" the users/purchasers (and they could only know who they were if hegykc keeps a record of purchasers and hands it over) . Let's not spread FUD.

Er, what happened to the 120fps IR sensor with custom lens and filter and your promise to throw some funds towards the authors to improve the software?

One concern is how Opentrack makes itself appear as TrackIR to games and if that infringes any patents. At the moment it's not used that widely so NP may just have decided to ignore it but if this hardware changes that and Hegykc is helping to fund OT that could expose him up to a lawsuit.

Has anyone successfully used a webcam mic for voice control rather than a headset mic? I find that the volume settings I need for Teamspeak with my headset mic don't work very well with voice control, so I thought maybe using a separate mic on a webcam might work better. I've got a PS3 Eye webcam which is supposed to have a good mic array but unfortunately the Windows driver doesn't allow you to adjust the gain, so it's much too quiet to work. I thought of getting a Logitech C270 HD Webcam to try instead but I don't want to waste money if it is unlikely to work. I've been meaning to build a small circuit to improve my headset mic volume/quality, so that might make it work better with voice control and TS at the same time.

That's good news, thanks for the info.

Yeah, same here (UK, Sidewinder X4 keyboard). It's a long-standing issue that I reported ages ago. We have to go into the DCS control settings and add "OEM102" (by pressing the key) to anything that's mapped to "\" for every aircraft or else the key won't do anything. No other program/game I've tried has this problem, they all see "\" when it's pressed. I did suggest that if it was complicated to fix that ED just add "OEM102" to the necessary mappings so that new players don't run into this problem and find they can't activate the radios.

I don't think so unfortunately. I've wanted to do this in lots of sims but there always seems to be something that stops me achieving what I want. You can have a cockpit-less forward view with HUD on one monitor and use Helios on the other to show the gauges/switches but then I don't think the outside view can be panned with TrackIR or similar and is fixed forward and of course you might prefer a proper cockpit view on the second monitor rather than a Helios-one. You could probably set up a view that spans both monitors and adjust it so that the upper part (windows and HUD) is on the top monitor and the lower (inside cockpit) part on the bottom monitor but that's not going to be maintained as you look around with TrackIR. If you disable pitch tracking, so that the view doesn't move up/down when you move your head, I guess you could just pan left/right and maintain the split but then you won't be able to view parts of the cockpit or scan vertically out of the windows.

Thanks for the tips, I'll hopefully have time to get into it next year.

Yes, for briefing purposes rather than in-mission an interactive map, etc would be fantastic.

After soldering I think the most important thing to be able to do is make PCBs, as they make things much neater and can help minimise wiring. I need to learn how to do that myself, so it would be great if people could share tips on the best free PCB design software for noobs, the cheapest but still decent methods of actually making the boards, etc. There's various guides available but they tend to each recommend different methods, so it would be great if people who have tried one or more of them could advise on their experience. I've also long wondered if a dremel is necessary for creating nice looking panels, as the decent cordless ones aren't cheap (you can get cheap ones, sometimes with 100+ attachments but reviews reveal the motor is too weak, the attachments wear out very quickly, etc), so I'd only want to buy one if it's necessary.

Although even in that it can't be displayed on a secondary monitor, so you have to open it on your main screen and lose any view or awareness of the 3D world. It's not just DCS that fails to take advantage of our hardware.

I'm not sure it's sensible to try and sync the drawings between all players on a server, partly for the reason you mention but also it's unrealistic (in that IRL you might just have a paper map/kneeboard that you write on, no auto-syncing electronic map) and it would take much longer to implement. For now, I'd be happy if ED gave us a separate program to run on our secondary monitors that contained the maps and allowed us to draw on them, or maybe it could just receive the map from DCS. That would leave out single-screen users though, unless they could alt-tab between DCS and the map but it could be that the easiest/fastest way to provide it to everyone is to incorporate it in DCS for single-screen users and have a separate program for dual-screen users.

Definitely +1. It would be even better if we could have a drawable map permanently displayed on a secondary monitor. It's a shame the full potential of secondary monitors and touchscreens isn't utilised.

I agree this should be added, as the hardware can easily be identified by software and it's better placed to know what settings are appropriate for that hardware than the user. It would be even better to have a few options like "Best image quality with minimum 30fps", "Best quality whilst maintaining 60fps", etc. Then the user can choose an option depending on what matters the most to them, rather than having to spend their time trying different settings when they should be flying. When the user picks settings they might give 60fps on the runway, only for it to drop lower than the user finds acceptable once he encounters the enemy, drops a bomb, etc. The software knows what the most demanding situations are and can choose settings that ensure the desired framerate will be maintained in those situations.

Er, OK. I'm thinking that, umm, what are you talking about :) The only way to put the index "back in again" would be to make a backup of it first before formatting the drive. Otherwise, a new index is created referencing the new files that are created on the formatted drive. None of which matters to someone who just wants to format the drive to re-use it.

You said reformatting lays down pathways to the data. In fact, it is these "pathways" i.e. the index that is deleted when formatting. Whether the wear from erasing the data is significant enough to worry about is debatable but the fact it serves no purpose if you're going to re-use the drive yourself isn't (other than some extreme case where the old data was highly confidential and someone might break into your house and steal the drive before the old data has been overwritten by new data).