streakeagle

I would love to try one. If I liked it, I would buy it.

Twist grip would be the bomb. I can't wait to see everything you will have for sale in your shop. It is good to see you didn't give up and are on the verge of releasing really cool stuff for us combat flight sim addicts!

Paper specs look nice, but how does well does it play DCS? and how much do the various models cost?

It is working a lot better than the last time I used it. Part of that might be the SteamVR driver modifications referenced in an earlier post that got the controllers/hands aligned more correctly. I have a lot of difficulty getting a response to pulling the trigger or pinching. When I show hands, I can see the correct gesture, but it won't "click"... but then while I am struggling to get it working, it will click... and on the wrong thing. It is partially a function of what area I am trying to work (left/center/right and high/center/low) and the size of the trigger areas for that particular switch/button/lever. Some controls I can operate perfectly and others I have to struggle long and hard to move the switch/turn the knob. I still find the gloved VR hand controllers built in to DCS World VR settings a lot smoother and more intuitive. I can be much more precise and can easily tell whether my hands are being recognized correctly or not. But neither one is reliable enough for me to use regularly. Too much time trying to move small switches/buttons that I can hit instantly using a mouse. Too many accidental switch/button presses while struggling to press the right one or while simply looking around while my hands are on the stick and throttle. I need something that doesn't lose track and clicks exactly where and when I want it to click. I had my VR hands gut stuck holding the stick. They wouldn't move the stick, but they wouldn't let go either. Not sure what I did, but I got my left hand stuck while unsticking my right hand. Some gesture/position got me stuck and some other gesture/position got me unstuck.

I got overwhelmed by the new patch yesterday: P-47, channel terrain, and MiG-21 updates. I spent most of the night playing with the P-47. Maybe tonight I will have time to try this out again.

If you want to see the pressure indicate correctly, put the flaps lever to neutral before you start pumping. From a cold start, the flaps are drooping all the way down. With the lever in the "up" position, the flaps will be soaking up all that hydraulic pressure. With flap lever placed in the neutral position, the pressure charges up and you can move the cowl flaps.

This aircraft is so frustrating. I got the Wingwing Hornet throttle and have a 3-position switch assigned to the landing lights, but it doesn't work. Back to using the toggle function I was stuck with on the Warthog throttle. Patches don't improve the MiG-21bis, they at best change what is broken :(

I downloaded and installed it, but it is too late for me to play with it tonight. I will try it out tomorrow and provide feedback.

I hate using key mapping because it can result in conflicts. That is one reason I never used Target. There were never enough dx buttons available to cover the virtual combined stick/throttle controller and pushing different buttons with key maps could result in unwanted behavior. The VKB configurations software works the way I would prefer: I make the changes I would like using the full range of available DX button assignments, then burn it into the firmware of the stick, so no software additional software needs to be running to utilize my custom configurations. I haven't played with the SimAppPro to see what I can do, but I am guessing it needs to be running to use its custom configuration options?

Nice setup!

It is really nice to have dx buttons triggered by the off or center positions of switches. Much more flexible than the Warthog throttle when dealing with the random switch mapping strategies of the different DCS aircraft modules. There are a couple of areas where I don't get a dx button indication but would have liked one: 1) the idle finger lifts. It's only use is to animate them in the game, but they did so for the friction lever, so why not the finger lifts? The DCS Hornet has inputs mapped for them. 2) the idle cutoff switches. When you go to idle, you get a button, but when you leave idle, there is not dx button for this "off" position. Some aircraft need a button that tells it the throttle is no longer in idle, some even have two positions other than idle stop. In many cases, I can use an LUA script to make the single button cause the desired action when it turns off. But if I simply had a dx button that went high when the throttle is not at cutoff, that would be one less script I would have to update after every patch. The only other thing I might ask for are two buttons reporting the opened/closed status of the generator switch cover that has been discussed quite a bit in its own topic. The Wingwing throttle out of the box without using any software is everything I would have hoped it would be. The above two complaints only arise out of seeing what they already did with all of the other switches, knobs, etc. There is a small penalty for swapping to out the Warthog throttle for the Hornet throttle: the available controls and their physical arrangement on the grips are substantially different. The only way to really solve this would be to have multiple sets of throttle grips depending on the aircraft type, much as I have been able to do with the stick grips.

I used my TM Warthog stick and throttle without Target. The only thing missing were off positions of two way and three way toggle switches. I used LUA edits to solve that for modules that didn't provide mappings that supported the Warthog's throttle switches. The Wingwing Hornet throttle and startup panels have dx buttons for nearly every single thing. There are more than 32 buttons, so you can't see them all in the windows game controller tool. But DCS World sees everything. What SimAppPro gives you are a lot of options in case you want things different than default. You can do all kinds of crazy customization with it. It is about as powerful/useful of writing your own Target scripts. I did't need Target and so far I don't need this. You can get some idea about the kinds of things people are doing/problems they are solving by using SimAppPro by reading some of the posts withing this forum. A good case is the lack of a switch to sense the position of the generator switch cover. The game won't let you move the switch until you open the cover. So it is important for the game to know that you want the cover open so that you can use the switch at will without having to press a key or use the mouse. With a little work, SimAppPro can be used to generate the inputs needed to have the cover open and close automatically when you move the generator toggle switch.

Still doesn't solve the problem of where to put them. They do need a line of sight. I have a large TV for a monitor and the positions to either side get obstructed by the TV. Positions to the rear get obstructed by my mock-up of an F-4 ejection seat. The inside out cameras cause me zero problems... unless I put the headset somewhere where it can't see and it decides it need to reset the floor level. Base stations also chew up communication bandwidth. With the Rift S: one USB connection and one display port connection. If the Galaxy matched the performance and quality of the Rift S, I would use it since Oculus is maxing out there development efforts on improving the Galaxy, including the recent adoption of hand tracking... which base stations won't do. If the Rift S had the mic and earphones of the CV1 and get the hand tracking of the galaxy, it would keep my happy for awhile. As it stands, I have a headset that fits over the Rift S with good audio and a nice mic and Leap Motion hand tracking that is working remarkably well for being shoe-horned in with modded SteamVR drivers. Give me a VR headset that has better resolution, wider field of view, runs a steady 80-90 fps in DCS World with existing hardware, and a price under $1,000, and I will buy it. But it doesn't exist.

That is an awesome setup. I hope to approach this quality level at some point over the next few years.

Despite the requirement for good lighting, I much prefer the camera tracking as opposed to having to find good locations for the base stations and trying not to bump them. I have an upstairs bonus room with an otherwise 1-story home, so I can keep the light at bright as I want. Whereas, bright light coming in the windows from the sun would mess up my TrackIR and even possibly interfere with the CV1 tracking. So, I am very happy with inside out tracking. As for the mic, mine works after you unplug and re-plug in the USB cable, but stops working shortly after using any application that uses the mic. Every now and then it will work for a long time until the next firmware update resets it back to the "normal" behavior. The CV1 never gave me any trouble with the mic. Overall, I much preferred the audio on the CV1. With the Rift S, I have to wear a headset to get both the good stereo sound and a stable mic. Oculus' fixation on the Galaxy and ignoring the needs of PC gamers, particularly flight simmers like us has me looking elsewhere for my next headset. But it won't do me any good to buy a better headset until cpus and gpus make some kind of performance jump. I am trying to be patient and get a good return on my money.

I am 100% with you one this. CaptoGlove would be in my home right now if I saw others had it working correctly. I would have worked overtime to buy it. As it stands, I have Ultraleap/Leap Motion now and have most of the capability CaptoGlove promised minus the virtual hands being connected to the virtual pilot's arms at a fraction of the price. I have a Rift S. I don't see a reason to buy anything better because there isn't a PC out there that can give me a better experience no matter how much better the VR headset is than the Rift S. The Varjo promises to deliver the kind of image quality I would love, but it comes with three big costs: 1) A lot of money 2) It will run like a slide show with even the best hardware available if you try to use that quality with DCS World 3) The field of view is far from impressive for that price tag. I want to see VR get the pixels per degree up so high that it is considered a "retina display". I want to see VR get a field of view so wide that it matches or exceeds my peripheral vision so that I don't fee like I am looking through a tube. I want to see the hardware, drivers, and other assisting tech like eye tracking reach a point where I can have the first two items and still have a stable frame rate at 90fps or better. I want to see all of this available at a price the average consumer can afford so that VR becomes as big a deal as it would be if all of the above were true. In the mean time, a $6,000 head set that will look no better than my Rift S if I lower my settings enough to get playable frame rates is not happening for me.

SimAppPro has been stable and worked fined for me, but it has two problems that keep me from using it: 1) It wants to startup up with Windows no matter what I set the preference to, so I had to disable startup through the Windows task manager... no biggie, but annoying. 2) It wants to phone home. Why on earth would I need a joystick configuration program that wants to be online 24/7? Checking for updates and having the option to scope out cloud profiles is nice, but it doesn't require a continuous connection to the internet. Combined with the always starts with windows problem, it leaves me somewhat suspicious. I have run DCS World with and without SimAppPro. If the only difference is whether the APU light turns on and off when flying the Hornet, I can live without it. I don't need any fancy macros. I tend to edit DCS input LUA files when I need customization. So it is a cool looking app and can do a lot, but I simply don't need it to enjoy my throttle and startup panel.

I will try it out. If capto gloves were working correctly, I would have bought them... especially since they had the option to connect to the arms of the virtual pilot. But Leap Motion (now known as Ultraleap) is working fairly well and more practical. But without haptic feedback to let you know when you are in proximity of a switch, it can be very dangerous. Accidently dropping the landing gear at high speed or other such fun inadvertent button/lever pushes. <edit>These modified drivers work a lot better. I can see my hands in SteamVR and they work fairly well in DCS World. It definitely takes some practice to get used to the limitations of the field of view of the leap motion sensor and its ability to see your hands well enough when looking down and to the sides. I inadvertently was moving the radio volume knob on the MiG-21bis. It is on the right hand side near the switches I was turning on during startup. While experimenting with the knob trying to perfect setting it at minimum, mid-range, and maximum, I hit the canopy jettison control... oops! I quickly got pretty good at toggling switches, but pushing buttons that need to be held in for a few seconds is a little trickier. I got the MiG-21bis started up 100% using VR hands, got permission to takeoff and was just about to push the throttle forward when DCS crashed. Running SteamVR on top of Oculus with LeapMotion as well has having VoiceAttack/Vaicom Pro and SimShaker (vibrating seat) running in parallel is a bit much on the system. It seemed like it crashed when I glanced down. Leap motion doesn't seem to like my looking anywhere but mostly straight ahead and level, whereas lowering my head, especially to the sides where I have physical barriers, gives it trouble seeing and recognizing the hand position and shape.

In the VR settings for DCS World, you can enable VR hands for VR controllers. I am forcing SteamVR and using the drivers I installed to support DCSLeap, so Leap Motion makes my hands show up as HTC Vive Controllers in SteamVR. So: I have Leap Motion and SteamVR running, but not DCSLeap, then I enable hands in the DCS World VR settings, I see the same hands I would see if I was running Oculus with Touch Controllers. Only the hands follow my hands and the index finger follows my index finger. The VR hands do not quite match the orientation of my real hands, but it is more than close enough. The nice thing is if my hands go out of view of the leap motion sensor, they disappear from the screen. This makes it easier to manage: i.e. avoid bumping switches/levers while using the HOTAS or the mouse. It would be cool if the hands could be turned on and off at will, like a PTT button. So that when I don't want them floating around bumping things, they are invisible. Imagine a toggle function: when you have a pilot body visible, you press a key or button and the hands rest on the throttle and stick. Bump the key/button again, and the hands follow your real hands. That is what I would love to see. What I have right now is pretty close minus the connection to the virtual pilot's arms/hands. What you lose by not running DCSLeap are the gestures and the simplified capability of the DCS hands that have trouble doing much more than toggling switches and pushing buttons. If I could have the virtual hands AND the gestures along with a single toggle function to turn both on/off, that would be awesome.

I tried using the DCS World VR hands instead of DCLeap. I found it much easier to use, no tuning necessary. I could push buttons with my fingertips and use the palm-up/palm-down to switch between left and right mouse button. I was in an F-14 and was able to reach around and flip the ejection seat switch using my left finger to push it. The experience was very close to what I would have wanted with capto-gloves. If I could just connect the virtual pilot to my VR hands, it would really be cool. I also could use the mouse without having to <CTRL><ESC> to shut down DCSLeap, and then could transition back to virtual hands at my leisure.

I have the in-game cursor more-or-less following my hand, but I need to tune the settings to get it smooth and predictable. Right now, I struggle to move the switch/lever I am targeting, but bump all kinds of things accidently while looking around. It is sad and disappointing to see how well my hands are tracked in the leap motion visualizer but all I can do in the game is mouse emulation... much like TrackIR in mouse emulation mode, close but no cigar. DCS needs native support for Leap Motion. It could work really well with what was intended for capto gloves.

Leap Motion has my hands show up as controllers in SteamVR and I can show hands. But once I start DCSLeap, the mouse cursor mainly reacts to my head position, not my hands. I have zero control. It overrides my real mouse, so the only way I can do anything is to use the oculus controller to kill steamvr to give me back mouse control. Of course Oculus decides to send an update on the night I get my Leap Motion control.

I have my new Leap Motion installed. So far, all I have done is use the visualizer to see it map my hands. Amazing! 1) Why didn't the VR headsets with cameras have this capability built in? 2) Why hasn't Oculus made this available on the Rift S when they have it on the other lower capability Galaxy? 3) Where has this been all my life? If I can get this working reliably in games, this is as big as the VR headset itself. I would have been happy using this with a flat screen. So, now I have to start running Steam VR and following the regular instructions for DCS Leap... but I am willing to work with whoever to make this work natively with Oculus software if independent third parties aren't locked out.

One small problem with replacing my Warthog throttle with this one: In VR, I usually can find every switch by memory/feel with a little difficulty with the toggles that are covered by the throttle when it is forward. I wonder who long it will take me to learn to fly with this panel full of switches by braille. I also had memorized most of the control maps I was using with various aircraft. Now I have to create new control maps and there are a lot more controls to memorize. I am missing my flaps switch the most. I have two switches that are filling that role depending on how the rest of the layout is mapped: Engine Anti Ice ON-OFF-TEST is in almost the exact same spot. If I just slipped a little knob over the top to make it stand out, maybe a flap shaped paddle like real flaps switches use. Alternatively, the three position pinky switch on the side of the outboard throttle grip is more accessible, just unrealistically easy to reach for most aircraft. Once they release the new panel with a landing gear lever, tail hook lever, and a dedicated flap switch, I will be in heaven.

It was incredibly easy to configure the throttle axes as sliders and create a custom profile that makes the push-through afterburner detents work perfectly with the F-14 Tomcat. The push-through detent is probably not the best thing for helo collectives, but it shouldn't interfere too much.