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AJ.eightFive

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Everything posted by AJ.eightFive

  1. How are things going jrsteensen? Any sexy new renders you can tease us with?
  2. Looking at picking up some acrylic sheet so I can start experimenting with back-lit panel fabrication. I'd rather just order one big sheet cut down into a more manageable size so I have enough to experiment with and plenty remaining to pack the actual panels when the plans are available. If I recall correctly, you are designing the OpenHornet back-lit panels around the assumption they will be made of stacked layers of 3mm/0.125" acrylic, milled (necessitating cast, not extruded acrylic), painted and engraved, is that correct? I'm thinking to get the sheet cut down into 5.750" wide blanks to minimize material wastage when milling the light plate and panel to their final dimensions while being wide enough to make the backing plate to the mil-spec dimension if I stick with an acrylic back plate instead of aluminum. Are the OpenHornet panels being designed around those same dimensions from the mil-spec or should I look at getting the sheets cut to a different size? Thanks and Happy New Year!
  3. Amazing work as always! Just got my Shapeoko XXL fired up before Christmas and can't wait to start making some OpenHornet related chips and sawdust!
  4. Been a while since I've stopped by. That latest render looks amazing, keep up the good work!
  5. Thanks for the reply! No worries re: releasing info prematurely. Glad you guys are dedicated to producing something of high quality. I can keep fooling around with what I have for now. There's still plenty to learn and my Shakepoko 3 arrives tomorrow so I need to make a home for it which will keep me busy for a while! Congrats on getting the website up, it's looking great, as are the latest renders! I'll keep an eye on the forums for when they are open to sign-ups. For now, I've made use of the most important part of the site and dropped of a little care package to get you started toward your $250 goal. Feel free to PM me your logo requirements too. I made Zorlac's "Touch Buddy" logo many, many years ago, maybe I can help with this one too. :) :pilotfly:
  6. I picked up a couple of knock-off Arduino starter kits off Amazon a little while ago and have been playing around with the various components along with DCS-BIOS. While playing around with the included stepper motor last night, I noticed the motion is not very fast, certainly not fast enough to keep up with an IVSI or Altimeter winding through several thousand feet per second. Are there stepper motors that are capable of much faster motion (mine seems limited to about 40rpm, not sure if it's a limitation of the motor itself, the Uno R3 or the ULN2003 driver board but I'm guessing it's the motor) or do you plan to use something else for those instruments? I have been reading about air core motors as well but can't seem to find any for purchase. On that note, you mentioned in another post that you have many of the components for the project identified. I assume by this you mean things like switches, motors, LEDs etc. If that's the case, would you mind sharing your source for these? I'd like to order some stuff to tinker with so I can see how it all works and hopefully shallow the learning curve when you guys start releasing plans. Thanks!
  7. Great! I think anyone that is serious enough about building a pit from your plans will have already gone down the road of setting up voice control and that's one less panel for you to design :). I haven't been home since 2.5 released but once I've got it up and running I'll take a look at what ED have done with the radio system lately and see if I can't get my mod up to date too. I wanted to ask if any of your spindle gauge designs are far enough along that you could release it for people to use as a primer of sorts while the rest is in development? My thinking is that a component like the standby airspeed indicator or VSI would make a good entry point for a novice like myself as building one would involve most of the skills/processes that will be required for the rest of the project, without being overly complicated. I see it as a sort of "minimum viable product" if you will. What do you think?
  8. I feel like AI radio commands are best handled using voice recognition software. It's hard to believe it's been 6 or more years since I've flown in DCS, but when I did, I had been working on modifying the radio system to make it easier to use with AI voice control programs like VAC and had it in a pretty good state where I could delegate tasks to my AI wingman and communicate with ATC in the A-10 quite easily. https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=82529. I can't imagine it still works after all this time though but I'll definitely be taking another look when the Hornet releases. I'm sure others have run with the idea and made improvements since though. Anyway, if you are going to make a panel for it, the simplest solution would just be two rows of 7 pushbuttons (maybe of the UFC keypad style?). Row 1 with ESC and F1-F6 and row 2 with Backspace and F7-12. Some brail, maybe on the F1 (1 dot) and F7 (2 dots), and a "guard" (like around the probe extend switch) separating the ESC and Backspace buttons from the others would help with tactile identification so you can stay head up. Would look like this: [ESC] | [F1] [F2] [F3] [F4] [F5] [F6] [bCK] | [F7] [F8] [F9] [10] [11] [12]
  9. I just dug one out of my basement. I bought it a few years back, realized pretty quickly I preferred the Warthog throttle, and put it back in the box. It's still in perfect condition. I'm in Toronto, Canada. Shoot me a PM with an offer if anyone is interested and still watching this thread. Edit: Sold
  10. Wish I had the time to work on this some more :( Haven't even been able to fire up the sim for months. Hope someone else is able to pick the ball up and run with it for you guys!
  11. shamandgg, the latest release of the mod is only compatible with DCS A-10C 1.1.1.1. I'm working on a DCS:W 1.2.0 compatible version as we speak. It's nearly ready but I want to do a little more testing this time around.
  12. Thanks Formski, Have just tested the first two missions of the Devil's Cross campaign and so far it's looking good. All of the allied flight reports played correctly and I didn't see any instances where a subtitle appeared but no voice message was played. Will probably be another week or so before the mod is ready and I might just wait for FC3 and accompanying patch for DCS:W before I put out a new version of the mod.
  13. Formski, as I'm updating the mod for DCS:W I'm also trying address any of the existing bugs. I haven't been able to reproduce yours however. If you're able to send me a mission where this clearly happens that might help. I've created a couple of missions myself and the AI units are making the radio calls correctly, along with subtitles. Thanks!
  14. Did you consider looking for an update on the TARS website? It's there...
  15. VAC is a great piece of software and I've spend a considerable amount of time creating profiles and tweaking the sim to make the user experience even better when using VAC (See VAC Friendly Radio Mod in DCS Mods forum). Unfortunately, using VAC to issue radio commands in DCS remains clumsy due to the context sensitive nature of many commands and I am beginning to wonder if my efforts would be better directed toward creating a tailored voice recognition utility that interacts directly with the sim, bypassing the radio communication menu entirely. I think it is unrealistic to expect ED to develop voice recognition capabilities in addition to their current projects so the concept for a third party application to fill the void is roughly as follows: Through the sim's export interface, the proposed utility maintains a list of named radio entities in the simulation world (ATC, JTAC, AWACS etc.) on the tuned frequency (or more simply parralel the sim's radio communication menu). When a voice command is issued, the utility looks to see if that entity exists and sends the appropriate command directly to the sim using the input interface rather than through keypress macros activating the communications menu. I've found through putting together the VAC Friendly Radio Mod that the functions required to get the list of radio entities are exposed in the speech lua files. A means of calling these and returning their output to the external utility would satisfy the first requirement for such a program. The second requirement is the ability to issue the radio commands directly with the appropriate parameters. This may prove to be more challenging (unless a developer can share some details of how the system works) but I beleive that it is still technically possible from what I've been reading in the forums. If this is not possible, but the first requirement can be satisfied, then it will still be possible to issue the commands using keypress macros. The ultimate goals is to be able to tune the appropriate radio frequency, issue a voice command such as "Darkstar, Hawg 1-1 available for tasking, playtime 0+45" and have the proposed utility find and address the command to the correct entity (the JTAC named "Darkstar") within the simulation. This will make the interface between user and sim more intuitive and provide a more immersive experience benefitting both single-player and mutli-player users. I'm hoping some of the more experienced and technically competent modders, as well as any developers who happen upon this post, will join the discussion here and weigh in on whether something like this is techinally possible before I invest a great deal of time pursuing it. This thread is also intended to serve as brainstorming session and to feel out if anyone else would be interested in working on this project as well. Thanks in advance for everyone's input.
  16. Dusan if you create a profile for BS2 I will happily include it!
  17. Sorry I dropped off the face of the Earth! (No, I did not hitch a ride on the MSL Curiosity). I still don't have a lot of time to dedicate to simming at the moment but I am going to try and get this mod working better in DCS:W. It seems the VAC profile seems to work well enough for wingman/flight commands for the time being but the changes to the radio menus has probably broken everything else.
  18. Hey Boarder. I'm loving the latest version of iControl DCS. Thanks for adding the portrait CDU, I've had access to a second iPad for a while now and being able to run one dedicated to the CDU is really sweat. I'm sure you've got lots of things planned for future releases already but I wanted to throw in another couple of suggestions I think will make the app even more useful. Since we now know how to export not just the MFDs and CDU but all of the cockpit displays, I'm hoping you can add some additional layouts in future releases so we can take advantage of this. First would be a UFC + RWR + CMSC layout as shown in the first attached image. Since I have physical MFDs, as I'm sure others do as well, I have no need for the "soft" MFDs in iControl DCS so it would be much more useful to display these on my front iPad instead. Second is a CMSP + CDU, or CMSP + Caution/Warning Panel layout in portrait. Actually, as I'm writing this I'm thinking it would be really cool if in portrait you could swipe between CMSP + Caution/Warning Panel | CDU | TACAN/ILS/AHRS as though you were looking down the right console. See the second attachment for an idea of what I mean. Thanks again for the great software!
  19. This doesn't seem to be working for me. Sun is the exact same size with both files installed, but with slightly different shading. Any ideas?
  20. Kaboom! Just watching someone get rocked by a SAM. Haha, this is great. Thanks Tyger, I'll be sure to tune in when I'm bored, err not busy, at work!
  21. Unfortunately I do not have BS2 to test with Smil. My gut feeling is that it will not work.
  22. Here's what I've got going. Only the throttle is scripted. I apologize to whoever's T.A.R.G.E.T profile I based this off of for not giving credit, but I can't remember who's it was! If you recognize your own work please let me know! TM Profiles.zip
  23. Running much smoother for me as well. Framerates look pretty similar but the "jerkiness" or "judder" I was seeing on my far left and right monitors is much less apparent. I'm puzzled by it, but happy. :)
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