lxsapper

Not really, maybe it was fraps? I don't hate them, but I do think they should be "put straight" maybe by someone taking legal action agaist them in the states would make them stop their abusive practices. Apart from that we have a lot to thank Natural Point, they didn't exactly invent head tracking, but I believe they made it possible for us simmers and particulary flight simmers to have it avaiable in a way that no one thought of before, also I don't know of anyone implementing 6DOF before they did. But if you really want to find what they are doing that's wrong and "immoral" pop by that site I linked and do some reading. Not going further about it here. Some people will dismiss it as "nothing but Freeloaders whining" but everyone has a right to their own opinion. My self, even though I own a TrackIR, I'll side with the "freeloaders" and the right everyone should have, to chose what's best for them.

Basicaly yes. they are identical, not exactly the same on the real jets, but very close so that most of us won't see the diference ,apart from color, I belive F-15 seats are usually black.

Maybe the X-52 is sending V and a DX butto command assigned to that function? It's been a long time since I had my x-52 I don't think it used to do that but still.... On the other hand do you have a rotary or slider assigned to that function? I used to have mad spiking issues with the rotaries and sliders on the x-52.

I've taken the PDFs from Brenda's and Converted them to DFX after that I've imported them into sketchup and have been building (spare time only) a 3D model with all the components to make the seat, wich I later plan to alter to Make an A-10/F-15 version. There are Free PDF to DXF converters that work quite well. But my limited experience tells me those drawing weren't really made with CNC in mind because they sometimes have some imperfections (discontiued lines, etc) but maybe a CNC machine doesn't mind (BIT diameter), I really don't know, as all I know about CNC comes from watching you tube cut videos LOL.

SkateZilla I really don't want to further this much as it's off topic but: I agree, at least to a certain degree, but it's been a little hard at times because: What they do is as ilegal as using a couple lines of very simple code. In the states it's called Anti-Trust. Not to mention moraly wrong, sadly they most likely would not need to resort to such tactics as they have a great product and were first on the market. Also going after the DIY guys is just ridiculous. Basicaly they have a monopoly and want to keep it. It's preaty much a given that you can't get without headtracking in Flight Sims this days. Who wouldn't want to be in charge of the only company that was able to manufacture Joystick/Hotas? It's a Hard market because it's a niche market, but in the end I belive Healthy competition serves everyone the best (except the people who were hoping on a monopoly of course).

http://naturalpointofview.blogspot.pt/p/trackir-anticompetition.html A few minutes of reading should give you an idea.

Well as far as I know ED changed it's policy for Freetrack a while back and even integretes it's native API into DCS so it should be ok to post Freetrack links. I do own a trackIR (wich I bought second hand incedently) but I also have a few issues with natural point monopoly policies, if only trackIR didn't work so much better for me than I was ever able to get freetrack too.... No way I would ever had owned one I tell you. But purely speaking of the piece of kit... It's great, out of the box great. Can't even compare using hats or mouse to this.

Well you can try my backup plan. Wich is to procure an old FLCS and use that grip. I have since beguining to thinker with the FLCS grip found out that internally electronicaly is very identical to the cougar grip a few wires have to swaped around to maintain cougar like functionality and to make the TG1 and TG1 functional but it's quite easy to do. Then you can take the 5 wire flat cable that conects to the base and adapt it into a PS2 male connector and it's ready to connect to your cougar or WT base to interface through eighter of them. It's danm near perfect, except of course for the guiving up the excelent built and looks of the WT grip, also the buttons on the FLCS have a crappy feel, so one may want to replace those with better quality/looking ones, the hats aren't that great eighter but can be made to feel better with some modding. And some aditional modding will be required to get the DMS push down funciton to work, for flying the A-10 you can allways opt out of that and use the paddle as a replacement since the A-10C doesn't have the Paddle switch.

Well, like you can see PeterP is using a Cougar grip, the Warthog grip is not really heavier that the Cougar's i'd weight them both, but my cougar is boxed looking for a buyer, but I garantee that if there's a weight diference it is marginal. PeterP has reported that the grip is indeed a bit too heavy for the MSFF2, that's why he "doubled" the mechanism, the "two set of motors" thing plus counter weight and all.

Now that I know Target a little better I'm not sure if there is a center positon on the switch or not. There is no DX button that's a given. But in T.A.R.G.E.T (and DCS lua) not only you can program the middle position by giving "release" programing to the outer positions (like you did with the cougar through Foxy) but you can actually assign a command to the center position. Now two things might be true, eighter the switch exits but not as a DX button, but a button that TARGET drivers can read and assign keystrokes. Or the switches electronicly realy don't exist, just like they didn't in the cougar (the dogfight and speedbrake switches), but TARGET software is design so that you can program those positions not only in the old way but also in an easier new way, in wich you just assign a command to those switch positions and the software makes the necessary adjustments in the background to make it work. My money is on this later possibility.

Since you are going for the x-52 then i'll say HOATS first, if you were getting a warthog ir similar with no twist function I'd say it depends on the sim/aircraft. Some sort of yaw control is mandatory for helicopters and props.

can't do it in game by the way it has to be done in TARGET. They all work with A-10C because the warthog is speacially suported by default.

The boat switch does not have a center ( the same for all the other 3 postion sitches), you program that position by assigning a command to the other switch positions to activate when they are off.

Well my two cents from someone who is packing a cougar hoping to sell it and have just made the leap for the warthog, is that the warthog would be the most universal hotas. The reasoning beeing that it has more controls to map. The cougar is not only missing a hat, excluding the throttle base, you have on the warthog throttle 3 extra 3 position switches 2 (ON-ON-ON) and one (MON-ON-MOM), also 2 hats on the warthog one on the stick and one on the throttle have push down funtions. The missing rotaries are somewhat unfortunate but for western fighters I belive only the F-16 has 2 rotaries the F-15,F-18 etc only have one rotary on the throttle. If you ask me for the radar antenna you can very well do with the rotary on the warthog throttle base, it's close to the hand easy to find without looking and you'd use it on long range scans to adjust your radar coverage where in my opinion taking the hand off the throttle for a couple of seconds won't hurt you. For the range knob (flying an F-16), and for the antenna if you really must have it on the throttle leavers themselfs, you can use the free hat or the other switches left free on the throttle to program them as presses. I find it doesn't really hurt to use this functions in this manner. So my vote is on the Hog. But like I said... Cougar is for sale... lol!

Sorry.... I just have to.... LOLLOLOLOLOL

I found the default would not work for me (SOO DANM SLOW the cursor would hardly move, I've taken out the saturation, put a small deadzone and a nice curve and it's working very well for me, extremely sensitive but very precise. If you find that too sensitive just mess a bit with the saturation and curve settings you should find something that works well for you.

I just got the warthog but I'm already getting my hands on getting it to work with my several sims. I'm not sure what you mean by reversing the detent beucause the reversable detent is only for afterburner and doesn't give more or less range. The range is the same but you eighter have a detent to access to last 20% or so of travel or you'll have no detent, but the range of detection is the same. I can't comment on assigning those commands to Start/Stop Engine commands because I'm not on my DCS computer and I can't test it. But you have no axis range aft of the idle detent, the axis stops there, only the "ignition switches" as you called them are read there. A possible workarround if setting those switches on the Options/Controls menu is beeing to much of a problem would be to make a target profile and assign to those two switches the commands you want. You could probably leave the rest of the hotas unprogramed if that's what you want. I'm not sure if that's of help, but I may not have fully understood the issue.

By the way, as for buying a joystick from someone else, it may interest you I have a Cougar wich I am selling and I'm now a happy owner of the warthog, I also used to have an x-52. But for force feedbak please don't tell me to go with the G940, if you know of any alternatives that work well with DCS and come close to the MSFF2 quality please let me know.

You may not know this but the MSFF2 is considered by many as the finest FF stick ever produced for home consumers. Microsoft are very sucessefull in the software side of things but they're far from beeing perfect on that front, but rest assured their hardware was not designed the their software engeniers and they produced some incredible gaming hardware back in the day. And in case you missed it.... NO OTHER Game/Sim is giving this problem.

Well I'm not that knowlageable but using the 3 cards actually brings your cards down to 8x right? Of course that bandwith migh still be enough to have 1 card deliver full power, but I'm just gessing I really don't know.

By the way, No Hawx 2 IS NOT graphicaly superior it's both graphicaly inferior and less complex! It does however lend it self well to delivering a cinematic experience that passes sometime as photorealistic, through some clever texturing and lighting.

Ok I'm sorry if someone is going to be offended, but I have to say something. This guy has a killer system tips like "turn off mirrors" and "set water to low" "because they are resource hogs" are just PLAIN STUPID! my system is not half of his but is not redered unplayable by water and mirrors, yes it does have an impact but not enough for the game to come to a screaching halt at 7fps (only rockets do that for me). Given that I don't run those resolutions, nevertheless I belive other people here in this forums do run them, and not everyone of them has a system quite this powerfull. Now the multi-gpu wich should be a plus is most likely causing a big problem. How hard would it be for you to try and mount only 1 card? Just for testing?

And I'm not sure why I do! lol No other simulator does this for me.

Maybe you have a particulary powerfull system... I only have an i5 750 (a little overclocked) with 8gb ram and a HD6870. They never hit 100% use though. I have the same issue of having the same FPSs regardless of high or low settings. But when using FFB there seems to be a bottleneck somewhere because my CPU and GPU get used even less (and I get worst FPSs for it).

His hats are not wired through the MSFF2 they are still working on the X52 electronics. The MSFF2 is using its Axis only.