Ranma13

I find these discussions over whether displaying meters is realistic or not as a reason for not implementing it, rather asinine. We're playing a sim where you can reload an entire aircraft in under a minute, repair it in under 4, and fly a JF-17 in the Caucasus, Nevada, or the Persian Gulf, theaters where it never operated in. Yet nobody's complaining about these highly unrealistic things, but when it comes to representing the same distance two different ways, we have 9 pages of people going back and forth about it. Frankly, this is just bikeshedding and people throwing around the word "realistic" as a blanket excuse to justify whatever they're arguing for. I don't care about what's "realistic". We're not talking about the aircraft's performance, weapons damage, or other things that have a real impact on how the aircraft performs. We're simply asking for a toggle to switch between two different units of measurement that has no bearing on the aircraft's abilities aside from making it easier for the user to parse distances. If you want ultimate "realism", then keep it in Imperial, but for those of us who primarily fly Russian aircraft and/or are used to distances measured in km (even the official JF-17 quick start guide lists distances in km), it would be extremely useful to see distances in a format that we're familiar with. If you have to justify it somehow under whatever selective definition of "realism" you prescribe to, just pretend it's a Russian export variant.

8x12 inches gives a diagonal length of 14.4 inches. Assuming this is the size of the entire MFD and not just the display, we can take a guess that the screen itself is 12 inches. I have a 12.3" monitor and comparing its size to pictures taken of the simulator, it seems about right.

Please keep us up to date. If these parts are indeed still available and especially at that price, I'm sure the folks over at viperpits.org would love to hear about it. It's hard enough to source a linear potentiometer with a center detent, even harder to find one with a center detent and momentary push, and impossible to find one with a momentary push that has significant travel (as opposed to a tactile click where it moves less than 1mm).

Yes, it's colloquially referred to as snow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise_(video)

When viewing the data link for a fired CM-802AKG, the in-cockpit version will show a bunch of random snow that moves around rapidly, but on the exported display it sits mostly still: Also note the significant brightness difference between the two, but that's a problem that exists in all modules, not just the JF-17.

The axis for radar antenna elevation is also used for zooming in the WMD7, but the direction is reversed between the two. For example, if you have a wheel that you spin up to raise the elevation and spin down to lower it, it would make sense to spin the wheel up to zoom in and down to zoom out, but currently it's reversed. If you reverse the axis in the controls, then it will reverse both so that wheel up = zoom in and wheel down = zoom out, but then wheel up = radar down and wheel down = radar up.

Yes, but on the other side of the coin, the chances of getting into a knife fight with guns only is extremely rare. More likely they'll be firing off their BVR missiles, and if they miss, turn tail and return home and let others deal with it rather than get into WVR combat. It's probably more likely to get targets of opportunity on the ground that can be engaged with the cannon than something in the sky.

From what I hear (and I have no idea if this is true or not), it was done that way because the assumption was that A2A combat will be done solely with missiles and the gun is just for very specific situations that are highly unlikely to occur, so they tilted the gun downwards so that it can better attack ground targets.

The solution is easy: don't create pointless polls that are ultimately go nowhere, and instead do something more meaningful like creating a mock preorder page where people actually have to put some effort into preordering, or design a 3D model of what you want and get feedback on that, or ask for what people actually want feature-wise and compile it together into a sensible list. What you're doing right now is akin to saying "do you want something?", getting a few dozen upvotes in a poll, then sending that off to some company and hoping for something to happen. Of course people want something, because something they don't want is better than nothing at all. If the level of effort that you put in is next to zero, the level of a company giving a crap is likewise going to be zero.

The problem with polls like this is that it's essentially the same as asking "do you want something or nothing"? Given the option between something vs. nothing, nobody's going to pick nothing, especially if the only effort required is clicking a button. It might work for judging interest if it was a wider survey, but not as a poll in a sub-forum of a sub-forum that the vast majority of the target market won't see.

Everyone has different requirements. If you have a Warthog throttle, how often do you swap out the detents? I do it multiple times a week as I switch between aircraft with afterburners and aircraft without. Likewise, I like a heavier throw when I'm flying fixed wing, but as loose as possible for helicopter flight when I'm using the throttle as a collective. How easy or difficult it is to adjust has no relation to how often you adjust it. It doesn't have to be difficult to adjust, as Virpil has shown in their previous throttles, and just because you adjusted it once and never touched it again, doesn't mean that everyone does the same.

I am, and it's still under active development: https://github.com/danieltian/dcs-bios-stream-deck-plugin-new It's a rewrite of the older version I had up here: https://github.com/danieltian/dcs-bios-stream-deck-plugin which I got close to complete, but near the end I wanted to change around some of the features and realized that it would involve so many changes that I was better off rewriting it. I can't give any estimates on when the new version will be finished by, all I can say is that it's under active development and I'm aiming to put out an initial alpha release within a year, depending on how much free time I get.

The default hotkey to center the view is F12. You can rebind it in the TrackIR software, under the Hotkeys section on the left.

To be honest, I'm not sure why anyone would do this aside from novelty's sake. Light falls off based on the inverse cube law, so unless the light detecting resistor accounts for that, you'll have to adapt the curve back to a linear one, which will lose a lot of fidelity at the extremes. The LDR will also have a lot of noise in it and the readings must be smoothed out for it to be somewhat stable, which means that the joystick update rate will be rather low (in the video his update rate is only 8 FPS). The LED will also get dimmer over time and can vary slightly in brightness depending on how stable the power source is, which will need frequent calibrations to keep it calibrated. If you have the time and energy to do all this, you might as well just get pots and replace them whenever they wear out, or pick up hall sensors that are orders of magnitude more accurate than a light-based setup. They even make laser-based contactless potentiometers that have the benefits of both regular potentiometers (not affected by magnetic fields) and hall sensors (doesn't wear out). Bottom line is, if you're trying to do this because you want to turn a cheap joystick into a usable one that will last you a long time, don't. There are much, much better solutions out there. If you're doing it just for fun because you have nothing better to do, then it's up to you if you want to or not, but I feel like your time would be better spent doing something like building a button box or something rather than pursuing this extremely odd mod.

RS Electronics sells a 2-axes force transducer here: https://americas.rsdelivers.com/product/zf/462c-1/zf-462c-1-2-way-joystick-switch-knob-momentary/0419681 This is the same one used in Deltasim's force sensor mod before it went out of stock. It might seem really costly at $462, but considering that typical force transducers start at $1000 and only go up from there, it's actually pretty cheap. RS Electronics also sells two different caps for it: https://americas.rsdelivers.com/productlist/search?query=ultra-electronics&tag=&family=8318 Though you can also 3D print one for cheaper. BadCrc, if you still have that transducer and don't mind selling it, I'd be willing to buy it off you or trade you the aforementioned Ultra 462 sensor for it (I have one with a cap). Please let me know, thanks!

I don't own the Brunner (yet), but I can answer some of those questions. Because the base is force feedback, it can emulate any kind of gimbal. The software allows you to set things like how fast the force ramps up as you move away from the center point, and has built-in support for both force trim in helicopters as well as trimming in fixed wing. This built-in support (called hardware trim) is separate from the sim, so it won't reflect the state of the sim. This usually isn't a problem though, as DCS only changes the center point of the force and won't move your stick outside of you doing it manually (for example, an autopilot moving the stick for you). This means that when you first load into an aircraft, all you have to do is press the hardware trim reset button once and you're good to go. I believe the base uses direct drive motors, so it avoids the cogging feeling like that on the Logitech G940 and Microsoft FFB2. You can use extensions, though it will sag if you move it too far off-center due to its weight. It fares a lot better with the lighter sticks and can be used with the Virpil and RealSimulator grips, but not with the VKB because it uses a different mount. I believe if you purchase one nowadays, it will support the Virpil CM2 stick out of the box (with all buttons and even lever axis working), but previous versions purchased before mid-2019 will need modifying a resistor to support the CM2. Don't expect too much out of the FFB forces. Brunner is not reading the FFB data from the sim itself, but rather getting exported data from the sim itself and processing that data. It will do ground rumble when taxiing and the stick forces getting stronger as airspeed increases, but not much else. It won't have the kind of nuance that you'd get in real life, at least not in DCS. If you only fly fixed wing, I'd say you're probably better off just getting a spring-based joystick, and if you only fly helicopters, you'll probably enjoy the VKB Gunfighter and its dry clutches. The Brunner only becomes an option if you want to have different forces between different aircraft (for example a lighter more linear feel for the F-16 and a heavier feel for the A-10C), or if you fly a mix of helicopters and fixed wing and want to use one joystick without having to reconfigure the hardware in between, but you're paying a lot of money for that convenience. The force on the stick is 4Nm. Without hands-on experience I can't tell you what this feels like, but if you're looking for that "need two hands to pull it back" kind of force, this isn't going to meet that goal. However, it's nothing to scoff at; people use the Microsoft FFB2 which reportedly has 0.4Nm of force and need to turn that down sometimes, so 4Nm should be decent. Keep in mind though that 4Nm is the max force, but the stick can't sustain that for long without the motors overheating (and I believe there's overheat protection). Price-wise, you can check for yourself here: https://www.brunner-innovation.swiss/product/cls-e-joystick/ but shipped to the US it comes out to 1354 EUR, or 1490 USD. The CLS-P is in another league; the peak force is 100Nm and it's sold by request only. I recall reading somewhere that it's in the high 4 figures to low 5 figures.

The problem with the LLTV pod implementation is two-fold: 1. It's a low light amplification device, not FLIR. However, in-game it's being treated as a FLIR pod. 2. There's a very rudimentary and incorrect level adjustment filter getting applied to it. Both LLTV and FLIR are light amplification devices, but LLTV amplifies visible light whereas FLIR amplifies IR light (as well as making it visible). In short, LLTV should look very similar to how it does with the naked eye, just brighter. Let's see how DCS handles this. I loaded the Vikhr and LLTV training mission in both DCS 1.5.8 and 2.5, then slewed over to the tank sitting on the runway. This is how it looks like in 1.5.8 using just the IT-23: It's very dark, but if you look closely enough, you can just make out the runway and the tank. I'd say that this is fairly realistic, as even on a moonless night it's never completely dark, and it matches what I see when hiking at night in unpopulated places. Adjusting the brightness in Photoshop, we can get an idea of what it should look like with light amplification: It's no surprise that it looks very similar to what it'd look like during day, as DCS simulates day/night by adjusting the brightness of the ambient light. Now let's see what the actual LLTV image looks like: It's incorrectly using the same fake IR rendering as the A10C, so the tank shows up brighter than the runway despite being the opposite in the visible light range. Switching over to DCS 2.5.5, I won't bother with the night IT-23 image because it's no different than a completely black image. But here's the LLTV image of the same tank: There aren't any shades, it's just completely white or completely black. If we take the 1.5.8 LLTV actual image, then apply a level adjust to it, we get an image similar to what we see in 2.5.5: So I believe that DCS is using a similar technique. In real life, nobody would make a low-light/IR pod that returned an image that looked like this because it's nearly useless. Also, night vision has been in development since the 60's, whereas the Su-25T entered service in the early 90's. It's had a long time to develop. The LLTV rendering in DCS is simply incorrect.

I have a G940 throttle and scraped off the rubber coating with a fingernail. It takes a really long time, but it's smooth black plastic underneath and with a bit of cleaning up afterwards, it looks great, like it was originally sold that way.

Assuming that they'll even entertain you (they sell only to commercial and government entities but will occasionally make exceptions for home users only if you're in the USA), it's gonna start at $40-50K.

Yes, it's always been a little flaky but it seems to have gotten really, really bad recently.

You'll have to add in the off command to be sent when the button is released for each control you want it to apply to.

If you get toggle switches with a flat bat, they won't rotate within their casing: https://www.digikey.com/products/en/switches/toggle-switches/201?k=&pkeyword=&sv=0&pv545=347856&sf=0&FV=-8%7C201&quantity=&ColumnSort=0&page=1&pageSize=25 Otherwise, there are rounded bats with anti-rotation built in: https://www.digikey.com/products/en/switches/toggle-switches/201?FV=-8%7C201%2C545%7C314173&quantity=0&ColumnSort=0&page=1&pageSize=25 But make sure you double-check that you're getting the one with the correct model number for anti-rotation, as they typically make them in both rotation and anti-rotation models.

And suffer the requisite downgrade in quality. 3D printing doesn't handle fine text and details very well. It's going to be cheaper to pick up some 2-layer acrylic like this: https://www.inventables.com/technologies/black-and-clear-reverse-laserable-acrylic-sheet And either find a laser cutting service or buy a cheap Chinese one that's capable of handling acrylic.

They'll stay in the last trimmed position. Here's a video of someone who built a force trim system for helicopter anti-torque pedals:

Unfortunately this is an issue with the AI in general. I've had wingmen fly into mountains when I tell them to RTB, wingmen who will fly into trees, wingmen who fly off in a random direction forever when I tell them to attack a target, wingmen who fly directly into enemy range when they have standoff weapons with twice that range, etc. It's not specific to just the Ka-50.