Rushup

Thanks - that looks really nice, and only about £30 over here. I'm sure it would do me for the foreseeable future. And most importantly, my 4 year old son will find it easier than using the keyboard :smilewink:

Not sure that's right about the memory supported by AMD. I think DDR3-1866 is the fastest that architecture supports. I've just build a new system with an FX8350 and Sabertooth FX990 R2.0 and went with DDR3-1600 memory. I wouldn't base my AMD vs. Intel decision on supported memory speed. I think single thread performance and efficiency are Intel's main winning points - but you pay for that. I couldn't make my mind up between an i5 3750 and the FX 8350. In the end my heart said 'AMD' even though my brain said 'Intel'. Let me know if you'd like to know how this performs with DCS.

Thanks for the replies guys - much appreciated. Quite true :thumbup: I'm trying really hard not to get too sucked in at this stage....most people in my position (2 young kids, F/T job, evening studies etc..) would just get a quick shoot-em-up game and be done with it. The problem is, I've always been interested in how helicopters fly, and my curiosity got the better of me. And [don't laugh] but I've got two young kids who both love helicopters. So I'd like them to learn, and of course with DCS, respect the machines, and go through the cold-start procedure. And with the Mi-8MTV2, a chance to learn some Russian too ! I'm a nice dad, honest !! I'm not really into the whole 'shooting the enemy' type of game - part of the appeal of the Mi-8MTV2 module was cargo/support missions. But I'll certainly enjoy a quick blast when the need arises ! One thing's for sure, I've well and truly thrown myself in at the deep end !

Please can anyone suggest whether I would be wasting my time with a gamepad controller to operate a helicopter ? I already have a gamepad that I use for other games. It's a very basic model with an 8-way pad on the left, 4 buttons on the right, and 4 large buttons at the back. Is it feasible to configure the 8-way pad for the cyclic, 2 buttons for the collective (one for up, one for down), and a couple of rear buttons for the anti-torque, and the rest handled by keyboard ? Perhaps I should just stick to the keyboard overall ? At present, I'm not wanting to purchase a dedicated joystick, I'd just like to get my gamepad working. If I had the money, I'd like to get a proper helicopter controller. I already have a wheel and pedals for playing Dirt 3, so kind of like realistic controllers ! But within the DCS options, I can't seem to assign all the gamepad buttons to the axis configuration. Is this due to local hardware driver issues, or does the DCS application not permit the use of substandard controllers, i.e. do I need a proper flight-sim joystick ? BTW - I'm totally new to flight sims. I pondered for a while, and finally decided to go the straight to DCS 1.2.6 with Mi-8MTV2 :doh:yes, a bit crazy, but hey, why not :prop: