Vedexent

There's definitely an element of this, for sure - but cockpit design puts certain controls on the left side so that they can be used in tandem with the flight stick. That's why things like landing gear controls and weapon selection tends to be on the left, and things like cabin climate control is on the right ( with apologies to all the left-handed pilots out there). In short planes are designed to be flown with both hands, and - at least for me - a left handed mouse, even to control the left side of the cockpit, is a real pain.

Well played, sir ;) That rationale doesn't work in my F-5E or SU-25 ... but I'll give you that one for the Gazelle :)

I have Voice Attack, and have experimented with this sort of thing. This is the aspect that feel "cheaty" ( for me only, what you do is your business, I'm not judging :) ) - the real aircraft doesn't have control interfaces nearly that sophisticated.

I'm just getting back into flight-sims again with the HTC Vive. Things have changed just a bit between 1.5 and 2.5! :D With VR, I'm noticing a bit of a "control struggle": Either systems are controlled by keyboard inputs ( Su-25 ) and I can't see the keyboard, or clickable cockpit - and to move the mouse around with my dominant hand, I need to take my hand off the flight stick ( it's embarrassing to nose the L-39C into the runway while you're trying to retract the landing gear :P ). Neither seems really practical. So how are people flying without being able to see any of your controllers? Becoming skilled touch typists? Learning to mouse with their "off" hand? Just mapping EVERYTHING to HOTAS control switches? Voice Attack ( although having a fully voice controllable place seems kinds "cheaty" to me, although simultaneously pretty cool )? Touch pads?

Something else I've noticed: I need to be able to move my physical HOTAS controls around in 3D space. It's disorienting when the throttle assembly I can see and the throttle assembly I can feel are in different places in space; I need to be able to move the latter to match the former.

Back in the Saddle, again Hey, DCS people! It's been awhile; I hung up the flight stick for over a year due to moving across country, new job, new house, renovations, etc. But I'm back - and this time 'geared up' with an HTC Vive. I chose it over the Rift primarily because of the gaming other family members wanted to do ( more wide field of view room scale experiences ), even though I think the Rift might have had a slight edge over the Vive when considering DCS solely. Couple of things I've needed to re/un-learn so far: Labels are not a "gamey" gimmick It turns out that the current state of the art VR gear makes it damned hard to spot even main battle tanks parked in the middle of a wheat field, only a couple of kilometers out. You need labels. I've "hacked" my labels.lua to give everything a dark grey centered dot, within a given range ( too close = no dot, too far = no dot, with distances depending on unit type). That's all I'm willing to concede ;) No faction colors, no text data, etc; is something there, or not - only. Combat aircraft cockpits are damn small! They looked roomy enough on a 2D monitor with TrackIR - but damn, I feel like I'm slipping on the F-5 or the SU-25 like a pair of pants ( although the L-39C has some room ) which leads me to ... The Immersion is awesome! This feels 80% as real as flying a C-172 - not bad for a video game! I don't have kinesthetic cues like I do in a real plane, but all the visual cues and checks - quick glances at wingtips to judge pitch & bank, keeping part of my attention of the forward 'sight picture' to see if the nose is side-slipping ( and thus my yaw correction is off ) or my pitch is good, etc. - this is not only possibly in VR, but instinctive. I'd say that my in game piloting ability has gone way up because of the VR immersion. Couple that with the "I'm wearing the damn plane, not sitting in it" scale of combat aircraft cockpits, and it feels less like the "I'm driving an air minivan" feeling I get from a Cessna, to an "I'm flying, I'm just wearing this plane to make that possible" feeling. It was unexpectedly viscerally "rollar coaster real" the first time I "rolled in" on a ground target with the Frogfoot :D And putting a P-51D into a spin and pulling her back out is awesome in VR! Landing is also much, much easier. Bigger is NOT better for graphics settings in VR This is still a work in progress, but I'm trimming down my graphics resolution & simplifying rendered details which would get lost in the headset displays anyway, in order to drive up FPS. Advice / Suggestions on this front would be very welcome. I can't read the numbers, but I can see the needles Surprisingly, the aircraft instrumentation is usable, with a little experience and practice. I might need to lean in to identify an instrument I'm not familiar with, or read the scale, but with instruments I know, I can tell solely from the needle position what an instrument is reading. One tricky exception: a Soviet-era HSI with its fine needles is a bit more of a challenge, although the flight-director needles on the ADI are easy to follow, so if you're got your RSBN programmed correctly, you're OK. Bind functions to your HOTAS buttons, use the clickable cockpit, or use Voice Attack! Pushing up your headset a bit to peek down at the keyboard is possible, but a real pain-in-the-ass. The Vive Headset, and a pint glass of beer are hard to reconcile What is the world coming to, when a combat pilot can't drink beer on a mission?! :mad: Maybe I need to get some glass straws .... All in all - Flight Sims are ( for me ) the killer VR app :D I really am looking forward to the next few generations of VR gear for speed and resolution improvements - but even at the current state, I'd take this over 2D.

Not even after 20 months of beta release (according to my ED purchase history).

I find it's even more juvenile that that. Their attitude seems to be "All DCS developers should stop all projects if they're not building something that supports the aircraft/roles/maps/missions/etc that I want". They seem to have missed the memo that other people want different things than they do. ---- As for what I plan on using the F-5E for: 1) The sheer joy of learning the systems, history, and flight characteristics of a new plane. 2) Air-to-ground roles - as I've been almost exclusively a "ground pounder", to date 3) Transition learning from A2G to A2A - I think it will be a good plane for anyone wanting to "cross the floor": master the plane for the role you know, then learn the role you don't know :)

Would we like to see an expansion of the 109 to include other variants? Hell yes - more planes is always good. More things to learn is good. However, have we ever seen developers come back to a finished module and add more variants, systems, features, before? Not saying it couldn't happen, and I'd love to see that start to happen - I just don't think it's ever happened before. But yeah - more variants of any aircraft would be great.

It's another system to simulate. Probably not a horrifically complex one, but it's an added feature. Developers have to limit the specifications somewhere, and lock them down. Belsimtek have opted to give us a fairly vanilla F-5E without a lot of the optional "bells and whistles" - that's all. So, it's unlikely to be an option (I think the developers have said as much), and it likely won't be a future add-on (seriously, can you name a DCS module where the developers came back after it was a successful stable product - not beta - and added things to it?).

I would not count on this. You could find yourself in a "surprise! We released it. Now full price" situation. They might give warning - but I personally doubt it.

ED is a business. If there's enough money behind GA aircraft, they'll build them, or license the 3rd party FSX developers to port/build for DCS. If there isn't, they won't. Very little in the forums, one way or another, is likely to affect that. That said - I agree that it's probably not likely that we'll see GA aircraft anytime soon.

with clickable 6DOF cockpit?

My first flight instructor said that she flew an PAR approach once, flying into CFB Trenton, with an extremely low ceiling. She said it was somewhat unnerving being 'micromanaged' on the approach, but when she broke out into the clear she was perfectly on the approach path.

click the switch, there's a snap, and it falls onto the cockpit floor?