crime

With all that independent simulations of every part of the helo, a low speed crash must be something spectacular to see. For example, hitting a building with the rotors while stationary and see how it all develops.

I play with a z800. As I said before, the small FOV and low resolution makes it a device for people who really likes these things. Not a device for the masses yet, but I prefer it over the greatest 2D display. And yes, you can get sick the firsts weeks while you get used to the stereoscopic graphics and the slightly lagged headtracking, specially if you wear it for too long. Maybe I'm not getting it right, but, is people who spent hours pretending that they fly things that don't exist, that don't move a cm from where they are no matter how long they are in a cockpit that doesn't exist anywhere but in the condensers of their RAM making fun of computer devices?

urze, you are right again. If you want to use the systems fast a touchscreen is optimum. I once had a touchscreen at work for some weeks and spent the hours thinking how great it would be for flight simulators. Unfortunately never had a chance to try. What happens is that I have always been very attracted by virtual reality and all these kind of devices got me very excited thinking in their posibilities. I was just thinking that the best part of a haptic device is that once you grab something in the cockpit the device *becomes* that thing. If it is a 2 positions slide switch, you could feel the initial resistance and then click!, the switch snaps. If it is a push button then it would be like click! clack! And levers, if it has detent positions and you have to displace laterally to be able to move it then you could feel how it is blocked till you do that lateral movement. And, so on.... I was thinking about all this and decided to reconnect to share it, and then I saw your post that opened my eyes. All these simply don't fit in a COMBAT flight simulator. But.... isn't it cool? :prop:

I think the same, but that device seems to fit specially well for a 3D cockpit manipulation, if supported by the software. And that haptics capability makes it really interesting, it would allow to feel the switches and levers.

I think that the novint falcon is a way to go. By the way, has any BS tester tried to run BS in stereoscopic?

I bet for computer controlled, I think it's quiet normal nowadays. But, maybe, it has a throttle anyway for manual control in emergencies.

Errrr... it seems that I just can't express myself properly in english and will never do :dunno: Sorry for the confusion CAT.

Anyway it seems to be a lot easier to fly than a convetional helicopter (with anti-torque rotor at the tail). Is that right?

The X52 uses non-contact sensors (effect hall sensors) on the X and Y axis. They never wear out and have absolute precission (the signals never shiver, I haven't seen that on my previous sticks). I have seen that some people changes the pots of the Cougar for effect hall sensors (I great solution for such a great HOTAS). Unfortunately none of the rest axis, including the throttle axis, use this kind of sensor (even in the pro version :-/). And, what is worst, their precission changes with temperature. You can find yourself with a throttle that shivers a lot and with a lost of about 20% of its range in a hot summer day. The characteristic x52 stick looseness makes it good for helicopter sims. Some people takes the spring off completely. A stick without centering mechanism is supposes to fit better for helicopter simulation. Yes, most people don't like how loosen it feels, but all I can say is that I get so used to it that when I try a "nomal" stick I have problems to control with precission.:joystick:

I think that a powerful home simulation system would consist of several networked PC's, each one specialized in a task. One for user input/ouput, another for physics simulation, another for graphics rendering and one more for AI, for example. The network would go like crazy with all the data that needs to be shared. A theoretical model would be needed to calculate the increase of performance over a single computer (if any) to see if it's really worth or not, but intuitively it seems like it should be. Or maybe the network bandwidth isn't just big enough, don't know. But it probably would depend a lot on the simulation design. Maybe one designed from the ground up to run in a distributed system could work. Flightgear allows to have a second computer calculating the flight model, but I've never been able to try it. I always have problems to run flightgear in the standard way.

I suppose that everybody knows about this: http://www.force-dynamics.com/ It simulates accelerations, not motion/position. I once took a ride in a motion simulator in a funfair. It only moved the seat to the position of the virtual roller-coaster wagon instead of trying to simulate the acceleration. Very frustrating. But it looks like the guys at force dynamics are doing it right, very right.

Based on what vr920 owners say, it seems that its headtracker is even worst than the one in the z800. At least it allows good stereoscopic gaming... if you don't care about reading instruments.... only 640x480 :huh:

I have the eMagin z800 from more than a year. It has a 3DOF head tracker that doesn't work very well, 800x600 and narrow FOV. Despite all that, it has changed they way I enjoy simulation permanently. There's nothing like looking around naturally in a stereoscopic 3D cockpit. But I wouldn't recommend it to anyone! I hope the future will bring a better experience, with HMD's or whatever. That device from emotiv.com looks like science fiction. Have you tried it, or anyone?

Will BS run at 800x600, at least when the 3D window is launched?

The number of buyers has increased enormously.

Maybe the novint falcon would work better than a data glove. As it has haptics technologies it would allow to 'feel' the cockpit to some extend. http://home.novint.com/products/novint_falcon.php

For a leap forward in immersion, new sims (well, and old ones too, with apropiated patches) should support head trackers for different HMDs... specially mine (hehe)! It's so great to "simply" see what is at your head line of sight instead of being confined to the monitor display. So simple in concept and so technically difficult. I like, too, the idea of being able to walk to the aircraft. Can be done partially with active camera in FS (you can't jump into the cockpit as said earlier in the thread), and combined with the stereoscopic capabilities of the HMD it's just a great little detail. By the way, new sims should not miss stereoscopic support. VR powa! :P

That's why I think that the x-52 should have a mini-trackball, and not a mini-stick. Maybe it's only mine, but the ministick is so imprecise that I can't use it for nearly anything. I bought a trackball for mouse-look some years ago, before the trackIr era. I saw the comment in a forum and thought it was a great idea, and... it was! I never thought in using for aiming.

That's exactly what I meant. If you want to fly seriously you need a map, a ruler and a marker in your pre-flight. Thanks for that link.

I think that it would be enough with a printed, big format, map of crimea and surroundings in the CD box. Some sims from late 80's and early 90's had a map in the box. I think f-19 did. As nowadays that's impossible, at least a pdf with a high definition map to do it yourself. ..hmm.. I don't know if that pdf is already included. I'm not home, so I can not look at the cd's.

I have an X-52 and all the improve it needed was the "non-contact technology" on the throttle axis and a usable ministick. Actually I have lost a good percentage of usable throttle movement because of the inacuracy at the limits. I could not have the engine at the idle position any more without setting a big area of deadzone at the limits of the movement. And the ministick it's too sensitive to be usefull. The IBM laptops from ages ago already had that kind of "ministick" to move the mouse pointer and it worked extremely well. Before buying my x-52 I expected that kind of behaviour... but not. The other rotaries and the slider are nearly useless too because of the inacuracy, but effect hall sensors there it's to ask for too much if even the throttle is using a conventional potentiometer. Anyway, if you don't believe after reading all this, I love my x-52 :) And the leds... well, I turned them off some time ago but, after a time, I turned them on again. There is something obscure on the human mind that makes you enjoy all those lights around the hotas. Without the improvements I talked about on the throttle axis and the ministick I won't envy the new x-52pro.

My systems reboots without any message when loading a mission in time to time. It happens very sparse. The very first time I loaded a mission with the su-25t after installing it rebooted. That's a very bad impression! After the reboot I loaded the same mission again but it finished right. I don't know the difference. This has happened to me 2 more times.

This kind of videos makes me see how useless is to fly sims. There's nothing like reality! *sigh*

The pressure at the atack border is same, but the speed at wich the wing is moving through the air is different. The aircraft must take apart air molecules. It is very diferent to take apart them at low speed than at transonic speeds. I'm not sure, maybe I'm mixing terms, but I think that it's called the compresibility problem at transonic speeds. This makes the air behave so diferent that the computer models need to be diferent at low and high speeds. Last night I was having a dejà vu feeling about all this and a recall from the deep of my sick mind came out: I did a similar question to eagle dynamics when 1.1 demo was released! I ask about the su-25's speed limit at very different altitudes being determined by TAS and not IAS. But in a jet aircraft things are more complicated that in a cessna 150. This is what they told me: ---- Concerning the max speed I have to recall that there are several types of a speed limit: 1. Physical or energy limit: the plane flies horisontally at the constant altitude and the thrust is equal to the drag. 2. Structural restriction or IAS restriction. It's a never-exceed speed that is defind by structural limits and/or controllability and stability reasons. It is actual mostly at low altitudes. Modern fighters at low altitude generally has this restiction lower than energy limit. 3. Mach restrictions or TAS limit. The second cause for a never-exceed speed mostly for the planes with the non-swept wing such as Su-25 or A-10. If the speed get closer to this limit there are some stability issues such as nose tucking, the loss or reducing of pitch controllability, buffeting, etc. I should note that IAS at high altitude is less than max structural IAS though Mach number is high. All these limits can be actual when the altitude varies. Planes in 1.02 has the first limit regardless of Mach or IAS separately because the thrust is a complicated function of Mach number, altitude (temperature and pressure) and the drag is a function of IAS where CL and CD coefficients are functions of Mach number. Restriction 2 is very hard to implement because in Lomac very hard to imagine how it can be modelled reducing of airframe lifetime because of ovaerspeed. Nevertheless in 1.1 the dramatic reducing and even the negative roll responce for Su-27 and MiG-29 is modelled. So there is no rreason now to overspeed planes at low alt. Su-25 and 25T as non-swept wing planes have the third speed limit basically. Su-25 without payload is very overpowered plane so the energy limit is much higher than the Mach limit and the pilots should control the thrust very carefully not to overspeed the plane. There are numbers of Mach resriction depending on various payload so be ready to have a buffeting while you exceed 550-600 kph IAS with Vikhr or MBD under the wings. I'll be glad if I answer all your questions, Regards, Dmitry

Ok, now I see it. It is not intuitive to me at first glance. The same pressure that acts on the pitot tube to make it mark a certain speed is acting on the rest of the front surface of the aircraft. So it seems that it should perform the same at the same IAS no matter the true airspeed is. The shake of the cockpit and the lack of estability indicates being near transonic speeds, not the structural limit as I thought. The su-25 has low sweep wings and can't fly transonic speeds smoothly. I see it so clear now that I feel ashamed of my question... Thanks a lot for the replies.