TripRodriguez

Just did some tests and the clearances are significantly better than I anticipated. =) I was able to mount the collective within 1.5 cm of where it should be and at nearly the correct angle, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to be able to have the overhead switches and knobs properly located as well with almost no heave axis restriction. My pedals are a bit higher than they should be, but I've been testing it the past couple hours now and I basically cant' even tell. Super excited now. =)

Hello folks! My motion simulator is powered by AC VFD's. These make a lot of irritating high pitched noises that I drown out with headphones, but the noise proved to be very incompatible with wives. As such, I had to get rid of mine. No, no, not the motion sim.. the wife! :pilotfly::thumbup: Kidding aside, I think I'm about to finally get back to work on this project. I had kinda decided to do a simplified Ka-50 pit first because I like the combat systems and the fact that there is no AI co-pilot to deal with but once I was reminded how ridiculously easy that thing is to fly I decided I think I'm going to go back to the Huey as my primary chopper. The reason I selected it in the first place is I just love flying it. Flying this old bird is about as "raw" as a helicopter is going to get. IMO the DCS UH-1H and the DCS Mi-8 are the two best helicopter sims available if you want to really experience (and master) the challenge of rotary wing flight without electronics doing most of the work for you. I like flying an aircraft that is trying to kill me, and requires constant attention (no autopilot, no auto-hover and no coaxial rotors which are almost the same effect as auto-hover!) Due to some lessons learned and improvements to the motion sim (and by the way amazing improvements happening to the motion software options for DCS!) I'm going to be making some compromises on some dimensions such as the angle of the collective and height of the seat off the floor of the cockpit. The biggest problem is that I wound up deciding that lowering the sim into the floor was a bad idea, and on top of that my sim now actually has even more total travel so the overhead console again is a major problem. I can either have the overhead console properly in place and use very very little of my "heave" (strafe up and down) travel, or I can eliminate the overhead panel or locate it much lower than it should be. Eventually this should be solved by relocation. When I move the sim to my own home (currently it's in my 92 y/o Dad's basement) my plans are to renovate my screen porch into a sim room and will allow for quite a bit more overhead clearance so when that happens I can install the full panel at the correct height. Tonight I'm planning to just start looking at dimensions to see how I can fit the seat, controls, and center console without having to really drastically reduce the motion travel I can use. The other thing is I now have a Valve Index, and I'm not really willing to chop away at the facial interface so I'm back to looking for solutions on how to interact with the cockpit without fumbling blindly at switches. I have a few things in mind, I'm sure I'll find something at least passable.

Awesome, thanks! I'll have to try that teensy code out as soon as I can find time. There's an LC sitting right here on the kitchen table next to my laptop as I write this. I'm still going to want the hand brake for the Ka-50 and other aircraft that use it, but I think I've changed my mind about making the Shark my primary helicopter. It's been two years since I flew the Ka-50 and I forgot just how ridiculously easy that thing is to fly. The most fun thing about flying helicopters IMO is the fact that they are constantly trying to kill you. =) The Huey is excellent for that.. raw and untamed with serious tendency to go into VRS. Flying a combat med-evac/extraction while under fire in that thing takes some skills! I just hate having to deal with the second seat. That, and I really prefer the much more complex start up procedures of the Russian aircraft. I'm still planning to learn the Ka-50 and play the campaigns, but not sure whether or not I'll build the pit now. I think I'm going to start working on completing my slightly less than half finished Huey pit for now.

Hot damn Mole, you are my pit-building hero at this point! My problem is I just can't see flying with a 2D display from a real cockpit now that we have VR. =( I think I'm going to try to bug report the (mostly right side) switches being activated by VR hands without clicking thing tonight.

+1 to the original question. I absolutely loathe having to change seats to do the co-pilot/gunner jobs. :/ And, I'd be happy to play 2nd seat with friends half the time, and have them play 2nd seat the other half. It just kills my immersion to be doing both.

Thanks for the great replies guys! Here is another question, how/where do you guys order your arduinos? The last time I bought some (Nanos) on ebay it turned out the boards were missing some specific component/feature that it just so happened was what I bought them for. =( Don't ask for details, I don't remember! Anyway they wound up being salvaged for pin headers and then thrown away. I have some Teensy LC also I think laying around that I couldn't get to work by trying to read a little and fumble through the Arduino code. I'd have to take a good number of hours to sit and try to learn enough and time is hard to come by around here. Maybe I'll start doing some bed time reading. =) @Mole I've got to go get the BS2 manual off the gaming rig and start reading it, it sounds like you are saying the brake lever (at least on the Russian aircraft) is on/off rather than variable? (Edit: just looked at your thread and see you used a load cell. My collective and microhelis gimbal are on a BUO-836A so I'll have to look at that option!)

Hey guys. What I'm looking for here is for you guys to post the best solutions you've come up with (or seen others post) for adding the analog/variable bicycle brake style brake handle to an existing joystick. I plan to do this as soon as possible and I'd like to see all in one place some different options for what parts to buy and how to connect the sensor to the cable, how to create the spring tension, etc. as easily and neatly as possible. I can do it on my own, but it won't be elegant and will probably break periodically. =P

Clearpath can be run with Thanos AMC1280USB. Also check out Thanos's new controller for servos. For software, I'm beta testing this and helping perfect it: https://www.xsimulator.net/community/threads/flypt-mover-interface.13464/page-12#post-182166 It is a massive leap forward in motion sim control. FlyPT has been putting a ton of effort into the DCS World direct mode and it's already amazing (though still with bugs!),

Well, no DCS CTD tonight. Now I'm getting some hard locks but that's happening even when DCS isn't running so nothing for you to worry about. Thanks!

Agreed. Also please stay polite here guys, I really don't want this to become yet another locked thread. :cry:

Except we are fairly sure no ka-50 has ever had a third pylon added, so at that point we can say with some confidence that if ED adds a third pylon it is ka50 that never existed. From what I've been told ED has stated that the new Ka-50 will be fictional, but realistic in that it is what they believe the Ka-50 would have become if development continued in full force. I felt the same way initially, that this shouldn't be done. Now I realize that I'd rather have a modernized shark that never actually happened than an alligator with a second seat occupied by AI. AFAIK the old version will be getting fully updated to modern DCS standards as well, and it had better! That's the one I intend to spend a huge amount of my time in, I like flying older aircraft a lot more than the modern stuff.

Thanks BigNewy, I'll try that procedure tonight. Sounds like solid advice, especially since I copied my DCS saved games folder over rather than doing everything over from scratch after I reinstalled windows. Graphics driver is the latest version according to the GeForce Experience updater, I fully updated Windows and Nvidia after the windows reinstall. I did also do a reinstall of SteamVR after I posted this, so I'll test that first and then move on to renaming the saved games folder if the crash still occurs.

Thank you sir. Win 10 Pro Z370 Aorus Ultra Gaming MoBo Intel i5-8600k 16GB RAM Nvidia GTX 1080 Gigabyte Gaming OC edition Valve Index HMD logs zip folder attached. If you need anything else let me know. dcs.log-20190706-105221.zip

Hey guys, before I really beat my brains out trying to figure this out I just wanted to see if others are having this problem or if you have any advice. I took a quick look at the logs (am I supposed to be looking at the zip folder ones?) and didn't see anything about errors or anything like that. Anyway, the main thing that has me concerned is that while flying (in VR) suddenly what appears to be a command prompt window flashes for just a split second.. then about 3-5 seconds later DCS just disappears. Is this common/normal with DCS crashes? I did a fresh windows install yesterday expecting that to fix this but it did not. FYI I'm playing in VR and using an export.lua for my motion simulator. Probably tomorrow I'll try with the export.LUA removed just to make sure this still happens. I had no problems at all a week ago, then logged in yesterday and I can only get maybe twenty minutes of gameplay before this happens. Thanks for any help, Trip PS- If anyone wants me to post logs, please confirm that the ones in the zip folder are the ones I should be grabbing and I'll be happy to upload them.

Great posts Fri13, thank you for taking the time to pass on this information. I will leave a nice photo of one of the updated Ka-50's.

Please do, "« mix » leap motion and hardware button" is exactly what I'm wanting to do but I don't know how to use Unity, most of the time I find something I need on Github I don't know how to use it. All I can do is hope for detailed instructions or someone who knows more and wants to help.

I've got mine mounted too. I got the cord coiled in the frunk Alec Delorean were you just talking about mounting your Leap, or did you mean you are working on the software? I was on mobile at the time with almost no signal so I didn't see until now that it was just a pic of the Leap on the Index. Software is the problem.....

I don't at all mind seeing the Ka-50 in DCS with the equipment that the night variant (that never went into production) had. I'm not crazy about adding anything that we have no reason to believe was ever on any Ka-50, but within reason I won't complain. Edit: Actually because I'd rather fly single seat aircraft unless flying with another real person multi-crew (for immersion's sake mostly) I've just had a change of heart. I'd be fine with bringing the Ka-50 up to basically Ka-52 spec. As for saying the Ka-50 was never more than a prototype; that is trying to change historical facts, and that is something I will strongly and vocally object to. Do not try to justify the decision to create this fictitious updated Ka-50 by purporting a fictitious version of history. I'm ok with ED saying "We basically want to bring the Ka-52 to DCS but we're going to leave it single seat (Ka-50 variant) because it will lend itself better to DCS gameplay and will require much less development time and effort than building the Ka-52."

Awesome! I hope you can provide installation instructions "for dummies"! 90% of the time of I find something I need is on github I can't figure out how to use it. I'd happily pay $20 usd for this of its easy to install and will be maintained so it keeps working when steam VR does updates. Ideally (wish list here, not mandatory) with it would also have adjustable scale as well on case your home cockpit is a little later or smaller than in game. You can adjust the cockpit size in DCS with force IPD but it would be better to scale the overlay up or down a bit.

But do we have actual confirmation that the new DCS ka-50 will have equipment that we are fairly certain it has never been equipped with in reality, including those few still in active service today? Because the real debate is whether or not ED is including "fictitious" aircraft in DCS world. In my opinion as long as there has been at least one aircraft with the same equipment in active military service at some point in time it is legitimate. If there was never a single one in service with that equipment it technically shouldn't be in DCS. I wouldn't be super critical of stretching that a bit, but adding a third hardpoint to each side of the Hokum would be be going too far IMO.

Kariyann71 could you share your setup for the OVRLay? I have no idea what I'm doing LOL, but I'm just trying to see my leap motion (and/or Vive Tracker) hands in DCS. I don't want my hands to operate anything in DCS, I just want to see them in 3D so I can find switches more easily in a real cockpit. Any help would be very much appreciated, and I know there are others wanting the same thing.

But.... that post neither states nor implies that all Ka-50 helicopters built were prototypes... nothing there contradicts anything I said. The fact that it became obsolete before many were built changes nothing about its operational status in the mid to late 90's.

Eldur I'm glad someone enjoyed that comment. =D

What I find really really strange is that Leap Motion themselves don't just make it a native SteamVR device. Seems like such an obvious thing to do....

Maybe I should have been born Russian! I too have a fondness for duct tape and zip ties. Also I recently saw Russian engineering described as building prototypes until something works and that is absolutely the way I do my engineering LOL. I edited my post to include my guess that the photo was a Ka-50N or Ka-50sh prototype at the same time you posted LOL.