Nanne118

Is the IZLID a feature we could see on the DCS Apache? From what i have heard it is a fairly late block II addition so it could be dubious, but isn't the CMWS a really late block II upgrade as well?

Does anyone know what item this in the F14D, above the handhold in the RIO cockpit? Does anyone know what items this is in the F14D, just above the handhold / handlebar in the RIO cockpit? It looks to be some sort of display, maybe for comms purposes? My apologies if this has been posted before, but I could not find it.

I think ultimately that would be up to PC to decide. Given that the airframe was cleared and able to carry it I think the GAU-19 would make a great addition to the KW. It does not appear to be that unrealistic for us, seeing as it fires the same .50 cal munition as the M3P, just at a faster fire rate. In terms of "making it into operational service", there is the matter of the bomb load on the F-14B. In a similar fashion this program also never made it into operational service due to concerns about the bomb clearance from the airframe: would you also suggest that that needs to be removed to suit realism?

My point was more that sometimes realism should take a backseat, as sheer realism can be detrimental to being interesting / engaging / fun. As such developers could sway from realism somewhat to get a more interesting and engaging (fun) module experience. The Mirage 2000C module has a set of Missile Warning System sensors called the D2M, which are similar to the MWS we have in the A-10C. Despite the IRL M2000C having the required panel and interfacing for it it is never fielded on it, as it is instead reserved for the M2000D two seater attack variant. A similar "departure" is made on the F14 module as the 14x Mk82 loadout on its belly stations is apparently not an approved loadout, something to do with the bombs not properly seperating out the tunnel between the engines. Ergo these functionalities were never really fielded. Meanwhile ED with its F-16C decides not to implement the Lantirn Navigation and Flir pod (AN/AAQ-13 navigation pod), whilst we do get the Lantirn Targetting Pod (TGP, the AN/AAQ-14). Whilst both togehter are part of the common LANTIRN system, apparantly on the AAQ-14 TGP is realistic to implement given its fielding. Similarly, even the LAU-88 (triple rack) for the Mavericks was not supposed to be coming to the DCS F-16C as not being realistic. Some community backlash eventually reversed that later so that the LAU-88 will now be coming to the F-16C module. Huh, I did not know that. I thought stuff like the MUMI and the SatCom was only sparingly rolled out to some aircraft, where they put it on *some* aircraft but never made it fully operational. My apologies :S, thanks for your info, I love learning about stuff like this! :) Regarding the GAU-19 I did remember reading a bit about its approvement and certification process in some documents; Wikipedia also had some links to these but apparantly those links are now dead. In the same spirit as my question before, would that then be something that could be implemented on the OH-58D module or is that too contrived as being not realistic? Basically, where would you guys "draw the line" (though that does sound very harsh) in terms of realism?

I think you are raising an interesting point: the integration of systems into the Kiowa. Stuff like MUMI, SatCom was integrated and was AFAIK not used all that much operationally: the GAU-19 was also integrated and not used operationally except for trials and trailers.

Dear Polychop-Simulations and other readers, I opened this topic because I wanted to ask what sort of approach you would like to take regarding realism versus enjoyability. I think previously you folks have caught a lot of flak regarding realism, some perhaps deserved, some not so deserved. With the release of the Kiowa Warrior drawing ever closer I thought it could be interesting to see how you are intending to tackle "realism": for some folks rivet counting is the order of the day, whilst others rather enjoy the inclusion of elements that perhaps never made it past the prototype stage or were never realistically deployed. For example, the DCS F-16C is not able to carry AN/AAQ-13 Litening NavFlir pod, despite it being fully able to: the reasoning for not including it is that it does not carry it. On the other end of the scale the F14 can enjoy a large quantity of bombs to throw around and the M2000C has its D2M MWS. Whilst such latter items are perhaps not strictly accurate to the real life deployment of the aircraft in question, they certainly add a lot of fun and diversity to the aircraft. The statement could be made that those who wish to enjoy such less-realistic features (perhaps roleplaying as a test squadron) are able to do so, whilst the rivet counters can simply leave these features behind. My question to you therefore is how you intended do go about this with the OH-58D? There were a lot of interesting prototypes / test systems that were evaluated on the OH-58D but were never actually deployed / massively used. Items that spring to mind are the GAU-19, ANVIS Symbology system, ATAS, MUMI, SatCom; these are all systems that could provide an interesting and diversified module but that some nitpicker might say should not be implemented because it is not realistic. I'd say that such prototype systems could be really fun to mess around with, but what is your take on this?

I too can confirm that this appears borked at the moment, hopefully a fix will be pushed for it soon. Slightly OT, but can I ask which rocker and dobber you are using for your ICP? I am currently looking for a nice set but cant really decide which ones to pick (and how much I am willing to spend on it). There is that official dobber from Mouser floating around, but I am not decided on it yet. Nice central display!

Does anyone know what this instrument in the OH-58D Kiowa is for? I have read the manual which lists all the other functionality, but this item appears not listed in most manuals. Also, on most cockpit pictures it appears that this item is removed with a simple blank panel installed in place of it.

NerdShowAndTell was streaming this night and had similar issues with the black screen popping. He was able to repro it by having "Full Screen" enabled in the video main config and alt-tabbing out + in. He was able to resolve it by turning off the fullscreen option.

So, the official one is quite pricy at 111 EUR a piece, but supposedly has a very nice touch and feel to it. How it is typically done for most joysticks (like the TM Warthog) is that they use 4 microswitches around a central pole, on which a plate is positioned that connects to the actual HAT itself to move it around. Probably works best on a PCB. I have also been looking for other multiposition switches myself for a similar purpose, which can be easily found from a site such as mouser and selecting the multi-switch category. I have been considering the following switches: RKJXT1F42001, 4 way + center push that also has a rotary encoder embedded into it RKJXL100401V, 8 way with center push JS5208, standard 4 way + central push I think when I get my next pay that I will order one of each and check which one I like best, as it is very hard to convey feel online. They have listed the necessary activation forces and their deflection in degrees, but that will unfortunately not indicate how the activation click feels. Hope this helps

I have been trying to do some attempts on this matter as well. The Arduino (Nano) does indeed seem much too slow to yield the desired update frequency, though I am wondering if the Teensy (4.0) would be able to deliver the necessary processing capabilities. Alternatively I also got my Nextion screen, which I hope to be able to employ for this. This features an integrated graphics processor so it would need to rely on data input, which could be handled via the Arduino. Any thoughts / recommendations on this?

I can similarly attest to the quality of the force sensing solution, and also some of my friends being equally jealous :D I have said it many times before but thanks ever so much for this, Delta!

Hello all, I have been making some plans towards building up my own cockpit setup and create a sort of minimalist sim pit. My current setup has a nice combination of a large and small screen so that I can mount 2 MFD's (or remove them to open up the screen for Discord and such): I am looking for a new screen that I can use to mount 3 MFD's in a horizontal fashion (side-by-side). Similarly to my current setup I do not wish to have a full-size 2nd monitor, but instead something smaller. I have been looking on Amazon to find Piece of Sales (POS) screens of desired small size and widescreen, but have not been able to find anything yet that seems to fit 3 Thrustmaster MFD's next to one another. The screen size should minimally be 387.2 mm wide, with a height of 141.2 mm (preferably with a wide bezel and HDMI input). Are there any screens out there that fit these specs?

AFAIK the F-18 is also capable of a 5th autopilot mode, CPL ('coupled') which does do automatic waypoint following. I not entirely sure if this will be implemented (might be a later block than the one in DCS), but it might not be implemented yet as it has some advanced functionality as automatically determining the most fuel efficient or fastest route

It really keeps amazing me still what effort you put into this Blue, it looks absolutely fantastic and being able to follow your progress like this is great :) I have been drawing up some rough sketches for a simpit of my own thanks to your inspiration: the goal is to sort of replicate an F-16 style angled instrument hood with a number of general switches (master arm, master caution button w/ LED, perhaps some indicator exports / digital flight instruments) to have a multi-purpose / multi-module simpit. I have a set of 3 TM MDF's that I want to integrate into this as a center display, but I need to find a widescreen display of around 16'' that is capable of mounting the MFD's next to one another first. Ebay, Banggood and alieexpress have unfortunately not turned up anything promising yet. Anyhow, thanks for the inspiration!

Hey man, cool to see you making so much progress! Any reason why you modelled the emergency jettison and the spin recovery switch in yellow?

It just keeps reaching higher and higher levels of excellence! I also really wanted to thank you for the input on the programming aspect of it, that helps a lot to wrap my head around it.

Have you tried altering the font size or printing 12 on font size 5 normally (so without DCS inputting, just a display.print('12')) to see if that changes things?

Is there an explanation somewhere of how to do this?

Wow, that looks really cool! I have been drawing up plans to do a similar thing for a radio panel (and designed to be common for all aircraft), with a 4x20 LCD and push/pull pots. How did you interface the radio panel data (i.e. frequency selection, volume wheel and tx/rx LED) to SRS: did you interface with SRS directly or is that done via DCS Bios (for Arduino)?

Wowzers man, that is looking more and more awesome by the day! I noticed what looks suspiciously like a radar altimeter in your Fusion CAD image: would you be willing to expand your detailing on this somewhat if and when you are making your update on the rad. alt? Not that you are normally withholding on the details and instructions, I find this whole slew of updates a very forthcoming and detailed explanation :D I am just wondering how you will interface the rotary knob, the needle for displaying the altitude warning and the needle(s) for displaying current rad. altitude / altitude alert (altitude alert needle being that little triangle that goes around the outside). I think it has been asked before, but you use the F/A-18C DCS-Bios Library by AndreW to interface the panels into DCS?

It is also an upgrade I have been contemplating due to the (unfortunately) subpar quality of the TM:W joystick gimbal: I however saw some people that managed to break the connector on their TM:W joystick in combination with a Virpil / VKB base. Any thoughts on that?

Thanks ever so much! I really appreciate the detailed explanation of what is going on inside, it really helps to get things into perspective (and fuels me wanting to build my own panels for DCS). I am having some issue wrapping my head around the RS-485 (and respective chips MAX-485/-487) though. I have ordered the chips and they should be here next week, so hopefully having the hardware will un-complicate things a little. The issue I am struggling with is that of communication between the Arduino's, with respect to the DCS Bios programming language. Because of the 'slow' data rate, you obviously want to have your transmissions be as concise as possible (to save on transmission time), and thus avoid having any lengthy descriptors attached to your values from the Arduino's. Also only transmit when there is a change, presumably. Does that than mean that you have labelled each slave device (Arduino Nano) with a simple descriptor, like AA or A1, and then sort everything out at the Master Mega? That would also make multi-aircraft compatibility easier to do, right?

Cheers for your previous answers, they have been helpful and definitely insightful as to what goes into designing / developing this stuff! :D I hope you don't mind me shooting another couple questions your way: 1. How did you design and print the brake pressure indicator? Multiple colour extrusion? (It looks really good!) 2. Any particular reason why you used VGA connectors for the implementation of the RS-458 (MAX-485/-487)? Would that not leave you with a number of spare connections on the VGA connector, seeing as you only need 4 wires (VCC, GND, A, B)? 3. I presume you use the optocoupler in conjuction with the (mos)fet to avoid reverse current or overvoltage, seeing as the fan can source these issues? Would a capacitor over the poles of the fan not also suffice to suppress any unwanted voltage/current spikes? I mean, using an optocoupler is a much nicer solution, I am just wondering if there are any other advantages to using it. 4. How much of a pain was it to get those louvers from the ACU correct in Fusion? I cannot imagine that has been a painless and easy process (or I am just really crap at Fusion, which given my track record seems more likely)

Can I just say that it is truly inspirational watching the development of your panels in this manner. Early on you were wondering if this was the place to keep such a build log, I would say that it really shows the effort and time you put into developing this :D. It is also nice to see you reply to other people's questions and remarks, as it also helps them further their own build stuff. I cannot get enough of going through these posts, as they outline kind of the same process I wish to go through for building my own 'simpit': I wish to go a bit more frankenstein however and build a number of panels that really would not make sense for anyone else, like having a number of small displays to the side of my monitor with airspeed and g loading. To the end of my own insatiable curiosity (and hopefully without infringement on you hypothetically selling these panels), do you mind if I shoot you a few questions? 1. Did you use two HE sensors for each lever type switch, with a magnet in the handle? Or did you put a magnet on each end (with different magnetic properties) with a HE sensor in the handle? 2. {Probably related to 1.} How did you do the magnets for the parking break? You put magnets (with different properties) on the outside, with a HE sensor in the sliding shaft? 3. How did you work out the gearing to get from the hornet's ejector wheel to correspond with your absolute rotation switch? Again, thanks so much for your effort in the development and documentation of this!