TomOnSteam

I'm hoping for an F-16 throttle from Thrustmaster, because the Slew is just awful on the Warthog throttle. A re-release of the Cougar but with hal sensors and usb would be amazing.

It's likely a whole foods plant-based diet (which is what the United Nations and Lancet are recommending). It has all the protein the body needs, sans crickets (yuck haha). Going by the trailer, they're out to dispel the myth that protein is only in animal meats.

Hence my recommendation to only use VR if you have a HP Reverb or better ;-) Since it's said to be slightly crisper than playing on a 1080p monitor.

You will likely have reduced depth perception. If I close one eye in my VR headset, then the 3D effect is gone, as it in real life. However the sense of scale and immersion still exceeds a typical monitor or even large projector. Even with one eye closed, I still feel like I'm really in that cockpit. You feel like you are in the game/sim surrounded by the game world, instead of peering into it through a window as we do with a monitor.

Now that the HP Reverb VR Headset is out, you can actually read the instruments and small text in the cockpit, so I'd be leaning towards that if you can afford a top tier graphics card. The immersion in VR is just on another level compared to even the largest of TV's. The sense of depth and scale, is not achievable on a flat screen. The aircraft are huge (realistically) and all of the little buttons stick out, it feels like you can touch them. And also having 1:1 head tracking is much more than natural than what trackIR does. Also having a 90hz fast refresh screen in VR is very much beneficial for moving a head around. The smoothness is great. (I wouldn't recommend any other VR headsets though, because the resolution and screen door effect make DCS very hard to play. Either get the HP Reverb, or wait until other headsets of equal pixel density arrive in the near future. Even the pimax 5k/8k is not good enough.)

When the stand costs more than the electronics.... yikes. It does look nice, but needs to cost about 1/2 as much.... although that modularity is very nice.

I've been disappointed that the growing flightstick market still hasn't been able to provide an affordable joystick - with more than one HAT. Coincidentally I saw an Xbox360 disassembly video(below), and it got me wondering: Why doesn't anyone make conversion kit for it? Think about it: the standard console controller is cheap, and it has 5 axis (two with push click), 8 buttons, and a D-PAD. It even has triggers that you could reuse. If someone clever made a mold for a base and grip, could it not be reassembled into a flight stick by a home user with a screw driver and some minimal soldering? X/Y Axis - for bank/pitch Z Axis for throttle X/Y rotation analog HAT #1 - TPG/Designator, and/or rudder D-PAD for HAT #2 - Trim ABXY buttons placed closer together for another HAT, or just a button cluster BACK/START buttons for china-hat style Left bumper / Right bumper for trigger and pickle. You'd have to store the PCB in the base and wire up the buttons somehow - that's where I have no idea about this stuff. I'm just an ideas man :-) But you'd just plug this in, and windows would see it and away you go. Someone smarter than me would just need to design and sell a kit/shell, perhaps 3D printed. A home user could buy an xbox controller and the shell, and then assemble the xbox controller components in the shell of the conversion kit - and hey presto, you have a very cheap joystick but with lots of buttons and hats. Sure it wouldn't be the most accurate stick around, but it would do the trick, since I've seen people already play with xbox controllers and fly pretty fine. EDIT: after a bit more research, perhaps instead of using the xbox PCB, a Teensy board would be better. But we could still make use of the xbox controller's buttons and such.

I've got an Xperia XZ with a 4k screen (although I think it runs the VR stuff at 1080p) but it still has a screen door effect and small text is not readable. And 60hz refresh rate means that when you look around everything is blurred, object are bearable, but text impossible unless you stop moving your head or move it only very very slow. The mobile VR experience just does not compare to a true dedicated headset. Phones also lose their centre very easily, so you need play on a swivel chair or standing up, to constantly recentre yourself. So seated / cockpit style games aren't very viable. You also aren't able to move your head in space, only look around, which is quite unnatural. Large screen phones are also very heavy, so it's uncomfortable. Because of the limitations you also can't last as long without getting sick. (New phones will have 120hz screens, and some already have two cameras so you could get the full 6 DoF.) still I think it is cheaper to buy a mid tier phone, and a PC VR headset separately. But I don't see why you couldn't have a basic flight experience on phone if you are happy with the compromises. Flanker 1.0 is out of the question, as you need a texture to get a sense of speed and movement (flat shaded polygons don't give you the feeling of travel so it can make you feel sick). So it would have to be Flanker 2.0 style. And simplified for working on a gaming controller. (bluetooth controllers are not particularly responsive or accurate on mobiles either, so it's another obstacle). It would have to be simplified to something more like Ace Combat series, but also much slower paced to prevent nausea. It could work, but it is more of a gimmick I think, and it would be hard to have a serious gaming session. Perhaps something where you can sit in a stationary cockpit might work better. Might even be a good way to promote DCS. For some fun, I tried once to make a helicopter simulator for my phone VR. And I figured, to keep the graphics simple I will make it with green night vision. Well after about 10 minutes of testing, I took the VR headset off, and everything looked purple in real life for about 10 minutes because my brain got used to so much green it must have made some adjustments. I would be scared it will never go back to normal after playing for too long haha :-) Anyway, try something like VR Space Cockpit on the android store if you want to get an idea of what VR on mobile is like. It's kind of cool, but the limitations are there. Have fun :-)

A headset that allows us to read cockpit instruments? Could it be true? Praise Wagner, let it be true!

After watching the first two episodes of the Unidentified show, I'm now absolutely convinced that it's all a load of baloney. It's some combination of jamming technology tests and hypoxia mixed with just plain old lies for attention and money, with some hysteria and desperate yearning for UFOs to be real. The evidence got mysteriously erased lol..... how convenient. The only hard evidence we have is footage of a dot from a low resolution TGP/FLIR, which could be anything. Some of people are clearly lying, some are actors, some of them I hate to say it look like they have money issues / substance abuse problems. One of them is 100% an alcoholic. Sad to see people falling on hard times like that, but it is obvious. Then there are parts of the show which are clearly scripted conversations for dramatic effect. They also go to some pretty ridiculous lengths to link "spooky" events to locations etc. They use the word "government" as a scary mysterious word. Because that always appeals to the UFO fanatics and conspiracy theorists, who self indulge in the thought of government cover ups and secrecy. It's a joke. But it is entertaining I'll give them that, by combing so many different elements, actors, liars, crazies with some credible but misleading people and footage, it makes it harder to pick apart, and the producers have done a really clever job with that. Even the way it is shot is quite funny. Someone is doing something as simple as pouring a hot coffee, and the cameraman is fiddling with the zoom/focus as if his previous job was a DJ scratching records. And you know, having it on the history channel is going to hurt credibility in the best of circumstances - don't forget this is the channel which brought us great memes such as: The show itself is probably sponsored by Tic Tac given how much they love to mention it :P

This kind of abrupt radar / sonar track behavior makes me think it was some kind of jamming being used. Doing exactly what it's designed to do: purposely causing a misleading track on the radar. Perhaps even a set of jamming pods being used in concert, even some sonar based jammers dropped by helicopter into the water to confuse submarines. Also could the footage from the FLIR be from an IR jammer, perhaps mounted on a drone or towed decoy? (we have something moving on the FLIR, but it's not abruptly changing speed or altitude, flying quite smoothly as I'd expect a regular plane to do) I don't know what an IR jammer looks like when viewed in a FLIR but I would expect it to look kind of like the footage. If I wanted to test how good my jammer is, I'd definitely do it by sending out unarmed hornets to be double sure they aren't going to fire on a friendly. And I'd keep the whole thing a secret in order to make the results as realistic as possible. I would expect a debrief however afterwards where they reveal that it was a jamming device. But perhaps not, so the operators and pilots remain spooked. Jamming would explain a lot if not everything from the sensor and equipment side. But not the eyeball visual accounts from the pilots. I'll have to watch to the series/show to see just how much the pilots saw with their own eyes.

I saw a comment on a youtube video: The aliens are visitors from the brightest star in Lyras constallation, which is the Vega solar system. And it makes perfect sense, when you think about how there are so many Vegans around these days....

I think that's what NineGzuz is getting at - the pilots were primed to expect to see a "UFO" so anything their brains couldn't explain to them naturally (under the stresses of flying the best fighter plane at the time) everything unusual would stand out as a UFO. Have you ever been mushroom gathering in a forest? Everything after a while starts looking like a mushroom. Every shadow, every stick, every rock is subconsciously a mushroom, until you consciously analyze it. Magician's also use priming like this to do their tricks. Even the best person around can be primed and tricked (unless they know it's coming). This is what I think happened: The surface ship's have a radar malfunction, or a training bogey, who knows. They brief the pilots to look for something unusual. Under the mental and physical stress and perhaps even mild effects of hypoxia from high G, the brain is not going to thinking as clearly as it's capable with two feet on the ground and a nice cup of coffee... and something visually miles away looks to be a certain size and shape, even though it's just an optical illusion. We don't know if what the pilots saw was the same as what the FLIR saw, or what the radar on the surface ship detected. They might have all been separate and unrelated things. I'm married to a psychologist, trust me, our brains are stupid (especially mine apparently :P)

The pilots no doubt are the best, no question, but from a high altitude, travelling at incredible speed, with possible mild hypoxia effects on the brain due to high g forces - how accurately can anyone (even the best) tell how big something is, when it's in the ocean, miles away. There would be nothing to give you a true sense of scale. The quality of FLIR is also not particularly high definition and takes some interpretation. This UFO looks like a huge satellite orbiting earth. But it's actually a small blanket that feel out of the space station....

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/26/us/politics/ufo-sightings-navy-pilots.html I'd love to know what the DCS community thinks about the footage captured by Navy pilots. It's not fake (it is released from the pentagon), and I don't think it's aliens - but what could it be?

Very interesting about the F-16's HARM Pod, that might just be the reason I pick up the F-16 as well as the Hornet - while I do like the idea of landing on a carrier, I completely suck at it, so F-16 might just become my main jet haha!

Prometheus APC vehicle has a warthog joystick But I don't think anything will beat that last one lol

http://www.avxaircraft.com/programs X-52 Pro at 2:39

It really depends on the details. The price must be balanced with the new features. Of course I love to support DCS, and when most of us have spent nearly $1000 on hardware, I have no issue paying a few dollars for software to match it.

4xJBvKJht78 Described as a lemon, too slow, too heavy, over budget, might be cancelled entirely, we should buy more older aircraft. These arguments sound familiar when hearing news about the F-35 - but it appears all of these arguments were also made against the F-18 back in the early 80s, and no doubt about the F-111 even earlier. History repeating itself! And we now know how great both the F-18 and F-111 are, and how they are praised. How long until the F-35 also gets this praise? I suppose when the F-44 comes out , then people will be saying the same things again, and singing praises about the 'good old, reliable' F-35 when we reach the year 2030 :-)

If there was an option for VR with 2D rendering, VR would function like a really aweseome trackIR, with much of the immersion, but without the depth of 3D, then we would be able to run DCS with the visuals maxed out in VR.

*movie spoilers* And we've got a Saitek X-52 in Pandorum :-)

Looks like an x-56 to me at 1 minute 22 seconds: YC8Z6i59s7o?t=83

You should be happy not disappointed. Happy that ED are one of the few developers that have the integrity not to release something 1/2 assed just for the sake of ticking off a milestone.

Interesting! I will be keeping an eye open for that.