TX-EcoDragon

Oh, one more thing. . .with your Dell XPS, you will want to verify that the powersupply is a standard ATX powersupply and not some sort of proprietary Dell PSU as they used to be. I have heard that the newer XPS machines don't do this anymore, but you will want to check! These were dangerous since the connectors were identical, it was easy to think you could plug a Dell PSU into a standard motherboard, but if you did, poof! You may also need a new case if it doesn't have the proper standoffs to allow for standard motherboards.

Thanks all! Rep all around! Oh and Mxyzpylk, Windows 7 can be installed to clean drive or partition. . .or you can upgrade Vista, what you can't do is *upgrade* from XP. I for one don't know that all that many people would want to upgrade to a beta though. . .

Hey guys, I'm currently running XP, but I would like to try out BlackShark in WIndows 7 using a dual boot, or perhaps just swap in a clean C: drive rather than dual booting. This will mean I'll need duplicate DCS installs on the same machine. . .is it going to cost me an activation to do this? Is there a DCS approved means of using the same activation on each install?

I love these clickable cockpits. . .I don't use a single key command on my keyboard, other than "Page Up and Page Down" and "Rctrl C" - and I'd rather not have to do that! The reason LockOn was never anything more than a way to fly some formation aerobatics was the lack of clickable cockpits - if I never see something like "LWin + LAlt+RCtrl+Z+backflip+handspring+dropkick+Esc" again it will be too soon! :) That said, I'm sure there will be a market for such a tweak.

Well, first comment I'll make is that SLI doesn't do much in most sims. . .in fact if you use FSX it will drastically LOWER performance. The fastest video system in FSX is still the 8800GTS 512!! Sims are strange like that. I play some "games" but my focus is flight sims, and the intel chipset generally is the better overclocker than the SLI boards are, and since sims make so much use of CPU power, and since SLI is a no go for many of them, I would stick with something like a P35/P45 motherboard (that uses DDR2) unless you are an fps type game player and know you want to SLI. One of the better ones you can get is also a lot less cash than that eVGA board: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128358 Also, the listed "DDR standard" really doesn't matter all that much in most cases. . .generally any good overclocking mobo that says "DDR2 800" will be able to run higher DDR2 speeds and high FSB speeds. . .the only potential problem is that many 1000+ MHz DDR2 kits run at voltages like 2.0-2.2 volts, and most of the older DDR2 800 motherboards will need you to change this in the BIOS, since they are probably setting DDR2 voltage to 1.8, while those that say 1333 might be better able to set higher voltages based on the SPD settings on the sticks. Either way, most modern boards should be at 1333 anyway. This depends on the board. I've used Gigabyte and Abit boards that spec DDR2 800, and had no problems with my Ballistix 1000MHz or my OCZ 1066 kits. Oh and if you are looking at 4 GB 1066, here's two (I own the OCZ) OCZ Reapers http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227289 Corsair Dominators: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145214 The Gskill kits are nice too: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231166 Of course you can also pay a premium for 1100 MHz or faster memory, but I for one think that's a waste of cash. Any of those kits will exceed 1100 MHz, and that's "fast enough". Only way to see a difference will be in dedicated memory benchmarking software, BlackShark will be the same if your CPU clocks stay the same. . .what you want your RAM to do, is tolerate any expected CPU/FSB overclocks, that is where the performance is. From my own benchmarks I ran in Black Shark going between 800 MHz and 1100 MHz itself has next to no effect on fps. In fact neither did going from 2 to 4 (err 3) gigs of RAM (3 since I'm running XP). Here are some benchmarks dedicated to comapring DDR2 800 to 1333. . .it once again shows that there is little difference at all, as long as you can get the desired CPU and FSB overclocks you want without being limited by the RAM (which you wont with good 1066, or even good 800) http://www.breakitdownblog.com/ddr2-800-vs-ddr3-1333-does-speed-matter/

My WIP benchmarks in BlackShark can be found here: http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=599456&postcount=24 I saw a very linear increase in fps with CPU clock speeds - that was the ONLY thing I could change to get much improvement in FPS. Even in game quality settings did little to improve things much, medium and high was a few tenths of a second avg fps different, so I just run at max quality, since it's either that or low, and OC the CPU! At max in game quality, 2xAA, 8XAF, 1920x1200 res, I saw average fps increase approximately 2.8 fps for every 300MHz faster the CPU ran. This might allow you some means to guess how different an E6600 is from an E8500 (ignoring the Cache differences) etc. While my video card OC is minimal, from experience in other titles (like most fps type games) that OC will show a tangible increase if the CPU isn't holding things back, and you can see there that it only added a few tenths of a frame rate! Also, regarding the Corei7, well if other sims are any indication, there is no compelling reason to make the change from a late model Core2Duo. FSX, my primary means for judging hardware, the i7 is identical to a similarly clocked Core2Duo, but just about twice the price to build that system than a comparable C2D. http://www.simhq.com/_technology2/technology_111a.html

If I were you, I'd just get a new motherboard, and swap those parts to it, and add a good CPU heatsink fan (like the Thermalright Ultima/120). Other than the 2.4GHz clock speed, you don't need much of an upgrade, and with a good aircooler that CPU should be easy to get to 2.8 or 3.0GHz. If you want to go a step up from that, then buy a new motherboard, CPU cooler, and an E8400 which will easily run 3.6-3.8GHz, and in some cases over 4.0GHz.

There is no way to answer you without knowing the system you are building, as well as if you plan to overclock or not. The motherboard will dictate if you need DDR2 or DDR3 and to a lesser degree, the speed of the RAM. The CPU you select will also be a big factor. In a generic sense, memory clocks have minimal performance boost in most games and sims. . .most overclockers are running between 800 and 1066 MHz RAM. The big deciding factor is the CPU you use, and what FSB speeds it will be running at. For my E8400 overclocked to 3.96 GHz, I need the 1066. Someone with an E8600 won't need that given the the higher CPU multiplier allows lower FSB speeds. RAM is SO cheap right now, you can get 4 gigs of DDR2 1066 for 32 bucks. The same in 800 MHz might be 20.

Well, for me it works 99% of the time. . .I posted elsewhere on this same subject, myself and a few squaddies have had the same thing happen - even when there was no obvious explaination. . .and even when INU alignment shouldn't be a concern. Still haven't gotten it figured out, but usually it's just a matter of reactivating the AP modes, and re-entering a hover (that is unless the gyrations it does kills you first).

While the aircraft that I fly that feature such systems are fixed wing, in those cases we must remain stationary on the ramp, we do not even taxi. . .moving the aircraft before alignment completes means we have to start all over again. . . of course we have cockpit annunciators that let us know when alignment and initialization is complete, which does indeed help!

From the manual: "Res. of Cockpit Displays. For aircraft that have displays such as mirrors, multifunction displays, moving maps, etc., you can adjust the resolution of these displays using the dropdown list. Note higher resolution settings can negatively impact the smoothness of game play" I didn't mean for my post to be a final post - it's a work in progress for me, I want to test a few other settings, and I would also like to see how performance changes as resolution does, a higher video card OC, as well as 4x AA etc. . . I just decided to post it unfinished rather than whenever I get it "done". . .if I ever do! :-D

Yep: http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=599456&postcount=24

My System: Intel E8400 2x1GB Crucial Ballistix DDR21000 Abit AB9ProQuadGT P965 eVGA 8800GTS 512 (G92) CPU is aircooled by TuniqTower120 BlackShark is installed on a 320gig 7200.10 Barracuda Planar PX2611W 26" 1920*1200 monitor. Windows XP Pro. **************nVidia Driver level settings (unless otherwise specified for individual runs)******************* Anisotropic Filtering: 8x Antialiasing: 2x (Override any app setting) AA Transparency: Supersampling Conformant Texture Clamp: Use Hardware Force mipmaps: Trilinear Max Pre-Rendered frames: 3 Single Display Performance Mode Texture Filtering Anisotropic sample optimization: On Negative LOD vias: Clamp Texture filtering quality: Quality Tilinear Optimization: On Threaded Optimization: Auto Triple Buffering: On Anisotropic mip filter Optimization: Off vSynch: Forced on ********************************************* In game settings: Textures:HIGH Scenes: HIGH Civ Traffic: No Water: Normal Visible Range: Medium Heat Blur: On Shadows: All Planar 1920x1200, 16:10, 1 Camera Res of Cockpit textures: 1024 (One benchmark tests 512mb) Mirrors: ON Battle.miz.trk Start: When HMS initially activated Stop: After 8 minutes 0 seconds Battle.miz is a very large mission, with a lot going on. I flew the mission and recorded a track, I then ran FRAPS benchmarking utility during the same 8 minute portion of the replay at various settings as described below. Driver level settings, and in game settings were kept constant with only one exception for the 512 vs 1024mb cockpit texture comparison. ***************CPU Overclock scaling in Black Shark*************** It is clear that Black Shark is sensitive to CPU clock speeds. Over the range of speeds I tested, I observed a rather linear increase in both minimum as well as average frame rate as CPU clock speed increases. In this case, a 300 MHz increase in CPU speed gains approximately 2.8 average frames per second from 3GHz on up to 3.9. Raw data: E8400 @ 3.06 GHz (speedstep enabled) 2x1Gigs of PC8000 RAM at 850Mhz, 8800GTS (G92) at stock clocks 670 core 972 memory 1674 shaders. Frames: 16232 - Time: 480193ms - Avg: 33.803 - Min: 5 - Max: 61 E8400 @ 3.303GHz 2x1Gigs of PC8000 RAM at 917.6MHz, 8800GTS (G92) at stock clocks 670 core 972 memory 1674 shaders. Frames: 17450 - Time: 480253ms - Avg: 36.335 - Min: 6 - Max: 62 E8400 @ 3.6GHz 2x1Gigs of PC8000 RAM at 1,000MHz, 8800GTS (G92) at stock clocks 670 core 972 memory 1674 shaders. Frames: 18977 - Time: 479752ms - Avg: 39.555 - Min: 8 - Max: 62 E8400 @ 3.906GHz 2x1Gigs of PC8000 RAM at 868MHz, 8800GTS (G92) at stock clocks 670 core 972 memory 1674 shaders. Frames: 20212 - Time: 479121ms - Avg: 42.185 - Min: 10 - Max: 62 3.06 to 3.303 yields 2.532 avg fps increase, 3.303 to 3.6 yields 3.22 avg fps more, 3.6 to 3.9 yields 2.63 avg fps increase. ***************Video Card Overclocks*************** While this OC isn’t major, it’s clear that the fps did not change any appreciable amount. In fact this GPU OC only nets .231 average fps better! Note that while I've got 8X Anisotropic Filtering running, I'm only using 2XAA - which is just fine at a higher resolution like 1920x1200. There really aren't any jaggies to speak of, and I think that getting rid of jaggies via resolution instead of adding blur of antialiasing looks better in sims (especially the cockpit). At higher AA settings perhaps the video card OC would show a little more of a change. The minimum frame rate is 1 fps better – however it would take many runs to confirm that this since it only takes one dip to create this data, while the average should be quite accurate over 8 minute runs. Raw data: E8400 @ 3.6GHz 2x1Gigs of PC8000 RAM at 1,000MHz, 8800GTS (G92) at stock clocks 670 core 972 memory 1674 shaders. Frames: 18977 - Time: 479752ms - Avg: 39.555 - Min: 8 - Max: 62 E8400 @ 3.6GHz 2x1Gigs of PC8000 RAM at 1,000MHz, 8800GTS (G92) Overclocked to 700 core 1000 memory 1748 shaders. Frames: 19096 - Time: 479965ms - Avg: 39.786 - Min: 9 - Max: 62 ***************Cockpit texture Resolution 1024 vs 512*************** Here we see that setting cockpit textures to 512mb instead of 1024 improves average fps by only 0.219 fps on this system! Raw Data: E8400 @ 3.6GHz 2x1Gigs of PC8000 RAM at 1,000MHz, 8800GTS (G92) at stock clocks, “Resolution of Cockpit Textures” set to 512 Frames: 19079 - Time: 479674ms - Avg: 39.774 - Min: 8 - Max: 62 E8400 @ 3.6GHz 2x1Gigs of PC8000 RAM at 1,000MHz, 8800GTS (G92) at stock clocks “Resolution of Cockpit Textures” set to 1024 Frames: 18977 - Time: 479752ms - Avg: 39.555 - Min: 8 - Max: 62 ***************Two Cores vs One Core in Black Shark – Windows XP Pro 32*************** Allowing DCS to run on both cores instead of one resulted in an average increase of 1.07 fps Raw Data: E8400 @ 3.6GHz 2x1Gigs of PC8000 RAM at 1,000MHz, 8800GTS (G92) at stock clocks, CPU core affinity for DCS.EXE set to core 0. Frames: 18977 - Time: 479752ms - Avg: 39.555 - Min: 8 - Max: 62 E8400 @ 3.6GHz 2x1Gigs of PC8000 RAM at 1,000MHz, 8800GTS (G92) at stock clocks, but core 0 and 1 set to DCS.EXE. Frames: 19497 - Time: 479911ms - Avg: 40.626 - Min: 6 - Max: 62 ***************Conclusion*************** So in summary we see that Black Shark, like most Flight Simulators, is highly dependant on CPU clock speeds, and any increase in CPU clocks will lead to a noticable frame rate increase. On the other hand, video card overclocks, had minimal impact on performance, and neither did changing between 512mb and 1024 mb cockpit texture settings. . .at least on my machine. On lower end machines the 1024 textures might be a more obvious decrease in performance. For users with Core2Duo machines or similar, these settings are hardly worth worrying about, and the same can be said for the video card OC as the difference in each case was approximately 2/10ths of a frame!! We do see that it might be worth it to set the DCS.EXE to use both cores instead of one, even for Xp users. While there is a 2fps lower minimum frame rate, it’s clear that overall we have improved performance with both cores running – though only by a little over 1 frame per second. S! TX-EcoDragon www.txsquadron.com

Myself and a squad mate have both found autohover to somewhat randomly dissengage from a stable hover, often with a rapid pitch/yaw/roll deviation and associated unusual attitude. . .of course this is usually when I've gone head down and am using the shkval or abris. . .I usually keep the attitude indicator in sight when head down for this reason. I appreciate the detective work regarding the INU - but I still wonder if all instances where this happens is due to that, simply because it happens even after extended flights, on the second and third auto-hover, and generally after alignment should be assured. We had come to the conclusion that we must have some sort of controls conflict - but since it happened to more than one of us, we started to look for something else.

Yep. . .take your time in the climb, maintain a mid range forward speed, remember the anti-ice, and it will do just fine up at altitude!!

Well, 1920x1200 is awesome!!!!!

Certainly! Most of my simming is in aircraft without weapons. I go where the good sims are - decent fidelity is all I need to enjoy it. Of course in a combat sim, I'm not sure there is much place for something like an R-22, or B222 - but heck, I'd fly them! Longbow used to have missions for Kiowa as well as Blackhawk pilots where shooting wasn't really a part of the deal, but you still had appropriate and enjoyable missions doing recon, transport, SAR etc.

The standard lapse rate is considered to be 2 degrees C per 1,000 feet of altitude. It changes based on humidity and other factors, but that's the value that is generally used. It's pretty nice to see this included in BlackShark, but an OAT gauge would indeed be nice!!

I'm certainly a fixed wing pilot first and foremost, but as long as it flys I'll enjoy flying it!!

Hmmm. . .that's not great news. Well thanks for the feedback.

Day or night I get a graphics glitch when on the ground that looks like the daytime concrete apron texture is overlaid on itself in a thin band. This overlay moves when I pan my view, and it sits on the highest texture layer such that I see it over the shadows, and even over night textures. Take a look and let me know if you've seen this same issue: System setup: Win XP Pro, DirectX 9.0c, nVidia 8800GTS 512mb running 178.24 drivers.

Plenty of pilots, fixed wing or rotorcraft will do it - but it's generally considered to be poor form by most. This is especially true in the type of flying I do (aerobatics) where tilting your head will not reward you with the precision that you need, not to mention the potential consequences to your neck when at higher G loads. It's also a bad idea for marginal VFR or IFR operations given the greater potential of confusing a pilot's kinesthetic sense which is not easy to ignore when flying without outside visual references. I know none of this applies to this sim, but I’m just sayin. . .

Agreed. . . I don't like the automatic head tilting, especially since it happens even with 6DOF enabled to some degree as well.

Perhaps it is the option to enable the pilot's headmotion that you are talking about, if you look in the Black Shark Key Commands pdf under view you will find: F1-LCtrl :::: "Natural head movement view" try toggling that and see what you think. Oops. . .Waggs posted that the one you want is: F1-LWin::::Headshift Movement on/off (Left Windows key and F1 key).