CyBerkut

For a budget approach to a HOTAS, that is what I'd suggest looking at. The Saitek X52 Pro if you can swing it, or X52 if you really need to keep the expenditure down. The X52 Pro has some improvements in the internals, as well as looking more appropriate to a military sim. If you go that route, I'd suggest that you download the latest drivers and profile software from Saitek's site and then do your install from those, rather than use what is on the CD included with the controller. They may be the same version, but it is also quite possibe that the downloads will be newer.

You could mount a TrackClip Pro upon a microphone-only headset. That would let you keep using your speakers for sound, if that happens to be a priority for you. LabTec makes one that will work. http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=875487&postcount=11

There are lots of different aspects to the issue: - Revenues and revenue sharing. - Copy protection. - Customer preferences on downloaded vs boxed media. - Control of the online / multiplayer experience. From my perspective, E.D. has demonstrated a clear, solid interest in all aspects, and has made good decisions to date, based upon what appear to be good reasons. I don't expect that to change in the foreseeable future. Steam can be a good *option* at some point, I suppose (ie. after direct sales from E.D. have tapered off), but I wouldn't want to see them be the sole point of access for anything that E.D. is producing. As long as privately hosted servers, and mod-ability remain intact, I don't think Steam could hurt, once it makes financial sense. I know a number of people who despise Modern Warfare 2 being on Steam. My experience with Supreme Commander 2 on Steam has been OK, but it hardly makes me want to use it for everything. Supreme Commander 2 has been a disappointment in community related aspects such as user-created maps and mods that extended the playability of Supreme Commander, and SC:Forged Alliance for much longer..... but that probably lies at the feet of Square Enix and/or THQ. Everybody has opinions, but in the end, E.D. has to do what they think makes the best sense.

You could probably use TouchPal, but just edit it to put fewer things on the screen. TouchBuddy can work with it. If you're flying Lockon FC2, you might take a look at Yoda's LEAVU. If you're playing online, you could park your voice comms display on it...

A serial to USB converter would be of no use at all. I suspect you meant an analog game port to USB converter though, and that doesn't really get it done either. I know a number of different ones have been tried by various people to no real avail. As Sokol said, you might get the X&Y axis and a few buttons, but no where near the functionality of the total HOTAS. There was an epic thread on someone's conversion process... I think it was over on the X-Plane forums, but it might have been a different one. (I can't check it where I'm at right now...) It was, seriously, a LOT of work.

Hi troenix, and welcome to the forums! That is a nice controller set for it's day. (I have a set, also). The problems that are working against you selling them are: - They are no longer produced/supported. There are no drivers for the more recent operating systems. - They use the old analog game port and keyboard connectors. - While up until recently, they were the only mass produced split throttle HOTAS arrangement out there, there are now two mainstream models with another due out this year. That is not to say they won't be of interest to someone, as there are some very clever people on here. Other folks have converted them to USB before, and there may be someone who wants to take a shot at that. I was thinking about doing that with mine, up until the split throttle offerings from Logitech, Saitek and Thrustmaster started getting previews / reviews. I still may do it someday, but it seems much less likely now. I'm guessing it is not your forte', but if you have the skills and could convert the controllers over to USB (with Leo Bodnar's board, or whatever), you might get a nice chunk of change out of them.... hard to say. There could be an F-15 fan out there that would make a puddle over that. Good luck!

Wow... That's kind of... disturbing.

I would agree that is a biggie. Of course, the simple thing to do for those who don't want their real name out there, is provide a different name for the "real name". [Assuming they aren't extracting the info from credit card payment info, which would be a stupendous mistake on Blizzard's part].

A question come to mind. How are they going to handle this for individuals who are minors? Protecting children from online predators has been an increasing concern in recent years. I don't know all the details, but it sounds like Blizzard may be opening up a real can of worms.

A combination of things come to mind... 1. The internet doesn't forget. Stuff gets archived and quoted (often times on some other system(s) under somebody else's control) and can show up years later in places you would never have expected. 2. Many people in the gaming communities are not of an age where they fully appreciate the consequences of their choices. In other words, they are young/immature and do/say immature things. Everyone here can judge for themselves, but I know I can think of some things back in my adolescence that I'm glad have not been preserved for worldwide consumption. 3. With the explosive growth of social networking on the internet has come the corresponding increase in net savvy employers, and net savvy political opponents, etc. How many college graduates have encountered problems getting job offers due to the party pictures they posted on a social networking site a year or three earlier? 4. I can say from experience that some people will behave differently on a keyboard even when their real identity is known and they are arguing with other people within their own county. I saw it many times back in the ol' BBS forums before the internet caught on at the consumer level. Now, one could certainly argue that foolish people bring it upon themselves... but you're talking here about the potential for kids to have things following them around decades later. Unlike the social networking sites, a set of gaming forums can be closely related to competition / (virtual) combat, which increases the probablility that little Johhny is going to write inflammatory things while he is all ticked off about losing his ship at the hands of the intended message recipient. Hopefully, he will outgrow his impulsiveness by gaining a better perspective... but that nasty heap of invective could keep hanging around years after that maturity has been reached. For gaming forums, it is just unnecessary.

This might be one of the things that Moa was referring to.

You had me right up until you put that smiley on the end... ;)

I probably should have used a quote, to make it clearer that I was referring to what Subs17 had written... The part about ground talk channel, and modeling the battery usage in particular, caused me to recall the 'parable of Janes A-10' (specifically the 'feature creep'). As for the other parts of the thread, it isn't particularly difficult to understand. I will point out though that I often do not automatically accept declarations from people who are not either part of the dev team, or the testing team, when it comes to the ease of adding something to the simulation code. That is not intended as a slam, or a slight upon whatever expertise they may have... it is simply based upon: 1. The knowledge that simulator code of this order tends to be a large squirming beast, and that additions/changes often have unintended consequences. 2. Those of us on the outside are less than fully informed about what is in the simulator code. Personally, I *think* TS3 integration/support (or possibly Mumble) *probably* would be fairly easy to add, or at least provide hooks for... [and could be a very nice feature!]. However, I'm not in a position to declare that as a fact. If they can do something like that without significantly delaying the rollout, then heck yeah, go for it! If that doesn't appear (To E.D.) to be the case, then I'm content to trust their business decision(s).

All of that sounds pretty spiffy, but I think I'd rather just get it in 2010 in whatever form they already had planned. ;)

Be careful what you wish for on dirt kicking up. If it is mostly hitting the GPU, that's one thing. If it is taxing the CPU (and we're pretty sure that isn't getting handed off to a separate core/thread), that might not be so spiffy for frame rates. I'm sure E.D. will make good design decisions on it. If it can be done with adjustable realism settings for the depictions, to accomodate different CPU/GPU setups, even better!

It doesn't appear that a TrackClip Pro would attach in a useable way to that headset in its factory issued configuration. I suspect it wouldn't be too hard to coble up an attachment method, providing one is willing to possibly sacrifice the spiffy folding capability of that headset. The TrackClip Pro is a lightweight item, so you might be able to put a cable tie around the left ear piece (just behind where the ear piece is attached to the headband), slide the TrackClip Pro's clip through the loop, and then snug it down for a stable mount. Keep in mind you would be attaching a fairly fragile/flimsy item (the TrackClip Pro) to another item that doesn't appear to be all that substantial itself. If it works though, and you remain mindful of the fragility, it could be a comfortable arrangement.

I'd like to hear more about that too! For you folks that are adding a mic to a set of headphones, what mic are you using (with what headphone), and how did you mount it? Thanks!

PDF release... Hmmm... now where is the pickle switch for that again?.... Bomb them with documents! Muhahahaha!

In case you haven't seen it yet: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?p=755405&highlight=Evo+Force#post755405 Maybe that will help.

No (For DCS:BS). It's only coded for the Force Trim in DCS:BS. I don't think LO:FC2 has environmental effects coded in to FFB either.

Trigger, you're going to end up with your house burnt down. Either from the overloaded wiring, or from the angry torch wielding neighbors who are tired of the brownouts from every time you release the trim button... :music_whistling:

If the whole machine crashes, then yes you are correct... his original goal is not met. I was talking about: 1. Normal game exits. 2. Crashes of the game, but not the entire machine. As such, the 3rd party program that was either encrypting, or adding a key/code to the end of the file, *might* still be able to do that. TacView is obviously a very valuable tool. It's a shame that it is not really available for use on most multiplayer servers due to concerns over unethical use.

Hmmm... I hate to think of the CPU load that it might impose... but maybe have a routine that encrypts the file(s) [that are to be read by TacView] on the fly during game play, and a decryption routine built into TacView that will only work on closed out, encrypted files? With the newer multicore CPUs, it might not be too bad. Or, perhaps have some sort of key, or code, that gets tacked on to the end of the file after the game is ended, and have TacView require that key/code to be present at the end of the file before it will play it. I have no idea if either of those are feasible... I'm just throwing the ideas out there.

Hmmm... the use of crossfire might be a factor worth investigating. I've seen mention of issues with crossfire causing slide show-like stuttering on really large pixel count display groups. (reportedly a bandwidth limitation issue of the crossfire connection) Your setup is obviously different, but perhaps it is seeing a bandwidth issue due to the mix of both USB and crossfire.

San Francisco's version of NYC's Fleet Week. How apropos... EB, I hope you can make it! It should be very interesting.