Headspace

Congrats, AlphaOneSix. I remember you saying you were working on it. I hope that your checkride was uneventful. Consider doing your instrument rating when time and money allow. I am currently working on mine. You will find that your level of precision goes way up, making you a safer pilot in the long run. Remember that a huge number of accidents are caused by inadvertent flight into IMC, and weather in general. Best of luck to you.

My significant other took this during a cross country flight where she was my passenger...

I always just tune ATIS or AWOS from a nearby airport or look at the on field windsock or other wind indicator...very rarely will airports not have those. Even grass fields.

I was hoping to have something to release this weekend, but unfortunately the wait continues--merging all of the modules together (A-10/KA-50) is requiring additional work, since people will likely want to switch during a game and TARS has to handle that seamlessly. Lua and Plugin code changes need to be made to accomodate this. The POV hat issue is resolved along with the API upgrade to the latest TS3 API.

Future development plans for the mod include CA and DCS: World airplanes that don't have detailed modeling for radios.

The server spam setting has been useful in getting rid of the problem for a lot of users. I'm hoping that TARS on the new API version will help with that particular issue. In other news, my goal is to have a generic frequency set that the combined arms JTAC and people who want to act as ATC will be able to use. Part of the latest development effort has been focused on getting that ready.

The next one will be world-compatible. I'm dealing with the POV issue as well. I'm going to break from my usual policy of testing only internally and release builds for public testing as soon as I make them. So, there will be "known stable" and "test" versions of TARS going forward.

I plan on visiting Duxford next time I'm in the UK. I had to go to London the second time. But we will be going to Duxford the next time for sure.

Stick and rudder has one of the definitive guides on what causes the ground loop. The CG being aft of the main gear is the primary contributor.

First, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to compare development times for a mod for ArmA to development times for a mod for DCS. Second, the reason it "takes so long" is because TARS is not my full time job, nor is it the full time job of anyone else who works on it. While it would be great if I could release a new TARS as soon as TS3 updates, it isn't always practicable. So, as I said in the TARS thread, it's being worked on. The target for the next release is going to be the current TS3 combined with DCS World once it's out of beta, unless it takes much longer in which case there will be a current TS3 version only. And there is more than just me--I have several people who have been around since the very beginning who help with it.

I'm busy getting it integrated into DCS World and testing it with version 3.0.6 of TS3. Edit: Would people be interested in a 3.0.6 compatible version first? I can have that ready for testing by Wednesday, probably before. Just need to iron out some issues with the Config tool.

Listen up you primitive screwheads <3 :D This is what this sort of thing costs in the current market. This isn't 1998 where everyone and their mother was lining up at Circuit City and Babbage's (remember those places?) to buy flight sim themed games. ED has the benefit of having a development team in a part of the world where payscales aren't inflated like they are in the US metro areas, and they have the benefit of having a group of highly qualified people testing it for free (We have at least one tester with over 2,000 flight hours in military aircraft). When I fly for real it costs me over 100 USD for less than two hours of flight time. I can play any of ED's high fidelity representations of highly advanced aircraft that I'll probably never have a chance to log time in for real for a one-time fee. It's really not that bad when you look at it from that perspective. I realize the ongoing changes to the game plan has been frustrating for many people, as well as the recurring need to purchase additional modules and games. However, there really isn't much of a choice here. Nobody can be asked to work for free--you will all benefit from this in the long run.

Which "actual A-10C sim?"

To answer your question about the new version of TS: I can't until I've had the opportunity to test it. I'm sure I'll have things sorted by the weekend. Please stay tuned. In the meantime it won't hurt you to use 3.0.5.

It's a suggestion on how to exchange information. In your plugin. I would learn the Teamspeak 3 API if you want to do something with it. In the future there may be some kind of publication for how TARS clients talk, but I don't have the bandwidth to produce something like that now--particularly because things are currently being changed in several ways.

The Teamspeak API supports inter-client communication with its plugin command feature. If you don't want to establish a socket between clients (which is probably a good idea to avoid if you can help it), you should use that.

I'm not sure what you mean by "voice packages." Could you clarify that?

It shouldn't matter if you use PTT or not. If you don't, the normal PTT keys are used to switch radios. People who are having problems need to submit logs of the problem occurring.

Pretty cool dude. I really like seeing people get a lot out of the mod like you are.

I wonder if they paid Vangelis for the blade runner theme they use in the movie.

Well, the good news is that the frequency filtering is already implemented as of last year and all that it takes to change it is to tweak one or two values. Keep in mind that the type of filter (Chebyshev, etc) can influence things as well, but there are several that are used in practice. I can make the filtered frequency levels (like bandpass cutoffs) user-configurable in the future. www.liveatc.net is generally a good place to go if you want to hear VHF radio traffic. You might try listening to a Class C or B airport's approach or tower; there's almost always something going on during the day in those places.

Also, if you're the same guy who just sent the ACRE dev team an email, I'm going to repeat myself here: The core DSP package is [mostly] the same. It isn't the sort of thing one reinvents when there are very good packages out there that are licensed under just about any open license you could choose from. Although we have both added some proprietary DSP technology ourselves to each respective mod. It's also worth pointing out that the ACRE people are attempting to include land-based, digital radios that do not fall under the feature set of what TARS is attempting to provide. I'm not offended and I'm sure you're just trying to help, but I've been answering this question for over a year whenever issues of technology come up. It is about what the users have asked for. If you want "full real," you had better get used to having the volume a lot higher and trying to make out what people are saying. The community is not going to come to a consensus anytime soon about what constitutes "realistic enough" vs. "burdensome enough." If I made the distortion worse in one direction, people will complain that it the distortion being too high. And vice versa. User-adjustability is the only way to make everyone happy. Which brings me back to the point as to what you consider "most realistic." Is "realistic" equivalent to "difficult to make out?" Do you want it to sound like a military ARC or something far cheaper? This is a subjective metric. There's a guy a few buildings away from the airport who has a scanner set up, that he streams onto the net, and you can hear ATC and airplanes talking. It sounds awful when an airplane transmits, why? Because his transmitter is probably a whole lot weaker than the tower's, and he's on the ground when he's taxiing and starting, causing the signal to have to go through a bunch of buildings and terrain. People will take recordings such as the one I've described, which are uncharacteristically garbled, and suggest I make it sound like that--this is an example of what one person thinks is "realistic." My opinion is that right now, the TARS audio is turned to the point where interference and distortion are slightly less than what you would actually hear, at least in the VHF range. But not by a great deal. It would be easier if people could link recordings of what they want it to sound like--that's the only way to objectively show me what you want to hear. I do appreciate the continual feedback though!

There are already multiple filters, including high pass. The tuning has been done to accomodate the entire user base, based on feedback. The other mod you're referring to probably still uses the same filter library as TARS (it's an MIT licensed package) although I haven't discussed it with them recently. It isn't a matter of type of filter used, but curve adjustment. When I tuned it in the other direction last year, I got a significant amount of feedback from people who wanted it to be made easier to hear. I've been talking on the real radio a lot lately. I really doubt the average consumer who plays DCS A-10 is going to want TARS turned to what the actual quality of VHF transmissions is. In the future I may offer it as a config option, but there's some other important stuff going on right now that is taking up my attention.

I was waiting for someone to post that.

Really cool. I was in England over New Years and wanted to go but we ended up going into London instead. Since I'm in the UK so infrequently I wanted to see London at least once. I usually hang out up North!