WynnTTr

Have you flown the A-10C? Not to belittle your experience but just because you've flown everything else except the aircraft in question doesn't mean that's not how it is for said aircraft. Until you do everything else is assumption.

You still need TrackIR because the side monitors only represent your peripheral vision in the form of the fisheye effect. It's like you looking at your monitor right now, your peripheral vision isn't focused and is blurry. If someone came up to your right you'd still turn your head to the right to face them to get them fully into focus. The same with the three monitors. Now if they rendered exactly what would be seen what was on your right then that's a different story and one aspect closer to having a wrap around monitor solution.

Holding the trimmer gives you full control a la FD and without the need to press an extra button (if you have it mapped to your HOTAS).

I was thinking along the Cougars and mini screen route as well. Then I saw Helios and what you can do with it. One decent sized touchscreen and you basically have the functionality of the touchscreen MFD a la Cougar + 8in screen but a lot more versatility and customisation not only for DCS but for other games.

You tried the X3 series? It's like Elite but for our generation and like EVE only singleplayer. Good sense of movement in space and you're free to do whatever, shoot, trade, mine etc... If you check it out, play Terran Conflict it's more polished and intuitive than the original X3 but still complex.

Yeah your poll implies that having AP is somehow less responsive or smoother than without and that's flat out wrong. I can manoeuvre just fine with AP on and the proper use of the trimmer. This includes all situations from manual hovering, avoiding SAMs/AAA, to landing on a building, whatever. There was a video of an actual BS pilot which was split into multi screens. One showed what his hand was doing and every time he made course corrections you could hear the trimmer being depressed and released. I learnt to fly the BS properly from that video. This all reminds me of the FD arguments in the early days of the release where it was already established that it's Russian military doctrine to fly with the AP channels on and to use the trimmer!

Have you met my friend, he's a Nigerian prince....

It's best to completely clear everything under your Saitek heading as some games map throttle or whatnot to them. Then just remap what you need - that's usually quick and painless as the only functions for rudders is yaw and wheel brake.

ED have given us the short manual - that has everything you need to fire weapons. The flight manual is for people who want the extra information. If you're playing this game properly you want all that info. Remember this is a military aircraft - all the fat that can be cut out has already been done so. Everything that remains is essential for the pilot. If you just want a quick flight and know how to drop a bomb the quick manual is more than sufficient.

I'm running a single 6950 flashed to 6970. The res I'm running is 5760x1080 as well so my 27" goes down to 1920x1080 so you'll have no problems if all your screens are the same size. With mine because my centre monitor is physically bigger the edges don't quite match up but it's not noticeable when I'm in the thick of it. With 3x24" screens everything will match up perfectly for you. Just do what I did and physically overlap the bezels. When you're looking at it front on you'll hardly notice that the centre monitor is ever so slightly back but you won't have thick bezel bars to hamper you.

You shouldn't be able to spot and track targets at 20,000 feet with the Mk.1 eyeball, limitations of the sim or not. As Immel said, it should be TGP/JTAC. I can understand the need for a padlock if you're low as the limitations of sitting in front of a monitor would severely hamper your SA.

I recently upgraded to Eyefinity and for me, it's definitely worth it. You do see more screen and it really increases the immersion factor by leaps. It feels like you're in the cockpit moreso than just one monitor. For instance you can see the wing stubs and side cockpit doors wrap around you instead of the frontal HUD/instruments view. Sure it's peripheral and does have fisheye but that's all that's needed. When you turn your head to look left that part of the screen comes into focus so having the fisheye effect isn't that noticeable. My eyefinity isn't even a perfect setup - my central monitor is a Dell 27" and the side ones are Acers 24". Eyefinity still does a decent job of aligning up the monitors. Of course with the screen sizes it's not perfect but still good enough for me not to notice in game. I've thought about swapping the central screen to another Acer but I like the 1920x1200 res for other things. Bezels aren't that bad either cos I overlap my acer bezels over the Dell ones. It's not the same immersion factor as a HOTAS/TrackIR (these are a MUST) but it's not far off. I can't play A-10/BS/any flight sim with just a single monitor anymore. I've tried it with my 46 1080p and all it is is just a bigger frontal view, which made me sit further from my desk. Almost nothing really changed from my 27" Dell (apart from lower res and blurrier graphics) except everything's bigger but with Eyefinity it's a totally different ball game.

A fair assessment and I completely agree with the review, particularly the last paragraph.

How about the military then? Or Department of Defense, or Pentagon or actual weapons systems engineers and contractors? Forgive me if I throw more weight behind the acronym USAF rather than "Seanner". But your arguments tend to go off in different directions. There are flaws everywhere in every organisation in every work sector. As has been stated numerous times if you seriously think that your proposals are better and haven't been canvassed before then draft up a report and submit it to the US... er military contractor/Pentagon/DoD for appraisal.

If the system you're suggesting is exactly the same now but with a voice command cancellation then it'd still result in a hung store - it's already been stated that once the process begins it can't be aborted. So what's the difference between what we have now and starting the process as opposed to starting the process then yelling out "abort, abort... arghh". Or do you mean voice activated cancel on a quick release - wouldn't that then defeat the purpose of having a quick release? You'd have to be pretty damn quick to yell out if that quick release is pressed and has now dropped your ordnance. Maybe a "Cooommme baaaack" voice command?

Time for ED to take up the challenge? :music_whistling: Unfortunately if ED decides to do a Viper then comparisons are inevitable. I don't envy the task ahead in surmounting an established fan base if ED do decide the F-16.

Love armchair general theorists. Ofc his system's better than what the military has come up with. It's so obvious and logical from sitting behind your 24" screen playing a sim. Seanner - I dare you to write a proposal to the USAF with your ideas - with Skynet, Star Trek, computer AI included. So Data has a brain - wth can't we do it too. I'm sure they'll take it seriously and under advisement and try not to chuckle... much.

Yeah I'm looking forward to the new career mode as well. Hope it lives up to the hype.

Hmm, that's a request from NP but no contract with them. In the end the effect's the same though - no Freetrack or other type of head tracking device. Yeah like you said - it is unfortunate but there's nothing that any of us can do then.

Source? Nothing I've seen so far has pointed to any contract or agreement with NP. Maybe an agreement of some sorts with TM for the WH but not NP. They just develop their sim and NP has to try and keep up.

I'm using the G700 and am very happy with it. Fully programmable, precise, smooth, has a ton of buttons that are easily accessible and doesn't lose track in wireless mode. Best of all the recharging cable is sitting on my desk held in case I need to recharge it. When it gets low I just plug it in and play normally. When it's fully recharge I just unplug it and leave the cable on my monitor stand. I hate having to get up to change batteries or to put it in a dock. The other thing I like about it is that it's precise up until it fully runs out of batteries. So no erratic movements or losing track when it's low, it just dies with no power. plug in the recharging cable and you're back in business. Batteries last a while for me. I spend 2-3 hours on the computer when i get home from work and need to recharge it every 3-4 days. Takes about 30-45 minutes to fully recharge from red status (never timed it).

Seeing as ED developed trainers of the C for the military, I'd say they've got the credentials to back up their FM. Modern military aircraft are designed to be easy to fly - particularly single seat ones. The pilot has enough on his plate than worrying about handling an erratic plane. Besides, you're talking about making an aircraft stable enough to fire the GAU8 on the move - just trying to accommodate that would make anything easy to fly. It's not as nimble as a fast mover but that's a different aspect altogether. After years of F4 I'd say the F-16 is pretty easy too. From what I've read other military aircraft are relatively easy to fly as well, like the AH64.

:music_whistling: You shouldn't have a problem with the basic reflectors and TIR5's bigger viewing camera. And yeah, TIR will free up the mouse and hat switch for you to interact with the cockpit. Just remember to place the camera dead centre if you're wearing the cap piece and to the left when wearing your pro clip.

The Pro just means the emitter clip that you need to plug in. The camera is the same whether you buy the pro or not. You can buy the pro clip separately but I think it's more expensive than if you had bought it as part of the package. It'll still work with the reflectors but if you can get the Pro clip, I'd grab that cos the unit will come with the cap reflector regardless. That way you can choose what you want to use.

Normal TrackIR only comes with a band that sits on the peak of your cap that's got 3 reflectors on it. Hence no clip if you use headphones. You've got to wear something that the reflectors can sit on top of. The camera itself will emit the IR light and pick up the reflectors. This works and is still good but lights behind you (like if your back is to a window) will throw off TrackIR. Also if you move your head out of view of the camera it'll lose tracking until you bring your head back up in front of the camera. The clip is the TrackclipPro which has a clip and three IR emitters on it hence it needs to be plugged into your machine for power. But this means that it's more accurate and doesn't lose tracking as much. Obviously if you turn your head completely so that all three emitters aren't in view you'll lose track. Either way works and yeah, you'll be kicking yourself on why you didn't buy TIR earlier. It truly will raise your simming experience to another level.