sweinhart3

I assume you work for Intel? Just curious what department. I work in TMG at D1C and I dont get to test new processors :(

I will too. Next year tho they come out with a 6 core i7 chip. Will be interested to see how it fares.

I saw that in one of my emails but I didnt look closely at it because I dont have a Lynnfield processor lol. Ive been waiting for Intel to put out a new free loaner chip since the Core 2 line but maybe waiting a long time for it. I have my eye on one of the 160GB SSD drives. $300 with employee discount is giving me a hard time justifying why not to get one.

/agree Would be nice to see a bunch of naked women laying on the beach sunbathing as you fly over the coast line with the waves lapping up. lol. in my dreams right?

Heres another great article that just came out that should give you some hard numbers to answer your question. http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3634

That is correct. Even with DCS Max that doesnt change the fact that DCS is not multi threaded to take advantage of multiple cores. Changing the affinity just tells the cpu to spread the resources around so that 1 core isnt running DCS and background duties. The new i5 processors might be really good with this sim cause they can take cores that are not utilized and shut them down so that the 1 or 2 free cores can dynamically overclock. 99% of the time I get very playable frame rates. The worst I had actually only happened once while trying to land at an airfield after the last mission in Deployment campaign. That one time my frame rates dropped so far it was difficult to control the chopper.

Im starting to drool. http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3635

I had a lot of problems with that mission but mostly cause wingman or myself always got shot down. After getting a little hint I got it after one try and it seemed so easy. I always ran out of ammo long before the mission completed so you definitely need wingman help. I decided not to bother with anything other than just the target area. Just not enough ammo to go around. I forget what direction your facing on ingress but I stayed well on the left side of the target where the road turns inland over the town. I shot the 3 AA units on that part of the road and 1 nearest the target. Used the rest of my ammo on target and made sure wingman stayed in formation and didnt engage anything. Once my ammo was expended there was less than half of the main target units left. I then data linked the targets and had wingman attack by target group. I also found out that even tho the targets are tanks of some type they die easy even with gunfire. Stay just outside of missle range and you should be all good. Dont wander off to the southern part of town if you know whats good for you lol.

hi. thnx for the reply. I actually thought of that but actually implementing that would require custom made parts that I think would be rather expensive. I actually found real avionics ADI on EBAY really cheap. Im thinking it might be simpler to rewire that to interface rather than trying to build one from scratch.

Oh here is my drawing of the engine instruments. I have measurements and sizes for all the parts. If you want more details pm me.

ADI concept Ive been trying to figure this one out for quite some time now. Everything Ive read building a simulated ADI is one of the most challenging instruments to build. I created a quick basic cad drawing of the insides. Aside from actually figuring out a way to build this, the concept isnt super difficult other than one thing thats knawing at my brain. The pitch wouldnt wouldnt be difficult. I would have a stepper motor driving it with a belt. The bank indication is where everything gets complicated. The stepper motor in the back has to be able to drive the whole assembly in circles. The 2 rings I have in front and middle would be on bearings. The one in back would be an inside spur gear attached to the frame. This could work I think except I cant figure out how you route the wiring for it all. If the whole assembly has to be able to turn freely in either direction, you would end up with a twisted heap of mess after a few turns eventually snagging the whole entire thing. The real ADI is setup somewhat similar to this but I dont know how they got around that problem unless they used some fancy wireless tricks. I work on lots of robots at work and assemblies that built like this can only make 1 revolution before having to change directions. That of course would pose a problem in a sim where you can make 10 barrel rolls in a single direction if you want. One solution would be to have the controller reverse its direction once it reaches the limit but Im not sure how realistic that is. Any other ideas would be welcome.

ty. the sdp-si spot looks like just the place i need.

Somewhere on these forums last week I ran into a link someone posted for a company that makes gears. It was similar to Digikey for electronics except it was for gears and pulleys and stepper motors and now I cant seem to find that thread anymore. If anyone knows any good companies for this sort of thing can u link it pls? Been searching an entire day and cant find it. Kicking myself for not saving the link.

Does anyone know if there is someplace you can get MFD with functional displays?

I was really hoping for a cessna with a turbine strap on.

I created a 3D CAD drawing of the pit based off of lotsa research. It will be made of wood since I know how to work with that. Just thought I would share the info. The ACES seat is wood too unless I can work up the money to buy a composite one. If anyone has questions lemme know.

As long as your comparing same architecture (i.e Intel chips to Intel chips or Amd chips to Amd chips) larger cache amounts will always give an extra boost in performance reguardless of application. So an Intel extreme chip running at 3Ghz with 12MB cache verse a non extreme chip running with 8MB will have a slight performance advantage. The purpose of cache memory is L1, L2, or L3 is to feed the cpu with instructions that it needs to use often. L1 cache is the fastest memory, is usually clocked at the same frequency as the CPU and its always on the CPU die and usually only in quantities like 256KB. L2 cache is a bit slower than L1 cache but in greater quantities like 1 or 2MB. L3 cache is the slowest of the 3 and because its in large quantities like 8MB or 12MB, its often packaged out side of the CPU die itself. Not all CPUs have lvl3 cache. All of these memories are however much faster for the CPU to access than main memory. To receive 1 byte of information from main memory, the CPU often has to wait around many cycles for the information to reach the CPU because it has to go thru interconnects and memory controllers etc all which have associated latencies. If a piece of information from memory is requested from the CPU it goes into cache memory first. The reason for this is so that if the CPU needs that same piece of memory often, it can pull it from the cache instead of main memory. Thats generally how and why cache works. But you cant compare an Intel 3Ghz chip with 8MB cache and an AMD 3Ghz chip with 8MB cache and expect the same performance. Obviously this is because they are two different architectures.

I work for Intel at the fabs that make the i7 and i5. The i5 is designed to be a scaled down cheaper mainstream chip while the i7 is targeted more toward the enthusiast group. The i5 lacks triple channel memory support and has a smaller cache making the chip and its supporting hardware cheaper. They did add hyperthreading on the i5 as well as improving its internal overclocking logic when multiple cores are not being used which helps to make up for some of its downgraded performance in some applications. In many tests the i5 and the i7 have reasonably comparable performance. So the choice is yours. If you want a great value with good performance characteristics for the i5. If you want the fastest chips that have the most performance capability than the i7 should be your choice. You probably know that right now having triple channel memory vs double channel wont net you much improvement in many applications but its theoritcal performance ability is greater. Also note that the entire core i5/i7 line was designed to take the strengths of the core2 line of chips and beef up its performance and usability in the server market segment. I personally have a Core 2 Extreme 9770, according to some benchmarks, upgrading to the i5/i7 line would yield roughly 5% performance improvement. So for me it would not be worth the extra $1000 to upgrade the chip as well as replace my memory for ddr3 and mb for a 2-3fps boost at best. The new line of processors strength above Core 2 is in its multi-threading server capabilities. I had high hopes for Nehalem when it came out due to the onboard memory controller, but if you have a good Core 2 chip, the upgrade likely wont be worth the money besides bragging rights.

anyone have any idea if the A-10 uses fssb type stick or if moves like Ka-50?

I doubt itll be 2 years before the release. Graphics are sposed to be same which means rendering engine wont change much. They already have good aircraft and weapon models. The rest should just be making all the pices integrate properly into the sim and and create its proper flight modeling and weapons modelling. I think 9-months to 1yr is realistic. But what do i know

Well if you have any insight on making a composite device lemme know. I attached a very rough drawing of my design. I previously had several ICs in place of every PLD but 1 PLD could save a lot of wiring and headache and could be good for 8 inputs or outputs each and they only cost $1.50 each. Downside is i have to get a programmer and they run $250-$600+.

did you have those buttons and panels custom made or did u do them your self? I dont have any cnc/milling experience or tools

My PC side software will be taking the PIC input and outputting a keyboard combination. Im not sure how to program around the LUA files yet. I still gotta do research on that. The direct input is what i cant get to work. It will enumerate as a game device but since the programming is 2-way coms windows doesnt recognize buttons being pushed. Ive never dealt with the HID descriptor being longer than 128bytes. Since data (at least mine) is transmitted in sets of 3bytes, (descriptor, data, data) the rest would be waisted bandwidth as the rest of the 125bytes would be 0xFF, the only advantage Im aware of using more than that is for cable transmission since apparently a logic high is less suseptible to noise than logic low.

Hey where did you get the buttons and stuff? Did you custom make yourself or have them made professionally?

Hi. This is actually what Ive been attempting but with limited success. Right now Im writing the PC side of the software in C++. I have successfully got 2-way communications to work but not completely in the way I want. My pc sees my device as a single generic HID device which is fine except that buttons dont register in the game controllers. It seems that game controllers have to be 1-way device or windows wont comunicate with it as a game device. I thought if I could recompile the controller as a HID composite device (game controller and output device) this could be a work around but I havent been successful creating a composite device. Im thinking that maybe I could create something like most of you using 8bit PICs for each panel and then interfacing them all together into my PIC32 which could be a cross between what u guys do and what I was thinking of. If I can think up the design of course it would significantly cut down on the wiring and logic but still all interface to the PC as 1 device. Good thinking guys.