glottis

I agree that it's a bit fiddly, but if you hold down trim once you reach your desired heading (not during the whole manoeuvre!), you can quickly release/recenter your rudder controls, and then release trim. This method stops the heading hold from acting whilst you recenter your controls, and results in a smooth turn without 'doubling back'. Also, as the trim is not saved until the button is released, this method only updates the heading adjustment, and not your control trim. edit: To clarify - what I do for yawing right for e.g. is: 1. Rudder To Right until correct baring is reached. 2. Hold trim. 3. Recenter my rudder control (release pedals or stick twist). 4. Release trim. Steps 2 - 4 should be completed relatively quickly.

I'll add a vote for overclocking, especially as you have a Core 2 Duo - many models overclock up to 40% with stock cooling.

Use ALT-C to switch between the mouse looking around, and the mouse selecting things (with crosshair). Sometimes the game will get into a state where you get the crosshair _and_ the mouselook together. This is actually a bug according to the developers. There are lots of other threads about this issue if you want more details :)

I have the X52 Pro and TrackIR 4 too - it's all good once you remove the offending file (mentioned above and in most other threads in the forum ;)). However, I bind pretty much everything in the game - I don't use shift-states or modes in Black Shark. I found that there are enough unshifted buttons to bind everything that's on the real KA-50 HOTAS, and with TrackIR/mouse you can quickly and easily flick everything else in the virtual cockpit. If you're happy to do that, you should be fine :)

I agree Poko - although the mods do a great job here I think sometimes they can be a bit overzealous and confusing with the off-topic corrections...

Doing one or the other (toggle with alt-c) is the default behaviour. The fact that sometimes you can do both is actually a bug (ED said so a while back) - that's why the cursor is often in a weird place when it happens. Some solutions are: a) Bind a mouse button - one of the side ones maybe - to toggle between modes. b) Press ESC twice to get into the bug state where you can do both - this might be fixed and is far from ideal! c) Use a hat or (much better) TrackIR to look around, and then the mouse to click stuff. TrackIR and mouse combo makes the startup sequence much easier :)

I think it is a frame-rate issue, yeah. Before doing the affinity fiddle and turning water down etc, my frame rate was much lower. Once I'd gotten it up to 30-40fps, the head tracking was much smoother-feeling.

There have been a lot of threads/posts about this already, but in summary: Yes, it's great, it works perfectly in Black Shark. I'd recommend TrackIR 4 Pro with TrackClip Pro - the second bit clips to your headphones, and improves the usability and (supposedly) the detection in certain light conditions. Install is a piece of cake - just the usual insert disk/press next a few times deal. You then do an automatic online update to get the latest game settings (including those for Black Shark). There's plenty of options to customize, but I just left the defaults for everything, except that I selected the box for the TrackClip Pro addon. Learning curve is about 5 minutes - before I bought it I was dubious about how real it would feel because of the amplification. I thought it might be weird to move just a few degrees in real life to look behind you in cockpit. However, once you use it everything becomes second nature - it's really intuitive. I'd buy it again if I had to, although I'd hide the receipt better before telling my housemates I couldn't afford to buy any food this month.

If you mean windows, then no, I don't think so [edit: you have to reactivate, but it doesn't use an activation]. As for Black Shark, I'm not sure I'm afraid - depends on how StarForce takes the machine's unique ID. Remember to deactivate before reinstalling and it should be fine.

You'll see the best improvement if you reinstall windows onto the SSD drive, then reinstall Black Shark there too :)

If the message itself is really bothering you that much, you can change/remove it. Look in Scripts\X52Pro\X52Pro.lua in your Black Shark folder, if memory serves.

Does that mean we can use lua to code the X52 LEDs and MFD again?

That's a bloody fantastic idea. I'm fairly sure it can't be done by anyone other than ED though. Therefore, I recommend adding it to the wish-list thread.

That's not OFP's own website, it's a fan site.

Only chumps land at airports anyway, a real KA-50 pilot would always land on a moving train.

I'm not sure that's a great way to do things... the dampening part of the autopilot is so essential in the KA-50 that flying without any autopilot at all is really an advanced, emergency-only skill. I can't really understand advising anyone to start with this.

I imagine that's it actually ZaltysZ - the first few times I tried I was a bit of a n00b and kept going too fast or slow. Still, it's a bit weird that he just stops talking - I'm sure I wasn't out of radio range, so he could at least say "screw you I'm off home" or something so you know that you've failed the mission...

Yeah that mission is a bit dodgy - even if you follow all the instructions and stay on the route your instructor will sometimes just stop talking - maybe one of the triggers is a bit small or something?

Good summary article - I've always been really interested in Jeff Orkin's work with the Goal-Oriented planners in FEAR and No One Lives Forever 2. I'm just getting stuck into Empire:Total War where they've apparently used a similar system this time around, so I'll have to see if it's any good.

I wouldn't be so sure about your graphics card being the weak point - have you tried setting CPU affinity (if in Vista), and putting water on medium (often increases frame rate a lot - around 15fps for me)? If not do that before splashing out. I have an old 8800 GTX - still a fairly respectable card, but nothing special by today's standards, and I'm definitely CPU-bound. I can set whatever resolution and AA I like and it runs at the same 25-40fps. As for tearing - if you mean jaggies, then yes a better graphics card will let you increase the AA. If you actually mean tearing - where the screen looks split along a horizontal line that moves around, then this can often be fixed by turning on VSync (force it on in the graphics driver control panel).

Also, what controller are you using? A Saitek by any chance?

I want to know this too!! :music_whistling:

When in an auto-hover (and therefore with Altitude Hold ON), pressing and holding descent button makes you descend :) You just go down whilst it's held. You need to be careful using it to land, as the autopilot doesn't function properly at a certain height (4m maybe?) off of the ground.

He means it's on the cyclic stick in the real KA-50. In the game, the cyclic and collective controls aren't clickable, as it's assumed you bind them to your real stick. [Also it might be hard/not supported to have clickable stuff on moving parts :P]

That's a strange one - I use TrackIR4 and the affinity tool and I don't have that problem... (sorry I realise that's not helpful).