Safari Ken

Until your post convinced me to look again just now, I never noticed those little sensitivity notches on the Deadzones tab. Sorta inconspicuous, and no label to point out they're even there! I dialed X and Y down quite a bit, and I'm gonna go test it out right now. I bet it'll be just the ticket, thanks! :thumbup:

The 3D Pro is pretty darn sensitive for flying. It took some practice to only move it a little in each direction. Then it took much more practice to break that habit, once I got the X52, to deal with having to move the stick further from center to get the same results. In that way, actually, I still prefer the 3D Pro.

I have an Extreme 3D Pro which I used before a friend gave me his X52. The 3D Pro is definitely a nice stick, but I think for helicopters, those little throttles is just too darn sensitive (I've found it's pretty important with the choppers to be able to make TINY adjustments to the collective, which isn't easy with those on-joystick throttles). It's great for aircraft though; I used it with IL-2 quite successfully. If you can't afford a HOTAS like the X52, it's a nice alternative.

My two cents: This doesn't seem like the type of game in which you'd be looking for competitive multiplayer. Coop, sure, and it's a blast I'm certain (I'm still novice enough that I haven't found the guts to venture online yet). And about the lack of radar, who cares if you're "blindfolded", if everyone is equal in that regard? Frankly, I prefer no radar in some ways; some modern jet sims are like playing a video game INSIDE a video game! Based on the huge level of traffic in this forum, I'd say the game has a pretty darn strong fanbase. I really can't imagine a day when you could log in to a DCS-type sim and find more than a handful of public servers up. After all, IL-2 is wildly popular (for a flight sim), and has been for years, and is much simpler to fly than BS, but The Interwebs have certainly never been in danger of collapsing under the weight of all those IL-2 servers, if you know what I mean... :) I agree that more people might be apt to buy the A-10 edition of DCS when it arrives, due to it being a bit more mainstream of an aircraft, but many of those people will be immediately turned off by the sheer level of detail packed into DCS. And if they don't get turned off, they're probably the kind of people who have already purchased Black Shark. People who like this kind of sim saw Black Shark coming a mile away...

Zing! :P

I like to fly with the view zoomed all the way back, but the TrackIR doesn't let me lean forward enough to zoom in very far to a particular instrument, if I feel the need. The other night I re-mapped the throttle slider on my X52 to the zoom function, so now if I want to zoom way in to something, I can just do it with a flick of my thumb. It's turned out to be pretty darn handy. :thumbup:

I'd get one as soon as you can afford one comfortably. It's way cooler than you expect, probably. :) And it works with pretty much any modern flight sim, and most racing sims. Your situational awareness and immersion level will both skyrocket immediately, and it's so intuitive that there is really no learning curve at all. Check out this video, the first minute or so should be enough to sell you:

You're in luck! We were just talking about that: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=39129

No joke! I've been a simmer for quite awhile, but it wasn't until Black Shark that I finally got a TrackIR (should've done that years ago!), and my rudder pedals are enroute. I felt like I should buy these things, if for no other reason, out of sheer respect for the game. :notworthy:

Exactly! I've never been a fan of padlock view (it tends to disorient me), but I figured that it, and other such assists, like turning off the cockpit in IL-2, were designed to give a little help to people who aren't blessed with TrackIR (which might be the coolest thing I've ever bought for my computer). Without those assists, "situational awareness" becomes just a concept that you hear other people talk about. :P But now that I have TrackIR, I don't use any of those assists anymore. There's no need; now I can just revel in the immersion, and try to explain "situational awareness" to my friends who don't have it. :pilotfly:

Heh, truth be told, you and your screenshots have conspired to convince me to turn it back to High, and give it another shot. :hehe:

It's not that it's not playable with water on high, it's just a gigantic boost to performance to turn it down, more so than it is an eye candy boost to keep it maxed. I went from roughly 20fps to 35 or so (of course my fps varies wildly depending on what's in the frame, but those would be the low values), just by turning down that one setting, and I can't really tell a difference in the image quality. Is 20fps playable? I think so. But 35 is much nicer.

Well, that's the whole idea of V-Sync. A frame rate higher than your refresh rate does you no good (and indeed, makes things worse, what with the tearing), but the games don't know that. I can get frame rates higher than my refresh rate on pretty much every game nowadays. Without V-Sync I've seen Black Shark frame rates as high as 80 or 85, along with the requisite drop in image quality. I have Fraps running full-time on my keyboard LCD, so I can keep close tabs on the fps. That said, Black Shark is a demanding enough game that it's not like my frame rates are that high under normal circumstances, but for the times they are, it's well worth it to turn on V-Sync. Like I said, that tearing is just awful, and it's 10x worse now that I have a TrackIR.

I meant a video driver update may have fixed it, or even a Vista update, since my quick Google search indicates that the issue was a decision on Microsoft's end. No forced V-Sync seems like a large, widespread problem to just leave hanging indefinitely, especially if Nvidia insists on rubbing it in our faces, leaving the option there. But when I Googled "vista vertical sync issue", I only found a few forum posts about it, and they were all over a year old.

Good thinking about setting low settings, for testing. I set every single thing to the bare minimum, chose a test mission I had made which contains nothing except my chopper and one vehicle, and in-game I did everything I could to max out the fps (such as zooming way out in external view, which turned out to be the most effective thing to do). The highest fps I saw the whole time was a few times it hit 62 and 63 for a fraction of a second, if I did something like whip the mouse real fast in external view, but I mean just a split-second. Otherwise it basically flatlined at 60. I don't know which BS config file to check to see if the max fps is set to 60 (if there is such an option, isn't this entire thread a moot point?), but I know it's not set that way, because when I turn V-Sync off, my fps and tearing issues both go through the roof. Could it be that a fix was put in place since the last time you tried it? I've only had Black Shark for about 2 weeks. Or it could be that it's just my Karma finally catching up with me... if so, it's about time, Karma! :thumbsup:

No, you misunderstand. I DO see tearing in BS, and it's quite obvious. And every time I've seen it, I glance down and see my fps is over 60. It's just I hadn't gotten around to forcing V-Sync on in the control panel yet, cuz I tend to forget those things until I'm in-game. Now that it's on, I glance down sometimes to see my fps pinned at 60 for pretty long periods, and I get a warm feeling in my stomach that V-Sync is doing its thing. :-) I can't comment on 3DMark, as I don't have it and don't have much interest in benchmark software, but I'm telling you that for me, in Black Shark, V-Sync works.

The funny thing is, for awhile I had heard about textures tearing when your fps exceeds your monitor's refresh rate, but until a few months ago, I had no idea what it meant. I had a decidedly mid-range PC, so not a whole lot of chances for my fps to exceed the 100hz refresh rate, on that awful CRT I was (for some reason) still using as my main monitor. :D But now that I have a good PC and a swank new LCD, my frame rate goes way over 60 in almost any game. Now I understand what everyone was complaining about! Texture tearing is immensely distracting and ugly... so now I'm 110% on the V-Sync=On side of the fence...

Okay, so here's the skinny. I stand corrected; I'm running GeForce drivers 181.22, from January. Vista 64 w/ SP1, Core 2 Quad 9300, 4gb ram. Never any issues with forcing V-Sync from the Nvidia control panel in any game, including Black Shark. Now to update those pesky drivers!

I agree. I can play with Water on High, but it doesn't really look all that much better, certainly not worth the performance hit. Nothing else in the settings has a whole lot of effect for me, other than the resolution of cockpit displays. I play at 1680x1050, 4xAA, 16xAF. Actually, now that we're talking about it, the only time my frame rate drops noticeably during actual gameplay is when my Shkval is positioned right around the horizon... big hit there, though it's never not playable (at least by my standards). My biggest improvement in fps, not surprisingly, was when I discovered the wonderful Affinity tool that let my quad-core do its job... Gigantic jump in performance at that point! :thumbup:

Yeah, I would think the GTX260 or the rough equivalent in an ATI, like the 4870, should do fine. It doesn't have to be top-of-the-line, but something pretty beefy nonetheless. I have a single Nvidia 9800 GTX+ that does great with everything I throw at it, but Black Shark is actually one of the few games where I have to back off on some settings (water, in this case). I certainly wouldn't consider anything lower-end than an 8800GT, but my point is you don't have to go crazy with it.

I'll have to check my driver version when I get home from work, but it's the latest ones from their website, from a couple weeks ago I think. Yes, of course Vista SP1 (soon-to-be SP2). You couldn't pay me to use Vista previously. :-) Honestly this is the first I've ever heard of a problem with Vista and V-Sync. I use it all the time, and I can tell when it's on or not. I'll post again with my driver version later today.

No, I've got an eVGA 9800 GTX+. Running Vista 64, V-Sync works exactly as I've always expected. When it's off, I get tearing in BS when the frame rate exceeds the monitor's refresh rate, and with it turned on (in the NVidia control panel of course), the fps never exceeds the refresh rate, solving the tearing issue. So based on this one example anyway, I'd say that if there was a problem with Vista and NVidia drivers regarding V-Sync, it's been solved.

No problems here either way. I leave it on, though, because I got occasional tearing without it.

You sure it's you that's getting the automatic clearance? I've noticed that when I'm in a mission with wingmen, and I take off without asking the tower (which I usually do, cuz I'm lazy like that), my wingman gets clearance immediately upon my leaving the ground, even though he didn't ask for it. At first I thought the tower was talking to me, but you can tell by the number, your wingy is your number +1.

When I first built this computer and installed Vista, I goofed around with the ReadyBoost a little. I figured, why not? I've got the thumb drives laying around anyway. Unfortunately, I never detected any performance difference, good or bad. Your mileage may vary, however. This is a pretty nice rig I built for myself; on a more mid-range PC, maybe you'll notice some improvement. Especially if you're low on RAM, I guess, but RAM is so incredibly cheap lately, I say you're better off just upgrading that instead.