Waxer

Alright: thank you for getting back to me. And I am glad to know that you are working on a solution.

@Cobra847 Can anything be done between Heatblur and Mircosoft to get correct certificates for your software to prevent this "false positive"? To people (like me) that don't have degrees in software engineering it can be very worrying. Even though I know that I haven't done stupid stuff on my PC, it is still a concern.

There are also reports of high failure rates on Intel 13th, 14th generation CPUs. (I think). Not really been looking at it closely but aware that Level 1 techs / Wendell and Gamers Nexus have been discussing these problems for some time. If you have an Intel CPU that is working wait for Zen 5 X3D. Or wait even longer if you remain happy with the 10th generation Intel.

Xen 5 is launching in a couple of weeks.

EUR 2,500 exc tax with eye tracking. Track this: That is £2,532 inc. VAT exc. any shipping fees. It's not like this is a stable technology where advances are incremental, but every 2 years we seem to get major generational changes in VR. Yeah, I know people are going to say "this isn't for everyone" and I suppose you are right. And I suppose that you can make the same kind of arguments about cutting edge graphics cards like the RTX4090 and the RTX5090. But even so I don't thing GPU advances are anything like as big as those generation on generation changes in VR.

Guys, the points made echo pretty much the impressions that we have collectively already worked out for ourselves. And the main take away is that both devices are good and offer a big leap forwards. Personally I am still aiming to get the FFBeast once that becomes available to me. (I am currently on the waitlist for a prebuilt device rather than doing a kit or build your own version).

I've just read through this thread. The premise of the thread "Has anyone had experience of both FFBeast and FFRhino?" is a good one to ask. And indeed I would urge those involved in both projects to maybe loan samples of both devices to a well known and well respected DCS user (someone like RedKite) to review. Or me ! (I know that @Winger has experience of both devices and is currently selling kits of the Rhino to people. I did ask him about the comparison in a DM but he didn't give a direct answer and I didn't press him again for a comparison. But maybe he is willing to offer opinions?) Personally I am more interested in the FFBeast. The higher potential loadings of this device mean that if I only load the device at 15-25% of its rated output and use it for 4 hours without break in Summer I am far less likely to run into potentially dangerous thermal loading problems. (Translation from engineer speak: fire). The idea of running a device at 75-100% rated load in a SIM room with my CPU and GPU kicking out 1kW of heat into the room during summer and me being too engrossed in DCS VR to notice until I smell smoke is not one that I favour. Now in FFRhino's defense the device does have a thermal cut off and a hardware mounted "kill" switch as far as I know. Can anyone with the Rhino confirm this? I've asked the FFBeast developer this and currently the device does not have this, but they are considering adding it in the future. I think this would be smart considering the high currents these devices use. I understand DCS users asking direct and pointed questions when spending over $1k on a device such as this. We should ask questions. However I'd just suggest that people recognise how long it takes established peripheral companies like Thrustmaster or VKB to get off their a$$ and innovate: they move like reluctant snails. It is great that the community has engineers willing to share their innovations with the DCS community. And sure... it is a side gig for them from which they are making money, but the pricing offers big spending early adopters reasonable value considering what you are getting (not cheap, but decent value). Compare prices to Brunner to see what I mean. If you don't want to be an early adopter but you are interested, then I suggest you sit on the sidelines and wait for the feedback from those of us that do receive these devices. And if you are an early adopter you need to understand that you are buying into an expensive workshop built experimental project that might be subject to ongoing development.

For sale a Winwing Pheonix MIP, the VR version so without LCD screens. The MIP works perfectly. And there are no cosmetic marks. All original packaging, boxes, bolts, threads, washers, clamps, USB cables, stickers are included. (You can buy the LCD screens separately from Winwing at full RRP if you actually need them for Track IR users). Winwing's UK RRP £480.19. I am looking for £360.14 (75% RRP) for a unit that is essentially in "mint" condition. I will include Royal Mail Tracked 48 delivery to a UK address in this price for no additional charge. (Apologies to EU DCS pilots: I am unwilling to send packages into the EU due to previous packages being permanently "lost" in the customs process. I am very happy to sell to EU pilots that are visiting the UK and I can arrange a meeting or delivery to a hotel or place of business).

Depends on what you are upgrading from. Me: 2x32GB DDR4 DIMMs. Not noticing any memory performance issues. So I doubt if 4x32GB or 2x64GB would make any difference to DCS currently. But upgrading from 2x16GB or 2x8GB: yes worth upgrading from that.

I use an old Samsung 970 Evo 2TB. Long discontinued. But I'm not having any performance issues with that. So anything more modern is likely to be even better. The only caveat / advice I would give you is to go bigger than 2TB. My DCS folder is about 0.5TB with maps taking about 350GB. And that is without Afghanistan or Kola which I intend to add. I am running out of space what with all the other things my PC is used for. And I've got pretty much all the DCS maps which take up considerable space. And the other thing about SSDs is that they work more reliably when you don't overcrowd them with stuff.

That is a crazy amount of work to get done in only 5 days! Did you sleep? One design comment, the choice of rail driven pedals is likely to result in relatively high friction / stiction. High grade bearings would alleviate this but in my experience flight sim kit gets covered in dust and grime over months of use and I'd imagine the rails to get some of this. Hopefully constructive. This looks amazing. I am looking forwards to a FF stick and once I've experienced that I'll probably be looking for FF pedals too. I'd love a way to convert my Slaw pedals.

I was thinking the same thing. I am here after checking the store to see if it was still listed for sale and surprised to see that it is. I also sunk some cash into a Winwing F-15E throttle. And while the throttle is not useless going forwards, I would not have bought it if I had known that Razbam was going to throw toys out the DCS pram and let down all the customers that had pre-ordered its content.

Disappointed. But not entirely surprised. Thank you for the explanation. And I hope your colleagues are well on the way to recovery of their health issues. There is a huge amount of goodwill towards Heatblur given the high quality of previous modules. Meanwhile, will T-shirts be received by pre-order customers on time? I've seen some customers receive T-shirts, but despite ordering on day 1 of pre-order I still have not received anything. (Location UK).

An alternative would be to go for the VKB Gunfighter base and Ultimate grip which has move on stick axis and buttons and has modular / removable axis switches (5 way and X-Y+push). Check it out. Very nice quality also. I use VKB for stick and Winwing for Throttle. You can use both together without compatibility problems.

Some positive feedback to you Eagle86: I just completed this AV-8B campaign having flow about one mission each day. Overall I really enjoyed it. I'd recommend it to AV-8B noobs like me. I'd only just learned how to operate the Harrier and obviously the learning curve is quite high with all the VTOL aspects as well as plenty of systems and sensors to understand how to employ. The way the campaign developed was well judged with gradually building complexity and difficulty. So it helped get your systems fluency developed. I move from janky do something, pause and figure out what to do next into click, click, click, boom quite rapidly after doing (and failing first time) a few missions. Then you added in the difficulty of night missions which added another layer of challenge to the mix. So it was a really good build up for someone that just learned the Harrier to really develop the muscle memory to fly the Harrier with some degree of fluency. The most difficult task was mission 8 hitting the moving target with other things going on. (Don't want to spoil the nasty surprise for people yet to try, so being vague here). The storyline itself was decent. Overall the triggers worked for me and things were bug free. (One exception already reported on here already). Two minor criticisms: 1) The voice acting was a little cheesy. But not a big deal. And 2) the music was naff. But you allowed a feature to switch that off in settings so that was not a problem either. So it was worth the money and time to complete. Very enjoyable. Thank you.