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Cgjunk2

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Everything posted by Cgjunk2

  1. Yikes, they really like to hold on to their springs lol. I’m surprised they didn’t send a matching set since the other one is already on death's door. I suppose they know it will mean more cam kit sales. My local hardware store had a variety of springs that were the same diameter and un-extended length. I actually found some slightly heavier springs than winwings heaviest option in their cam kit. It worked out perfectly for my stick extension. Nearly three dollars each, so not necessarily cheap, but cheaper than a whole cam kit! edit: it’s surprising you had problems buying extra springs from them, when others in this thread have been able to.
  2. It was the two allen screws that secure the telescoping portion of the extension. Good call!! It took me a while to pin down the problem. I took the cams off to get real good look, and decided to torque down the main axis bearing bolts thinking maybe it was the culprit. (As an aside, I took a good look at my grip twising issue while I was there, and happened to notice I was wrong with suspecting that it was turning internally. It was actually the screw collar twisting around the lower portion attached to the gimbal.) Anyway, I thought it had to be the main bearings since I was able to get a quarter turn on a couple of them, so i was disappointed when it felt way worse after reassembly! I previously hadn’t been able to replicate the clunk without being hard mounted to my sim chair, so the fact it was now clunking horribly on the workbench made it much easier to finally identify the problem. I didn’t see any obvious movement/shifting between the two extension tubes, but it was the best guess. When I got the allen key on them, it was obvious they weren’t tight enough. I cinched them down tight, and the clunk was immediately gone. Just spent a couple hours flying with the stick hard mounted, and all was smooth and quiet! Thank’s for the help everyone!!!
  3. Hello all, I've had an Orion2 joystick for about a year and half. Works great, and has been smooth and accurate. I installed the wingwing extension on it recently, and a few days later I started experiencing a "clunking" feeling (that can also be heard) that happens when the stick crosses over the center point of the axis travel. The clunks is more prominent when I move the stick quickly across center, and sometimes even feels like something is shifting slightly. The accuracy of the signal is normal and not affected during the clunk. By accident, I noticed that the clunking went away if I tightened screw ring of the extension down tighter. But lately it's been doing it more frequently and I can't tighten it down any harder. Sometimes if I loosen and re-tighten the extension it will go away for a while, but the clunking comes back. I don't think it feels or sounds like the springs settling/shifting as they get stretched and released. Possibly it could be the cams shifting over their mounting studs, but I don't see anything to suggest excessive wear on that pivot point (even though there has always been slop between the cam and the mounting stud). I'm suspecting it might have something to do with the following. When I first bought it and mounted the included F-16 grip, I noticed that I could sometimes turn the the grip on accident. It didn't turn at the junction between the grip and the joystick, but rather the portion of the joystick that attaches to the gimbal structure was turning. I don't know if that can be tightened down (there is a collar with flats that might be threaded that I might try to tighten). Not sure if that could have anything to do with this. Is anyone else experiencing this clunk with the extension? Does anybody else have any ideas what could be leading to the clunking?
  4. I’ve spent my last few MP sessions on an aerobatics server chasing around another F-18 buddy doing everything possible to shake me off, in the most stylish, edge of the envelope manner possible lol. Basically, dogfighting someone willing to be chased within the confines of an aerobatic box. Let me tell you, it’s some of the most fun you can have in VR. It was enough to actually raise my heart rate, which surprised me. But I swear, I’m not that out of shape! It was because it was so fun, immersive, and engaging! Although, I’ll admit my neck still hurts after two nights of this lol. Someone here previously mentioned VR quality and performance in the Hornet. I agree, it’s among the best of the modules in this regard. Even on my meager 2070 driving an HP G2, it’s an awesome and largely smooth experience on the MP aerobatics server I frequent. I especially love that the pilot model will actually cast shadows on the instrument panel, and that it moves lock step with my actual head position. I can actually block glare just by moving my head! That adds a huge amount to the immersion! From a flight dynamics and feel perspective, it’s an all around great job ED! Compliments to the chef! Your work is appreciated!!!
  5. I’m absolutely loving the feel of the new FM during aerobatic flight. And I’m also loving listening to the various podcasts interviewing different Hornet pilots and hearing how their experiences seem to match up so well with what I’ve been experiencing flying it. Including all the different ways it can catch you out and kill you. I was listening to an interview with a Canadian RAF pilot (“Bones”) and he mentioned the trim going inactive at certain AOA regimes. Perhaps that is partly to blame with some of the trim behavior being observed on the newest update? That said, trim has tried to kill me on the last FM as well in various situations. Bones himself seemed to think that some of the flight law was not universally well understood by all their pilots, leading to various accidents, so it’s not surprising if some if a flight sim pilot is surprised by what is or isn’t happening. I’ve only had one instance of being caught completely by surprise, where I ran out of pitch authority just as I was about to land on the carrier. It felt completely normal in the groove, and the vector was mostly stabilized in the bracket. In the last few seconds, I wanted to raise the nose slightly to adjust my descent. I thought I had enough speed to effect a small pitch up, but I got no response even as a quickly increased to Full aft stick. I dropped flat onto the deck, almost as if I was in a full aerodynamic stall. That was interesting! I have no idea if that’s a bug like the aileron input bug mentioned, or if that behavior was true to life. It wouldn’t surprise me if it’s a realistic response to a mistake i may have made. Truth be told, I’ve been having way too much fun throwing it around to devote time to do “serious” flight testing lol. I’m sure the experts here and at ED will identify and sort out any buggy aspects with a little time but in the meantime, I’m having a blast. The Hornet seems to have a more “real” feeling to how it moves in the air that makes it very satisfying to fly.
  6. I’m getting a bit confused at all the information I’m reading online regarding windows and WMR deprecation, and I’m unclear what the situation is for a fresh installation of Win 11 Home. Let’s suppose I were to buy a pre-built computer right now with the latest win11 home OS, would WMR come preinstalled? If not, is it currently possible to install WMR on the current version of win11? If I can get WMR to work with a newly installed version of Win11, then I’m planning to shut off updates to Win11 so I can keep using my G2 until better options arrive on the market. But if Microsoft wont allow wmr to be installed on new win11 installations, then I’m screwed. I really don’t want to spend for a new PC and a new (more expensive and less ideal) VR headset at the same time.
  7. Before I ordered my stick extension, I would occasionally have the issue of the grip twisting. It wasn't twisting at the threads, but rather the portion of the stick that goes into the gimbal (the same part that holds the screw ring) I could reduce the chances of twisting if I really tightened the grip with the screw ring, to the point I could no longer land the grub screw on the flat area. I installed my stick extension tightly enough, so I thought. But my spastic reaction during a near-miss in form flight loosened it slightly lol. In order to retighten it, I had get a good body position to improve my grip on the screw ring, grabbed the middle screw wring for counterforce, concentrated, stuck my tongue out a little, and tightened. I felt I got a good solid torque on it this time and it's been stable for a while. If it loosens again, I might dump the grub screw (it's just chewing up threads if it keeps slipping) and use the teflon tape idea. Hopefully, the teflon tape would still allow for enough torque to be applied to sufficiently pre-tension the stick nub coming out of the gimbal. That's my theory anyways! EDIT: I forgot to add this. I was playing around with different springs after using the stick extension for a while, and on my second try, I developed a hard center (I use soft center cams) on my aileron axis. It could hear/feel a "thunk" whenever I crossed center when the pitch axis was also centered. It felt horrible and thought it was actually wearing out. I looked around and thought it might have something do with the bearing that rides on the cams and that it somehow lost tension on the cams. I imagined maybe the bearings were on some sort eccentric mount, so I tried adjusting the bearing mount screwto no avail (because there was, in fact, no eccentric adjustment like I was hoping). Then my stick extension loosened up on a flight (that near miss I mentioned above). By total and complete chance, when I properly tightened the stick extension to the stick nub on the gimbal, my hard center completely went away, and it returned to normal quiet movement across the center.
  8. This is my understanding as well. From a purely aerodynamic perspective (meaning no artificial FCS intervention), my understanding is that as dihedral increases, a plane will show increasing tendency to roll back to level when roll input is nulled. So a basic trainer or ultralight plane with high angles of dihedral (wing tips higher than wing roots), will naturally want to return to level when rolling input pressure is relieved. Conversely, when a wing is built with anhedral (wingtips lower than wing roots) it’s the opposite…it will have less tendency to stay where you put it. It will also require less aileron input to roll, as a side benefit, if that’s what you are looking for in the basic aerodynamic traits of the design. First time I flew the F1, I thought it was odd that it wanted to roll level, especially since it has an anhedral wing. I figured maybe the FCS commanded that as an auto-level type thing. But that didnt make sense to me because requiring constant roll input pressure to hold a bank angle means it has to drag a wing spoiler out in the breeze the whole time it’s banked in a turn, which will induce a bunch of drag, and just generally mess up how it cuts through a turn. Anyone that has built paper airplanes, you had to put dihedral into the wings to make it stay level. But if you folded the wing tips lower than the root, it tended to fall off in either direction very easily, leading to a very short flight. Edit: a quick perusal of wiki regarding dihedral effect and roll stability revealed the fact that high mounted wings by themselves produce lots of dihedral effect due to pendulum effect, and anhedral is added to tone down the self leveling to more neutral levels. It also revealed that the self-leveling tendency of dihedral angle result as an effect from sideslip. In other words, even a plane with a high dihedral angle wing, if flown coordinated, will not self level. So if the Mirage F1 FCS keeps the plane coordinated in bank, it would have even less reason to show self-leveling effects on the roll axis
  9. @Art-J Did you notice a reduction in blade flap frequency by reducing the rotor rpm trim? If the sound is linked to the rpm (but correlated incorrectly) then hopefully it would be an easy bug fix. Awesome sleuthing by the way! I had a blast on a relaxing cross country flight today, and absolutely had a blast getting the main and tail rotors to bark. Love it. It’s worth the effort to get it perfectly right (even though my ear didn’t pick up on much difference).
  10. I still think sounds were ok before, but the new sound interpretation is artfully done. It’s a little less “clinical” now, in a good way. The sounds with the windows open as you start up really lets you know those turbines are sucking air a few feet from your head. You need to close the windows it’s so loud! That’s awesome! The balance of the turbine/transmission sounds are believable. ETL transitions, also different, but seems to match up with videos I’ve seen (although the old sounds could be heard in vids as well). Regarding the blade-slap sound when blade pitch is flattened, I love it. I’ve heard these sounds in some cockpit vids, but they don’t seem to come up often. Maybe because most pilots would rather not unload the disc that much during most flights? But I think it adds so much to the sound experience of this great module. I’m not sure if ED is done tweaking the sounds yet, but I’m enjoying it now that it’s more fleshed out. I judged the first iteration harshly not knowing it was not complete. And while the new sounds are definitely different (and in my opinion did not need changing), they are still believable, and they add to immersion with the raw/loud character it has now. Oh, I almost forgot, but the new tail rotor sounds on external view are spectacular as well! edit: reference 1:46 in vid below for the blade-slap sounds. To my ear, it seems ED have captured the character of the sound. In this video, it can be heard around the 1:00 minute 4:00 minute and 6 minute marks And here starting at 11:00 min mark. Actually, this video also capture the tailrotor sound shortly after the 11 minute mark: The taiorotor sound also seems to be coming through clearly shortly after they land
  11. I noticed too. The blade-slap sound is nice when the rotor is loaded in turns or during quick stops. It sounds dirty and raw, in a nice way lol.
  12. Maybe I’m misinterpreting what ED is trying to do here. Are the dots the beginning of improvements to rendering planes at distance? Or are “improved spotting dots” an overlay dot to improve visibility of what the game renders? I thought the intention was for it to be an overlay, like how the how the dots on the labels work (the smallest label option).
  13. I meant, are people having trouble seeing airplanes at reasonable distance without the dot. If they have a fov that wider than what a person naturaly sees, wouldn’t that result in objects, especially other airplanes, appear much smaller than it would in reality?
  14. I agree there should be no or very little information beyond 10 miles. Then why is there a huge (or any-sized) dot over planes and objects that are beyond visual range? by 5 miles there should be some additional useful, information transmitted to the eye, so why is there a big dot obscuring all or most of that information? Also, the fact the blob is meant to improve spotting, means it will improve the ability to maintain the target in sight with just a glance. In real life, if you lose sight, you have to start looking all over again, and you may not ever see it again if it stays at that distance. Are the people having trouble with flat screens because of field of view issues? Now I recall, When I played flat screen, I made sure my FOV was set in a way that made my screen act as if it were a window into the cockpit, trying to simulate one to one object size in the cockpit as much as the screen would allow, and understood that not having track ir meant I needed to use arrows to look around. Then I got track IR to get around that problem. I got a bigger monitor when I realized the little airplanes in the distance were smaller because the screen was small. But i never thought that it was a “DCS problem” that I couldnt see what others with bigger screen sizes could see. I never thought it was a DCS problem that I couldnt easily see most of the cockpit either.
  15. The VR experience, nascent or not, has been able to produce the most enjoyable and believable visual experience for me in my 30 plus years of simming. Now the default will be to cover up realistic visual representations, with black dot that reduces the amount of information transmitted to the eye. You bet that’s going to get the VR crowd riled up lol. I’m worried about where this is going. In a year or two, will DCS be able to justify modeling anything behind the dot if the majority of discord commenters can’t see anything without dots? I realize statistics on customers are important for businesses, but it’s not as simple as counting up the number of comments in forums or discord. I want them to stay the course with the mission of their product…one that inspires players to spend time, effort, and money (hotas, vr, etc) because they see the tremendous depth of the product, and want to keep experiencing more of it! Black dot overlays are perfectly fine to have, but making them default will set an expectation which will affect and bleed over into development of the sim. People want easy instead of realistic on a realistic flight sim? Say it ain’t so!
  16. I thought what was being discussed was lowering the resolution below native as a cheat. Regardless, I think most players that care about recreating the experience of flying and “how” you see in the air do not feel sad if it’s harder to spot after upgrading resolution. In fact, it was the opposite for me. When I got my G2, I was excited to finally be able to see other planes in the air like I did in real life. Working for that visual contact is fun in VR without the spotting dots. I assumed most of the player base would want to avoid anything that creates an impression of artificiality, even if it makes something easier to do. That’s why I never expected that something like the dots would be such a hot topic. Again, I’m not opposed at all to developing good accessibility options to allow the game to be fun for anyone (it’s a sim! Lol). But I only play MP, which obviously means playing with others, and having some semblance of shared reality. By making this the default, the “it’s a sim, not a game” crowd now has to wonder if their favorite servers will eventually relegate them to be the only ones that have to fight for visual contact. After some time, there will be less servers available to the “realism” crowd just due to the fact that spotting dots have been “deemed” to be so necessary that they should be defaulted to on. It’s for DCS to decide what to do here, I just never expected default spotting dots to be a debate in a game that has been so focused on modeling realism for so long.
  17. If somebody wants to run at low resolutions just to have an unfair advantage, let them! How many people actually do that? The ones that do will eventually get bored and move on to War Thunder or space in invaders, or watching somebody fly on twitch. Maybe I’m overthinking this, but I think the biggest problem here is that the goal of making spotting fair/balanced across systems, displays, or player visual acuity is actually the goal! Why is this a goal? This is not a goal consistent with the reality of what DCS simulates! Making this type change to the default settings of the game marks a fundamental change in philosophy regarding what DCS intends to simulate, and that’s what bothers me at the end of the day. Having a core philosophy here is important. If the goal is “balance” across all hardware, skill, and, visual acuity levels, it makes DCS spend their time and talent on how to make the dots a consistent experience for everyone. I’d rather they spend their time figuring out schemes for how to best visually simulate what the eye sees in real life, which given the complexities of human perception, is challenging enough. That said, on my G2 headset, it already looked plenty good before forced dots as game default. If balanced experience for all is the goal, then DCS should logically apply it to anything in the game that benefits from better hardware, peripherals, or skills. I have VR, and following a nearby airplane across my field of view is naturally easier than flat screen. Should we have the default setting be padlock nearest target so everyone has a balanced experience? After decades of simming on an old sidewinder stick with twist axis and throttle slider, I finally bought a good hotas and rudders recently that make flying formation and aerobatics way easier. Should the default for warbirds be auto rudder to make sure everyone has a balanced experience even if flying on a mouse or xbox controller? Or some sort of external autothrottle layer to make station keeping in formation more balanced across a range of peripherals? Someone might argue that this shouldn’t matter because you can turn the default to “hard”. I would counter with the following: How could DCS continue to justify the the hard work of developing high fidelity products and techniques to simulate reality, if their philosophy has shifted to making consistent experiences for all players? Well, they can’t… because doing so would literally be counterproductive!
  18. I was very happy to see this, unfortunately turning the dots off had no effect. I can still see airplanes and ground units as big black dots all over the place. I guess I don’t understand why such a prominent visual aid is “on” by default. This aid makes it impossible to lose sight of an aircraft that should be extremely difficult to see. If hardware or a person’s vision makes the sim unenjoyable, then having this as an accessibility options is great. But I enjoy looking for and trying to maintain sight of others as a core part of this whole flight simming thing, even as my eyes age. Air combat simulation , especially within normal visual range, should primarily be about training the eye to acquire and maintain sight. If feels odd that it’s no longer part of the DCS experience by default. Just because something is within visual range does not mean it will be easy to see, and that you can’t easily lose sight of it when you do. Right now, the default setting makes losing sight impossible, or at least turns it into a trivial problem.
  19. I’m having the same problem. I selected off under “improved spotting dot” and I still have the large black dots all over the place. I’m on a G2 headset if that matters.
  20. The apu, turbine, and transmission sounds seem to have been stripped of mid and high frequencies as heard inside the cockpit. The apu is nearly inaudible, and the turbine sounds are very quiet. I can hear the transmission loudly, but the character has changed into something else without the full spectrum of frequencies. The “hear like in helmet” option was verified to be off.
  21. I was about to put in a bug report regarding the sounds. This is definitely not an improvement. It essentially sounds like there was a high pass filter put over the sounds. So much so, I had to double check that the “hear like in helmet” option wasn’t flipped on. Unfortunately that wasn't the case. The APU sound sounds as if all high and mid frequencies were completely removed, similarly on the two turbines and transmission sounds. The sticky thread regarding the Mi8 module’s sound design explains the length ED went through to capture the sounds of this helicopter as authentically as possible. It was already reference level material, and needed no improvements as it was. I’m hoping it gets returned to normal quickly!
  22. I'd like to add to the wish list a version of the Mi8 with the dolphin nose (or whatever it's called) and the ramp door at the rear. It seems like these have been customer options for both domestic Mi8 and export Mi17s, and not necessarily tied to any particular variant of Mi8. So hopefully it could be a visual update to the model, not necessarily requiring any other changes to the variant that we have. Internal cockpit differences might be minimal. Instrument panels could remain as is, as real life mi8s with the nose seem to have simple top cover to span the gap between the two instrument pods. Other than that, blanking out the lower greenhouse windows or covering them with a panel might be all that's needed! I'd even buy a extra mi8 if this came to reality I'd be willing to bet this could give sales a second life as well. So, how about it DCS??? Pretty please???
  23. Super excited that multicrew finally came out! The other day a group of 4 of us were just cruising around, enjoying the view, flipping switches, trading on pilot flying, walking around the rear cargo cabin in VR etc. But I noticed that in VR, whenever I went in the back gunner seat, my position was in the middle of the cabin (next to where the slingload hatch would be). Whereas my buddies on flat screen would get a position next to the front side door. Is this a bug worth reporting, or is it some sort of VR limitation? I guess I don't mind walking over to the side the door if need be lol. Just need to clear the room so I dont fall on my face haha!
  24. Just posting to update that my Wingwing throttle replacement arrived a few days ago. I was told it took a while because some changes were made to it, as they determined it needed some more electrostatic resistance. Which is interesting, because in the middle of winter, when the air was driest, I do remember getting a couple of electro-static shocks from the throttle as I sat down in my simchair. I hope these changes take care of whatever they thought the problem was. It's apparent they've at least revised the pivots on the throttle levers. Instead of a solid cast metal box, the metal box is now open to the sides, where the the pivot area is. In the open area now appears to reside a new plastic pivot system with plastic friction adjuster clamp. My guess is that this was done specifically for isolation of any external static electricity. The cables that attach to the throttle handles also appear to be part of the revision, as the cable end is now plastic right below the metal screw collar. The cable end has subtle winwing branding on it too. It looks very nice. And the encoder/axis levers on the right side now feel extremely smooth and light to move, with a softer middle detent. I preferred the feel of the previous levers with the audible center click, but no big deal. The feel of the throttles as they pivot feels absolutely sublime at the current time. And I say that having been completely satisfied as the feel of my previous unit. They now feel as if they are hydraulicly damped, probably nyogelled I imagine. The friction adjustment feels a little harder to turn, but it still allows for finer changes to friction. I've used it the last three evenings, and it is an honest pleasure to move those levers around. Oh, and the revisions included different looking knobs, including the wing-fold knob. At first I thought they were kinda cheap looking, but then I realized they are exact replicas of the knobs in the F18 cockpit lol. Nicely done Wingwing. Hoping for the best regarding the longevity of this unit.
  25. I'm not sure what voltage they use. All the troubleshooting and testing I did was using Winwings Simmap pro software. I determined the cables and the hall sensors were good in my case, because both sensors/cables were being read by the simapp pro software when they were plugged into one of the motherboard sockets, but not when I swapped them to the other socket.
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