Cgjunk2

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

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.

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).

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?

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.

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!

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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!

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??? null edit: new pics for inspiration (and to replace broken links)

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!

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.

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.

Keep us updated on how it goes. Hopefully they will send one out quickly.

Have you been able to contact winwing directly through their chat support? Even though the process of troubleshooting itself can take a while, they usually have responded to me pretty quickly with the steps they want you take. It will probably be way faster than responses through the forum.

I forgot to update this thread, but customer support responded to me regarding the testing results. Apparently they forwarded the concerns to an engineer and I was told they would be sending me a new one! Based on when they told me, it hopefully will be sent out soon. I’ll update the thread once I get it and put a bit of time on it. Can’t wait to fire up the Su27 and start doing some cobras with differential thrust at the top lol. I was just starting to get good at throwing that airplane around when I got relegated to single axis by the failures. Thanks for the heads up! I’ve removed and installed those honeycomb adapters at least 6 different times in my troubleshooting efforts (they need to come off to open the base). They seem to have held up just fine (knock wood). I have seen the pics of the ones that have snapped. I don’t bang the throttle around, since I tend to have a fair bit of mechanical sympathy. I developed that sympathy when I was a kid by breaking things…on purpose just to see how things broke . All that has paid off as an adult, because it’s given me a good sense of material limits haha. I think these are pretty cool looking parts, it took me a while to determine they were even plastic. It’s very precicely manufactured, I’m not even sure how it’s made…the surface finish, and the fine webbing for strengthening really quite nice. Apparently though, like you’ve warned, they also appear to have some brittleness. It’s also worth being quite gentle with the final torquing of the mounting screws.

I don’t understand why they told you 14 days. They have a warranty. Did you remind them of when you bought it? They should have access to when you bought it, but it wouldn't hurt to forward your receipt e-mail as a reminder. Granted, the warranty is just their word of honor, since there is no legal recourse other than local Chines courts. But, I’m sure that they understand not keeping their word hurts them. Maybe I’m naive, but Winwing appears to me to be designed by people who are also enthusiasts, and would ultimately care enough to keep their word. https://www.winwing.cn/en/terms_of_service?language=en Of course, the other problem might be the intermittent nature of the problem you are experiencing. I could imagine the language barriers could preclude a more complete and gentle explanation, leading to a statement that seems dismissive (for efficiency’s sake, saying 14 days might end the discourse). So if you do have remaining warranty, I’d recommend just doing the troubleshooting steps as stated, and reporting your results. I think that’s just a gating step in their process to ensure the problems aren’t easily solveable. Once support has the info ruling out simple problems, I would imagine they would escalate to more complex possibilities. Good luck! Edit: it doesn’t mean your conclusion is wrong. I’ve had three axes fail on two different Orion2 throttle bases, and my suspicions were correct that it wasn’t cables or sensors. But until I could report back the results of their troubleshooting steps, it seems they would not move forward. Using the base without the stick…could you unplug it and still thread it back on? I cant imagine, unless you got really lucky, catching a disconnect event on video. Perhaps, just fly it until it happens with it disconnected, and keep a log to report every event when it does happen.

Stuff happens for sure. Even though there is the issues I've had, you'd be forgiven for thinking they are aircraft quality. I think the construction of the stick strikes a fine balance between manufacturability (nothing is perfectly polished, but good castings and bearing surfaces), the feeling/look of substantial heft, and a solid overal design. The throttle almost matches the physical feel, if not for the plastic case. That said, I wouldn't necessarily say a plastic case is bad, especially mounted. The actual mechanical aspect of the throttle is pretty cool to look at as well. The f18 grips are solid feeling as well, just like the stick. The first thing I thought was that these are great for serviceability if anything ever went wrong with switches or small boards... It just sucks that what's breaking on my throttles is the main motherboard itself, which the largest piece and hardest to replace if it I ever had to replace only that in the future. The die is cast, no use worrying about it. Hopefully my issues don't represent a larger problem in their manufacture of the Orion2 throttle base itself. Like I said, if you have to pony up for shipping once, you're still ahead of the game.

It's been mentioned by others that nothing is perfect, and these types of peripherals can have their issues, no matter the brand. Not only that, but the low volume nature of the products, and price competition, result in a DIY support model. As far as I understand, even Thrustmaster is like this with regard to support. I recognized that going in, and I generally don't mind taking things apart, but was hoping for better luck. It's the multiple failures, in a similar fashion that led to me wondering if this is a larger problem. And of course, the fact we are talking about the axes is a big deal because I bought them primarily because I wanted "throttle" two things at once...using axes . So assuming that Winwing offers to replace it if I pay for shipping my defective unit back, that means I would be around 240 dollars above my original 520 out the door price. That's mighty close to paying for a product with an importer (now I understand an importers role in this whole deal lol). As far as I understand, there's only one high-end peripheral importer in the US. I'm sure they are not perfect either, but accepting a 30 dollar return shipping fee is much more palatable lol. For competition's and customer's sake, I wish the US had more options in this area.

Hello all, Has anybody buying winwing Orion 2 throttles in recent months been having problems with the throttle axes failing? I bought my Orion 2 stick and throttle combo (F16 grip, F/18 throttle) towards the end of November 2022. I had been using my original MS Sidewinder stick for long enough (probably since the late 1990s lol), so I decided to jump in to winwing for my first "real" hotas. . Unfortunately, my first throttle lasted about a month before the left axis failed. The Simapp pro software showed no movement of the axis. Through their chat support, I took it it apart and did their prescribed diagnostic tests (calibrating, swapping cables, and swapping positions of cable inputs at the motherboard). All tests showed the signal was not being read at the motherboard. Winwing said they would send me a new throttle base, after I paid to return ship the old one. I decided to sleep on it because I had not yet decided if I was going to spend 120 dollars to ship mine back, or just call this a "learned lesson" about buying direct without the benefits of an importer. I continued to use the one remaining axis, but after a few more hours of use, the left throttle axis failed in a similar fashion. So I sent it back. I received my new replacement base pretty quickly, but after only a few days, I had an essentially identical failure of the right throttle axis. Dead as a door nail, as read on Simapp pro. I knew the drill, go to chat support again....But after the long hours of going through the chat support process and diagnostic work, I was just tired, and didnt have the time to go through the disassembly and picture/video posting routine. I had one working throttle axis, so maybe I'm destined to only have one throttle axis lol. Well, today, I finally had some time and went through their trouble shooting document, which again consisted of swapping cables from left to right, testing, and crossing inputs at the motherboard. Just like the first time, the both cables show the ability to pass a signal from the hall sensors to the mother board as long as it is connected to the left motherboard socket. But the socket at the motherboard for the right axis is not able to pass any signal to simapp pro. Being that this is my third axis to fail in two units, I've got to wonder if there has been a manufacturing problems that has gotten through. As for me, I just now let winwing know the results, but honestly, I can't spend another $120 dollars on shipping (I'm assuming their response will be similar to the first time...they send out a new one, and I pay to send mine back) I had looked at Virpil, but the prices were eyewatering. Before buying winwing, I figured it was gamble, but where odds were probably in my favor, even if I had to ship things back once. It doesnt look like it payed off for me, but it's not a total loss. At least I have one functioning throttle axis (still) and I really like the Orion2 joystick, which is functioning well and feels great. I figured I would post this because it helps others, who like me, were trying to weigh the odds of going Winwing, vs other manufacturers.

One of the main things I would look forward to is the flight engineer slot. That's the guy that gets things rolling and warmed up while the pilot and copilot talk business. And as mentioned, who is going in the back to check on the slingload if it isn't the flight engineer. Honestly, the more the merrier. We should have at least one slot for each bench seat. Party bus!

Broken wings also do not show up to other players on multiplayer....so your heroic return to base with wing stubs go totally unnoticed