talisman

I dont care what happens - me and my 50 are staying together - im never leaving her, Ever. Not even for a shiny A-10. Eddie - ill take those 19yo blonds off your hands if you want?

$600 US or 550euros Wow thats an awful lot of wonga for what is essentially just $10 of MDF wood and a $50 T.Flight Hotas. Including accessories, time, and bits of metal and hinges - that cant be more than $100 worth of materials. Just do it yourself and use the reat of the money for something with lights on it.

On the 104th server last night - i forgot the most important rule of all fast jets are called that for a reason, they are quick. Something we forget about when we are buzzing the hedges. I was locking up AA and i noticed a little bit of dirt in the top corner of my monitor. When i moved my head, it moved too. SH&T its a bogey. I key my mic and report its presence - all the while pulling into the hover to confuse his radar. I unkey the mic and look round to where he was, Gone! - Wohooo i foxed him. Then i look the other way (back to my targets) Black shape, Dead. In the time it took me to key up - and inform my teammates, he had over flown me - turned, found me on his optics and locked me. The rest, is a mangled mess. now for a 30 minutes flight back to the firing line :(

saitek GH20 for me. The sound quality is not bad - but the vibration is bloody awful. Uncomforable after a while.

Yes that was what i ment, you can not add more than one macro funtion like Alt-A, pause Alt-B, pause Alt-D etc. Have a look on the website - it specifically mentions the following. "Any switch, even toggle and rotary switches, can be connected to the matrix." I assume that means no encoder. just a switch. so: switch would be: .....1 ..8 ....2 7....C... 3 ..6 .....4 ......5 common in the middle and 8 different switch connections. A real waste of effort and resources concidering you could just use a 2 position center return switch, one for left and one for right. i think Bengo means: use a three position switch and only use the 2 outer contacts for your key presses and program them so that they work also when the toggle is released. so pressed = A and released = A. so: Left is programmed to press A when the switch in pushed over to the left. When you push the switch to the middle position, the left function will be released - this will result in it pressing A again. when you push to the right, A is pressed again. Then on the return to center the right is released and A is pressed again. This you get a three position switch but without needing to use 3 switch contacts on the matrix.

for switches like the one on the flares - just do what i did. Have a single push button. press it once - ot moves to the middle - press it again - moves to the right etc. Works for every rotary on the game. If you have Tir you dont need to bother about rotaries.

Once you get your head round the idea of a matrix, using boards like this is easy. X-keys boards are unique in the way that they work, scan codes are stored on the card itself. I dont know about macros however. For that i would speak to their support staff. I do know however, that rotary switches, and toggles will work just fine. Remember though - this is not like some of the other boards out there. this one works like a programmable keyboard where as others work like a directx joystick. But, even without the ability to use macros - a couple of these would suffice to recreate nearly all of the functions of a KA-50. If you where to use this card as a basis for the toggle and rotary switches you mist remember that there is no way for this card to tell the sim which setting it is pointing to. For example: counter measures = left - both - right Switch position = A -> A -> A lets say the keypress for this toggle is the latter A. So pressing A will move the switch from one side to the other - usually it works from left to right. Programming the card will result in the card pressing the latter A whenever the switch is moved from one position to the other. This means that you will have to set up your switches BEFORE you take off or they will be out of sync. I have to do this as well and although it can be a pain - its what real pilots do anyway. hope this helps.

navagate to blackshark/config/view/view.lua find -- Camera view angle limits {view angle min, view angle max}. CameraViewAngleLimits = {} CameraViewAngleLimits[PlaneIndex.iSu_27] = {20.0, 140.0} CameraViewAngleLimits[PlaneIndex.iSu_33] = {20.0, 120.0} CameraViewAngleLimits[PlaneIndex.iSu_25] = {20.0, 120.0} CameraViewAngleLimits[PlaneIndex.iSu_39] = {20.0, 120.0} CameraViewAngleLimits[PlaneIndex.iMiG_29] = {20.0, 120.0} CameraViewAngleLimits[PlaneIndex.iMiG_29K] = {20.0, 120.0} CameraViewAngleLimits[PlaneIndex.iA_10] = {20.0, 120.0} CameraViewAngleLimits[PlaneIndex.iF_15] = {20.0, 140.0} CameraViewAngleLimits[PlaneIndex.iKA_50] = {20.0, 170.0} change the last one to match mine. So far this has caused no crashes, BUT my mouse now seems to miss buttons, ie the buttons are 2 or 3 inches away from the mouse detect zone. Very odd. Just backup your old one first - my problem could be another mod.

Peter - if your planning to fly the BS you will need to be able to determine the center of your cyclic. I know its not realistic but if your not using FFB every time you trim you will lose your place and your flying will go all to hell. The same applies to pedels. Basically, when you trim, you will need to bring the cyclic and the padels to the center point you had before trimming (on both methods of trimming) and in order to do this you need to know where that point was. Using FFB the the new trimpoint is placed automatically, but it is not using a standard stick. Thus every time you re-trim, you will end up a little off and that can cause some serious problems. esp with rudders. Now on any other helicopter, you can get away without a center point because the friction dampers on the cyclic will allow you to move it and then hold it in that new position, thus no need to trim or just a little amount of trim required. However, since the autopilot and the hold functions get 90% of their information from the trim function on the KA-50 you will need to use the trim function. Every time you hit the trim button - the stab functions are updated with new heading - alt and bank information. If you dont trim this wont be updated and you will end up flighting the autopilot all the time. Just try using autohover when the heading stab wants to be behind you. I got around this by using detents, I have a very weak spring in my cyclic that allows me to feel the center point - but wont return it to that point by itself. The same goes for my rudders - they dont auto return either, but there is a very clear detent which you can feel as you pass the center position. Without these (as i found out) your flying will very quickly become very unstable. Sorry, Talisman

looking good - this is how mine started.

site is now dead! Or at least i cant access it. :(

lol .. quick re-think of that one. I have 2gb of ram - so that would be 15% of MY resources. With 8gb it would be barely noticable.

I think you will find that 5 years ago 32Mb graphics cards where being used as frisbes and book ends and had even had time to collect dust. 10 years ago they where in regular use. My first "expensive" PC was an AMD Tbird running 800mhz and had 512 ram. Yes this worked fine - but i wasnt playing Lockon FC2 on it was i? No i was playing janes ww2 and unreal tournament with the graphics settings on low. Computers have moved on - and the games we play on them have also moved on. To your point, Hard Disks have a seek time - this is usually MUCH longer than RAM, this seek time slows your game down. When you first get into any cockpit in FS2 or BS, there will be a marked reduction in frame rates. This is caused by the game storing textures into RAM. If it had to do this in a swap file, the game would be much much slower. I agree with the above posts, CPU speed makes a huge difference to framerates, but more RAM will also improove load times, general performance and the over all smoothness of the game. PS if anyone is running vista etc, turn off the silly sidebar, you wont miss it and you will free up at least 15% of your system resources.

Oohhh i see a Westland Lynx cyclic grip. tasty. I also have one or two of those. Im glad i could convince you to carry on. Its nice to see another builder, erm, building :) Did you ever get to fly mine?

quick - OT zakobi - a google search of the names in your sig shows up some pretty scary stuff. Thank you, very interesting. end - OT

aww thank you Leroy +1

Mine is a slightly different story. I have always been a rotorhead, i used to fly the microsoft sims but they where never quite up to standard. I found the Blackshark on youtube, it was the startup demo vid and i nearly fell out of my seat. The first thing I thought was "That is the sim i have been looking for". Over a year later, i have a couple of hundred buttons around me when i fly, and i get frustrated if i cant fly for a day. I gave up smoking so i could fly in the lounge without having to go outside to have a cigerette. My phone automatically tells me if there are new posts on this forum and i have taken my sim to 2 different shows to let people fly it. DCS didnt just make me a simmer - it made me convert a large room into a workshop and in no small way, changed my life. And im not the only one, there are quite a few guys on here who have spent nearly a thousand dollars just on the tools to make stuff for the Blackshark! Now THAT is the mark of a good Sim. ED be proud.

i shall be watching this for amswers as well.

also +1ing

That pit is just crying out for some thrustmaster MFDs. Those would really bring it to life. Oh and - Happy Birthday!!!!

I know what tools your using - the same as mine, thats why you get so much praise from me. Using a CNC is not pit building - its manufacturing a single item. The skill is in the design not the outcome. We build using our hands, drilling and sanding and shaping as we go. Like me i bet you look at your straight lines and think "Good god!, i did that!" I appreciate your work because you have gone to a lot of trouble to get it right. I tend to have a "Oh it will do" attitude and i always end up going back to do it right the second time. :)

erk...... Probably a little over my head :S

Ohh any ideas - what i would love to to is export the data and use different gauges - like the 737? If you get my meaning. Basically i would love to have the knowledge to create something like BSVP and change the gauges to make a more modern feel to the shark. Basically the same info but a little updated. I was anlo thinking about using touchpal to create a screen that would fit with the MFDs. If i had the knowhow i would like it to show the status of the autopilot stab lights, ekcran, and unnunciator panel. Even the stores remaining tab. I like the gauges but the huge impact of them on the frame rate makes them almost impossable to use unless im displaying them. Is there a tutorial or how to about making/editing touchpal profiles? Im not adverse to learning?

Just a quick update - Bought a set of Thrustmaster MFD displays - Pit now looks like this: Its not exactly "like the original" but who cares? They light up, they sit in my new panel quite nicely and look bloody good. This now increases my button count by 56 and are brilliant for the sim. What do you guys think?

That is brilliant - love it. So much care and attention. WELL DONE !! keep it up.