GregP

Awesome! Looking forward to trying it out. Thanks Snacko!

I've got my Cougar programmed to do a 'zoom HUD' view (hold down KP0 and then KP5) when I press one of its buttons. I've noticed, though, that the laser designator pipper sometimes refuses to stay on the HUD, sometimes sinking off the bottom of it, no matter how much I try to slew it upward. It occurred to me to try a different 'zoom HUD' method by just zooming in (KP*) and slightly panning my view up to the HUD -- and when I do this, the pipper always stays on the HUD. I took some comparison screenshots of what can be seen through the HUD using both methods, and clearly, the line of sight is different: KP0/KP5 keeps the nose instrumentation booms out of view, while KP*/pan up brings them in to view. This leads me to believe that the latter provides a higher angle LOS relative to the centerline (i.e. looking more downward than the former method) and probably a bit higher in position, too; which, based on the effect on the pipper than I'm seeing, is exactly what I'd expect -- I would think that a higher angle looking downward through the HUD would tend to keep the pipper on the HUD more often than when your view is looking more straight ahead through the HUD. So the KP0/KP5 'zoom HUD' function seems to not be working correctly. Anyone else experienced this, or know how to fix it? I'd really rather not give up the handy KP0/KP5 combo, as it's a very convenient 'one HOTAS button press' shortcut. Using the KP0/KP5 method, which screws up the pipper: Using the KP*/pan up method:

In general JoyX would be roll, JoyY would be pitch, so throttle should be JoyZ or one of the other axes with 'Z' in it. Sure would have been nice to have an "in-GUI" axis tester, though, so you don't have to go into the game to see if you've set it up right.

Great video, guys, and I just had to comment on how awesome that "letters with flares" trick is ... I actually yelled out "NO WAY!" just now while watching it. :) Pretty impressive.

My guess would be "PND PER HOUR", i.e. pounds per hour, which may simply be a mistake by the designers instead of writing the more common "LBS PER HOUR". I'm pretty sure that aviation fuel is usually referred to by its poundage rather than its volume (gallons).

Have you checked within FC2's "Axis Commands" to make sure everything's set up correctly? In Black Shark, I have to set the pedals "JoyY" to "wheelbrakes" (although I'm pretty sure FC2 does not have this option) and "JoyZ" to "rudder". If FC2 doesn't have a wheelbrakes axis option, then just verify that JoyY is not assigned to anything.

Ditto--got mine from GoGamer yesterday and it was well worth the money: nice hard cardboard covers, very sharp and clear text and figures, nice quality paper. Holding this thing in your hands, it's completely understandable why companies simply cannot afford to include printed manuals like this in the box. Thanks for the effort in putting this together, ED!

Crap! GoGamer gets some back in stock but now I'm stuck at work for another seven hours and GoGamer's blocked here. :(

So - anybody have any comments on the sections added beyond what's in the digital version that comes with the sim?

You're trying to use Ultramon and multimonitor together? Oooo .... very bad. That's like Ghostbusters crossing the streams. :) Actually I'm not certain it's a problem, but would definitely guess so. Ultramon essentially takes over all multimonitor functions from Windows, right? So I'd assume that means BS cannot interact with the multiple monitors the way it expects to. I'm out of touch with ATI cards - is it not possible to run two monitors at different resolutions and spread your desktop across them? In other words why are you using Ultramon? I'd suggest temporarily disabling Ultramon and giving that a try. Sounds like you've read enough about running multiple monitors to know that BS creates a 'phantom' third monitor no matter what you do. But cypher1312's Phantom Monitor Fix can sort-of make that go away, so that BS is effectively rendering a smaller resolution (2 mons instead of 3) - however, I'm not sure but that may require that what would be your right monitor be the phantom one, i.e. that you put Shkval/ABRIS on left and main on center.

Under Vista in windowed mode with the Phantom Monitor Fix, I get Instant Actions framerates of about 50 with the following config (left 17" at 1024x768 with Shkval and ABRIS under DickDastardly's Touchbuddy profile overlay, center 37" at 1920x1080, right 22" nothing): [b]DD_ShkABR+Cam+Phantom.lua:[/b] Description = 'Shkval & ABRIS on the left, camera on the center' Viewports = { Center = { x = 1024; --(the width of your leftmost monitor) y = 0; width = 1920; --(the width of your primary monitor) height = 1080; --(the height of your primary monitor) viewDx = 0; viewDy = 0; aspect = 1.77; } } Shkval = { x = 17; y = 17; width = 486; height = 306; } ABRIS = { x = 589; y = 161; width = 366; height = 447; } [b]options.lua[/b] ["graphics"] = { ["multiMonitorSetup"] = "dd_shkabr+cam+phantom", ["color"] = "32", ["heatBlr"] = 1, ["scenes"] = "high", ["water"] = 2, ["fullScreen"] = false, ["visibRange"] = "High", ["aspect"] = 1.7777777777778, ["textures"] = 2, ["shadows"] = 2, ["display_mode"] = { ["avi"] = { ["bpp"] = 32, ["resolution"] = "640x480", ["full_screen"] = false, ["aspect"] = 1.333333333, ["height"] = 480, ["width"] = 640, }, -- end of ["avi"] }, -- end of ["display_mode"] ["effects"] = 2, ["haze"] = 1, ["lights"] = 2, ["height"] = 1080, ["resolution"] = "1920x1080", ["civTraffic"] = 0, ["width"] = 2944, }, -- end of ["graphics"] } -- end of options

Native is 1280x1024, but in order to have bigger buttons in DD's touchbuddy profile, I lower it to 1024x768.

Heh ... yeah ... well after splurging on the critical parts of the setup, some of the infrastructure has to be low-budget. :)

Yes, and they're easier to get working than you might think. Last month I bought a cheap 17" HP LCD from Tigerdirect ($90 US after rebate) and a 17-inch touchscreen overlay off of eBay ($90), so for less than the price of the CH MFP, I had a bigger and more versatile touchscreen. Installation couldn't be easier: pop the front bezel off the LCD, slide the overlay in there, put bezel back on, connect USB cable up, run the included calibration program, and you're good to go with touch-buddy. Here's a picture of my current setup; not quite as cool as Polecat's :) but still nice: 17-inch touchscreen using DickDastardly's excellent touch-buddy profile for ABRIS/Shkval, 37-inch center LCD, 22-inch LCD monitoring my computer to make sure it doesn't melt down while I'm flying. :) I found that pushing the ABRIS/Shkval to the right LCD [rather than on left touchscreen] didn't add much to the experience and dropped framerate too much.

Is it that, or just the fact that the main video card is being forced to render a huge resolution? I'm not sure.

Ah, I see. BTW, I tried to run a similar setup (DD's 3-monitor T-B profile left, main center, Shkval/ABRIS on right) and saw a huge framerate drop too. I was using a GeForce GTX 260 and 8400 GS. However, when I dropped back to 2 monitors and used cypher1312's Phantom Monitor Fix, I got a jump back up to very playable rates.

DD, each 8800 has two outputs, don't they? So wouldn't that give you 4 outputs total? Running 3 monitors should be no problem.

So you're using a 2-screen setup in BS, or 3? If 2, check out cypher1312's Phantom Monitor Fix (search for the thread, it's around here somewhere): it somehow gets around BS rendering the 3rd screen, bumping up your framerate. You do, however, have to run in Windowed mode instead of Full Screen, which drops FPS a bit. Overall though, your framerate ought to increase significantly.

So I'm trying to simply move the controls indicator a little further up on the screen ... any quick ideas about how exactly to do this? I've looked thru that lua file and it looks like I could sink whole day into experimenting with different values, as it's not at all obvious to me which parameters would affect the position.

Whew ... after much, much trial-and-error, I have finally got Dick Dastardly's touch-buddy profile working with the Phantom Monitor Fix. I've got a 1280x1024 touchscreen on the left and my main 1920x1080 in the center. PMF lets me see framerate (via FRAPS) and the controls indicator - except that the bottom of the controls indicator goes off the bottom of my screen. I know why this is - because I'm using a resolution of 3200x1080 in my options.lua (1280 left, 1920 center) but since my left screen is only 1024 tall, the 1080 of the overall image makes the controls indicator go partially off-screen. It seems that the controls indicator defaults to being in the extreme lower left corner. Surely there is some way to move it around the screen via lua options, but I haven't been able to find it yet. Anybody attempt this, or find a way to do it yet?

Exactly, that's what I was implying. Heiliger Bimbam, what resolution are you running? Unless it's something like 800x600, applying any AA at all ought to have a noticeable effect on framerate. So if you're not seeing anything, I'd guess it's not actually being applied.

I think the massive framerate increases some people see in going from XP to Vista (Munny being a case in point) have to do with XP by default not taking advantage of multiple cores while Vista does. In my own experience, using DCSmax under both XP and Vista - and thus presumably roughly equal utilization of multiple cores between the two OSes - my framerates go from 45-50 in Instant Action in XP to 51-57 under Vista.

Absolutely! Here's what you do - package them up all nice and safe, drop them in the mail addressed to my house, and I promise to make downright splendid use of them in boosting up my framerates. :) Short of that, I guess overclocking the i7 wouldn't hurt; if BS is anything like LockOn - and I believe it is - CPU power is just as important, if not more so, than GPU power. When I overclock my E6700 from 2.66 to 3.5, I see a pretty linear increase in framerate in LockOn.

Well, this may be a dumb question, but are you certain it's actually applying the settings in-game? i.e. have you taken screenshots and then compared them outside the game? With Nvidia's Control Panel, you have to point the drivers to the "DCS.exe" in order to have it "take" the AA/AF settings - using the "launcher.exe" will not do anything, as that is just the GUI.

Actually that could be exactly my problem - do these default to the left monitor? If so, that would explain it. Good idea, I'll try shifting Shkval and ABRIS over to my right monitor.