topdog

I'm at the point where I needed a new rig so I just thought I'd share what I've ordered. It's not a very compromising build (IMO), but it's not an OTT jawdropper one either (with perhaps the exception of the storage choice, that's about the most extravagent piece I've gone for I would say): CPU: i7 2600k RAM: 16GB (4x4GB) mushkin blackline LV MOBO: Gigabyte P67 UD7-B3 GFX: 3GB Geforce 580 * PSU: BeQuiet Dark Power 850 Cooler: Noctua NH-D14 DISK: OCZ Vertex 3 240GB (SSD) * CASE: Coolermaster Haf X Monitor: Acer HN274H 3D / 120Hz * HTU: TrackIR5 / pro clip ** Stick: TM Warthog Hotas ** Cockpit: Obutto ** OS: Win7 home premium 64-bit * = pre-orders, not in stock yet ** = existing gear, listed just for setup's completeness I'll be looking to get 4.6Ghz out of the CPU minimum, maybe a little more maybe not. The RAM is rated at 1600 @ 1.35v, other than that it was mostly picked for being low profile and good mojo in a 4GB per stick format, and not having to be all that fussy about it with a sandybridge other than for making sure it fits under the fat-ass Noc ! Will be using a 460 until the new graphics cards come into stock, upon which I'll make my selection but I'll be leaning towards an MSI Frozr II or similarly built card. Finally buckling down and getting 3D vision kit once the new 27" 3D panel based monitors launch in the next few weeks/month, most likely going with the Acer at this point but I may change my mind depending on the competition. I have NAS so don't really care for extra on-PC storage much, but so long as it remains quiet enough I may keep a 1TB sata 3 hard drive inside too. I do not like noisy PCs but don't get all crazy about it either, so some of the choices have been made with that in mind. All except the pre-order parts should be arriving this Friday, I'll make do with some other existing kit until that arrives. I've been waiting for the revision B3 motherboards to come back in stock before I put the order in, so now's the time - quite looking forward to assembling it together.

So a longer winded reply than Winz :) but was just trying to cover the futility of removing a layer of code that does what ever any alternative option would end up doing anyway.

Basically, abstractions - or more simply, APIs - in software aren't the evil that some AMD community manager would like to have you believe. They're prevalent, and standardised abstractions are better than home-rolled ones much of the time. In the case of DirectX it uses COM, which is an implementation similar to CORBA - the design pattern for this method of writing code is that you can think of the 'interfaces' exposed to programmers as being a 'contract' that is offered to them, promising a certain compatibility between different blocks of code. The back-end of the contract is fulfilled by Microsoft's enumeration systems, and the hardware vendor's driver-to-metal code (the big deal about this, is that so long as the contract looks the same in the middle, you can switch hardware/vendors on one side, you can switch game software on the other, and it's all happy and working under one nice standard and refinable approach, whichever side it is that needs the refining). When you request an interface to a graphics device, Microsoft hands you a reference to the object, and then you call its functions via a table of pointers to them all. It's hardly an overweight interface, and if you were to scrap this, you would either: a) be rolling your own 'graphics driver interfacing middleware component', forcing the developers to spend a large chunk of their time optimizing and implementing for specific pieces of hardware instead of giving you features b) be ignoring vast swathes of hardware, much like when games were written that only used 3Dfx's Glide api to support their voodoo cards, and only software rendering for others. c) be using some other 3rd party library (want to scrap DirectSound? Fine, have the inferior Miles sound driver library instead, but how has this made you better off?) All of these are just examples of abstractions themselves, so what's the reason for blaming DirectX? Direct3D and OpenGL are sort of synonymous; and it's not without good reason smart people like Carmack moved away from home-rolled software rendering and limited vendor APIs, instead embracing abstraction/API layers like OpenGL. This wasn't always the case btw, but from DirectX3 onward, they started getting it right, DirectX5 onward, and it was a solid foundation to work with. Before this time, I would perhaps have agreed, but we're talking well over a decade ago since this become out of date.

Same price (~280) at overclockers.co.uk too. It's a better place than the 320-330 they came out at, but not quite the radical crazy discount they had for a brief while either.

Let's scrap that abstraction layer known as the C runtime too, surely it's just getting in the way and slowing things down - machine code all the way baby. I guess April 1st came a week early for some.

If you have multiple profiles on your Saitek software app, the clutch and main X52 hat are used for unloading/selecting/loading profiles on the fly too.

It's valid Saitek software. Used for purging USB entry data related to the controller(s). Whatever software picked that up is almost certainly reporting a false-positive, unless it has actually been compromised by a virus but I think that is the less likely scenario. Chances are we may have different versions of the file on our systems, but if you MD5 yours and find it has the same result as mine, even more likely it's not a problem: C:\Program Files\Saitek\SD6\Software>C:\Users\Topdog\Downloads\windows-kb841290-x86-enu\fciv.exe -md5 ny.exe // // File Checksum Integrity Verifier version 2.05. // b07bd680438d9422d5a0dee027dbd1de ny.exe C:\Program Files\Saitek\SD6\Software>dir ny* Volume in drive C is bringit Volume Serial Number is C8EE-2179 Directory of C:\Program Files\Saitek\SD6\Software 03/06/2009 10:49 AM 151,552 ny.exe 1 File(s) 151,552 bytes 0 Dir(s) 445,900,222,464 bytes free C:\Program Files\Saitek\SD6\Software>

Just to confirm, you're getting that in 1.0.1 or 1.0.2? If it's 1.0.2, I'm not sure yet what magic trick in your config made the difference :) Edit: I saw in your other thread that you've been using 1.0.1, I take it that hasn't changed.

Went from 8800gtx to 460gtx, different manufacturers (bfgtech to evga), and simply pulled the old out, popped the new in, installed new company's driver and gadgetry (clock altering panel), then applied newest nvidia reference driver over the top.. no probs. Having to rigorously clean old drivers seems to be something nvidia don't need so much now.. used to be a requirement before that you go back and set your card to basic svga standard driver before upgrading drivers, but not anymore.

It started happening in 1.0.2 only, before that was ok. It's not just the angle or aspect ratio, the view itself becomes off-center because it tries to draw/scale to the full (multi-monitor) resolution as if it was a single monitor. I'm pretty certain only a code change can fix it (or run 1.0.1 or single monitor config for those missions). I'm also quite certain every in-game multi-monitor config player is affected (not just some cards or setups).

Altering the shader algorithm to eliminate the noise mask is unlikely to affect why the game chooses to try and render NVG mode across the full screen resolution in multi-monitor in this one version of BS. So try it if you like, but the crystal clear thing shouldn't work/help for this problem.

I could do with a cursor and numeric key block part of the keyboard, but in a separate unit (I want to position it to the left side of the desk for use with some games, cos I'm not really a WASD type even though I've played through full games in that mode). I'd want it to be fairly traditional keyboard layout though, and not some claw-shaped abomination thing they like to do with some of the devices (the belkin one pic'd a few times on this site for example). Haven't started looking yet really, but that's what I'd like to track down soon. Regarding full gaming keyboards, I don't know about the Arvo, but the Roccat Valo keyboard is pants - looks great, but very problematic and a burden. If any were considering it, I'd lookup the problems it can have, chances are you'll have them all.

Whilst I've not really bothered with a battlefield game (or its competitor games) in yonks - other than arma2 which isn't quite the same thing - their trailer deserves a mention for being ALL in-gameplay footage rather than pre-rendered CGI work. As short as it is, it gets distinction for that. It's worth reminding ourselves that GA's videos was using in-game footage too (with a little augmentation) rather than totally external rendering.

How does the directory appear in the command prompt when you do a 'dir' of the parent (c:\dcs10ac) folder? Junction, symlink, or hardlink?

Yes I do; though I'm not yet setup for flying with it as I haven't mounted my throttle and stick to the post points yet. My shipment was short 2 bolts but that's for a specific reason - the flight stick mount was out of stock when I ordered mine so I was offered the display/demo cockpit mount instead of a new one which I took. Otherwise everything came as it should, and went together well. I suggest a watch through of Chris' videos from the FAQ of the main obutto.com site, he only recorded them mid-December and although they were done to help people having trouble to put it together, it is the best assembly information produced for it so far. If you just want to do an inventory check without putting it together let me know, though it's not so bad to disassemble for moving, the fittings make it fairly easy to do just you'll want to redo all the bubble wrapping if it's going to be in for a possibly bumpy ride (I moved mine by just loading the bits in the back seat of my car, since the box wouldn't fit anyway). Edit: heh, when I opened the thread I failed to notice this was page 2 so I thought it was just the first post of it I was replying to - no probs, just it might explain my offbeat reply! Edit2: Regarding 3x 23" monitors, when using the triple monitor mount, it'll hold them in place easy in landscape mode, I assume they have vesa mount positions on the back of the monitors (75x75 or 100x100 probably). I currently have a 27" in the center and 24" to one side of mine (just because, that's what I use for my 2 PCs and I'm not yet ready for triple setup anyway).

I wasn't referring to ring vortex of the main blades causing a feedback loop of descent by the way, but of the tail rotor itself: http://www.dynamicflight.com/aerodynamics/loss_tail_eff/ Co-ax rotor heli doesn't have this issue (at least, not for this reason or with these limits).

I received a customs slip today, royal mail are witholding release of the package until I pay them a 11.84 GBP bonus fee (extra $17.50 USD), so looks like I was held up whilst they wanted to have a nose around inside.

They also sometimes choose to light up in sequence and then go out again when the device fires up (receives power / driver connectivity), so may operate as a kind of baby-POST or at least get tested themselves at some point. I've been waiting anxiously for the user-programmable bit though, and I'd say the MFD's would be a lot more attractive to me if they too were programmable (on the LEDs) beyond a pre-set and static 'ID' setting.

I believe the 'speciality' in the ka-50 is simply that without a tail rotor it won't suffer from vortex ring issue when rotating the craft around, meaning in theory it's not limited to how quickly it can spin on the spot whilst staying aloft. Helis with tail rotors can effectively 'stall' the tail and crash when turning in some situations and have to limit their yaw speed. That's how I heard it, and it may even be in the manuals somewhere (I don't profess to know them cover to cover by any means).

Pretty sure those were just done on scraps for demonstration purposes. Might be worth mentioning beside the pics that it's just overlaid for demo. So you got the shipping email on 24th? I presume if you check the tracking status on USPS site from within the email it still says Status: Acceptance though right (since there isn't any tracking really for this postage option)? Beginning to think mine may not arrive if so. Bad weather or not I had over 2 weeks head start on yours (also to be sent to the UK, south east): "Acceptance, December 07, 2010, 4:38 pm, <location>" Bleh. Will give it time still seeing as he's on the road for a while.

It's also just bad luck with the timing, I sent a couple of items from UK to US to a friend by air about 10-14 days before I ordered my covers, and it got there in only 5 days. The same could easily happen in reverse, but things choked up with the double whammy of xmas and weather. Even some deliveries completely within the country - and we're talking max distances of 300 miles or so - got delayed by 3 weeks or more from some shops once December (and its snow/ice) rolled in.

In a never-ending quest for the answers, resulting in the deaths of 3 people and 1 kitten to bring these facts out into the light, behold as the true reasons behind the previously unexplained and near random delays to different parts of the world are finally exposed: uxX1kA-nhZk Conclusion: It was just too damn heavy to defy gravity, causing a 6 week shipment delay as it made the slow climb to the top of the conveyer belts.

With how short lived OA was I was put off of any further expansions/DLC a bit. Most of the missions auto-fail if you take more than about 45 mins, even if you want to mooch and creep around or try out something else tactically, so that leaves you with about 6 hours of actual gameplay until it's over. Maybe I'll have to give mission editing a go, but it seems like it spoils things a bit? Other than wacko AI decisions, the other surprise and objective/outcome discoveries are removed. May give some online action a go too, might be better for what I'm looking for. Edit: I take that back; there are some non-campaign single-player missions included too I think? Some are just benchmarks and campaign missions in single form, but I think I recall there being some other additional ones to give a go.

Z and X have built-in trimmer resetting for the axis (meaning, your hud will show you trimmed north, but if you use Z to face west, your heli will now hold you west but the diamond in hud is still stuck north). I find this a bit of an irritation, though it won't affect or modify your pitch/bank trimming, only the heading. Similar behaviour exists in the cursor keys for adjusting pitch and bank, but they have limiters on them as to how far they will adjust and lock the trim to (it's around 50% of the movement range).

7/12 and no show yet too, but, there have been some very haphazard postal delays here (given time of year, and bad enough weather in some parts of the country). I figured when I ordered that it might arrive shortly after the xmas rush and backlog eases up, but crossed my fingers anyway in hope :)