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An old noob seeking advice.


markamerica

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feefifofum,

 

Thanks, I've seen pictures of the MFDs but I've got no reference for size. How large are they?

 

On a side note, having been a long way from any sort of gaming/sims for a long time, looking at the graphics cards these days, what's with all the slot-hogs? Does everything really need 2 slots of width? I know we need fans, but then I see this MSI Limited Edition GTX 1080, and I thought, oh, that's smart... they moved the fans to a remote arrangement, maybe that will only use up one slot's width in the card bay... And nope... Look at the edge-on view, and realize they're still using two slots. I guess that's the cost of progress...LOL

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They're around 5.5" x 5.5", around 1/2"-3/4" deep. They come with a kick stand of sorts if you want to have them free standing on a desk and have a place to insert a label card if you aren't exporting video to a screen behind them.

 

I have three (they come in packs of two, but I had a button fail and wanted a second set for the Hornet's third display anyway) and I've secured mine to a 19" monitor with a 3M picture hanging strips and export the in-cockpit displays to the space on the monitor behind them which creates functional MFDs/AMPCDs/DDIs/acronyms of your choice. This is a couple years old and doesn't have the third screen, new pedals, or the extension on the stick but will give you an idea

 

hogpit_1445777038.jpg

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Mark,

 

 

I'm out in the middle of nowhere surrounded by farms. I have satellite internet through Viasat. Bandwidth is capped at 25 Gb/month with a free period from midnight to 5am so all downloads are done then. It works for single player but not for online. Too much lag to fly online... Don't know about VPN but I don't see why it wouldn't work.

 

 

VR needs an exceptional computer to work well. I have I7-7700, 1070, Samsung 1Tb SSD, Thrustmaster Warthog, TrackIR5, Crosswind pedals, with 32Gb 3200 mHz ram which is excellent for a 1080p monitor but the bottom of the line for VR. If you build a new system don't consider less than 32Gb. It just leads to heartache and frustration.

 

 

Dcs World comes with a free TF-51 which will give you a chance to test the performance of your computer before you sink a bunch of money into flight gear.

 

 

Get Chuck's guides for any planes you're interested in.


Edited by Bun

I7-7700K 4.5 GHz / RTX 2080 Ti / 32Gb RAM / 1Tb 850 Evo SSD / Win10 Pro / TM Warthog / Crosswind Pedals / Odyssey+

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Algerad3, Thank you, I will be looking into that... Thanks for the link!

 

feefifofum, Cool! I've got a pair on order. Probably will order another pair later. Too bad somebody doesn't make a small LED or something. I wonder if there's some sort of Point-of-Sales display panel like that.

 

Bun, thanks. That sounds painful, but at least it works.

 

Okay, so a little update from the farm. Yesterday evening, I plugged in an aircard to my cradlepoint router. I wired up two external antennae, and I got it started installing/downloading DCS world 2.5. The best I ever saw it hit before I abandoned it when I went to bed last night was around 0.5 MB/sec.

 

It was still working along getting close to 35%-ish when I left for work this morning. It has completed, according to my bride, who humored me and checked the status on it. She said it was doing something with files when she looked(a couple minutes ago.) I imagine unpacking, etc.

 

We'll see how that ol' "Bates 4000" handles it.

 

I may have to upgrade to the "Bates 5000." Sigh.

 

Thanks all, I'll let you know how it looks as soon as I do.

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Great news , glad to have you aboard !

9700k @ stock , Aorus Pro Z390 wifi , 32gb 3200 mhz CL16 , 1tb EVO 970 , MSI RX 6800XT Gaming X TRIO , Seasonic Prime 850w Gold , Coolermaster H500m , Noctua NH-D15S , CH Pro throttle and T50CM2/WarBrD base on Foxxmounts , CH pedals , Reverb G2v2

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"Any landing you can walk away from..."

 

Well, I couldn't resist turning the first SU25 Startup/Taxi/Takeoff training mission into a crash. I landed it, couldn't remember where something was, and while I fumbled around with it, after landing, I veered off the runway and went through a wall:

picture.php?albumid=1599&pictureid=10240

 

I sucked so bad the first time, I repeated the lesson, but not learning much, I still insisted on landing the plane. While this was better, I think I need to take the Landings lesson before I try this again. Still wound up in the grass. Glad this is a simulation, or it would be getting expensive by now:

picture.php?albumid=1599&pictureid=10241

 

All in all, not too glitchy, although I'm running it in a window slightly smaller than one of my monitors. One thing I noticed is that my drive performance could be a good bit better. I may need to do something about that. I can see SSDs in my near future.

 

By the way, I dug an ancient Microsoft Sidewinder joystick out of the closet. I think my daughter used it for some StarWars Pods Racers or something. It was better than nothing....I think. Yeah, I can see that TM Warthog rig soon.

 

I have a ton of questions now. I'll try not to be a nuisance.

 

Thanks!

 

Mark


Edited by markamerica
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There are small screens available; Lilliput makes an 8" USB monitor that is a near-perfect vertical fit and are widely used. They're just a bit on the pricey side vs. a spare monitor like most of us have sitting around if you've been a PC user since PCs. I like having the big monitor myself because I dump a bunch of other stuff on there like the RWR, UFC etc. (I am currently building an F/A-18 UFC frame I intend to put between the upper Cougars)

 

Regardless of the resolution setting, running the game full-screen (hit alt-enter) should improve your performance somewhat (though don't get too attached because fullscreen doesn't work with display exports :p )

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I actually had Falcon 3.0 back in the day.

 

Sir you are a gem. Living in 256k country, Jetfighter and Falcon 3.0 on your CV, obvious technical chops. A classic flight simmer. I'm young, (Falcon 3.0 was the first sim I owned as a boy) but I've recently imagined what an incredible thing it would be to jump from "what we used to have" to the current era of physically-based rendering (PBR,) nascent virtual reality, and boutique precision-engineered HOTAS peripherals. You're all set for a real treat with but a modest investment of your time and money, hope you enjoy!

 

If you ever need a hand you can sure send me a message and I'd be happy to help.

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feefifofum,

 

I take it, based purely on your and others' posts that "display exports" are subsets of the overall display that I can position around if I've got it worked out. Can't wait for that! It'll be a while, naturally, but I can already tell: I have the bug again.

 

Yeah, I just did the basic nav lesson, and it became immediately apparent that this Sidewinder is the pits. The gimbal is so loose it rattles around, and I can tell it doesn't track right. YEp... Definitely new controls coming soon.

 

Svsmokey, thanks, I think...LOL Hijack, it's only a matter of minutes before I yard-dart one real quick here.

 

Aaron886, Thanks! I'm more like the chunk of ol' carbon though. Not so much diamond in this rough... I work with multiple 10G ethernet connections daily. I manage fiber channel switches and Vmware vcenter datacenter with one metric butt-ton of VMs and more cisco gear than you can shake a stick at, but almost 40 years ago, when I got into computers, I got into it for THIS.

 

I appreciate your offer of assistance. I may well need it.

 

One of the things about my job is that I see to it that systems work and can continue to work in almost any exigency. Unfortunately, that also makes me a bit like the stereotypical dungeon-dwelling, seldom-sees-daylight, pop-culture-deprived, nerd. My farm is kind of my refuge. I haven't minded the lack of bandwidth too much until I ran into a video of this sim last week.

 

Don't get me wrong: I have the horses and all to keep me busy, and I do gun-smithing and welding and a little machining in my spare time, which is rare, by the way, but all things must come to an end. I'll enjoy this as much as I can, while I can. Thanks for contributing to that!

 

Mark

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markamerica,

Which instrument panels are you refering too?

 

Algerad3, I apologize, I meant to reply to this, not sure why I didn't. I was looking at the Pro Flight Instrument Panel and also the Pro Flight Radio Panel(Though I don't foresee needing the latter any time soon.) I was also looking at the G Pro Flight Multi Panel. I have no idea if these work with DCS, but I saw them and thought that they were really cool.

 

Thanks!

 

Mark

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Actually , you did reply and saw the link in my sig. The thread needs to be cleaned up or updated as it started out as a group effort to get things working and then progressed to success.

 

Take a poke around their and let me know if you have any questions.

[sIGPIC][/sIGPIC] CPIAS FOR Saitek:

Saitek Flight instrument panels and X-52 pro mfd scripts for Dcs

 

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=94174

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Oh yes, okay, I remember now. It's a thread with like 50 pages of conversation. I looked around a little, but I didn't have time to read it all. I'll get to it eventually. Long and short: Is the PFIP supported? I see a ton of possibilities.

 

I was thinking about putting a display behind the MFDs and somebody here mentioned one. I found one made by gvision that would seem to fit the bill, and bonus, it's available as a touch screen. (V8 series - 8" Touch Screen res 800x600 all USB.) That's nearly perfect.

 

Thanks!

 

Mark

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Hi Mark,

 

 

As a counterpoint to some of the other posts I've read here, absolutely go VR. It is a total game changer when it comes to sims. It depends on why you fly sims. It's true, it can be harder to spot targets without some sort of label, so if your main joy is blowing up a target, maybe not. But if you enjoy flight sims for the flying part, VR is a nobrainer in its current iteration. The presence and sheer feel of flight is 100x what a simple monitor will give in my slightly hyperbole laden opinion.

 

 

If I was you, I would jump on it. Get a Warthog, or go for one of those funky Russian looking Virpil thingies. Get a 1080 and go VR!!

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If I was you, I would jump on it. Get a Warthog, or go for one of those funky Russian looking Virpil thingies. Get a 1080 and go VR!!

 

Anklebiter,

 

Perhaps. I don't know anything about it. What to buy, what it entails, any of that. I like the flying part, though I do love to blow stuff up too, but the problem is that I know nothing about it, or where even to start. It's something I simply never looked into, and for the last 2 dozen years or so, I had other priorities. Assuming I was interested in going that direction, maybe even experimentally, where do I start? Also, when you say "1080," I assume you're talking about the Nvidia card and not my new TV's "1080P." We've had it a little while but it's still "new" to me.

 

As an aside, why DID the US gov't have to force us to digital TV? I find the picture far too pixelated. Doesn't matter... I haven't watched any broadcast network affiliates since their lame-duck friends screwed satellite dish owners in late 1994 with that Home Sat Viewers Act. I hate politicians.

 

Sorry for the OT rant. Every time I look at the TV, or think about it, I get mad.

 

Anyway, back to V/R, but where do I start?

 

Thanks!

 

Mark

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There is a VR subforum in the input/output forum .

9700k @ stock , Aorus Pro Z390 wifi , 32gb 3200 mhz CL16 , 1tb EVO 970 , MSI RX 6800XT Gaming X TRIO , Seasonic Prime 850w Gold , Coolermaster H500m , Noctua NH-D15S , CH Pro throttle and T50CM2/WarBrD base on Foxxmounts , CH pedals , Reverb G2v2

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VR is still new and evolving tech, I'm still waiting for it to evolve before I take any serious look. What I hear it can be a blast in its own right but there can be issues like performance or you get some kind of nausea... With DCS some people seem to much prefer it.

 

1060, 1070, 1080, +Ti are Nvidia graphics cards, very popular in gaming nowadays. 1080p might refer to the screen resolution when it's implied by the context. (Naturally it matters for graphics cards too - for performance reasons. 1080p is the entry level resolution nowadays.)

 

Hardware may need a bit of planning ahead. If what you have works somewhat I'd first see where you go with DCS and what level you eventually want. There's tons of expensive upgrades one starts thinking with DCS. Just bought a 0.5TB SSD for games etc - already reading stuff that makes it feel a bit small, thought about recording some videos with DCS. And they say you should get a faster model with M.2 interface, I'm just using a regular one for lower cost.

SA-342 Ka-50 Mi-8 AJS-37 F-18 M2000C AV-8B-N/A Mig-15bis CA --- How to learn DCS

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Svsmokey,

 

Thanks, I'll check it out.

 

Varis,

 

Like you, I'm trying to decide what's next with storage and video, and whether that will necessitate a new system to get what I want. Biggest obstacle is that I don't really have physical space for another system, so that means building or buying, because I need a machine for my work/dev stuff that has some hardcore capabilities and the ability to run a number of VMs as needed for various things. That's why I tend to like the Dell workstations, despite the fact that they don't generally do bleeding-edge stuff.

 

On the other hand, it's been a while since I built a machine. Maybe I go that way. V/R sounds really interesting but I read things that tell me to hold off just a while longer on that. It's not to say it isn't great stuff, but better is coming.

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9700k @ stock , Aorus Pro Z390 wifi , 32gb 3200 mhz CL16 , 1tb EVO 970 , MSI RX 6800XT Gaming X TRIO , Seasonic Prime 850w Gold , Coolermaster H500m , Noctua NH-D15S , CH Pro throttle and T50CM2/WarBrD base on Foxxmounts , CH pedals , Reverb G2v2

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...and you may also wish to check thread "Chucks Tutorials" sticky near the top of this forum .

9700k @ stock , Aorus Pro Z390 wifi , 32gb 3200 mhz CL16 , 1tb EVO 970 , MSI RX 6800XT Gaming X TRIO , Seasonic Prime 850w Gold , Coolermaster H500m , Noctua NH-D15S , CH Pro throttle and T50CM2/WarBrD base on Foxxmounts , CH pedals , Reverb G2v2

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Thanks Svsmokey! That did it for me!

 

 

...and you may also wish to check thread "Chucks Tutorials" sticky near the top of this forum .
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