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Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Cojawfee posted:

How long has that been a thing? Or was it always? Maybe it's the other way around that doesn't work. I bought the vegas map in some way that doesn't allow transferring to the other system.

It's been on and off a couple of times over the last 7 years or so. It's subject to the whims of Valve and Eagle Dynamics and the third party devs, depending on who's got a bee in their bonnet today. It seems to have calmed down a bit now, but it was very fractured a few years back — some devs refusing to go on steam because they demanded their own DRM, and then all broke down and the capability was removed for a year or two… but it works now.

Above all, it works now because they've largely moved away from classic product keys — you get registered as an owner upon purchase, and then you don't worry about it any more. It's not a cross-platform “check-in” system by the looks of it either, so even if they were to suddenly disagree again, you wouldn't lose your old transferred purchases since you're already a registered owner at that point.


…oh, and people have been alluding to it already, but let's just very clearly reiterate:

Don't buy the FC3 planes separately.
If you want one of them for whatever reason, just get the full FC3 package.

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Snapshot
Oct 22, 2004

damnit Matt get in the boat

Aero737 posted:

I want to get DSC World just so I can fly the C130 mod. Does anyone use that in their missions?

Goons have done a mission with the Hercules, and there’s at least one mp server that uses it as part of the logistics setup.
It’s not finished, but it is flyable; you will probably have to do some dead reckoning as the flight computer/navigation system isn’t complete.

HerpicleOmnicron5
May 31, 2013

How did this smug dummkopf ever make general?


Tippis posted:


…oh, and people have been alluding to it already, but let's just very clearly reiterate:

Don't buy the FC3 planes separately.
If you want one of them for whatever reason, just get the full FC3 package.

I mostly disagree. The only FC3 plane I care about at all is the F-15, you miss out on the tutorials but there’s plenty on YouTube.

JayKay
Sep 11, 2001

And you thought they were cute and cuddly.

How are the Mi8 and the Gazelle? I'm thinking about picking both up while they're on sale but wanted to make sure there weren't any glaring issues.

I'm enjoying the crap out of the F-18, Syria, Persian Gulf, and Super Carrier. Thanks for the goon suggestions.

Trillhouse
Dec 31, 2000

JayKay posted:

How are the Mi8 and the Gazelle? I'm thinking about picking both up while they're on sale but wanted to make sure there weren't any glaring issues.

I'm enjoying the crap out of the F-18, Syria, Persian Gulf, and Super Carrier. Thanks for the goon suggestions.

Gazelle is crazy. I don't have the Mi8 (waiting for the hind instead) but I have the Huey and the KA-50. Both of those need like 80% collective to hover. The Gazelle lifts off at around 25% (not exact, but you get the idea). It handles like a sports car compared to the other two.

I haven't flown it much since I just got it this sale, and haven't learned the weapons, but it's extremely zippy. A lot of people think it flies like an RC helicopter but I guess that's realistic? I don't trust virtual pilots on the realism of in-game vehicles.

V for Vegans
Jan 30, 2009
So this week, YouTube started suggesting DCS videos to me, so I downloaded the game to try the free planes and then this sale popped up so now I spent last night doing some frogfoot trainings to see if I want the F18 like everyone suggests, but my biggest issue is I couldn’t figure out how to zoom into my dashboard. I use track IR so I can look around easily, but when I tried to lean in to look at the different knobs, the track ir would lose my clip lights and I’d be far away again. I saw a zoom function in controls that said to use + and = for in and out, but it didn’t seem to work. Do they not allow zooming in while using head tracking? Or because the frogfoot isn’t a clickable plane, does it have simplified cockpit functions because it assumes you’re doing everything with shortcuts. I just found it hard to see the different functions that the training was telling me to look at like which bombs were armed or how far away a waypoint was because of how small they were on my screen.

Vahakyla
May 3, 2013
Your TrackIR is not necessarily set up correctly. If you lean in and lose tracking adjust the TIR curves in the app so that you don’t have to lean in as much, and you won’t lose tracking.

MrYenko
Jun 18, 2012

#2 isn't ALWAYS bad...

There’s definitely a zoom axis (in the axis control group) that you can use while using TrackIR. I generally bind it to the trim wheel on my warthog throttle. It does NOT work when in VR though. (There’s a separate VR zoom.)

Vahakyla
May 3, 2013
Advertisement for this saturday's, tomorrow's Goon DCS mission, especially now that there is a sale going on.

Time: 2000 UTC, saturday the 24th.
Signup sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15Grz7yEp70GOFfjch3zD1mp2TpDStdapDdqNVTAOu6c/edit#gid=0
Discord: https://discord.gg/Vx4qqGyb


We will be using SRS, SimpleRadioStandalone, to simulate the radios. It is not hard to use, and works through the in-game radios.


Long story short:

This is a peacekeeping/asymmetric warfare scenario in the Caucasus mountains, with no hostile enemy air. Human Airborne Forward Air Controllers in A-10C's will fly to their IP's to get taskings from groundborne JTACs, and will then try to resolve situations on the ground, like troops in contact and convoy ambushes, by utilizing fast moving jets with laser guided bombs and rockets, and possibly gun runs. They will call for fast movers, F-14s, F-16s, and F-18s that orbit the area, and then guide them as needed.


For the fast moving jets, the skills you need are pretty simple. You can drop an LGB, and you can punch in a waypoint to the plane, so that you can fly to it when the AFAC gives you coordinates.
You should probably also be able to take off and land. This scenario emphasizes fuel management, and voluntary Aerial Refuel, rather than lots of weapons. More tanks, less bombs.

If you want to fly, you should hop on discord, get set up, and ask questions. Easy peasy.




F-14s refueling last weekend.

Trillhouse
Dec 31, 2000

V for Vegans posted:

So this week, YouTube started suggesting DCS videos to me, so I downloaded the game to try the free planes and then this sale popped up so now I spent last night doing some frogfoot trainings to see if I want the F18 like everyone suggests, but my biggest issue is I couldn’t figure out how to zoom into my dashboard. I use track IR so I can look around easily, but when I tried to lean in to look at the different knobs, the track ir would lose my clip lights and I’d be far away again. I saw a zoom function in controls that said to use + and = for in and out, but it didn’t seem to work. Do they not allow zooming in while using head tracking? Or because the frogfoot isn’t a clickable plane, does it have simplified cockpit functions because it assumes you’re doing everything with shortcuts. I just found it hard to see the different functions that the training was telling me to look at like which bombs were armed or how far away a waypoint was because of how small they were on my screen.

Look for the zoom axis in axis bindings, or "Zoom in slow" and "zoom out slow" in the button bindings. I usually use the zoom slow button binds and bind it somewhere easy to reach on my joystick.

Sounds like your TrackIR is messing up. Make sure the camera is centered on the clip lights, and move them around some so it doesn't wig out. I also calibrate it so if I'm looking at the right bezel of my monitor, my view is 180 degrees rotated to the right and vice versa.

V for Vegans
Jan 30, 2009

Trillhouse posted:

Look for the zoom axis in axis bindings, or "Zoom in slow" and "zoom out slow" in the button bindings. I usually use the zoom slow button binds and bind it somewhere easy to reach on my joystick.

Sounds like your TrackIR is messing up. Make sure the camera is centered on the clip lights, and move them around some so it doesn't wig out. I also calibrate it so if I'm looking at the right bezel of my monitor, my view is 180 degrees rotated to the right and vice versa.

Yeah, I’ll screw around with it a bit, I use it mostly for iRacing and have it set up properly for that at the moment, but I should be able to make it work

Sagebrush
Feb 26, 2012

Here are my OpenTrack curves, just so you have an idea of a reasonable starting point









Yaw: 1-to-1 mapping in the center of the view, accelerating as you move through 90 degrees, then decelerating again at the corner of the screen looking over your shoulder. This makes it easy to look around the instrument panel while still having full travel. Capped at 160 degrees because that's about as far as you can realistically look sideways without getting out of your chair.

Pitch: Mostly linear with a slight acceleration. Mapped about 2-to-1 in the center, because monitors are wider than they are tall and you don't want to be craning your neck. Capped at values that prevent you from flipping upside down. Faster acceleration in the top half because you want to be able to freely track bad guys, slower in the bottom half for precision when looking around the cockpit.

Roll: 1-to-1 linear because there's no reason for anything else here.

X, Y: slow linear, capped at a value that corresponds roughly with hitting your head on the canopy. If you don't cap these you will be able to stick your head out into the airstream.

Z: also slow, but mapped with deceleration on the backwards motion (you don't want to fling yourself backwards through the seat) but slight acceleration forwards (normally you want to stay at the same zoom level, but sometimes squint at a gauge by sitting up closer).

When you're first starting out, it may help to just disable everything except pitch and yaw, and get those calibrated and feeling right before you go for the full six axes.

MrYenko
Jun 18, 2012

#2 isn't ALWAYS bad...

You also don’t want to be too close or too far away from the camera. That can cause LoS and loss of tracking issues.

Sagebrush
Feb 26, 2012

Does TrackIR have a raw camera view? OpenTrack is somewhat more finicky to set up, but one nice thing is that it does show exactly what your tracking camera is seeing, so you can ensure that it's got a solid view of the whole envelope you're trying to use.

plester1
Jul 9, 2004





Sagebrush posted:

Does TrackIR have a raw camera view? OpenTrack is somewhat more finicky to set up, but one nice thing is that it does show exactly what your tracking camera is seeing, so you can ensure that it's got a solid view of the whole envelope you're trying to use.

It does!

Btw thanks for posting your curves and the theory behind it, I'm planning on using yours as a basis. I've been mostly fumbling along with janky curves and really need to get it dialed in for my setup.

plester1 fucked around with this message at 22:30 on Apr 23, 2021

MrYenko
Jun 18, 2012

#2 isn't ALWAYS bad...

Sagebrush posted:

Does TrackIR have a raw camera view? OpenTrack is somewhat more finicky to set up, but one nice thing is that it does show exactly what your tracking camera is seeing, so you can ensure that it's got a solid view of the whole envelope you're trying to use.

Ya, you can show the camera view.

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos
Yes, the expensive IR camera software can give you an output of where your track dots are in the FOV.

That's useful for range of motion on horizontal and vertical skew, pitch, and roll but loss of tracking for too close is a little more immediately easy to figure out cause the track light goes out on the camera and it's for the exceedingly easy to figure out reason that you are too close. Compared to some of the more arcane crap like not having your camera pointed right or getting into those really magical conformations where the track clip pro somehow obscures itself.

Yearly reminder head tracking curves are personal and game specific. Ex. I generally dampen, add a threshold, or turn off roll because my head rolling usually means I see things sideways and I want to see things sideways. A good car curve is not gonna work out the box for planes for almost certain.

Sagebrush
Feb 26, 2012

Yes, I said they are a starting point. When I first started playing with head-tracking in like uhhhhh 2009 I think nobody had any good suggestions for curves or logic for why you'd want it a certain way and I just had to experiment. Over time this is what I've settled on, and usually the only tweaking required for different games is to ensure the head motion maps to the in-game motion I've become accustomed to. But obviously everyone has their own idea of what's comfortable.

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos
Oh sorry I wasn't being down on you posting your curve or anything, it's nice to have a starting point. For the person on TrackIR there's usually a bunch of profiles you can download from the forums per game too. But the best thing you can do is tweak them to match your set up since that's almost always different.

Changing profiles per game is probably more important changing whole genres than changing games within that genre. Flight sims are all gonna match pretty well cause they have a pretty well agreed upon idea of where a head goes in a cockpit. But like flight sim to racing, or even racing to truck driving, and especially anything to space sims tends to just have different needs and set ups so I am up to probably 4 or 5 profiles I lean on now.

plester1
Jul 9, 2004





The most useful part to me is the explanation of the rationale behind the curves. As a newcomer, I have no clue how to convert a curve into something usable. The explanation of acceleration curves for instrumentation, where you want cutoffs, etc is invaluable for starting to dial this stuff in. Otherwise, I'm just fumbling in the dark.

Zero One
Dec 30, 2004

HAIL TO THE VICTORS!
Big A32NX update

quote:

After months of intensive development and testing, it's finally time.

Starting today, the first version of our entirely custom fly-by-wire and autopilot systems, our custom LEAP 1A-26 engine FADEC performance model, and re-written PFD will be available in the development version. We'd like to remind our users that you have to calibrate your throttles via the EFB!

The experimental version will not be updated for a few days while we let users transition to the development version. After this period the experimental version will welcome a new prototype feature: our custom LNAV and flight plan manager, based on the work from Working Title Simulations.

That version will remain under the limited support policy of the previous experimental version, as that system is in its early age.

Please ensure your read the following guide: https://docs.flybywiresim.com/start/autopilot-fbw/

Happy flying!

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

HerpicleOmnicron5 posted:

I mostly disagree. The only FC3 plane I care about at all is the F-15, you miss out on the tutorials but there’s plenty on YouTube.

The reason I always suggest against buying the individual planes is that even if right now you only care about one, there will come a day where you are in the mood for something else, and you could have had that for a pretty small extra outlay rather than now having to pay an inflated cost for a once-or-maybe-twice-off. It just opens up more options to goof around… well, assuming you buy it on a sale of course because for the love of all that's holy, don't buy anything for DCS without a discount.

Also, for the most part, all the FC3 planes are effectively the same from a control standpoint. You can almost (but not quite) symlink their binds directories together so that, if you bind one of them, this applies to all of them. Even when the differences are a bit too much to do that, you can still always try to directly import binds from one to another and let the game sort out which ones need to be ignored, so that lowers the bar quite a lot. :haw:

Sagebrush posted:

Does TrackIR have a raw camera view? OpenTrack is somewhat more finicky to set up, but one nice thing is that it does show exactly what your tracking camera is seeing, so you can ensure that it's got a solid view of the whole envelope you're trying to use.

I can attest to the fact that it does and that this can be a pretty crucial part of trouble-shooting. When I upgraded from reflective hat clip to a delanclip using active IR LEDs to create trackign dots, the first thing that happened was that I got a huge amount of ghost input, and not (just) because I had first forgotten to tell TrackIR to change the pattern to look for.

The raw camera view revealed that it was seeing three times as many dots as it was expected and was flailing around wildly to try to figure out which ones it should be tracking. It turns out that those LEDs were… quite powerful and were sending off reflections off of my headset and glasses. A bit of masking tape and a reduction in camera sensitivity cleared that issue right up, but I would have had no idea what to fix or how without that view.

Lord Stimperor
Jun 13, 2018

I'm a lovable meme.

I have FC3 and I didn't like it much tbh. Like the planes are nice of course, but clickable cockpits makes everyting so much easier and engaging. In the F18, the entire flow of operations is really logical, especially when you're setting up things in the computer. With the FC planes, it's always memorizing tens of keybinds. That being said if you just want to buzz around and shoot heat-seeking missiles from a MiG 29, it's absolutely fine.

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Lord Stimperor posted:

I have FC3 and I didn't like it much tbh. Like the planes are nice of course, but clickable cockpits makes everyting so much easier and engaging. In the F18, the entire flow of operations is really logical, especially when you're setting up things in the computer. With the FC planes, it's always memorizing tens of keybinds. That being said if you just want to buzz around and shoot heat-seeking missiles from a MiG 29, it's absolutely fine.

Oh definitely. It's one of the reasons why I vastly prefer DCS over something like IL2: because my brain is far better wired to remember switch positions and cockpit sweeps rather than CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-Z to wobble the gubbin.

This is where that 95% commonality between the different FC3 planes help, though, since they can pretty much all be bound to the TM MFDs I have, and with a handy insert that lists each function. It's like the olden days of keyboard overlays all over again. :woop:

Trillhouse
Dec 31, 2000

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgWFDP8s3Bw

Cool new free 45C mod with clickable cockpit. Surprisingly well done and, well, it's free.

Combat Pretzel
Jun 23, 2004

No, seriously... what kurds?!
I had some weird issues with a mod in MSFS and I thought it was a great idea to let Steam check the local files. It appears for some reason it felt like it ought to nuke my game data folder, you know, the stuff it downloads in-game. I'm not sure why it'd do that, because I specifically chose a custom location to avoid this kind of poo poo. Ah well, here we go, downloading 173GB of data on a lovely 16MBit line.

Shipon
Nov 7, 2005

Zero One posted:

Big A32NX update

This is the one that enables proper autoland right?

Lord Stimperor
Jun 13, 2018

I'm a lovable meme.

Patch notes are quite extensive and do cover a lot of autopilot by the coolest thing is that you het an ipad now that can connect to sim died, oh and removable coffee cups

sigher
Apr 22, 2008

My guiding Moonlight...



Since I'm new the whole flight sim thing, does anyone make some old WWI planes to putter around in MSFS2020 with? Also, does anyone make fictional planes (Looking at your Porco Rosso seaplane)?

Combat Pretzel
Jun 23, 2004

No, seriously... what kurds?!

sigher posted:

Since I'm new the whole flight sim thing, does anyone make some old WWI planes to putter around in MSFS2020 with?
Some people are working on those. I could swear I saw a P51D for instance. Meanwhile, you could try the old FSX planes, too.

sigher posted:

Also, does anyone make fictional planes (Looking at your Porco Rosso seaplane)?

Lord Stimperor
Jun 13, 2018

I'm a lovable meme.

So, Neofly has a new mode where it sends you to seek out and explore a randomly generated crash site. Every day it's a new mission.

This one is today's:

Cojawfee
May 31, 2006
I think the US is dumb for not using Celsius
Is there an actual crash there, or is it just a "fly to this area and fly around for five minutes" type thing?

Lord Stimperor
Jun 13, 2018

I'm a lovable meme.

Cojawfee posted:

Is there an actual crash there, or is it just a "fly to this area and fly around for five minutes" type thing?




Apropos, flying between low-hanging clouds and a completely white featureless landscape that's slowly rising is pretty creepy, no wonder these New Zealand tourist flights crashed into the ice

MrYenko
Jun 18, 2012

#2 isn't ALWAYS bad...

Lord Stimperor posted:




Apropos, flying between low-hanging clouds and a completely white featureless landscape that's slowly rising is pretty creepy, no wonder these New Zealand tourist flights crashed into the ice

I’m pretty sure I have a photo of that wreck in my desktop rotation. :v:

Dr. Video Games 0031
Jul 17, 2004

Lord Stimperor posted:




Apropos, flying between low-hanging clouds and a completely white featureless landscape that's slowly rising is pretty creepy, no wonder these New Zealand tourist flights crashed into the ice

There's also that famous antarctic flight that crashed because they couldn't see the literal (white) mountain in front of them when set against the white clouds and white ice behind it. How effective is FS2020 at simulating these conditions?

sigher
Apr 22, 2008

My guiding Moonlight...




Holy poo poo, loooool

Lord Stimperor
Jun 13, 2018

I'm a lovable meme.

Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:

There's also that famous antarctic flight that crashed because they couldn't see the literal (white) mountain in front of them when set against the white clouds and white ice behind it. How effective is FS2020 at simulating these conditions?


Yeah that's the one I meant. The one that flew to one of the Sounds and went off course a little bit, right?

I don't know how realistic is per se, but I was below the clouds, above a white plain. The terrain was rising. If not for the occasional glitched texture that I was passing, I wouldn't have noticed that I had gone from a few thousand to a few hundred feet above ground. Would totally have flown into the ground even on a computer screen.

Lord Stimperor
Jun 13, 2018

I'm a lovable meme.

Combat Pretzel posted:

Some people are working on those. I could swear I saw a P51D for instance. Meanwhile, you could try the old FSX planes, too.



This rules

Dr. Video Games 0031
Jul 17, 2004

Lord Stimperor posted:

Yeah that's the one I meant. The one that flew to one of the Sounds and went off course a little bit, right?

I don't know how realistic is per se, but I was below the clouds, above a white plain. The terrain was rising. If not for the occasional glitched texture that I was passing, I wouldn't have noticed that I had gone from a few thousand to a few hundred feet above ground. Would totally have flown into the ground even on a computer screen.

The flight plan was changed on them without any notice and directed them towards Mount Erebus without any of the crew knowing. By the time they realized something was amiss, the foothills were rising up on them and they couldn't turn away in time. Terrifying.

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Combat Pretzel
Jun 23, 2004

No, seriously... what kurds?!
My ISP finally activated that new DSL cabinet, that's been sitting inactive in my road for months. I've gone from 16MBit to 70MBit. This game never stood a chance before. Over photogrammetry cities, it's pulling 50MBit and more.

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