Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Mandibular Fiasco
Oct 14, 2012
Anyone know if there is a TrackIR6 coming out any time soon (or ever)? I'm looking to build a PC for FS2020 at some point in the future and considering whether it's worth dusting off the old kit or just replacing it. I have a TrackIR4 of some variety or other, along with a HOTAS Cougar (upgraded to U2NXT gimbals and IJ's throttle modifications) and a set of Simped F-16+ pedals. Trying to figure out if I should just buy new stuff or if that will do the trick.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Mandibular Fiasco
Oct 14, 2012

skooma512 posted:

I was flying a 152 and having some fun going to Catalina. I'm going to land and my engine quits.

It's out of gas because it's only drawing from the right tank, but this is a Cessna 152 and it doesn't have a tank selector equipped. I think they both just feed into the engine by gravity.

Someone said to map the selector to a keyboard key, and it worked, but c'mon man. The Cessna is supposed to be the most simple and you go and make a phantom selector switch?

It's been at least 15 years since I logged time in a Cessna 152, but I seem to recall there was no fuel selector It was either open or closed and was gravity fed from the two wing tanks.

Mandibular Fiasco
Oct 14, 2012

Sagebrush posted:

God loving DAMMIT there is an entire chapter in the FAR just about special regulations in and around Grand Canyon National Park!!



Good thing this is in FS2020 and not Prepar3D.

Mandibular Fiasco
Oct 14, 2012

Sagebrush posted:

where is my 737-200 and dhc-2 on floats

Now you're talking. My Dad was a Captain on the 737-200 a long time ago and empty, these things were a rocket. Plus big bucket thrust reversers and a gravel kit meant you could get in to all sorts of places other jets couldn't get. I have half a dozen hours in the 737-200 simulator and was it ever fun to fly. (Of course, as a private pilot, being in a simulator of anything with that much power would be fun to fly!)

Mandibular Fiasco
Oct 14, 2012

slidebite posted:

This was a few years ago, but a bunch of dedicated people got a literal museum piece back up in the air to save it from being cut up to move it.
https://globalnews.ca/news/999859/737-takes-off-from-city-centre-airport-lands-safely-at-new-home/

That was quite cool. Fortunately, there are a lot of ex-737 pilots and AMEs around who aren't so old they couldn't work on the jet to get it up and running.

Mandibular Fiasco
Oct 14, 2012

Sagebrush posted:

Yeah that's the kind of stuff I like. I wanna fly an OG 737 with the cigar tube engines around a thunderstorm from like Corpus Christi to Mexico City, landing hot and high while getting jolted all over the place, and navigating only by VOR and NDB and stopwatch. Smooth autopilot cruising at the flight levels is for sissies.

Also look at how smol they are :3:



Not sure if you have seen this...looks pretty cool and highly accurate!

https://store.x-plane.org/732-TwinJet-V3-Pro_p_739.html#tab-1

Mandibular Fiasco
Oct 14, 2012

Sagebrush posted:

Yeah that is a really fantastic product. But it's for X-Plane and idk if I can do that simulator any more. The world is just...

Maybe they'll port it to FS2020

Yeah, that's my thing, too. FS2020 is just too amazing now. Hopefully it will see more ports. Plus, Austin Meyer seems like goof to whom we shouldn't give money.

Mandibular Fiasco
Oct 14, 2012

soggybagel posted:

I've never seen a formal announcement from them but this tweet which was posted a couple weeks ago showed flight pedals from Honeycomb. I continue to be impressed with their yoke and if they can come into the market with pedals that slot between the low end and the high end like their other products I think that would be awesome.

https://twitter.com/flyhoneycomb/status/1312199488497352704?s=20

That's exciting! I so want to get a new PC for flight simulation now. So much cool stuff to play with now.

I've largely given up trying to fly for real...costs are too great, benefits too small, time commitment enormous. I had dreamed of dusting off my logbook and finishing my PPL, but the barriers to doing so are just too big. I'd rather trick out a PC and spend a bunch of money on hardware to play with at home when I have a few hours to spare. Great to see someone like Honeycomb fitting into the mid-range of PC flight hardware.

Mandibular Fiasco
Oct 14, 2012

ZekeNY posted:

This really needs to be built in to every flight sim. gently caress Richard Daley forever.

Cannot agree more. When I visited Chicago, I went to the park there...was OK, but would have rather seen the flights in and out!

Mandibular Fiasco
Oct 14, 2012

quote:

Huge hole in Brazil has been fixed

Love this.

Mandibular Fiasco
Oct 14, 2012

Sagebrush posted:

I think the spergs just don't have the experience to know what qualifies as "wrong" and what is within the range of normal variation.

There is a big difference between flying a real small airplane and a simulator on your computer screen. Reality has an awful lot of variation to it that aren't modelled by a computer, no matter how sophisticated the model.

Mandibular Fiasco
Oct 14, 2012

i am kiss u now posted:

This is getting off topic of flight simulation a bit but I think more and more people are getting killed because of over-automation and reliance on technology and the absolute visual puke that is being shoved onto displays these days. What is happening in this picture? They're about to hit the side of a mountain probably because they are fumbling around with the display to make it show more poo poo it doesn't need and not flying the drat airplane. I'm all for spacial and situational awareness but that is ridiculous. When you have that full scale of a deflection, you go missed. You'd never want to try to salvage an approach in IMC botched so badly.



My PPL instructor told me to make sure to use the big instrument first - the world outside the windscreen.

I think you're right that the screen fixation is playing into this. Just because you can have all this crap on a display doesn't mean you need it. My Dad was ATPL and flew, amongst other things, the 707 as a first officer. No automation there and they did just fine flying all over the world. You don't need this stuff to fly safely. My cousin is a furloughed 737NG/Max Captain, he tells me he basically flies the thing ten minutes a leg. Everything else is automated, and he tries to fly it as much as he can. Some of his colleagues barely hand fly the thing at all.

Mandibular Fiasco
Oct 14, 2012

KodiakRS posted:

I have 5,000+ hours as an airline pilot, flown for multiple airlines on multiple fleet types, and ridden on the jumpseat of most of the airlines in the US covering about a dozen fleet types. To this day I have not seen a single autoland.

Your sample size is too small.

Seriously though, you are likely right that it is infrequent. You need so many things to do an auto land safely and within regulations that it’s easier just to fly the plane normally.

Mandibular Fiasco
Oct 14, 2012

Vahakyla posted:

They actually didn't.

I am not arguing comparative safety. I am commenting that pilots were able to fly without extensive automation and achieve safe outcomes the vast majority of the time, whereas now, we are seeing that extensive automation can actually contribute to problems where the pilots don't actually fly the airplane and airmanship skills deteriorate.

You quote survivorship bias, so let's talk epidemiology. One needs to consider the background rate of the events before commenting on the number of deaths. The background rate of deaths was higher during that time period, and did decrease in the decades since. However, as a function of exposure, the absolute rate of death was still very small per unit of exposure (seat miles, flights, whatever you decide to use as a measure of incidence density) and passenger aviation was still very safe. It is inarguable that aviation is safer today than fifty years ago. However, that is not to say that aviation then was patently unsafe. Quoting relative risk differences when event rates are so low is problematic at best. For me, the bottom line is that automation is not, in my opinion, an inarguable good.

Although I do like your reductio ad absurdum argument that the Sopwith Camel example. We should work a Snoopy reference in there somewhere. :)

Mandibular Fiasco
Oct 14, 2012

Sagebrush posted:

Why would you expect the AI in a flight simulator game to be able to avoid high terrain? That's basically impossible to code and a total waste of development time. Now please take a look at this list of misplaced rivets on this Nazi fighter plane

Truth.

Mandibular Fiasco
Oct 14, 2012

Not nearly enough Ireland. Croke Park should be an enhanced landmark.

Mandibular Fiasco
Oct 14, 2012

Trillhouse posted:

Edit: The top review on Steam for Stormworks is negative with 2,300 hours played. lmao never change steam reviewers.

In fairness, his complaint is with the development team and the direction they've taken. The reviewer sounds like he's fully invested (or was), so to me there's two possibilities. One, he's bonkers and shouldn't be listened to; or two, the developers are incompetent crazy people who won't listen to anyone. Truth probably in the middle somewhere (I'd lean towards the developers).

Mandibular Fiasco
Oct 14, 2012

Warmachine posted:

I thought, foolishly, that building computers and model kits would be the most expensive hobbies I'd ever be interested in.

I was wrong.

If you hate money, take up technical scuba diving.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Mandibular Fiasco
Oct 14, 2012

Porfiriato posted:

To add to this, they sent a takedown notice threatening legal action to flightsim.to, the biggest MSFS community mod/add-on site, for hosting freeware liveries for their 777. They claim that under the (almost certainly legally unenforceable) terms of their license they own ALL freeware liveries made for the 777, and on top of that they've apparently snagged all the liveries that were on flightsim.to and are rehosting them via their own proprietary add-on software without permission or credit from the original creators.

It's a good old-fashioned simworld trainwreck.



I seem to recall these guys have been dodgy since long before this. Can’t remember specifics other than it seemed doubtful I would ever buy one of their products. Anyone remember details?

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply