Posts by John Hargreaves

Quote from aarneson

Sorry that I missed the original thread on this, my bad... But might I add that my thread will probably call as much if not more attention to the fact that a new aircraft is on the horizon than the obscure references buried in a now 3-screen thread started in early March. Ray, all I want to do is celebrate what IPACS is up to.

I'm sure the R22 will be just the start, once they work out the physics of rotor flight for full size craft rather than RC size there will be much more to come. If the R22 has been 2+ years in development (probably more if you count all the work in ipacs other titles) I'm sure it won't be another 2 years until the R44, or whatever comes next. As you say, it's nice to celebrate what's happening and try to encourage the team.

The original Helisimmer interview with Torsten Hans was nearly two years ago. I can't believe it was so long ago but I've been eagerly awaiting this news ever since then. AFS2+helicopters=whole new level of fun Great news that the R22 is so far along.

Quote from slipstream

Very disappointed with the R22. Was hoping for a half decent one like the Huey or CH47. Won’t be purchasing this.

the Huey in DCS is incredible. I fly with the Copy Cat helo controls. Had them for years and are perfect for rotary flying.

The helicopters in XP11 are also just as good, and so long as the R22 we get is a match for those (and according to helisimmer, it looks like it will be), then it will be the first of many. You have to start somewhere.

Quote from pmb

Are there any affordable (say within the Saitek-range) helicopter controls available? The ones I know start at 600 $ which is a bit steep for a casual chopper flyer. I know there are numerous do-it-yourself solutions on YouTube but that's not what I would be looking for. And of course it should work with AeroflyFS2.

At present, I use a Saitek Quadrant for Collective, the Saitek Cessna Pedals (pretty poor for that purpose) and a TM16000.

I doubt there is, but just in case, thanks a lot, Michael

Unfortunately not, it's a pretty niche market and what's out there is generally good quality, but expensive. Best source of info is the helisimmer site and the DCS forums.

edit: the down and dirty way is to reverse the axis of your throttle so you pull it towards you to increase the collective pitch. Most helicopters seem to have an automatic throttle/governor, so I leave that on one half of the throttle unit and keep it forward, like in a fixed wing, then have the nearest one on collective. You can then use the joystick as normal, but it has a much shorter throw, so you need to fiddle with curves. I'd also say some decent pedals are very important on anti torque duty to get that 3D combination of pedals/collective/cyclic all working in a coordinated way.

It does work pretty well and is a good compromise.

Oh Boy

Quote from McLyn

I know 👍🏻 Perfect! I‘m looking forward. A little drama is, that all ORBX products I purchased during the last 10 years 👍🏻 I have to buy again 😉😥

If it's exactly the same as your previous version, say Meigs Field and probably all those airports that are coming, you'll get the 40% discount. If it's a whole new product like the new photoreal PNW or UK, even if you have the previous versions, then you will pay the full charge. Seems quite reasonable to me.

Like any aspect of the sim, I can see how it would be nice to have it perfect, but I can't say it's ever bothered me, and there are plenty of other things I would give a higher priority to include/fix. I'd just stick it on the end of the 'jobs to do' list and leave it there.

Certainly has the potential to be a really exciting product. They are talking about photo based scenery, not the landclass stuff from their original UK packages, so every building, road and feature in the country should be represented. Sounds massively ambitious, but really amazing if it comes off.

Quote from Jet-Pack

Well you can already share and backup the config files I think (never tried it), its the gc-map.mcf in the user folder I think.

And for the number three: this is exactly what I need more detail about. What in particular would you reconfigure for an aerobatic plane vs. an airliner? Glider airbrake can already be assigned on a custom axis and so would be helicopter collective. Once you've assigned it the right way you never have to worry about it again.

I know DCS saves per aircraft and it has advantages but I don't like redoing the same exact control assignment 18 times for all our aircraft. This doesn't suit Aerofly well. Aerofly is a flight simulator, not so much a configure and tweek until it finally works program.

I agree, it can be quite painful setting up a new plane in DCS, when you are just repeating stuff you've done many times already.

Helicopters are one thing that springs to mind; you want your joystick throttle to work in reverse, so pulling it towards you raises the collective.

Another one would be the toe brakes on a Spitfire, where you have one brake lever and then use the rudder pedals to move the braking left and right, rather than having two separate toe brakes like most planes have.

XP11 with ortho4XP and various community made autogen items can create very impressive scenery, so I'd guess we might be stuck with the home made versions using the IPACS tools. It seems that commercial costs of using photo scenery and charging for it is prohibitive, as you just aren't going to sell enough copies to make your money back.

I landed on Broadway in the 172, that was pretty cool.

I've also recreated the scene in my avatar in the Buckmeister, only without the Gorilla. We need more giant gorillas in FS2 for sure.

Quote from frui

Sad to hear about this. Looks like a helicopter is still quite a long way ahead.

IPACS have helicopters in the RC sim they do, so there is some base for helicopter physics there already. I'm sure they'll get round to it in due course.

Quote from Redtail

Thanks for the pirep. It will be a few days before I have the time to get it and marvel over all the beauty in VR. But what I think I'll do first, is make one last flight between KEGE and KASE in the default scenery.

Absolutely this: it really helps to appreciate the work when you do a default flight first, then you install the new stuff and it makes it all the better.

It's a complete fantasy and will never happen, but how cool would it be to take a plane from one sim and fly it in another? I'd love to take my DCS Huey or my Dreamfoil Bell 407 round the FS2/OrbX areas. We can dream for free.

Quote from J van E

I suppose you aren't using VR then...? Seriously, a detailed addon like this one should be flown in 2D and Vr as well: 2D to appreciate all the detail and VR, well, for the immersion. Even though all that detail will be reduced to pixels in VR things still will look a LOT better than without all those detail!

The best thing is that when we eventually do get high resolution VR, we can enjoy all these sceneries again as if for the first time.

That one looks like it splits the stereo signal to two speakers. I think what you would need first is a splitter that sends out two stereo signals, so you send one to the shaker and one to your headphones. The shaker actually only needs a mono signal, but your normal game sound will need stereo. I think you can turn stereo to mono easily enough (I had to Google it because numpty), but not the other way round. That's my understanding thus far.

I notice the links I put on the post above have been taken off, apologies to mods if this breaks forum rules, sorry, I was only trying to help share my experiences.

I looked at that open bass speaker first, but I decided to go with the encased version, just a bit neater, but you are right, you could do this at a seriously budget price. I never realised it would be possible to do this, the proper buttkickers are quite pricey, so I never went any deeper into it.

Regarding the gain filter, I think my souncard software does something similar, it allows me to choose what frequency range is included in the low frequency output, will that be the same thing?

I got this amp mainly as it had a separate subwoofer output channel with its own volume control

I put a Y-splitter cable into the front panel headphone socket coming from my soundcard, one part to the amp, the other to the headphones. The sub out from the amp I connected to this:

Which I screwed onto a piece of plywood that I bolted under my office chair. I'm going to connect the amp and my chair with a curly headphone cable, which will be neater and allow me to disconnect my new electric chair more easily. The rest was a few bits of speaker cable I had lying around, but if you had to buy everything from scratch it would still only be a few quid more. Whole thing took an hour or two to install, a bit of trial & error, hunting through the shed for bolts and plywood etc, and it was a very simple bit of drilling and wiring, little bit of soldering, but in terms of electronics about as easy as it gets.

Nice thing is it just works, you can turn it on and off quickly (amp screwed under my desk) and it works in all games as it uses the sound output. I can't believe I've not cottoned on to this before, it's an excellent value for money add on, really enhances the immersion.

Edit: however, I'm having a spot of bother getting audio mirroring working in FS2 with the rift. There is an option to do this in the rift settings, but it doesn't seem to work. Current low tech solution in VR is to unscrew the rift headphones and use my normal ones, until I figure it out. Works fine in 2-D no probs as it comes through the headphones anyway.

Edit edit: Phil's solution looks good, I'll try that

Quote from Zed

Hey John, unfortunately there isn’t a one size fits all "volume" setting. Some sims have less bass than others. PCars2 and AC both have dry strong bass. AFS2 seems a little light in the piston aircraft. I was flying P3D the other day in an A2A 182 and it was so strong it caused my shakers to thermal out and stop working until they cooled. It’s one of the problems with piggybacking shaking on audio. Putting your amp where it’s easy to tweak levels "in flight" is a good solution.

Also fun is raising/lowering the gear in the AFS2 Corsair as well as folding/unfolding the wings. There’s a strong base clunk that comes in as each gear or wing hits the stops. It’s kind of a trip to feel that.

I put the amp just under my desktop, so I can reach the volume knob easily. I soon noticed the differences between planes/sims, so having it to hand like that, it's as easy as turning up the volume on a car radio. I'll go try the Corsair, that sounds good.

FS2 store page and reviews is looking much healthier now, we'll have to keep checking from time to time to keep it on the light side.