Posts by GrahamD

  • R-22 challenge, requires Switzerland DLC

    OK, so this is a fairly daft thing to do, but I wonder if anyone else has tried landing at Schilthorn? It's an interesting challenge because the R-22 won't hover that high; you need transitional lift to get up there. As soon as your forward speed drops you begin to descend. This means approaching more like a fixed-wing, with a somewhat exaggerated flare and trying to plonk the R-22 on the helipad. On one attempt I thought I was about to achieve this, but when the downwash hit the helipad the R-22 suddenly remembered it was a helicopter and, since I still had full collective in a desperate attempt to stay in the air, promptly taxied over the edge. I did manage it once, but it wasn't pretty and I think in reality I hit the deck far too hard not to have done any serious damage. If anyone's daft enough to have a go, let me know how you get on.

  • THROUGH THE LENSES - PIMAX 8K vs PIMAX 5K+ vs Odyssey +

    Pimax 5k+ looks like a clear winner, and also has the wider field of view. The drawback is the drain on the GPU, I'd love to hear if anyone has tried it with anything other than a top-end GPU on AFS2. With new headsets coming out soon, the compromise is going to be between clarity and field of view. The likes of HP reverb and Acer Ojo ConceptD will offer much better clarity for reading gauges, but not much improvement in field of view. A larger field of view is better for immersion and I suspect will make the world of difference when flying the R22. Valve Index is still a bit of a mystery. Rumous say that it will have a resolution of 1440 X 1600 with a 135 degree field of view, but this would make the clarity awful, far worse than the original rift, so does not make sense. Just have to wait and see.

  • Learning how to fly the R22

    I had an old Logitech 3D Extreme 3D pro joystick from which I attempted to remove the spring. Sadly the process induced a fault (the jumper leads were in so tight that removing them wobbled the pins enough to damage the circuit tracks). I spent several hours with soldering iron and multimeter, trying to re-wire it, but to no avail. I toyed with getting another one and having another go, but ordered a Thrustmaster T Flight HOTAS 4 instead. This has an adjustable spring tension, and on the lowest setting it works just fine. I would certainly recommend this for helo flying as it is better than the unmodified Logitech one. The only slight problem is that the throttle (collective) has a fairly stiff notch in the centre position. Fortunately, it tends not to be near this position for the fiddly stuff, so its not a show-stopper.

  • Learning how to fly the R22

    Sadly, I have had little time to practise, maybe 10-15 minutes a few times a week. Yet I seem to learn in my sleep. After a few days off, it all just seemed to come together and, though landings may still have a bit of a thud, I seem to be able to put the R22 to where I want it to go. I actually had to quit and check that I was still on profi mode, I just could not believe how much more controllable it felt. It's certainly great fun and very satisfying to fly.

  • R22: hurt ego

    Having similar problems here, the only difference is that I totally expected it. That video looks pretty well controlled compared with my efforts. I'm using VR, but certainly wouldn't recommend learning to fly the R22 in VR to anyone with a weak stomach; I'm having to get my VR legs all over again.

  • Learning how to fly the R22

    Having great fun in pro mode, but absolutely hopless at it. The short joystick does not help. Is there a way to reduce sensitivity or would this be a problem when moving fast when you may need more movement? I notice at high altitude I get a low rpm warning. How do I increase this, is it the govenor control or do I just need to increae the throttle?

  • When will the ILS approaches get fixed ?

    What's with all the helicopterist talk? First Ipacs are criticised for not giving enough updates on what they are working on, and when they do give us a bit of information they're told they are working on the wrong things. Personally, I can't wait for a helicopter release but I'm not going to tell them to hold off on the ATC.

  • Good news: I almost achieved 90 FPS with Orbx TrueEarth Netherland on Pimax 5K+

    Quote from whitav8

    GrahamD

    Most benchmarking of the 2080ti over the 1080ti are showing a modest 30% or so improvement in performance (everything else the same).The 3X stuff has to do with ray tracing.

    I was referring to performance compared with a GTX 970, which ran adequately. At the moment, it seems that the Pimax needs an absolute top end graphics card and CPU to have any hope of running fluidly. This would suggest that a wide-angle VR system is going to require a major investment, even for something like AFS2 with a very efficient rendering engine. From pixel numbers alone I would have expected at GTX 1080 or 1070 ti with an i5 to be adequate. If/when occulus and Vive have wide angle systems, things may change.

  • Good news: I almost achieved 90 FPS with Orbx TrueEarth Netherland on Pimax 5K+

    I take your point entirely, but with roughly 3 X the raw processing power, the RTX 2080 Ti should cope quite easily with a 1.8 X increase in pixel count, though I admit that with high supersampling and dense scenery the 970 may have struggle a bit). The problem may be that when you approach 180 degrees, you can no longer project onto a flat plane, so a major shift in rendering technique may be required. I wouldn't be surprised things steadily improve with time,

  • Good news: I almost achieved 90 FPS with Orbx TrueEarth Netherland on Pimax 5K+

    I was running quite happily in a Windows Mixed Reality headset with an early i5 and GTX 970. The WMR headsets (except Samsung) have two 1440 X 1440 displays, whereas Pimax 5K+ has two 2560 X 1440 displays, less than 1.8 times the number of pixels, so why the huge increase in grunt needed? Sounds like the drivers are very sub-optimal. The AFS2 rendering engine is so efficient, I would imagine that if they can't run this, they must be pretty useless with anything else.