-Hawkeye-

Speaking of "back".... Are you back, Pfeil? Are you out of the hospital and doing well again? Very much hoping you are!

I can fly in this one. Does anybody use the JG1 TS channel for this, or is there another preference?

Yes, what he said, all of what I said is dependent on the rest of your system being up to date, or at least, not too out of date. They say there are games that are "CPU-intensive" (RoF is purported to be one of these) and games which are more "GPU intensive". The GPU can take away a lot of the processing load from the CPU, but only if the game code is written in a way that can take advantage of that. I think most of the mainstream, highly popular games are written that way. But flight sims? Possibly not so much.

The main lesson is, for gaming, don't buy a laptop. Sure, it's a "gaming" laptop... but what that really means is, compared to other laptops, it's good, but compared to a full sized PC? No. They like to imply that components inside a laptop are the same by using the same names; but they're all special laptop versions that are not only more compact, they have completely different architecture. They use less power. They can't cool as well. Their caches and memory are less and maybe even a completely different type. The full-sized components are bigger for a reason. When it comes to Nvidia GPUs, the first part of the number is the generation of the processor; but the last two numbers are basically how good that card is... and a 60 series is not that good. I personally would never buy anything less than a 70 series, they have about the best price point for what you're getting; but I almost always go for the 80 series. It's a big jump in price jump, but you get what you pay for. Basically any current 80 series card will run any current game at full settings, fast, using only one card. It's all about data throughput. There are two ways to increase that... you can speed things up, or you can process bigger chunks of data with each clock cycle. With each series increase, they do both of those things; and by the 80 series, they're basically about as fast as that generation of card can run. They may have a special "TI" version that can do a little more, but you're paying a very high premium for not that much increase... basically, bragging rights. Just use the "native" resolution of your monitor. If your machine can't run that at settings and frame rates that are acceptable to you, you need a new GPU. If that resolution is not good enough for you, you need a new monitor.

November 4. It's important for everyone to keep in mind that the time reference for FiF is, and always has been US time (not UTC/GMT). So if your time changes with respect to US time, or US time changes, and you're not in the US, your start/end time will change, unless your time happens to change by the same amount in the same direction, simultaneously. For those in the US, the start/end time never changes, regardless if it's standard or daylight savings time. Clear as mud? EDIT: Klaiber beat me to the post

What program are you using?

Sweet! Very professional, you put time into that!

Awesome videos Ricky! You sure can see your tracers like crazy. I can't see mine hardly at all. Maybe it's HDR?

@ Parsons, I'm pretty sure he means you should NOW have access to the Red Team section of the forum, not "not" have access

Another update on the Virpil line. One, they've consolidated their sales into one site instead of a european and north american site; it is now only an EU site (their "worldwide" store). Two, unfortunately they have to some extent adopted the VKB business model....in other words, you can't "pre-order" anything anymore. An item is either in stock or not in stock. If it's not in stock, your only option is to get on an email list to be notified when it is in stock. Their previous method of operating is the whole reason I chose to deal with them over VKB. With VKB and their very tiny production of maybe a dozen units at a time, it's most probable that you'll never get one, considering that the units are bought up before you can ever get a chance to order one, once notified. With VKB, it's kind of like e-Bay. Somebody always gets in before you. The good news is that so far, Virpil seems to have better ability to supply. By that I mean that I was going to buy a T-50 throttle, but they weren't in stock, so I put my name on the email list, not expecting much. However, within 2 weeks I received a notice (today) and immediately acted on it, and actually got a T-50 throttle on order. There's been some real confusion going on at the Virpil website, considering that they've moved their production to a new site, and changed their website over to a completely new one. This happened in the middle of my first order being fulfilled....the WarBRD base and T-50 Mongoos grip. For a while I couldn't track my order, which was disconcerting....they told me I had to create a whole new account, and even once I did....my original order info was missing. However, my original order has been shipped and has tracking information, which I found out through their support. Last I saw it left Minsk and should be coming via USPS Priority Mail in the near future. The Throttle order has been accepted and there is a record of it. Since it was one of a batch that they just had in stock, it should progress pretty quickly, as these things go. These things are not cheap!! The first order of base and grip cost me very close to $433.00, including shipping, which is a lot. The second order of throttle only, cost $419.00 including shipping. The throttle is basically 300 euros, not including shipping. Pretty expensive! But if I'm any where near as happy with this stuff as I am with my MFG Pedals, it will be well worth it. These things are going to require a lot of modifications to my physical setup, so I'm not going to dive into that until we have some break between FiF's. Once I figure out what I need to do with mounting/strengthening/spring tension/cam profiles, I'll set it all up....maybe in the Christmas time frame. They have a high standard to live up to; my CH gear has been bullet-proof, once I figured it out; and to be honest, having trim wheels on the pitch and roll axis is something almost nobody else has....which would be something that in FC could be a game changer. Hope I'm making the right decision!

The balloons along the front are angled up; nice, realistic touch. Not even the ones in the game do that. The airplanes and zeppelins in the air lend a perspective that emulates looking down from high above. The channel section shows the war that was going on there, too. The train line shows the distances from the ports and town along the coast, which turned out to be further than expected. Outstanding work, Geezer!

I had pretty much made up my mind to replace my quadrant with the Virpil throttle later, since I have a joystick on the way from them (supposed to have shipped this week). Might as well order it now, considering how long it takes to get this stuff. My biggest worry is the instructions; I've heard they're not in English.

A very complex subject. Does anybody really want a controller designed for one specific sim? Or, do you want it to be a little more universal, considering the expenditure. The main throttle physical offset of the handle is opposite in your two thumbnails that you've posted. Personally I'd want it offset to the left, considering that most people are right-handed and would be operating the throttle with the left hand. I'd also want the second axis to be right next to it, in case you want to use it for a second throttle on a twin-engined plane; or it could be used for prop pitch in a single-engined plane. In the case of potentiometers, no two are exactly the same. Would there be an accompanying utility to properly calibrate them that would work with Windows without trouble? Or, could Hall Effect sensors be used instead. In the interest of university, I would not want labels which could not be changed. Here's one example of a non-thustmaster throttle which could possibly serve the same purpose, with known software compatibility and (somewhat more?) widespread usage, etc.: Throttle

Can you say "feature updates"? Stuff nobody is asking for.... (said the grumpy old codger who remembers DOS...)

What exactly do they gain by changing this stuff so often anyway??? There's gotta be a reason.

Sadly, I believe the gentleman decided not to join JG1.

I just figured out how they came up with that name

Glad you decided to take the plunge, Em! Looking forward to more WWI and WWII adventures with you!

Ditto! Hope all is going well. S!

That last paragraph, Raz, makes me wonder about the difference between reality and VR. You really shouldn't have to turn around a full 180 degrees to see behind you, should you? Your true field of vision is over 180 degrees, and although it is clear you can't see things clearly at the very edges of your field of view, you should be able to discern movement. Having detected movement, would you not then shackle or something to get a better view? Just trying to figure out what the real problem is.

If you think about it, if it ever became mandatory for everybody in a flight sim, the younger, more flexible and pain-free guys will do a lot better than us old guys....which is the way it is in the real world. Probably as it should be, if reality is the primary concern! Heck, I remember getting a sore neck when I first started using TIR. Of course they said that was a sign that you just needed to speed up your curves. Someday, maybe they'll add actual G effects too. You'll wear a suit that inflates and has the opposite effect as a real G suit for pilots. The more G's you pull in the sim, the more it inflates by your head and squeezes the blood away from your brain. Then the young guys definitely will have the edge

The more I hear (and see) about VR from you guys, the more convinced I become not to buy it for flight sims. I realize that immersive trumps success for a lot of people....but it never will for me. Failure = frustration for me, and I will never get enjoyment out of that situation. I ain't built that way. Perhaps some day they will force VR over TIR, or maybe even make it a server side setting. At that time I would join the VR side, knowing everybody is on a level playing field. Until then, not.

First off, I wouldn't depend on the MSI live update utility to get your drivers. I also installed and tried it, but it only showed 1 driver for updating, when there were others that could have been. Also in addition to that shows utilities... not just ones that apply to your board, but also unnecessary, redundant, frivolous and even non-MSI apps. I've come to the conclusion the best thing to do is to search your board, go to the support>downloads page for your board, then save a short cut in your browser for that. The list is more comprehensive and there is some explanation as to the purpose of the items. Still it is not all clear, and for things that you aren't completely sure of, a Google search helps a lot but even there critical info can be amazingly obscure, such as the processor type applicability. In your case there's a couple of possibilities. Main thing is to look at Control Panel > Programs listing to see whether it's listed there. There is a 2.0 version and a 3.0 version; maybe you have 2.0. I've read they don't do the same thing, you can Google the differences. Also, in order for the drivers/software to do anything or work, you need to have "Intel Turbo Boost Technology" enabled in your BIOS. In my BIOS, this is enabled by default... but you should probably check. I've even read some people claiming that you have to have it enabled when you installed Windows, or it may never work. I've also read repeatedly that you must uninstall the old version first, and not install the new version over top of what you have. Apparently, in order to tell if it's actually working, there's a way to see what the current CPU multiplier is, and you should see it go up under load. The 3.0 version figures out which is your fastest core, and assigns the heaviest processing to that. They say it can make up to a 15% difference in speed. I guess that's where th "max" comes in. You can get the drivers/utility from MSI of course, but also directly from Intel. I did notice extra stuff in MSI's package compared to Intel's, so I probably would have installed that if it had applied to me. One other confusing thing....on my BIOS at MSI, the version number is different than the download file name. I think they leave off a zero on the download file name. So for example, you might have version 1 of your BIOS, which would be called *.10 if you checked it. Then if you checked online, you might see a download file name of *.9 there, making you think that your version is newer. However, if you were to download and install that *.9 file, it would be BIOS version *.90 when completed, which is 8 versions newer than you had. Best thing to do might be to download whatever latest zip file is posted, then look inside the zip file; there you should see the actual version BIOS file used. Confusing much?

Are there recommendations from anybody for standard video settings, TIR or otherwise?

Special thanks to Snaggle for slogging through the drivers with me. It turned out, in addition to all of the standard drivers: 1) Intel Management Engine (ME): Needed. Lots of things it does that are required. 2) Intel Turbo Boost Max Technology: Not applicable. Does apply to my motherboard, but only if processors of the 68xx, 69xx, 78xx, 79xx families are used (Broadwell, etc.). I have a i7-5930K (Haswell). 3) Intel Rapid Storage driver: Not needed. ACPI is set in BIOS, and I don't use RAID. Thanks for the help, it got me on the right road! S!