Sloan

Yeah I'm sort of in the build-it-yourself mood, especially because I'm pretty happy with my saitek x52 already and I think I could do all this for cheaper than buying something and modding it. I'll keep you guys posted.

This is what I used when I built my arcade machine: http://www.ultimarc.com/ipac1.html The upside is that it has easy to use screw-terminals. The downside is that its a bit more expensive than what you posted there. My concern is that I'm just no good at soldering. :oops: Does anyone have an idea where to get project boxes? (metal, plastic or otherwise?) I've got a ton of good catalogues for switches but I'll have to call them and ask if they'll sell them non-bulk. There's all sorts of fancy switches, lights and toggles possible.

Muahaha mockup.

Starting a new thread for this project: Hehe as if we needed another project around here. Lets begin with some basics. In my mind the box should primarily take care of things that a standard joystick doesn't (i.e. we don't need a view hat on it). It should contain things that would naturally be a switch in a real cockpit. It should be something that can sit comfortably to the side of your existing setup and provide hardware versions of keyboard inputs. I've got experience with a few interfaces that convert button and switches to keyboard signals. They are available as USB and generally run about $50. I'm thinking the overall cost for the project should be a comfortable ~$100. Things that would be great to have: 3 trim tabs/wheels Landing gear Flaps up/down Eject button (with prevantative cover) Cockpit lights/Nav Lights/Strobes Supercharger Next/Prev Magneto Next/Prev Airbrake WEP Mixture Prop Pitch Engine selectors Engine start Now naturally, we don't need all those on the thing. People could customize it to their own preferences. But it would also be easy enough to install every one of the items if the box was about a foot wide by two feet in length. Most of the multifunction items can be done with one switch. So we don't need a seperate one for up *and* down. This could all be cased in a metal project box if we could find one online somewhere. Wood would suffice if we wanted to do a custom shape of some sort. Basically construction would go like this: Drill appropriate holes in project box. Install switches. Run ground wire from switch to switch. Run wire to keyboard encoder. Plug keyboard encoder into PC. Progam to IL-2 keyboard functions. If we had things planned out, total construction time wouldn't exceed more than two hours.

I would use http://youtube.com/ - they seem to work pretty well and you can actually embed movies into your own webpages and stream from them. Not sure how, but I hear its not complicated.

[my long winded idea moved to a thread of its own]

I'm dying to make my own trim tabs (all three on one box). Any other buttons that could be snuck in there would be great as well. Can anyone think of a nice (and cosmetically appealing) way of doing this? I was planning on developing this anyway, but it would rock if our squadrons could develop an easy to build schematic that we could distribute free of charge to fellow IL2'ers. Would anyone be game in collaborating with me on this? It can't be more difficult than my last project, built from scratch: I have to show her off every chance I get. But yeah, I'd love to put together a CAD file or otherwise that would tell someone how to build a little panel box start to finish. Anyone up to the challenge?

is it just me or are those pci slot covers? :shock:

thank you so much. I tried this prog yesterday and couldn't get the hang of it. I'll give this a second shot this evening.

Cool - tell me what you think of them and if you have any troubles. I've found the source of a low garble noise is having the vibration on. Luckily once you get in the game you can't notice it. Let me know if you have a similar issue so I can trace my problem. I still love the headphones btw even with this small issue. They're very comfortable for long flights.

as a hippie vegetarian of 10 of my 23 years I agree with your decision. :wink: :cowers in the corner ready for backlash: We had a very large flock of those in my hometown (a rather large city) and the city decided to kill them all because they were sitting on people's cars. Sometimes I think it is humans who do the encroaching but its a downward slope I suppose. Thanks for the pictures BG, always nice to see a little of the outdoor wild among you wild dogs.

honestly I can't see whats wrong with it? is it the feathered texture that wasn't there before? if so, i like it this way too!

I typically just use [DD] so that it doesnt cut off the remainder of your screenname. It'd be kind of silly for other people to read :ddogs:Slo and miss that its me Sloan. Just a thought.

AMD 2600 (~1.9ghz) 1024 MB Ram ATI Radeon 9800 Pro Windows XP SP2 ~500 GB Harddisk space (spread out over 3 HDs) TrackIR 4 Saitek x52 Creative Labs Live! Value Card eDimensional Force-Feedback Headphones Butt-Kicker Force-Feedback Chair Addon

Just wanted to show you guys this website: http://www.writeboard.com/ Its sort of like a wiki in that it lets a lot of people edit one document. Might be good to use for a newbie flying document or squadron thoughts etc.

I've seen other sites effectively use old photos of pilots in front of their planes, only they paste in the players face over top and modify the markings on the plane. Would this be an idea we would want to pursue? I don't wanna rip anyone else off, but its a fairly common practice among squadron websites. I don't think itd be too much awful work. I could help with the photoshop'ing if needed. We could even do a group shot in front of one plane to make the image editing easier. Perhaps have each squad in front of a plane bearing its respective team logo. Also, if this has already been suggested consider me: :oops:

Did you know that Sam (the world's ugliest dog) passed away about a month ago? Here's one to our fallen dogs... if Sam can be called a dog. Always looked more like a burnt rat to me.

Now that's what I'm talking about! Many props to you Arsenal. You do good work.

Oh I forgot to add one of the things I liked best about the force feedback. I'm not sure if the low frequencies are just coded into the game at the right spots (causing the seat to react), but when stressing my aircraft with turns that are too tight or dives that are too steep I definitely get corresponding feedback from my seat and headset. The normal "drone" increases and makes it seem like I'm doing something wrong, which in fact, I am. Now instead of going into a flat spin and being "oh I must have done something wrong" I can sort of feel it coming which tells me to adjust accordingly. I'm not sure if in real life you would feel this turbulance as you stress a plane, but it feels right here, and I'm not complaining. Oh man, now I'm researching the new Sound Blaster line of cards. Will it ever end? :oops:

Wow. My neighbors are gunna kill me. These things as a pair are awesome. Let me start with takeoff. When the motor is off, everything is quiet of course. No movement anywhere. As soon as I hit the ignition key, the seat starts vibrating with an ever increasing pulse (the prop spinning up). The kickback of smoke right before full ignition startled me the first time, and after a few pops from my seat and headset, the engine reached peak. During normal flight there is a repetitive drone to the buzz, something which I imagine isn't far off from reality. Its weird at first, but afterwards its one of those things like flying with the trackIR - it wouldn't feel real without it. Now is the fun part. Using my machine guns sends my seat bucking. The vibrations from my head and body even travel down to my flying hand, making it feel like theres almost force feedback coming from the joystick. It feels like it should. Taking damage now has a realistic feel to it, and you feel everything coming apart at the seams. The chair is kicking my ass at this point, not with anything steady but random bumps and punts as my plane absorbs lead. I wish sometimes that IL-2 didn't kick you into third person mode as soon as you blew up, cause outside the plane an explosion feels less... explosive. But I see why they made that choice, because technically you'd be dead and wouldn't feel that explosion anyway. These things are *fun*. The sound quality on the headphones are around a B+ grade. I boosted the high end of my EQ up a bit, but as gaming headphones and for the price ($50), they're right where they should be in terms of sound quality. I'm also getting some weird garbled noises during the menu screen of IL-2, though I think its something to do with my soundcard and not the headphones. Sounds like electric interference from my harddrive or something. Anyway its only a slight annoyance. The only downside of the butt kicker is that my downstairs neighbors are eventually gunna complain. It isn't so much the bass as the fact that I'm sure theres a slight rumble coming from their ceiling. All in all, for $150 the pair is a worthy purchase, and I feel it definitely engages me in the game that much further. Its somewhat frivolous to spend so much money to have my ass kicked around in a computer chair, but I believe deserve an ass kicking now and again. :wink: On a side note, I'd be interested to hear if anyone knows what being in a WWII fighter likely "felt" like? What was the average amount of feedback during flight. Did using the machine guns rattle the plane you think?

Well I know this will elicit many jokes, but I'm gunna go ahead anyway. I have two new pieces of hardware coming in the mail today as a late gift for valentines day from the girlfriend. Vibrating hardware to be exact. :oops: Thats right, vibrating headphones and a bass buttkicker to vibrate my chair. Now you can hear me scream in pain as you shoot me down and I vibrate right out of my chair. I'll have some tentative reviews as soon as I get to play with them. Or as soon as they play with me.

I neeeeed this.... :shock:

yikes! that was me that posted that. glad i could show that guests shouldn't be able to post! :oops:

Tracks is a great idea. Small file, low bandwidth usage and as long as ONE of us remembers to hit record, we'll be able to see all the fun that we've had and pull good screenshots after the fact.

Wow. Maybe we should change our squad name. I play bass too. Etta James? Gang of Four? That's awesome man. I'm jealous.