X-Plane 10 (XPX)

[v4moose]

and v4moose you'll find the warthog cheaper at pccg and techbuy; while it looks and feels a great stick it's designed for a-10c and having quite a heavy resistance it's probably not the best for long flights. At that price point the saitek x65 is possibly a better general aviation hotas though I'm yet to try one or the force sensing tech. try before you buy if you can at that pp.

cheers

mmm true. I'm still hunting around at what stick to get. I think I will definitely get something more 'generic' so it is more suitable for general aviation. Really just wanted to stay clear of saitek due to being burned in the past with equipment failure, and reading a few unhappy forums posts (driver issue) and the warthog HOTAS looks smexeh.

unfortunately theres just not many options bar saitek. you'd have to go CH products but that means having to buy separate rudder pedals and throttlesm, or the thrusmaster gear.

WTB a decent, all round forcebeedback stick... seriously... why doesn't one exist.

[Nightstaar]

I'm considering the Saitek, although I've never really used their products before tbh. It's the or the separate gear like you said v4moose...

[Hydra]

WTB a decent, all round forcebeedback stick... seriously... why doesn't one exist.

IMO the old MS sidewinder FFB sticks were the best Too bad they don't make them anymore.

Like this one:

[brimlad]

think it's a good thing they don't make them anymore

force feedback is somewhat frowned upon in the siming world these days, not sure why never actually owned or tried one so can't really comment more than I have.

Saitek drivers and software can be dodgy. I stopped using the software as it tended to give weird results in DCS, I just map directly ingame and that works fine it just takes a fair amount of time to do. The current drivers seem to work well with w7 with the exception that it overrides any other controller so if I want to play fifa12 with the xbox style controller I need to unplug the saitex gear to get it to work correctly.

Never tried CH gear but it is very modular so you can build any sort of setup that suits. Warthog is quality but it's best bolted into a sim pit rather than sitting on a desk and you will need rudder pedals as the stick doesn't twist

and thanks Cas ozgame does seem the best option atm, will do some more browsing today just to satisfy my curiosity.

cheers

[v4moose]

WTB a decent, all round forcebeedback stick... seriously... why doesn't one exist.

IMO the old MS sidewinder FFB sticks were the best Too bad they don't make them anymore.

Like this one:

Microsoft Sidewinder FF Pro_06.jpg

couldn't agree more. I still have mine sitting around, used it mainly to play NFS hot pursuit. Plugged into 'GamePort' or something weird though and I don't think MS brought out drivers for XP onwards... wonder if you can get a USB converter and 3rd parrty drivers.

Can't understand why FFB would be shunned upon, IMO nothing like feeling a little aileron deflection going through turbulence or trimming to relieve pressue to highten realism... may after the sidewinder did such a good job no one has done it right :/

BTW - i have no idea how to open that attachment...

[v4moose]

WTB a decent, all round forcebeedback stick... seriously... why doesn't one exist.

IMO the old MS sidewinder FFB sticks were the best Too bad they don't make them anymore.

Like this one:

Microsoft Sidewinder FF Pro_06.jpg

couldn't agree more. I still have mine sitting around, used it mainly to play NFS hot pursuit. Plugged into 'GamePort' or something weird though and I don't think MS brought out drivers for XP onwards... wonder if you can get a USB converter and 3rd parrty drivers.

Can't understand why FFB would be shunned upon, IMO nothing like feeling a little aileron deflection going through turbulence or trimming to relieve pressue to highten realism... may after the sidewinder did such a good job no one has done it right :/

BTW - i have no idea how to open that attachment...

force feedback is somewhat frowned upon in the siming world these days

I feel an avsim.com discussion coming on

[cyclobs]

WTB a decent, all round forcebeedback stick... seriously... why doesn't one exist.

IMO the old MS sidewinder FFB sticks were the best Too bad they don't make them anymore.

Like this one:

actually have one at home, was using it before i got my Logitech, sadly it's pretty beat up. stick is broken and no feedback

[brimlad]

force feedback is somewhat frowned upon in the siming world these days

I feel an avsim.com discussion coming on

lol
I don't understand the ff dislike either; I almost bought that said stick but got caught up in FarCry at that time and didn't sim for 3 years, when I came back to sims they just weren't making that type of stick and still aren't so the demand must not be there. I remember when I was looking at new sticks back then that there were quite a few simers saying that the ff thing was a gimmick and interfered with the experience; maybe we'll see them return.

and Dean from pcaviator replied to my email saying he has plenty of stock of X10; now the dilemma support local or go global and save... ponderosa time lol

cheers

[Ash_Williams]

and Dean from pcaviator replied to my email saying he has plenty of stock of X10; now the dilemma support local or go global and save... ponderosa time lol

cheers

Go global. Everyone else in Australia has.

[v4moose]

X-Plane 10.10 beta is out now. Changlog can be found here

In particular I am happy with this:

The "ATI Windows" issue is fixed: the ATI Windows driver is a bit slow to map memory compared to other drivers/platforms, so we use an alternate code path. This should provide lower CPU use for clouds on ATI Windows systems. If you still have slow clouds, then X-Plane is slow or your machine is slow or your settings are too high.

quite a hefty update IMO - did anyone end up buying? I might pick it up in the next couple of weeks after i get through a bit of DCS

[brimlad]

that's good news, list of improvements is extensive; I'll grab a copy when I'm in london (slightly cheaper than Cas's price) so I won't be flying x10 until I get back in late september. Plenty of DCS to keep me going until then.

cheers

[brimlad]

xpx is now 64bit which greatly improves performance of this sim. I've flying the 10.20 beta for the last couple of nights and have found no problems with the build only improvements in memory and core use.

I installed xpx about a month ago (8xdvd=2hours install lol) and have flown a few familiar places and the terrain mesh is certainly an improvement over fsx though the city detail is a tad thin compared to fsx; I do imagine there is plenty to download.
this pic of Canberra has no significant buildings, even telstra tower is missing:


Even Chicago is pretty thin, taking off north from Meigs you should be faced with a wall of buildings, but not xpx just a few tall non-descript buildings.


The planes themselves fly beautifully and the cabins look good and operate well; the baron 58's panel:


I plan to do a few flights round tassy on friday and compare that terrain mesh to the enhanced mesh I had with fsx so will post up some pics then.

[v4moose]

hey brim is there in built multiplayer in this sim? Was thinking of grabbing myself a copy, I'll come fly with you for **** n giggles if there is

[brimlad]

Hi V4 good to hear from you; peer to peer is built into xpx though I haven't tried it. There is also a plugin called netflight x which again I haven't tried but it does support xplane 9 and 10 and dual cockpit planes which does sound like fun.
the link Cas put up is the best price around and I have bought a couple of games from them since and it takes about a week for them to deliver so worth the wait
and always eager for some fun flying V4 so we'll have to tee up some flights this summer, still pretty keen to shoot down that pretty p-51d you have in the hanger

[v4moose]

heard about laminar research getting sued by a patent troll. Very unfortunate at such a pivotal point in x-plane development. Absolutely ridiculous.

http://www.x-plane.com/x-world/lawsuit/

Paragraph 12 of the lawsuit states: ”Laminar Research is directly infringing one or more claims of the ’067 patent in this judicial district and elsewhere in Texas, including at least claim 107, without the consent or authorization of Uniloc, by or through making, using, offering for sale, selling and/or importing Android based applications for use on cellular phones and/or tablet devices that require communication with a server to perform a license check to prevent the unauthorized use of said application, including, but not limited to, X-Plane.”

Section 107 of the patent, which they claim I violated, contains: “107. …code for verifying the license data stored on the licensing medium by communicating with a registration authority having verification data….”

Uniloc is suing myself, and 8 other developers, for distributing Apps on Android, claiming that we infringe on “their” idea.

Speaking for Laminar Research, we used only the technology that was provided to us by Google for copy protection in our Android App ‘X-Plane’… we used exactly the copy protection Google gave us! And, of course, this is what Google provides to EVERYONE ELSE THAT IS MAKING A GAME FOR ANDROID!