the box o tricks
A few people have been asking how I hook up all my switches and lights to the PC. It's quite simple really - via the box o tricks.

boxy. tricksy.


In there is a BetaInnovations PlasmaV2 analogue/digital input board (essentially a joystick HID board), a BetaInnovations GammaRayV2 digital input board (256 inputs) and a PhidgetLED64 output board (64 LEDs). Rather than wire my panels directly to the boards which gets very messy after awhile, I breakout the board ports to five D37 sockets on the front panel.

The 4 on the left go to 4 of the 8 GammaRay ports (3 configured as digital input, one as rotary encoders) with 32 inputs on each port, and the one on the right goes to ports 0-15 on the PhidgetLED64. The Plasma is currently not connected.

The PhidgetLED64 is brand new, a thoughtful birthday gift from my dear wife :) First project for that will be the Ka-50 autopilot or the Ka-50 targeting mode control panel. Probably the latter as I use it more often.

not at all difficult to understand Russian

15/02/09 @ 10:28 AM AEST [link] [No Comments]

yeah baby
Finally - with the aid of the TH2G, a 3.6GHz overclock and x48 mobo goodness, a solid 30FPS on high settings in instant action at 3x1280x768 plus a 1024x768 ABRIS/Shkval.

I retract my previous big fat oprah tits statement. THIS is big fat oprah tits


There's still a little bit of wierdness as the engine crashes every time I exit the mission (but retains the mission results) and screenshotting using the built-in screenshot key fails, but those things are minor. It works! It works!!!

For posterity, the settings used were these. The only other mod is the 200 FOV mod to View.lua.
13/02/09 @ 10:59 PM AEST [link] [2 Comments]

stock speed comparison
Q6600 @ 2.4GHz, P35 mobo, 2GB DDR-8500, 8800 Ultra, Vista_32: 11,654 in 3dMark06

Q6600 @ 2.4GHz, X48 mobo, 6GB DDR-8500, 9800GTX+, Win7_64: 12,168 in 3dMark06

Not as impressive as I'd hoped. However, I assume the GPU has some headroom and the RAM will help at high resolutions such as with the TH2G. We shall see, at least it's not worse!

*edit*

And it went to 14,517 with a very easy overclock. Let's see how stable it is...

13/02/09 @ 12:11 AM AEST [link] [No Comments]

decision
Let's try the 9800 GTX+ (maybe with a teeny OC) in Win7_64bit with the TH2G on the main head (3x1280x768) plus the ABRIS on the second head. Will be able to use all 6GB RAM, and it seems there's no way to use fullscreen in XP with what I want to do, so there's no real reason to go to XP. This will also give me DX10 for FSX if I ever use it again :)

Will set the TH2G to use a wide perspective a'la the very bottom of this thread rather than using centre/left/right.

So this should get me decent performance on a single GPU with all 4 screens. If it can hack it, I'll push the resolution up using the 5 meter VGA cable trick. I could also later make the move to Crossfire by picking up a couple of 4870's!
04/02/09 @ 07:08 PM AEST [link] [No Comments]

pit screens - working it out
So there are a number of things I'm wrestling with. first is OS:

- XP 32: Stable drivers and supports fullscreen, but can't use more than 3GB RAM which can be an issue with high-RAM GPUs. No DX10.
- XP 64: Out, because no trackIR drivers.
- Vista 32: RAM problem, can't run fullscreen. DX10.
- Win7 64: Can use all RAM and has TrackIR drivers. Only problem is can't run fullscreen. DX10.

So it looks like the contenders are XP_32 and Win7_64. I'll try XP first, and if I can run fullscreen and get good frames, I'll stick with it. Might dual-boot with Win7_64 for FSX/DX10?

Next: hardware.

- Dual Nvidia cards: poor performance on existing mobo. Dual PCIe x16 slots on the new mobo might help. Can run 4 screens.
- 4850X2: 4 heads on one card, should get rid of the multi-card problem. Can also run xfire for increased performance on 2 heads (e.g. a TH2G plus ABRIS).
- Single card: requires TH2G. eliminates double card issue.

Gah.
04/02/09 @ 11:00 AM AEST [link] [No Comments]