And give up my beloved Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback 2?
I love it! Iām pretty sure I had that. I definitely remember having one for M1A1 Tank Commander, and I definitely had a boxed copy of F-19, so Iām pretty sure I had the keyboard overlay.
Come to think of it, I was probably 8 years old or so, and Iām really scratching my head trying to remember how, when, or why my parents would have picked either of those games upā¦
Huge floods of nostalgia, Brian.
Also I feel like the real story here is that you still have that keyboard!
Oh the keyboard is by Unicomp, I got it a couple of years ago for Star Fleet II.
https://www.pckeyboard.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=UB40B5A
I know, Iām so happy I tracked down a boxed copy for shit like this.
OMG when I loaded it up today to test it out, and I was at the primary menu with the coffee cup and such? MASSIVE nostalgia hit.
So, wanting to play something relatively modern without jumping down an endless switchology rabbit hole, I dug up an old copy of F4 Allied Force, installed the the last patch (1.0.13), and the AF Hi-Tiles (now free for the last few years, which is nice, since Iād deleted my paid copy a long time ago).
Happy to report that the old girl runs flawlessly, and happy to play F4 again without having to worry about bullshit like ādata cartridgesā.
Doing more nostalgic stuff, I fired up RB2 3D after many years. Used the GoG distro, which includes an old GLide wrapper (which still works, but grabbing nGlide 2.x and installing it is a good idea, after cleaning up the GLide files installed in the GoG distro). However, it sadly does not include a DirectDraw wrapper, which inevitably causes the shell of the sim to crash at launch. Thatās fixed by grabbing one of the many DirectDraw wrappers out on the Interwebs and putting that in the install directory.
Itās interesting to see just how much RB2 3D influenced WoFF, although that should be expected as Winding Man and Pavlovski were big RB2 3D modders back in the day (Full Metal Jacket, I believe, was the big mod back then.)
Do deeee dooo over here playing 80s and 90s sims dooo deeeee dooooo because theyāre the best dooo deee dooo
Also Iād forgotten why I didnāt okay much Falcon 3 back in the day. Then I revisited it this week.
Itās dull. Mindnumbingly dull. Going back to Tornado or F-19 or Megafortress was soooooo much more fun.
Protip: if you want to use throttle and hat with DOSBox sims:
- The sim has to natively support the CH Flightstick. Janeās ATF does. So does EF2000.
- DOSBox settings:
[joystick]
joysticktype=ch
timed=true
swap34=true
Itās fun playing these lovely old sims that catered to the player as opposed to some sense of busybox ārealismā
Ohh good to know, thank you!
Got a sweet new toy, Winwing Orion 2 HOTAS. (F/A-18 throttle, F-16 stick.) Itās awesomeā¦ Getting up to speed on it with MSFS and then Iāll tackle the nightmare of figuring out how to get all those switches configured in DCS. :) Iām guessing there will be lots of prebuilt profiles for it.
A bit of a bitch to put together with crappy documentation and no good youtube videos covering the latest revisions of the product.
(Anyone need a T.16000m and Monstertech mounts for it? :-) )
Fucking gorgeous.
So I hate to admit it, but Iād forgotten just how good Digital Integrationās Apache Longbow is. Iāve been streaming it this week, and each mission Iāve done has been AMAZINGLY compelling, like Iāve been in the middle of a proper warzone. SO GOOD. I think I forgot in light of just how good Hind is, but wow, Apache Longbow is amazing.
I have gotten bitten by the War Thunder bug.
That certainly is a fun game to play. I have heard the grind is stupid, but I am not worried about that, just enjoying my low tier matches of tank and fighter combat.
Certainly not a capital S Sim, but it is certainly a lot more simmy than some of the offerings out there, plus it offers fairly quick times between matches.
Congratulations on your new HOTAS man. If I were you, Iād get the Chuckās guide for your module of choice and configure controls as closely to the pattern he lays out as you can. Except of course thw flaming cliffs machines who should all get the same scheme. Good luck!
Almost have completed my Digital Integration collection. Now all I need is iF-16.
Work has been a bit crappy of late so this week I engaged in some retail therapy. My Rift S decided to stop working so I bought the HP G2 Reverb based off @schurem recommendations. (I did look at the Pimax as the FOV is attractive but when you tot up the costs of the stands and the controllers I decided for the limited time I have to spend on gaming these days it probably wasnāt going to be value for money). And letās face it I have been dying to extricate myself from the meta ecosystem for some time.
I picked up the new South Atlantic map and AH-64 module for DCS. The map has some stunning mountainous terrain which I would think would look great in VR. And the AH-64 because, well, along with the Hind they are my favourite Cold War choppers.
So I was pretty excited to grab some (limited) time this morning while my loving wife prepped my four year old for the day ahead when the troubles beganā¦
Firstly, the HP reverb software setup is not all that well explained. I set up windows augmented reality but had no idea at first that a driver needs to be installed by Steam for Steam VR to work so I aimlessly launched apps, frustrated my headset did not pick them up. Easy when you figure that out, but I had to go to YouTube to do it.
Then I launched DCS. Lots of stuttering on the intro screen. My computer is pretty beefy (5950X, 3090 and 64Gb of ram) so I ruled that out. Still havenāt figured out what is wrong there, because I did not have time. After a couple of minutes my USB ports all fall over and my headset is disconnected. Even though I have a powered hub I can only conclude that the added draw from the reverb headset is too much. (Admittedly I have waaay too many razer peripherals with RGB lightingā¦.) I figure it could be my X-56 HOTAS as those are known to be power hungry. But I guess I will have to spend time pulling USB peripherals out to try and reduce the load on the USB hubsā¦.
Really frustrating.
Congrats on the Reverb!
I went ahead and got the Quest 2 on Saturday, the day before prices went up on it. I figure, you no longer need a FB account to use it, and buying it literally cost FB money. Win win.