Throat mic

I've thought about using a throat microphone for gaming for some time. If you've played FPS or sims using VoIP you'll know what a pain it is when someone is using a normal microphone and has loud background sounds like game sounds, music, phones or the wife yelling at them. Especially if they've set the transmit in Teamspeak to activate automatically - you end up with the voice channel full of rubbish background noise.




Another reason I was looking at mics is the microphone on my Medusa Gamer 5.1 headphones isn't very reliable. The Medusa headphones are great, they have rumbling bass and excellent positioning of surround sound, but the first edition has a detachable microphone that is highly problematic. It sometimes just doesn't work at all because of the screw in connection. The second edition of the headphones fixed this by making the microphone integrated.

A 70% off sale at my electronic store and I've now got a throat mic to muck around with for only $5. The mic, a DigiPowr PMR-TM2 was intended for walkie-talkie radio use and has both a microphone and a single ear plug headphone. It has a single 3.5 mm audio plug suitable for use with the computer microphone input. The quality of the mic input is highly dependant on the position on your throat, it has to be in the right spot.

This is what the two microphones output is like:

After trying the microphones out in different situations, the outcome wasn't what I expected. I found that my headset microphone actually does an outstanding job of filtering out most of the background noises. My loud room cooling fan I was mainly concerned about wasn't even audible in the recording, nor was some background gaming sounds. The throat mic was clearer than I expected, but does make the audio more difficult to understand. The only advantages with the throat microphone is that background noises don't activate Teamspeak when Teamspeak is auto-activate mode, and there is absolutely zero background noise transmitted.

I'll be sticking with the headset microphone, it does a better job than I thought.

Messy Cabling

Just wanted to share my collection of messy cabling pictures sourced from different sites around the Internet.

My racks are not this bad!

Gotta love the devices hanging down:

Love the cooling fan in this one, but at least they've chained the cable distribution record book to the frame!:





Doesn't appear to be a single cable management rail in this one, big hanging roll of unused orange cable is a great touch as is the use of double adaptors::




This one is my favourite:

Links: www.ratemynetworkdiagram.com

Touchbuddy and Touchscreens

Touchbuddy is a free Windows application that allows you to enter keyboard inputs via a touchscreen. It allows you to create your own interfaces that look like cockpit panels or any other interface you can imagine and when you press the touchscreen it can send a keystroke to your application. When you touch the screen you can have the image under your finger change, so (for example) you can have toggle switches change position. There are several community made profiles available for Falcon 4, Lock On, ARMA and Winamp from the Touchbuddy website and there is a developer kit to make your own. The application supports embedding ActiveX applets like PDF readers for accessing maps and manuals in-sim and also has the ability to show cockpit information from Lock On.

Here is a sample video from the Touchbuddy website showing a touchscreen being used with Lock On:

That profile uses very simple buttons. Simon Cookman's profile for Falcon 4 provides interfaces that look like real panels complete with toggle and rotary switches:


Touchscreens can be very expensive, especially once you go beyond the small 10" or smaller touchscreens coming out of China intended for cars. But you can buy "touch panels" much more cheaply, saving up to 80% over larger touchscreens of 19 inches (assuming you have a 19" LCD monitor), because you are only buying the touch part of the touchscreen without the LCD display unit. You put the touch panel over an existing LCD monitor either fitting it between the plastic bezel and LCD screen or placing it on top of the bezel of your LCD monitor. I have a 15 inch Touchkit touch panel I bought on Ebay and I've just taped mine to a 15" LCD using black electrical tape. Electrical tape - is there anything it can't do? The touch panel consists of a 3mm thick glass panel, a small controller connected via ribbon cable to the panel and a USB cable to your PC:



Touchbuddy is an excellent app but there is a problem with some games/sims. Touchbuddy generates a left mouse click input when you press the screen. This means in games that use the left mouse button to fire a weapon - for example Armed Assault, Touchbuddy doesn't work correctly. You press the screen and you fire your weapon. There are ways around this. You can use Touchbuddy in client/server mode. That is, running the touchscreen and Touchbuddy off a second PC with the second PC sending just the keystrokes over the network to the other PC running the Touchbuddy client. This works very well. I've also read of people running Touchbuddy in a Virtual Machine to send keystrokes to the host running the virtual machine, unsure how exactly they do this.

Using a Touchscreen for Falcon 4.

In response to a forum post on Frugalsworld, I tried out using the touchscreen to press the buttons in the cockpit of Falcon4:AF. That is use the touchscreen as a fully clickable cockpit. That worked reasonably ok, the ICP was easy to press as were the toggle switches in the side panels, but the MFD buttons are very small on a 15" screen running at 1024x768 and that was problematic. I would occasionally press the wrong button. On a larger screen I think it would be ok.

Here is a video of me using the touchscreen in Falcon 4:AF with the default pit:

On using a Touchscreen as your primary monitor for Falcon 4 I had an issue using a touch screen with rotary switches. For example in Falcon the rotary switches require a right mouse click to turn the rotary switch in an anti-clockwise direction. With some touch screens like the screens using the latest Touchkit drivers a right mouse click is supported by holding your finger on the screen for a short duration. But this is the problem I had - when you first press the screen you still generate a left mouse click that has to be undone. So it works like this: You press and hold the screen. You first generate a left mouse click, then by holding your finger down you generate a right mouse click. You continue to hold your finger on the screen you generate another right click. What this means is that using the rotary switches you initially switch the wrong way and it takes a couple of seconds to do two or more switches back the other (correct) way.

I don't use the 15" screen for Falcon like this normally, I just tried it to see how it would work.

Joysticks

At the risk of appearing as though I'm showing off my toys I'm going to talk about my joysticks.

I've owned the following joysticks:

• CH Products Flightstick



• Microsoft Sidewinder 3D Pro



• Saitek X-36 gameport HOTAS (hands on throttle and stick)



• Saitek X-52 HOTAS



• Thrustmaster Cougar HOTAS

The CH Flightstick was easily the smoothest, most accurate and best quality controller I've ever owned. It took an absolute hammering in space sims including X-Wing and worked faultlessly for a very long time. I stopped using it when I needed a joystick with a POV (point of view) hat. Years later when I was using the Saitek X-36 I pinched a potentiometer out of the FlightStick to keep the X-36 going after a X-36 potentiometer wore out.

The Sidewinder Pro offered a twist handle for rudder control and a POV hat. Aside from flight sims it also saw a lot of use playing Mechwarrior providing an easy way to rotate the mechs cabin. I found it and the twist rudder useful much later for flying the helicopters in Battlefield 2. I ended up butchering it for parts including using the gameport cable for home made rudder pedals.

My first HOTAS, the Saitek X-36 gameport (not USB) was great value, looked reasonably realistic but very quickly wore out. Also it used a AT keyboard pass through arrangement and was unable to be used reliably with newer PS2 motherboards or versions of Windows beyond Windows 98. It became obsolete as Saitek dropped support for it. But incredibly, I've since found third party drivers created by Alfredo Costalogo to run the X-36 gameport under Windows 2000, XP and Vista including 64 bit! You can find Alfredo Costalogos website at http://x36driver.byethost13.com/. He has some developers docs on the X-36 as well. I still have my X-36, but I haven't tried any of his drivers myself yet.

The Thrustmaster Couger I'd read a lot about. People talked about the incredible metal controller with the powerful Foxy software. The first and only time I saw it for sale in a shop was in a Hardly Normal store in Brisbane and they were asking an insane $650 (AUD) for it. On Ebay even the second hand ones seemed to go for $400+. Way too expensive, so I settled on a Saitek X-52 choosing that over the CH HOTAS because I couldn't get "hands-on" locally with the CH HOTAS before buying it and it was both more expensive outright and required delivery charges.

The Saitek X-52 was a good value controller that was incredibly easy to setup. With the exception of a dodgy Microsoft Windows update that caused problems it was all smooth sailing. The whole spacey silver with LEDs look didn't grab me at first, but playing with the lights turned down became cool. It was very easy to program and responsive, if a little too soft. I modded the stick by putting in a spacer to compress the spring to make the stick stiffer. You have to be careful though because if you compress the spring too much you might wear the base of the stick. I didn't mod the hall sensor magnets as others have done (Lockon.Ru Forums) to improve its input characteristics.

Compressing the X-52 springs

It was only when I saw an Aussie post on a Frugalsworld forum about buying a Thrustmaster Cougar directly from the US I looked at it again. I bought mine from Provantage and including freight it was a lot cheaper. I was also graduating from uni soon and that gave me an excuse to buy one. So after selling a whole lot of my old crap on Ebay including my treasured but not recently used eighteen year old Hewlett Packard 42S RPN calculator I had the money and placed an order. A week and a half later it arrived. Shortly after that I received an unexpected additional bill from the courier company for $50 (AUD) for "Australian quarantine fees" - I guess that customs must have thought it had a raccoon in it or something.

What is a Thrustmaster Cougar like? Well it is the most user-hostile computer peripheral I have ever experienced in all my time computing. I've used a lot of stuff so that is really saying something. It just isn't for people without a lot of commitment and perseverance. Many people get them broken out of the box, with a large batch missing the grease inside that is absolutely necessary to stop the poor quality metal insides (the "gimbals") quickly turning into a pile of metal shavings. (The gimbals are the part inside the base of the joystick that translate the joystick movement into the turns of a potentiometer). So first thing you have to do is pull it apart and check and possibly grease it. There can be an issue with the speedbrake that you have to check and fix before it breaks and some have an issue with the antenna knob potentiometer spiking. My Cougar antenna rotary dial has a large dead zone, that is movement at the end of the turn of the knob that doesn't provide input. The throttle has an incredibly loud annoying clicking indents that to remove requires you to disassemble and mod the throttle. The throttle intents are (I've read) in the wrong place anyway. The stick itself is incredibly stiff out of the box because of the rubber boot around the bottom of the joystick and the resistance springs, you can end up with a sore arm after a long session using it. The pinky toggle lacks feedback and feels a little weak like it could break at any time, but I haven't seen reports of this happening - it just feels a little flimsy. And the red button on the top of the stick doesn't feel very good - not providing effective tactile feedback that you've pressed it correctly.

And that is before you even install the software, plug it in and update the firmware. Once it has installed the eight devices in your computer you then have a very elaborate calibration to go through. You can chose to let the device auto-calibrate if you don't have issues with your rotary knobs. If you bork a step in the manual calibration you have to start right from the beginning. You've then got a calibrated Windows joystick. To use the programming capabilities you use Foxy which is completely intimidating. Here is some sample Foxy button code from Jastangs Falcon 4 Profile:

BTN H1U /I /H KU(X3) Trim_Nose_Down
/O /P KD(X1) DLY(100) KU(X1) /R Glance_Fwd_Rel
BTN H1D /I /P /H KU(X3) Trim_Nose_Up /R KD(X47) DLY(60) KU(X47)
/O /P KD(X20) DLY(100) KU(X20) /R Glance_Back_Rel
BTN H1L /I /H KU(X3) Trim_Roll_Left
/O KD(X23) DLY(100) KU(X23)
BTN H1R /I /H KU(X3) Trim_Roll_Right
/O KD(X24) DLY(100) KU(X24))

Even if you use an existing profile the setup is very involved. For example, take a look at the no less than twenty eight steps in setting up Jastangs Falcon 4 profile. And you will probably find things in the profile you need to change anyway requiring you to mod the profile code.

I knew that the Cougar wasn't for the faint hearted and was prepared to do the reading and learn Foxy. The one thing that I wasn't prepared for was the slop around the centre position of the joystick. I can't even begin to describe how much the centre play completely pisses me off. It totally detracts from the stick making it feel cheap which it is certainly not. It is completely unforgivable that a stick this expensive has this much centre play. If you've come from CH products you'd be astounded that it got past QA and left the factory in this condition. I found the cause on my stick is the poor fit of the stem of the base of the joystick into the gimbals. It has about 1.5 mm mismatch in the gimbals which doesn't sound like much but that translates to 6 mm of centre play at the top of the stick. By centre play I mean movement of the stick that doesn't translate into movement of your plane, it also feels very loose and sloppy. There is a document available in a zip file on the Cougarworld website (7 MB) that describes the three types of axis play you can experience with the Cougar.

To fix these issues people mod the Cougar either adjusting the existing gimbals or more commonly with complete replacements for the gimbals. The replacements the Uber II Nxt replacement gimbals and the hall sensors it requires or the RealSimulator force sensing kits are expensive and are DIY. The list of fixes and mods for the Cougar can be viewed on the Cougarworld site at Frugalsworld.

The Uber NXT II Gimbals
(image from FrugalsWorld)

So you are probably thinking - what a bloody whiner, send the frigging Cougar to me you unappreciative spoilt git! Well, the thing about the Cougar is the hype that surrounds it and the cost builds up expectations that are probably unrealistic. But even with its problems looking at it and Foxy you know that the designers have tried to give you the most powerful and amazing HOTAS they could. It just falls short of this goal because of the poor "made in China" build quality, poor quality control, poor quality metal for the gimbals and use of potentiometers (albeit high sensitivity pots) that eventually will wear out. But despite these problems the HOTAS just screams at you to fix it and realise its potential. So I'm sticking with it and trying to work out how the hell I can possibly afford a Uber II Nxt mod and get one while they are still available. The most realistic scenario is I'll have try to fix the sloppiness myself by mucking around with the gap in the gimbals. I'm a little pissed I sold my HP 42S for it, but at least I didn't pay the ridiculous price I first saw for Cougars in Australia and I've still got my Saitek X-52 if it all goes pear shaped.

TrackClip Pro

Last blog post I said I bought a TrackClip Pro at the OzFlightSimExpo.

The TrackClip Pro attaches to headphones replacing the normal TrackClip reflector unit you would wear on a cap hat when using the NaturalPoint TrackIR 4 Pro .

The TrackIR Pro for the uninitiated is an awesome USB head tracking device that gives simmers the ability to look around the cockpit/game in response to real head movements. It consists of a small USB camera type device you put on your monitor and a infrared reflective clip you attach to a hat. Sims including flight sims, racing sims and Armed Assault support it and it adds to the immersion and greatly enhances gameplay. To see how it works, have a look at the video demos on the NaturalPoint website.

There is a copycat DIY project using webcams called FreeTrack, I've read it might have issues with CPU use on your PC and responsiveness due to the update rate of your webcam but I've not tried it yet.

When I first saw the TrackClip Pro and the cost of approx $50 I thought - man I bet I could MAKE one of those for a couple of bucks, after all it is just three infrared lights. So I bought three infrared LEDs from my local Disk Smith, grabbed a couple of wire coat hangers and got out the electrical tape. I then fashioned up a Trackclip Pro type device in a very approximate shape of the real deal. I powered the system with a 9 volt battery, an extra red LED to show the circuit was working ok and put a resistor (330 Ohms) incircuit to suit the LEDs. Well I discovered that the infrared LEDS (at least the ones my Dick Smith stock) are TOTALLY USELESS because they have a very narrow beam and turning your head the TrackIR can't see them. You need wide radiation angle LEDs. I've also since seen on the FreeTrack forums that the FreeTrack people file down the top of the LEDs to get around the view of beam issue (with the cost of degrading light output) so I might have to try it again doing that.

But now I've got the real TrackClip Pro was it worth the money to replace the hat clip? In a word, well two words - HELL YES!

I hated wearing a hat, especially when in summer it hits 35 degrees in my tiny computer room. I can use the TrackClip Pro on my headphones (it fits on my SpeedLink Medusa Gamer headphones fine) or a old single ear headset I've cut the audio lead off. In use the TrackClip has much better tracking feeling smoother in-game and with none of the dropouts I would normally get with the hat clip from moving my head too much that would drop the visibility of a reflector. Also it looks a lot less odd than wearing a cap with the reflector on it.

The TrackClip Pro is a great addition if you are a TrackIR Pro 4 user. Big thumbs up from me!

On the TrackIR Pro 4 I have to have a grumble. The top sensor unit is attached to the three legged base using a tiny 2 mm stem of plastic.

It is around this tiny part that the top rotates. Of course I've snapped my TrackIR Pro 4 in two having broken this stem and it is now attached with a big wad of blue-tac. Not very good engineering. But otherwise a really excellent peripheral that greatly enhances simming.

OzFlightSim Expo

Ozflightsim expo at the Gold Coast last weekend. A two day event held at Jupiters Casino, I got down there on the Sunday early after a two and a half hour drive and pacing impatiently outside for half an hour till it opened. When I walked in to the hall the first thing I saw once my eyes adjusted to the cave-like darkness was a Simworx commercial F-16 sim pit. I did a double take and really said "holy shit!" out loud. I must have looked like a real goose with my mouth hanging open but honestly it was a whole lot more than I was expecting. Beside it was a Matrox TH2GO triple head LCD/Saitek X-52/Saitek pedals equipped flight sim pit, a copter pit complete with skids and a driving pit - and that was just Simworx stand!

Only problem with the F-16 pit was they were flying a F-18!

I was really surprised just how compact the F-16 pit is.

Tripleheaded LCD Microsoft FSX goodness.

The Simworx copter pit.

There was some awesome tech to get hands-on with and great people to talk to. I had good fly in FSX on the stand with the new Saitek yoke and throttle which confirmed that a yoke definitely isn't for me. I'm lucky enough to already have a Saitek X-52 and a stock Thrustmaster Cougar. I used the Saitek pedals for the first time and using the rudder and the differential braking using both feet took some getting use to - to my embarassment I managed to drive off the runway into the sea after pulling off a good landing in front of a lot of people watching. That stand was also using the Roccaport2 gaming desk.

There were many Matrox triplehead head to go (TH2GO) triple LCD setups (most running FSX) I flew two, one with a Buttkicker bass shaker (the type that attaches to the chair stem). The TH2Go was driving 22" or 24" widescreen monitors at a resolution that must not have been native (given the resolution limits of the TH2GO) but still looked great. I've got my own TrackIR Pro, but using it with a triplehead LCD configuration for the first time I thought it works even better as it felt more natural because you could actually look to the sides. One of the setups I flew the owner said was driven by the PC with "the sixth highest 3DMark score in the world". It had everything in FSX at max looking and flying very smooth, but it was flying the standard terrain - no scenery addons unfortunately. On my own PC I prefer FS9 with VistaOz to the current visuals of FSX, especially with the poor performance of FSX on my PC with details turned up.

There were several commercial flight and driving pits and SimKits gauges. I had a very close look at the Simkit gauges and software thanks to the very helpful Mike Speekman from Melbourne Flight Simulators on the Simpits stand. The stand had a complete Cessna replica pit like the one on the SimKits website.

The "Vipers Nest" had guys including the 62nd Fighting Falcons, 69th Wildcats and the VAAF running Falcon 4:AF multiplayer with their Akers-Barnes portable pits with a big screen showing the action and some great commentary from Michael "Loophole" Barnes of Akers-Barnes pit fame. Ruprecht from the VAAF had a highly customised AB pit with switches and a borrowed replica F-16 ICP (that link has his photos of the expo too). The elevated height of his pit compared with the stock AB pit seems like an excellent idea. I took photos and some video, but the hall was very dark and I didn't like hitting people with the flash, apologies for the poor quality of this vid:

Rupecht's Pit at the Vipers Nest

Vipers Nest

There was also a completely awesome Awesimulation COTT racing pit running the Bathurst race circuit in Rfactor with a 1500 watt Buttkicker and 2500 watt 15" woofer behind the seat. The Awesimulation CEO was a great guy to talk to very friendly and very knowledgeable on simming tech. He told me Awesimulation are modding the Rfactor physics and developing custom high-fidelity controllers to build pits for professional racing race drivers. For example they want to accurately reproduce the heaviness of steering at lower speeds and the exact feel of a real race shifter. I have to admit that when he got into the exacting detail of how the plates in the shifter works he lost me as I'm a auto-mechanical n00b!

There was lots of software for sale including every FSX addon imaginable including Flightdeck 5 released at the expo from the FlightSimStore and PCAvaitor stands. The FlightSimStore had a Buttkicker (I believe being used in the adjacent cockpit) and was taking pre orders. There was a demo of the upcoming Orbx TerrainX for FSX by the VistaOz guys (looking like an absolute must-buy) running on a huge curved screen. There were stands by VATSIM, RAAF virtual and virtual airlines (including Transload Virtual Airlines) amongst others from the flight simming community. The stands were staffed with very friendly people passionate about their simming.

IRIS Simulation had a stand showing off their range of FS addons. The founder and lead designer of IRIS David Brice was there working on the new PC-9 trying to get it done. He was nice enough to have a talk with me showing me around the PC-9, the reference materials he uses and even offered me a fly of the PC-9 on his PC (that I wasn't game to take up). The guys from VATSIM had what they told me was a complete replica air controller console setup and one very enthusiastic VATSIM guy encouraged me to sign up as a virtual air controller on the spot - "you can join up now on this PC right here!". The VATSIM controller had two large screens one showing the virtual airspace around Brisbane and one showing an overhead Brisbane airport in detail. There was also a small touchscreen display with a button pad to issue commands and the controller was issuing verbal commands via his headset mic:

VATSIM controller

For a first time event it completely exceeded my expectations in every way and I'm very grateful to the organisers and participants for delivering a really interesting event.

It cost only $10 to get in to the expo and I ended up buying a Trackclip Pro from the PCAviator guys that I got cheaper than I could buy it online. More on the Trackclip Pro later. There were a few things I was very keen on buying that weren't out yet. If TerrainX had been released I would have definitely snapped that up immediately. It really makes FSX look amazing and is supposed to improve performance over the normal FSX autogen scenery. There will be four separate zones to buy just for Australia and the first zone is $24.95 USD. The IRIS PC-9 looks very detailed and David Brice was nice enough to have a chat so that is on my gotta get list when it comes out. I've eliminated yokes from my PC flying future as I 've discovered I prefer a joystick and I might try resurrecting my dodgey homebrew rudder pedals before saving up for a Saitek pair. I was surprised that the CH Products MFD panel was nowhere to be seen. I guess it is just too early.

If you can make it to the expo next year I'd really encourage you to go to see great tech and have a talk with great people!