Hey gents, I’ve been lurking here forever and even know a few of you from SimHQ forums back in the day…
I haven’t fired up a flight sim for about four years but I used to be a true believer. I put in hundreds of hours, flying all the usual suspects from the last 25 years and learning scenario editors so I could design and publish missions, especially for the A-10C. I’m very proud of the complex, full-featured, pretty tactical scenarios I made for DCS A-10C. And then I stopped. My old CH HOTAS has been laid aside, my mountain of manuals and paperwork shelved. I bought a Fanatec racing wheel and pedals and resumed race-simming but I’m no hot-shoe, just the classic mid-packer.
Just as I think I’ve got one more “true” sports car in me – I’m 57 – I think I’m capable of speed-roping into the giant black hole of one more demanding “study sim”, as they used to be called. I’ve got one more steep learning curve in my future – the DCS F/A-18, of course – one more start-up sequence that takes about two hours at first and ends up at 8 minutes, one more bunch of radar sub-modes to learn, one more insanely complex command tree to map to a throttle and stick. The thing is – and this is what I wanted to ask you all about – I will need to rebuild my hardware, replacing my current, competent rig with one capable of running VR (of which I have no experience at all) and acquiring new peripherals, including a Rift. It’s ok; my trusty computer is past its peak, but I wonder if I can ask you gentlemen a few questions about this massive overhaul I’m contemplating:
VR and keyboard
I’m a TrackIR dinosaur, I don’t know from VR. How do guys with glasses deal with a VR headset? And can keyboard input be eliminated so successfully that you never have to peer out from under the headset and if not, how practical is that?
HOTAS
My faithful CH HOTAS is probably 18 years old now, so I can justify a new one but which? If I wanted to go high-end, is the TM Warthog the obvious candidate? Is TM likely to come through with its dedicated F/A-18 HOTAS? Are they taking preorders?
DCS itself
I haven’t flown or played in the DCS sandbox for several years. As an alpha tester for DCS A-10C, I’m entitled to a free Nellis but I am ashamed to say I don’t even have DCS installed right now, let alone updated. It’s called DCS World 2.5 these days, right? The Straits of Hormuz theater is a big incentive for me, as I feel I’ve been flying in the Caucasus for decades, in fact since Lock On, but I am so out of the loop I don’t even know if Hormuz is out yet, or in Beta or what! And does anyone play Combined Arms?
Well, apologies for the long post and some pretty rookie questions; I’m a born-again newb! Maybe that should be my new moniker on the DCS forums, BAN…or maybe not. I know what a great community of mature folks this is, which is why I’m contemplating one last big combat aviation sim romance and asking my dopey questions here. Please feel free to respond at whatever length you like, or not at all if it’s just too tedious. This is a very knowledgeable community so I’m curious to know your thoughts. Thanks!