Condor Joystick/Rudder

On Tue, 08 Jan 2013 15:05:34 -0800, Piet Barber wrote:

What I would really like is a force feedback joystick that closely
represents the style of control column you see in real life gliders.
Something that doesn't sit on a table, but is positioned on a chair, and
be grabbed in the customary fashion that a normal flight control stick
is grasped. And something with a mini-throttle built in that I could
use as a trim-tab. I don't need all those 85 buttons and control hat
that all the modern joysticks have.

If you can find something like an old CH Pro gaming stick (two buttons on
the stick, throttle wheel and X and Y trim pots it shouldn't be too hard
to adapt it. Make a stick of the right length from alloy tube and mount
it on a box or whatever so it has the right relationship to your chair.
Fit a mechanical link from your stick to the the CH Pro stick so it will
follow your stick's movements. Take the handle off the CH Pro and put it
on the top of your stick and wit up its two buttons in case you find a
use for them. Lengths of bicycle brake cable can be used to connect home
made brake and trim levers to the throttle and trim pots on the CH base
or use that sort of linkage to make the throttle into an airbrake and
build a mechanical trim setup with springs on the stick (would be more
realistic since the CH trim pots don't physically affect the position of
its stick).

Of course, the CH Pro is an old-style stick that plugs into a game port
and it may be hard to find a game port adapter to fit a modern PC.
However, I bet you could do a similar butcher job on a cheap modern USB
stick and simply discard all the buttons etc you don't need.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |

On 01/08/2013 03:05 PM, Piet Barber wrote:
I have a Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback 2 joystick.
Unfortunately, after upgrading to Windows 7, the force feedback part
doesn't work anymore. Now it just slops around with no tactile
center. I haven't been able to give ground instruction on a flight
simulator since this upgrade. This is terribly disappointing since
the operating system upgrade was done by Microsoft, and the hardware
made obsolete by the same company now makes it more or less useless.

Over in a Linux group, someone found a partial fix for the floppy stick.
http://scribblette.livejournal.com/643709.html

On Jan 8, 3:05*pm, Piet Barber wrote:
I have a Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback 2 joystick. *Unfortunately, after upgrading to Windows 7, the force feedback part doesn't work anymore. *Now it just slops around with no tactile center. I haven't been able to give ground instruction on a flight simulator since this upgrade. *This is terribly disappointing since the operating system upgrade was done by Microsoft, and the hardware made obsolete by the same company now makes it more or less useless.

Apparently, it does work for some: http://forum.condorsoaring.com/viewt...p?f=15&t=14804

I have W7 64 bit and am planning to get Condor and MSFF2. I hope that
the combination will work fine. If it does not, then I will simply run
Condor in a virtual machine under WinXP.

Bart

On Monday, January 7, 2013 4:35:24 PM UTC-5, vontresc wrote:
As much as it pains me to part with my vintage Thrustmaster F16 FLCS,

throttle, and rudders, I think it's time to move into the 21st century and

get a USB setup. What is the current consensus on what joystick/rudder

combo to go with??



Thanks



Pete

I have a Saitek Cyborg X which is nice because it has two throttle levers on the left side. One I assign as trim and the other for spoilers. It's been working great till last month, one of the throttles stopped working. Aaron

I'm using the SGS 2-32 joystick and rudder combo...

Boggs

https://www.facebook.com/NWSkysports

Condorks,

I'm finally ready to get set up Condor and I need suggestions for suitable computers. I'd like a laptop for portability and I don't want to spend a lot. Considering some of these $300 range new cheapo laptops or better yet cheaper and used. One of my computer gurus suggests that a non portable super cheap used windows machine might run the program better than any lap top. Lots of those avail at local university surplus.

I have a decent older Macbook and have read you might be able to run Condor on it with a Windows system within the Mac system. Anyone doing that? I'd imagine it to be sketchy.

Since I'm starting from scratch I can pretty much get whatever processor and ram suited to the task. I have a number of friends and students who ought to join the Condork Club too so lets figure out the cheapest and easiest way to bring them (and me) on board!

Matt

On Wednesday, February 6, 2013 10:09:33 AM UTC-6, wrote:
Condorks, I'm finally ready to get set up Condor and I need suggestions for suitable computers. I'd like a laptop for portability and I don't want to spend a lot. Considering some of these $300 range new cheapo laptops or better yet cheaper and used. One of my computer gurus suggests that a non portable super cheap used windows machine might run the program better than any lap top. Lots of those avail at local university surplus. I have a decent older Macbook and have read you might be able to run Condor on it with a Windows system within the Mac system. Anyone doing that? I'd imagine it to be sketchy. Since I'm starting from scratch I can pretty much get whatever processor and ram suited to the task. I have a number of friends and students who ought to join the Condork Club too so lets figure out the cheapest and easiest way to bring them (and me) on board! Matt

Hello Condork,

I originally bought a Dell D600 laptop, refurbished, and it didn't have enough guts to run condor well on multiplayer races in some of the higher detail scenery. It does meet all the minimum specs on the Condor website and it did do well when flying solo.

So i bought a Dell Precision m6300 refurbished off Ebay for pretty cheap. I bought it because its the same laptop that Frank Paynter flies with so i knew it would work well. It does, now the only excuse i have for getting beat is that I'm slow, not the computer.

On Wednesday, February 6, 2013 9:38:58 AM UTC-7, Tony wrote:
On Wednesday, February 6, 2013 10:09:33 AM UTC-6, wrote:

Condorks, I'm finally ready to get set up Condor and I need suggestions for suitable computers. I'd like a laptop for portability and I don't want to spend a lot. Considering some of these $300 range new cheapo laptops or better yet cheaper and used. One of my computer gurus suggests that a non portable super cheap used windows machine might run the program better than any lap top. Lots of those avail at local university surplus. I have a decent older Macbook and have read you might be able to run Condor on it with a Windows system within the Mac system. Anyone doing that? I'd imagine it to be sketchy. Since I'm starting from scratch I can pretty much get whatever processor and ram suited to the task. I have a number of friends and students who ought to join the Condork Club too so lets figure out the cheapest and easiest way to bring them (and me) on board! Matt



Hello Condork,



I originally bought a Dell D600 laptop, refurbished, and it didn't have enough guts to run condor well on multiplayer races in some of the higher detail scenery. It does meet all the minimum specs on the Condor website and it did do well when flying solo.



So i bought a Dell Precision m6300 refurbished off Ebay for pretty cheap. I bought it because its the same laptop that Frank Paynter flies with so i knew it would work well. It does, now the only excuse i have for getting beat is that I'm slow, not the computer.

FWIW, in an e-mail exchange with Uros several years ago, he said the software depends mainly on the CPU and not so much on graphics cards - his way of saying there's not much benefit to be gained from buying an expensive GPU card.

On Wednesday, February 6, 2013 11:09:33 AM UTC-5, wrote:
Condorks,



I'm finally ready to get set up Condor and I need suggestions for suitable computers. I'd like a laptop for portability and I don't want to spend a lot. Considering some of these $300 range new cheapo laptops or better yet cheaper and used. One of my computer gurus suggests that a non portable super cheap used windows machine might run the program better than any lap top. Lots of those avail at local university surplus.



I have a decent older Macbook and have read you might be able to run Condor on it with a Windows system within the Mac system. Anyone doing that? I'd imagine it to be sketchy.



Since I'm starting from scratch I can pretty much get whatever processor and ram suited to the task. I have a number of friends and students who ought to join the Condork Club too so lets figure out the cheapest and easiest way to bring them (and me) on board!



Matt

Using a Mac is totally possible. Use Bootcamp from Apple's website and get a copy of Windows 7 and install. This will take away disk space from OSX though as Windows will need it's own partition to live on along with the space Condor needs. So, if your MacBook is already short on disk space then it'd be an issue.
For me Condor takes 26.65GB with a multitude of sceneries installed and Windows 7 64bit takes 21.1GB with all the updates applied.

Your MacBook should have plenty of CPU to do a good enough job on most sceneries. The only limiting factors I can see are disk space, RAM, and video RAM when dealing with the large texture rich photo realistic sceneries like Alpi3.3. Most of the heavy duty sceneries have to be bought though so many amateur servers stick with free sceneries.

For a reference my system is a early model Mac Pro 1,1 (2006):
2 x 2.67GHz Xeon CPUs
*250GB HDD for Windows 7 64bit
*4GB RAM
*Radeon 5770 with 1GB video ram for Condor
*Nvidia 7300GT with 256MB video ram for OSX

With Condors graphics settings at the highest levels at 1600x1200 res it gets:

*Stock scenery (Slovenia 1.03)
-70fps w/ Radeon 5770
-40fps w/ 7300GT
-265MB RAM used

Even though the Condor developer Uros says CPU is the most important, which is true, a better GPU still helps...

On Wednesday, February 6, 2013 11:09:33 AM UTC-5, wrote:
Condorks,



I'm finally ready to get set up Condor and I need suggestions for suitable computers. I'd like a laptop for portability and I don't want to spend a lot. Considering some of these $300 range new cheapo laptops or better yet cheaper and used. One of my computer gurus suggests that a non portable super cheap used windows machine might run the program better than any lap top. Lots of those avail at local university surplus.



I have a decent older Macbook and have read you might be able to run Condor on it with a Windows system within the Mac system. Anyone doing that? I'd imagine it to be sketchy.



Since I'm starting from scratch I can pretty much get whatever processor and ram suited to the task. I have a number of friends and students who ought to join the Condork Club too so lets figure out the cheapest and easiest way to bring them (and me) on board!



Matt

I just bought a nice Lenovo ThinkPad running Win/7 Pro. Condor will not run on this machine. Talked to Frank Paynter and he believes it is the light weight graphics card. I would have chosen a more powerful one but the computer came preconfigured with the Intel HD Graphics 3000 card.

I have Condor running on my other 4 year old Lenovo ThinkPad under XP Pro. Ir runs fine on that PC which does have a better graphics card. I would also be a little skeptical about using XP Mode under the VM Machine in Win/7. I put a couple of programs there ( e.g. my old version of See You )and they are very very slow loading. I doubt if Condor will like it there.

My best guess is that my problem is the graphics card as Frank suggested. Get a good one and Win/7 Pro running on any decent PC will do the job.

Jim - 77