|
|
|
Setting Up Your TIR by CharveL
So perhaps after reading some reviews and more than a few shining forum posts, your new TrackIR 4 arrived to your gleeful little hands in a flurry of tattered gift wrap on Christmas morning or out of a bee-swarm of static packing peanuts in your traditional pre-Christmas Gift-To-Self. With only a brief glance at the installation section of the manual, just to be sure, you plug it in, install the software, figure out the hat and reflector clip thingies, and wait with a touch of nervous trepidation as a Forgotten Battles quick mission loads up. Chances are the first thing you probably saw was the ejection handle and some scratched paint on the cockpit seat but settling that initial twinge of rising panic while reaching for the manual you manage to find the F12 key that centers your viewpoint and start looking around. Panic then turns to a rush of jubilation as the world pans around with your head movements, just as advertised and everybody said it would be, but after a few more minutes the emotional rollercoaster descends again as you seriously start to wonder if this thing will really work for you. Still you're determined to both a) Make it work, and b) not find and make any more room on your closet shelf beside the dusty copy of UT2003 and that Voodoo1 card you're pretty sure will be a collector's item some day. Well, my view-limited friend, I am here to tell you that yes, not only is the TrackIR a practical and immersive piece of kit but one that will undoubtedly enhance both your oft-maligned gaming situational awareness but your sex life as well. Yes, it's true that reduced stress levels, incurred by smashing expensive-bits-of-hardware-that-don't-live-up-to-their-own-hype can actually improve your... Ah never mind, I think you get the idea without the up sell. The important thing is that with a cold beverage and a few minutes away from the rest of the household we should be able to wade through this daunting piece of software and tweak the TIR to help you fly, drive or shoot with only a peripheral knowledge that you are even using what amounts to a glorified mouse-pointer on your head! You will see that it is much more than that. Some clever algorithmic trickery by the NaturalPoint developers has brought us a sophisticated viewing system that solves a lot of the problems inherent to a device meant to extrapolate around sixty degrees of movement into a significantly larger amount in-game. All this technology and tweakability do come at a price and although NaturalPoint, and it's beta testers are constantly improving the interface and usability of the software the problem boils down to the fact that people have different setups from where they place the IR receiver to how far away they sit and how fidgety you happen to be when you get a clear shot at that ripe lone flying He-111. So, much like other bits of computer hardware we're forced to figure a few things out if we want to get the most out of it and I will try to go a bit further than the manual in this article to help you see the relationship between the bells and whistles and what they actually do for your gaming experience. Let's start from scratch with setting up the hardware. Keep in mind this isn't a comprehensive guide to replace your manual but mainly focuses on setting up and tweaking a profile, and getting a grip on how it all works so make sure you install the TIR4 and software (if it isn't already) according to the manual and we will begin. Your Real Life Cockpit Most of you will probably want to place that svelte little IR camera unit on top of your monitor like a web cam, and with the size of monitors these days chances are that's a fair tad above eye-level so consider adjusting your chair to get the dot/vector clip as level to the camera as possible when playing like I do. If that's not feasible you can still get good results facing it down a bit to keep your dot (or dots, we'll assume from now on that you are using the 3-reflector vector hat clip) visible on the tracking screen as close to center as possible. Enable the Tracking screen in the software (open main page-click view-click tracking) and sit as you normally would while simming and face the center of your monitor. You can drag these windows about the screen to suit- this is handy later on when setting up the profile. Just left click, hold down left mouse and drag the window, Ideally the dots will form a nice even triangle in the very center of the black screen. If not, just readjust your camera and check it again until it is. It's important to remember that over time you may have a tendency to slouch a bit in your seat or shift to a slightly different position after getting up for a beverage and reseating yourself but even still the TIR4 is pretty clever knowing where you are so you don't have to break out the measuring tape or anything, just try to keep a centered, dead-on aspect as best as possible. I sit about 24" away from hat tip to camera but farther back or a bit closer will work as well with varying results. At this distance I find a nice compromise between accuracy and not going blind by kissing up to the monitor screen. This is the main reason why we need to tweak our profiles since everyone sits at a bit closer or farther to adjust for increased/decreased sensitivity.
You should never have to move your head any farther than where it's still comfortable for your eyes to stay on the screen and not looking somewhere inside your skull while trying to watch the monitor. This translates into not a great deal of head movement but luckily the TIR4 is quite a good deal more accurate with the last couple of versions and can do so quite smoothly once your profile is set. The TIR works much like the mouse does with it's pointer, extrapolating a relatively small amount of input (your mouse pad) into a larger area of motion (that new 24" 16:9 LCD flat screen you wish you had).
About 20 degrees either way should be the most you'll have to turn (note: the TIR4 has a field of view of 46 degrees over the TIR3's 33 degrees which is more than ample to keep you in line) and you'll want to check that all three dots are green and distinguishable to all limits of your head motion area. Look up, down and to the sides about 10 - 20 degrees from center (only as far as where you can keep your eyes on the centre of the monitor without straining) and check that the left window your screen looks similar to mine below. Again if your eyes or neck become even slightly uncomfortable you're probably moving more than you need to. If one of the dots disappears you will likely lose tracking which causes annoying pauses and can make the view to go jumpy in the game. This tends to happen in-game when you're trying to keep track of an opponent in a dogfight and twist your head past the viewable area of the TIR while trying to look farther than the game's view limiting allows. That’s why it's important to understand how the profiles work to keep this kind of thing from ruining your experience! If you want to get an idea of how your profile will react in-game without having to constantly load it up and shut it down, just open up the "Heads" screen. [Open main page-click view-click Heads] The head on the left is a direct representation of what the camera "sees" of your head movement translated onto a virtual head looking back atcha. The head on the right represents how your profile (the profile currently selected) will affect in-game movement. Obviously, the head on the right moves a lot more, especially side to side, since you will want to look out the back of the cockpit while only moving your real head to about the edge of the monitor screen. This extrapolation is what takes a bit of getting used to but is much easier when you know how to tailor a profile to your own style and tendencies.
Looking to left: Notice how the left screen head is only a few degrees from centre, equivilent to the farthest you would comfortably look to the left. The right window is showing how far your in-game head will be looking which in this case is over the left shoulder. Of course, any changes you make to the profile will affect the in-game head so this is a good way to get an idea how much real head movement will translate to your game. If you're real head is looking any farther left than this one to check your six than you are turning farther than necessary and can strain your eyes and neck! Once you figure you're setup is ok, next you'll want to check a few other things so press the settings button on the lower-right of the tracking screen) and match your settings to what mine looks like unless one of the mentioned exceptions applies:
Camera Rotation: 0: Unless you are mounting the camera upside down or sideways for some necessity, just leave it at zero. Light Filtering: Off: This one can be quite handy if you have an open window or a glass picture frame somewhere behind you. If you get other dots or artifacts (usually red) on the tracking screen this can help you to filter them out before they can confuse the camera and positioning software. TIR is quite good at distinguishing reflector dots from other artifacts so you should still be pretty good even if your glasses or something else catches some light now and then but it's always best to eliminate them if possible. ;) Object Type: Track Hat: This one can't get any more straightforward but even I managed to mess this up for a while using the Track Hat in Dot mode. Not sure how I managed to accidentally change it but I must have flown for a couple weeks with it like this! The good thing is that either way the TIR4 works just fine but not quite as accurate. The reason for this is that with 3 dots the software has much greater ability to figure out the position of your head - especially at greater angles - whereas with only a single dot it's tougher to know where you are. The difference might seem slight but the increased accuracy is noticeable in-game when looking say, out the sides of the cockpit - it takes less effort to keep the view still. Preferred Object Size (pixels): 200 (100 in Dot mode) : Default setting works great for me and the only reason I can see that this would need changing is if you have some sort of custom dot setup going on like I used to have before the vector came out. The wife thought I looked hilariously nerdy with a 12" straw protruding from the brim of my hat sporting a big dot reflector on the end of it. Thankfully the newer units have much greater accuracy and sample rates that preclude the need for such ungainly contraptions. Vector Position: Hat: Some of you, for some reason or other may prefer to retard the onset of male-pattern baldness by refusing to wear even the new pleasingly stylish track hat that came with your TIR4. Sometimes wearing a headset mike for playing on comms is more than enough in the way of cranial accouterments. Either way, NaturalPoint had the foresight to add onto the recent driver release the option for having the vector clip attached to the top of your head should you prefer. This setting will compensate for the difference in head movement by taking this route. Nice job NP! The Enigmatic Profile! Now really, I'm not the most studious of learners. If I figure I can even get by without reading the manual it will sit in the original packaging for the rest of it's time with nary a dog-ear or fingerprint to belie the fact that the pages within have ever seen the light of from my computer room. Those of you who have owned a TIR for some time might have done the same - opting to fire up one of the included profiles, or perhaps even my now infamous CharveL profile (yes, I'll take my infamy wherever I can get it,) and settled for that until finally deciding it was time to get a bit more out of it. Any of these could be good profiles for you but again they aren't tailored for your own setup or idiosyncrasies so we're going to change that, but first of all a quick explanation: A profile is basically a bunch of settings that apply specifically to one or more games. Different genres and even different games within the same genre might require a different profile simply because the view system might be different, for example IL2:FB only allows two degrees of freedom (2DOF - yaw and pitch axes) while Rowan's Battle of Britain: Wings of Victory can handle six degrees (6DOF - yaw, pitch, x, y, z, roll). However, you may find that one or two profiles do pretty well for a bunch of games. One of the best features of recent driver releases is the ability for the TIR to detect the game being loaded and assign the appropriate profile automatically without you having to fuss with it. Chances are if you're like me you'd already be well into the game before you realized you forgot to load the proper profile so this is definitely a big plus. So let's get started and create one from scratch while I walk you through it! Start by going to the "Profiles" tab and down at the bottom left press "New...". Give it a cool ultra-hip techno script-kiddie name like "test" or go the full mile and call it "Flight Sim" or something. Feel free to leave a note-to-self in the box below to remind you to check the pizza before it burns too if you like. :) Now on the Profiles tab scroll down in the lower box (available profiles) until you find your cool new profile name, highlight it and press the "Edit..." button. You will want to be wearing your track hat with clip or dot and be seated in your gaming position at this point. You will find a dialogue box that looks like this:
Before we go ahead and start editing lets make sure that the Tracking type radio box at the top of the screen is checked for the proper setting - Vector if you are using the clip and Dot if you're not. To Smooth or not to Smooth I'm often asked what the Smoothing option really does and often times I see it being misunderstood but it is quite similar to mouse smoothing in first-person shooter games. The idea is that this setting will increase the apparent resolution of the device, meaning even finer steps between updated movement polling sent to the game. Think of the difference between an old 60 Hz serial mouse compared to one of the new USB gaming mice. Moving one of those old mice looked like a desktop pointer slideshow and really hurt your aiming accuracy in Unreal Tournament back in the day until the newer ones came along and gave much more precise aiming. Sounds pretty good right? Well, there are a couple caveats to having increased smoothing the main one being that the more you have the more lag you get in response time. This means there is a perceptible drag or time from when you move your head to when it actually moves in the game which can be disconcerting and possibly frustrating depending on your tolerance for such things. The TIR4 already has a refresh rate of 120fps which is pretty good as it is (although you don't get all of that translated to the game like a mouse would for various reasons which are going a bit beyond the scope of this article) so suffice it to say that in my experience you don't need much. Smoothing is accomplished by the computer predicting the direction of motion and filling in the spaces between the actual polled update positions. Think of it like a camera shutter going off a bunch of times as you pan around in a circle to make a flip booklet video. Smoothing would fill in some of the blanks between shots to make the flip booklet into a video only it does this in real time using CPU resources and introducing a delay. I use a value of 30 - 40 for smoothing personally, because I want more instant response with quick bird-like head movements while flying than smoother slow panning views, but I encourage you to try it for yourself and set to taste. A car racing game might have different requirements than a flight sim so it's nice to have this control feature if you're like me and want to wring every once of immersion value from your gaming experience. Preview Windows: Be a Profile Voyeur In the bottom right hand corner of the Motion Tab of your profile you can enable your Preview Windows. The tracking window and the Heads window we've already discussed and are pretty straightforward. These are your windows into what is really going to happen in the game as you make changes to tweak your profile and are quite handy, but the most useful one has got to be the Gauges window.
When looking dead centre of your monitor press F12 and you'll get a gauges screen like mine on the left. As you look left you'll notice that in the "Yaw" graph the yellow line reflects your real head deflection from centre while the red line shows the amplified movement of your Yaw profile and in-game head. The blue line shows a graph of your profile. The higher the blue line at a particular spot, the faster the red line moves! This window shows a horizontal curve and three vertical lines. The blue vertical line (the one that doesn't move) down the center represents the "zero" or straight ahead viewpoint (looking dead center of your monitor). The yellow represents your real head position and the red vertical line represents where the game head position is along that axis. The lighter blue horizontal curve represents the sensitivity or response curve of that axis' profile (breath deep and relax we'll get to that) what makes this such a useful tool is that you can separately visualize what is happening when you change a response curve in each axis. You can check how sensitive the curve is by displaying the heads window at the same time. Watch the Heads screen as you move and you'll probably note that the left "Your Head" moves at the same speed as the yellow vertical line in the graph, and the right "In-game Head" corresponds with the red vertical line. So the yellow line shows the speed and how far from side-to-side your real head travels while the red one shows the effects of adding speed the further away from center you look. So what the heck is a response curve anyway? Ok, this is the meat of it! Think of it like setting a stereo EQ - you can set up the view to react quicker as you move further to make that "six" check fast while keeping the steadier aim in the centre for wasting ammo on that invulnerable FW109's tail. A response curve changes how the in-game view speed responds depending on how far from center your head is pointing. Let's take simple left to right (Yaw axis) movement in a combat plane cockpit as an example: Most of the time you are looking straight ahead in the cockpit in the direction you're flying, through the gunsite. You'll want to look out both sides of the cockpit to scan the skies for other planes and - if you prefer not to be shot down too often - frequently to check your six. However considering that the TIR must accelerate a smaller amount of your head movement to a larger field of view you would probably want to have a few degrees of deadened response when looking directly at the monitor so that you can scratch your nose or creak your neck without the view jittering about spasmodically. It makes for a more comfortable experience if you have some wiggle room and not have to concentrate on keeping still most of the time. You set up a dead zone by having the curve touch the bottom of the screen. As you can see from this pic the response curve is sloped down in the middle creating a deadzone for the straight ahead center (gunsight) view while gradually getting more responsive (quicker) as you pan to the left and right. Keep in mind that the higher the node in the graph the faster your in-game head will move at that point from center!
Here is the way I set mine:
You'll notice I prefer less dead zone in the center and steeply accelerating as I look out the sides. I still like to be able to keep the view steady while in zoom view and looking out the sides of the cockpit so the curve doesn't really speed up until I'm starting to look behind me. Curve Editing, Yay!
Note that by default the "Roll" option is not checked. The reason is that, being the least useful and potentially the most disconcerting axis, Roll is best left off at least until you've got the other axes comfortable. You'll notice that even for my profiles I have a very low sensitivity for Roll since it doesn't need to react any differently that way than my real head. Having this axis too fast can cause odd behaviour in the others so keep that in mind as well even if you are using my profile! From the Motion Tab in your profile highlight the Yaw category making sure that the Enabled box is checked and check that "Smooth" is selected in the Acceleration drop down menu. Press the "Edit Yaw" button.
Everybody's taste will vary and even once you have the perfect profile you will find that you'll be able to get more out of it as you settle in. Some people get accustomed quick and other's longer but even if you are a bit frustrated now, like I was over the first couple weeks with a TIR 1 first generation unit, be assured that it gets much, much better. Understanding how the graph works will make the whole experience much more transparent and natural. And just think, now you have room for nav lights and air-show smoke along with a "d0nt ace hating!" taunt script right on your hat switch! Now make sure the Gauges screen is up and visible at the same time as the curve editor window. Then put your finger on the F12 key and look dead center of the monitor while in your normal flying position. Relax into your normal position and try to stay in that body position while you're editing and testing your changes but it's ok to move your head around. F12 calibrates your center position in the cockpit space. Don't worry if you have a tendency to settle into your chair as you play or get up to get a drink and sit back down, just reset yourself and press the F12 to calibrate again. Sensitivity/ Speed This might be a good time to try the default positions in the game. Get a feel for how sensitive it is from center and out the sides of the cockpit all the way to looking out back. If you find that you can't turn far enough comfortably to check six then you may want to raise the overall sensitivity or speed of that axis. You can do this in the Curve Editor by using the "Shift entire curve" up/down buttons. Use the heads display to see the effect of your changes, then try it in the game again. You will need to start and exit the game a couple of times probably as you tweak it. Likewise, if it's too sensitive bring it down.
But here's the beauty of it. You can also edit the curve of the graph by moving the nodes. The nodes are the small squares on the graph. Left click on one, hold down on the left mouse button and you can pull the node up or down to affect the shape of the curve in this area. You can make any view angle slower and more steady as suits you by taking the nodes in that position and lowering them or faster by raising them to cover more distance, e.g. quicker near the edges for those quick six checks! For yaw you'll probably want to keep things even on each side so make sure the "Mirror values" box is checked and you'll get the same edit on both sides. Look at the graph like it's a window facing north. Turning your head right faces east somewhere halfway through the graph and the far right would be south. Turning your head left brings you through west and continued to the far left edge and south as you can see in the picture below.
This screen shows what you would be looking at using the CharveL profile (all other seating and setup factors being equal) at full deflection over your left shoulder. The inset pic of the Gauges screen shows how far to the red line moves for me to get full deflection looking left. The TrackIR4 has a much wider visible tracking range which is nice just in case but you'll likely only need the up to where my red line is unless you prefer a larger deadzone or less acceleration than me. (The reason for the steep upturn past this point is just in case I start moving around too much the extra acceleration will make sure I get to see as far back as possible.)
This screen shows what you would be looking at using the CharveL profile (all other seating and setup factors being equal) at only half deflection over your left shoulder. It's useful to know at what point in your profile the game will be looking at so you can get a better idea of where you need more or less acceleration. Notice the In-game head reflects what you are looking at in the cockpit view screenshot from IL2:FB. Axes Well chances are you know what each axis actually does, at least the Yaw at this point but let's take a check each one because you'll want to tune each of them for what you'll be doing in the game. We'll use my IL2: FB profile as an example of getting a profile to fit you more like those worn-in sneakers than the clunky dress shoes you only bust out of your closet for friend's weddings. Use your own new profile we just set up to work on as we go along. Yaw: Swivelling your head left and right At first you'll probably want a bit more of a dead zone in the center to keep your view steady while looking straight ahead through your gun sight so use your mouse to grab and drag down the center node in the Curve Editor for "Yaw" if it isn't at the bottom already. Now do the same to the one beside the center. You'll notice that the curve line adjusts equally on both sides with the "Mirror values" checked and the number in the "Value" box goes to zero if you lower it. The position box shows which node position from center you're working on if you'd rather work that way.
Sensitivity in the center is lower for steady front view and rises more drastically near the edges as the view gets past 90 degrees left and right. The increasing speed on the ends is for quick checks over the shoulder and the lower speed toward the middle of the graph gives you the steadiness to track a target out front of the plane without having to hold your head excruciatingly still to keep the game screen steady. Pitch: Swivelling your head up and down Pitch is unique in an environment like the cockpit as everything outside of the plane is pretty much up from level gaze and the instrument panel is below level. If you think about it you'll probably want to hold pretty steady when zoomed into your flight gauges or even worse looking at that Spitfire compass, so my curve tends to be slower when looking down at the panel but gradually getting faster in case I have to check that I didn't get any shrapnel in my leg from that flak burst. ;) For looking up I have everything more sensitive so I can look straight up without actually physically having to do so. You'll see from the Pitch Gauge that when you look down the yellow and red bars move to the right, and up to the left.
Roll: Tilting your head side to side Unfortunately, IL2:FB does not have all six degrees for looking around struts but some other Sims like Battle of Britain: Wings of Victory and Microsoft's flight simulator among a growing list of others do but that's alright we'll tweak it anyway in case you end up only needing one profile for all of your flight sims. Personally, I find that Roll does not need to magnify your real head's tilting motion so I keep mine way low and even throughout at around 7 points since I don't think I'll ever need to tilt my head any more in-game than I would in real life. I keep a fairly large dead zero zone in the center as I don't want things tilting on me too much unless I really need it. This is great for BoB:WoV as you can roll back your canopy lean over to the side and tilt your head slightly to see the runway better as you taxi forward! Remember you can always check the In-Game head to make sure it's not going too jittery
X: leaning your shoulders side to side I'm sure by this point the way these axes work is starting to make some sense. "X" helps you move aside to keep an eye on your wing leader or a target that disappeared behind the strut bars. Unfortunately this is another of the axes that IL2:FB doesn't support so you'll still be tapping the rudders to move the plane instead of your head grumbling about the energy cost of doing so all the while. One thing I've noticed about "X" is that if it's too fast near the center it can cause the side-effect of making your "Roll" behave oddly like your neck is slipping to the side on ice as you tilt. Adding more dead zone to "X" and "Yaw" helps balance it out better. This took me a while to figure out and I had a tendency to blame the software for it but it can be tamed with those adjustments if they don't detract from their own axes. I prefer a linear gradual "V"-shaped rise in sensitivity for this axis.
Y: Sit up or crouch down When I sit comfortably ready to fly I know I can only crunch down so far without unnecessarily angering my lower back so this one has a pretty steep acceleration. Basically when I'm sitting normally the Y axis doesn't kick in until I move far enough to kick it out of the dead zone. This is necessary for keeping locked onto the gun sight (again not for IL2: FB but for 6DOF enhanced flight sims) when I need to keep still to aim, but just in the dead center and magnifies the up and down movements in case I want to duck like a coward behind the dash during a 500kph head-on game of chicken or, more happily, over the nose of the plane as I'm taxiing by those cute little pilot groupies on take-off. Oh yeah, they want me. ;)
Z: Lean into the gun sight or lean back in your seat This one requires, for me at least, a large dead zone. Again, I like to have the freedom to scratch my nose without the view freaking out and me on a downward death spiral glued to a rather annoyed wingman. To each their own of course - and you can see that the right hand side of the graph (lean back) is more sensitive because I sit in a high-backed computer chair that doesn't allow quite as much room to move without losing my chin disappearing into my neck. Z is one of my favorite axes because I like to try and use the actual cockpit gauges in BoB:WoV or lean back a bit when I want to have a wider peripheral vision of the sky or runway. The great part about that game is using the TrackIR VE Z-axis setting on FOV mode which makes leaning in work like binoculars for recognizing far away planes. On a side note there is a way to use IL2:FB's multiple zoom levels to be triggered by the "Z-axis" but being only a few steps it can be pretty tricky to set up including some external program utilities but I gave it up for being a bit too much hassle and clunky. This is a bit beyond the scope of this article but if you're interested in checking it out you can check out this forum link on the NaturalPoint forums for instructions but I warn you it's a bit advanced if you're still getting used to adjusting profiles.
Time Saving Tips Like I mentioned earlier, use the Gauges window's graph of the axis you are editing to get an idea where your real and in-game heads are. With the possible exception of "Roll" you'll want to have your profile set so that the red line will only reach the far end of the graph at the time that your head has turned as far as is comfortable. The yellow line is just the reference for your real head and it's not intended to travel very far from center. If you want to get a feel for how much fidgeting room you have in your forward facing position while formation flying forty minutes en-route to that Japanese carrier just press F12 to recalibrate and, well...fidget! You'll find most of the vertical lines won't move much within a radius of your initial position but don't worry too much if a couple do as long as when it counts you can keep them fairly still. The In-game Head avatar can help with this as well. F-12 is your best friend! As a rule, every time I start up a game and hop into the cockpit the very first thing to do is make sure your view is calibrated by looking dead center and pressing F12. If you find as time goes on that your neck is a bit uncomfortable try looking a slight bit down from level and pressing F12 again. We have a tendency to shift about, settle into the chair or sit rigidly while trying futilely to stay on the tail of that Spitfire so don't be afraid to recalibrate now and again. If you find you have to do recalibrate all the time chances are your profile is a bit too sensitive overall and either needs a bump with the "Shift Entire Curve" buttons or a bit less sensitivity in the center and a bit more towards the outside but try to isolate which axis is the jumpy one and tweak that one. Once you have everything working right you'll probably only rarely venture back into the software. Well, it all makes sense but... Don't expect it all to sink in right away, you'll need to put your profile to the test in-game at least a few times and find that you notice things as you're playing and make a mental note to tweak it in your profile when you're done. The only part that's tricky to grasp is exactly where you have to make adjustments to get the result you're looking for. Again, the red vertical line in the gauges window tells the whole story of where your in-game head will be at a certain viewing angle so just visualize where in the cockpit you are looking at that angle and make your tweak at that point of the response curve. And that's about it! With any luck you've actually read this far and got a grip on how you can use the powerful, if a tad daunting, version 4.x software. As part of the beta test team we're always looking to improve the software and over the generations I've seen an incredible amount of thought and effort go into making the software easier to use and highly customizable at the same time. It's a constant tug-of-war between adding features and keeping it less confusing and more transparent for the user but there is still some ways to go. In the near future I think we'll see developers start adding either their own in-game setup calibrations and/or perhaps a wizard that can walk you through much of this article step-by-step but that is always the way with new technologies. Hey, if us simmers weren't at least a little "hardcore" and willing to accept a challenge, chances are we'd probably be drooling out of the side of our mouths playing The Sims anyway. ;) If you'd like to try my most recent flight-sim profile or use it as a starting point to make your own you can download it here (Right click, Save as). Happy simming! CharveL |
