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    PMDG - BAe Jetstream 4100
    Erik
    By Erik,
      A Turbo-prop Regional Airliner Reborn The BAe Jetstream 4100!   The Jetstream 41 turboprop regional airliner, manufactured by BAE Systems, is a major development of the Jetstream 31/32 regional airliner family, which entered service in 1982. The Jetstream 31 and the Jetstream 32EP (enhanced performance) are 19-seat turboprop airliners. The stretched Jetstream 41 development was announced in 1989, the first flight took place in 1991 and the aircraft entered service in 1992. The goal was to compete directly with 30-seat aircraft like the Embraer Brasilia, Dornier 328 and Saab 340.   The Jetstream 41's stretched fuselage is 16 ft (4.88 m) longer, consisting of an 8 foot (2.5 m) plug forward of the wing and a 7 ft 9 in (2.36 m) plug to the rear; the fuselage design was completely new and did not contain any parts of the old fuselage. The new design required an increased wing span, which also included reworked ailerons and flaps. The wing was mounted below the fuselage in order for it not to carry through the cabin aisle, which also led to larger wing root fairings which increased baggage capacity.   The Jetstream 41 is fitted with Garrett TPE331-14 engines (now owned by Honeywell), and delivered 1,500 shp (1,120 kW) and later 1,650 shp (1,232 KW). They were mounted in new nacelles which increased ground clearance. The flightdeck was equipped with a modern EFIS setup, as well as a new windscreen arrangement. The J41 was the first turbo-prop certified to both JAR25 and FAR25 standards.   The J41 flew for the first time on 25 September 1991 and was certified on 23 November 1992. In January 1996, the J41 became part of the Aero International (Regional) (AI®), a marketing consortium consisting of ATR, Aérospatiale (of France), Alenia (of Italy), and British Aerospace.   Over 90 Jetstream 41 aircraft are operational worldwide in both 29/30 seat commuter and 14-seat corporate shuttle configurations.   An accurate, detailed simulation of the Jetstream 41 has been sorely missing from desktop flight simulation... Until Now!   After being in development for 9 months, PMDG's award winning development team is proud to release this faithfully reproduced aircraft! In traditional PMDG style, no effort was spared during this extensive development process and we are certain the J41 will quickly become your favorite regional turbo prop simulation!   PMDG Announces it's newest release. >> READ MORE <<

    Avsim Hacker Identified
    Fates
    By Fates,
      "Avsim is one of the largest sites serving the flight sim community. The publisher of a flight simulator site targeted by a hacker in May says it has presented a file of evidence to UK police identifying the perpetrator. Avsim said it had "incontrovertible evidence" about the hacker's identity. The attack wiped data held on two servers and "effectively destroyed" the site, which is still being rebuilt. The US firm said it expected the criminal complaint, filed with London police, to lead to the alleged hacker spending "time behind bars". "We will not name any names, but have incontrovertible evidence of the individual that performed the hack," said Tom Allensworth, the publisher and CEO of Avsim." --BBC World News America   Read more >>>BBC World News<<<

    Hanger 09
    Fates
    By Fates,
      Jonny Ryder, Cyberdome Technologies, is about to open a Entertainment Arcade called "Hanger 09" and is banking on its location to attract business. Just miles from Oceana NAS, Ryder is building incredible simulator cockpits and mating them with Graphsims FA-18/OIF......and selling pizza all under the same roof.       Read more at >>>PilotOnline .com<<<

    IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey Missions
    Erik
    By Erik,
      IL-2 STURMOVIK: BIRDS OF PREY MISSIONS REVEALED TEST YOUR METTLE AND EARN YOUR WINGS   505 Games in collaboration with 1C Company have today released more information on the mission mode in IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey. The highly anticipated WWII aerial combat title will hit the shelves on 4th September for Xbox 360, PS3, PSP and DS.   Mission mode extends the game play experience in IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds Of Prey by offering new missions that are unlocked through progress in the main campaign mode. By successfully navigating the campaign missions in each of the six scenarios, new operations become available such as night time recon, airfield assaults, escorting bombers, supply transports or troops to their destination, neutralising anti-aircraft units, low fling ground attacks, vessel air patrol and interception of enemy supply transports to name a few. These additional operations bring the mission total to 50 across the campaign and mission modes.   Based around large-scale aerial combat over the ground-based military operations of World War II, variety is at the heart of the action in IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey. Players participate in the most famous confrontations of the era piloting fighters, battle planes or heavy bombers across a range of missions. There are six theatres of war in which to engage – The Battle of Britain, Stalingrad, Berlin, Sicily, the Battle of the Bulge and Korsun – representing the main airborne battles of World War II in Europe.   As well as taking environmental and landscape visuals to new heights by incorporating satellite technology, IL-2 also boasts a tangible damage effects engine. Players will see real-time damage to the aircraft such as holes in the wings and trail lines during dogfights. IL-2 will support up to 16 players in multiplayer aerial combat set across 4 scenarios - Dogfight, Team Battle, Strike and Capture the Airfield.   IL2 Sturmovik: Birds Of Prey will be published by 505 Games in collaboration with 1C Company on 4th September 2009 for Xbox 360, PS3, DS and PSP. Playable demos for Xbox 360 and PS3 are available to download now from Marketplace and PSN. For the latest information visit the official website at http://www.il2game.com or follow on Twitter http://twitter.com/IL2BirdsOfPrey     New Media Maze Ltd

    Reviewing the Logitech G940
    Ruggbutt
    By Ruggbutt,
      This year has been a great year for flight simmers. Announcements of new software and new hardware piqued the interest of the flight sim community. Of all the products we were promised nothing generated the buzz that the Logitech G940 did. It was promo'd at E3 earlier this year. With E3 being an industry show many people just didn't get the chance to see it, touch it or talk to someone who had. I was fortunate enough to get my hands on the G940 and run it through it's paces. Those of you that know me know I'm a gadget guy. I love to make periodic additions to my cockpit to ease the "workload" when I'm flying online with my squadron. I own a couple of Logitech mice (510's) and two Logitech 5.1 surround systems, one for my pit and the other for my FPS (First Person Shooter) desk. My main mouse has been going for 5 years.   The G940 is a HOTAS (Hands On Throttle And Stick) and rudder pedals. The stick itself is FF (Force Feedback). I haven't "flown" with FF for years. I was anxious to see how well I'd be able to fly the jet and use the weapons with a stick that was alive, shaking and shuddering and doing it's best to spoil my aim. That's a common misconception that I'll touch on later in this review.   I was promised the G940 sometime in August as soon as the eval copies were to be made available. Sure enough I received a box that was shipped "next day". How's that for service?!! I immediately broke out my camera and started tearing into the boxes. The outer box was your standard brown cardboard with the Logitech logo, taped on all the corners with clear tape. Fitting tightly inside was the store display box. I thought to myself, let's see how well these are packed. After all, we know that our boxes get thrown around by UPS and FedEx. I hoped that nothing was broken.     I know that some of you like the unboxing part and like it documented, so I attempted that for you. The first parts I pulled out were the HOTAS itself, packaged up nicely and covered with thick protective plastic. Logitech did it's homework with it's packaging, the G940 arrived in pristine condition despite obvious abuse on it's outer packaging.     I'd heard from a friend who was at E3 (sadly, I wasn't able to make it this year) that the stick had a nice feel to it. He said it was kind of rubbery to the touch. I unpacked the stick and set it down on the counter, I wanted to handle it a bit first. My friend was right, it felt great in my hand. I have medium size hands and the stick fit just right. The hand grip part of the stick is smaller in diameter than sticks from some of the other high end manufacturers. I liked it. I also liked the coating that was on it. It was slightly rubbery to the touch. I don't think you'd lose your grip with sweaty hands. After imagining myself in a dogfight with an adversary (and making the appropriate machine guns sounds with my mouth) I set the stick down and took a quick look at the how many buttons and switches it had. Two stage trigger, POV (Coolie) hat, another hat, several buttons, and three rotators. There's also another button that lies under your pinkie on the stick that can be programmed as a "Shift" button. Excellent! That's absolutely mandatory and doubles the programmability. You'll notice mounting holes on all four corners of the HOTAS. There are rubber feet on the bottom but I'll bet that a lot of you out there will want to secure the HOTAS via the mounting holes.     Shot of the front of the stick so you can see the trigger, shift button and connectors for the throttle and pedals.     Trim rotators on the base of the stick.     I couldn't stand it any longer, I unpackaged the throttle and set it up on my left side. In my mind I was back in the dogfight, chopping throttle and maneuvering my imaginary aircraft to keep on my bandit's six. Immediately I felt the afterburner detent. Gotta love that! There's an idle detent too. Well done! There's some major cool factor going on with this throttle, it seems like Logitech did it's homework and listened to it's potential customers. I'm seeing all kinds of things that I'd want on a HOTAS and it's on the G940. You'll only need one open USB port for the G940. The stick has the USB connector, the throttle and pedals connect to it via gameport-type connectors. There is also a power cord that plugs into a wall outlet with an ac/dc converter. The converter itself is about 4 inches long, 2.5 inches wide and an inch or so in height. The wiring is fairly robust and I found that all cables were long enough to string around my cockpit without having to tension them.     I take a closer look and there's a rotator in the front of right throttle. Right throttle you say? Did I forget to mention that it's a split throttle? You can lock the left and right side together or disengage them and adjust them separately. This feature is one of the most wished for features in the combat flight sim community. If you're flying an F-16 you just lock the throttles together, but hop in that Su-33 and you have total control over both engines. There's another rotator on the side of the right throttle. There's also a POV switch, another 8 way hat, several buttons and a mode sliding switch. Remember me talking about programmability? The mode switch lets you program 3 times the amount of commands. You could use mode 1 for Navigation, mode 2 for Air to Air and Mode 3 for Air to Ground. In this manner you could fly any number of aircraft and not have to load different profiles for each plane.     Front side of the throttle:     On the bottom of the throttle there's an adjustment rotator so you can adjust the tension of the throttle.     I set the HOTAS aside and pulled the pedals out and removed the plastic. The pedals look nice, they have stainless steel foot rests. I particularly liked the "humps" that fit where the arch of your foot goes. There's a dial tension adjuster in between the pedals as well. I personally like a little bit of resistance.     I turned the pedals over and found a nice surprise, carpet spikes. They normally sit recessed into the base but you can extend them (by pushing in on the locks) and they'll keep the pedals from moving forward as you push on them. They work great, I use a lot of rudder flying the A10 and they didn't move an inch all the time I used them.     I took a closer look at the connecting rods for the pedals and was happy to see that they seem to be built very thick and heavy. This is good because pedals take huge amounts of abuse compared to their HOTAS buddies.   You can plug the G940 in and play. For the first time user this is great. You're up and running with little to no effort. I recommend that you take the time and use Logitech's software to create profiles for your sims. It's more time consuming but you'll be pleased with the end result and you'll find you'll be using your keyboard much less should you go this route. Now that all the exploring was done it was time to install the software. Installation went without a hitch and walked you through every step of the installation. You plug in the G940 during the software installation, it'll tell you when. The GUI (Graphical User Interface) was fairly straight forward and similar in nature to Saitek's software. If you're a first time profile creator there's a bit of a learning curve. You'll catch on quickly though. It worked just fine in Lock On/Flaming Cliffs and Black Shark. You have to tell both sims which axis is assigned to which command but the buttons and POV hats worked right off the bat.   The Profiler software (as it's called) is well thought out. You can pull up a graphic of each controller in the GUI and when you press a button, move a hat switch, dial a rotator or move an axis the software automatically highlights that particular part for you to command. No guessing involved.     You click with your mouse on the command panel and another menu opens with multiple choices.     When you choose to add a keypress or a cycle command another menu opens (depending on which of those you chose) and you can give custom names to your commands. For instance, if you're programming Flaps and there are three levels of flaps (full up, half flap, full down) you can add all of these commands to your new flap command and every press of the button will change the position of your flaps. The Profiler software allows you to record macros, keybinds, bands, etc. I played around with the software quite a bit and after a couple of days I had a nice Lock On/Flaming Cliffs profile that I was content with. Remember where I discussed "Shifted" commands? You can do that as well and Logitech has changed the color of the shifted commands so that there will be no mistake when the user is creating his/her profile.     I know you're all dying to know how well the hardware works so I'll move on to that. I love the pedals. They feel great. They're accurate. They feel solid. Don't let anyone tell you that cuz the G940 is made of plastic that it's "cheap" or isn't a quality product. I've put quite a few "miles" on my G940 so far, but it seems to be built sturdy. The throttle is just plain sick! (that's means awesome for some of you old folks). I programmed the rotators for radar elevation and for wide/narrow scan. The buttons seemed to lay nicely underneath my fingers and even though I'm used to using a different HOTAS I found I got used to the G940 fairly quickly. To unlock the split throttle you reach around to the lever on the left throttle. There's a raised metal "button" that you push in which separates the throttles. To lock them you align the throttles and push the metal button in on the right throttle shaft. During combat you'll find it a bit difficult to lock the throttles back together. At least I did because my stick and throttle sit at my waist in my pit.     The stick was "different". I haven't flown with force feedback in a long, long time. I found that I liked being able to feel buffeting on the wings of my A-10 as I pulled into a tight turn. In the F-15 I could feel I was at corner speed and I found myself quickly pulling just hard enough to feel the buffet. It made me fly better and the force feedback was a better cue than the visual one I was used to. The stick has a dual stage trigger, I messed around with programming it for jet sims but found that it just didn't work as well as it would in a sim like IL2 where some aircraft can fire machine guns and cannon at the same time. The dual stage trigger would really pay off in that sim. I flew several different types of aircraft in Lock On/Flaming Cliffs with the G940, just like I do with my old kit. I wanted to see how well I could adapt to a stick that "kicked back" at me. I spent countless hours using unguided rockets and GAU 8 to see if I could shoot as well with the G940. To my surprise I can. The stick doesn't spoil your aim even if you're in a turning fight against other jets. It makes you fly smarter. The stick is as accurate as anything else I've used. I'm told that Logitech uses Hall Sensors in this stick. I was able to tone down some of the centering forces in the stick as I found that my wrist became tired after flying for a while. I found the perfect adjustment and that pain went away. You can also adjust other parameters of the force feedback without affecting centering strength.   I try to be completely honest with my reviews and with that usually comes some criticism or suggestions that would make for a better product. Some of these are based strictly on preference and I would like you readers to take that into consideration. I only have a couple things I'd like to point out and see changed.   Hat switches. There are two kinds on the G940. The "coolie" hat and the one that's shaped like a cross. The cross hat is too smooth. It needs a bit more texturing.   I mapped the rotators on the base of the stick to trim pitch and roll and rudder. They really need a center detent. There are marks for center on the rotator but over time I can see them being rubbed off. Besides, tactile beats a graphic any time and being able to feel center is better than seeing it. I mapped the rotator on the front of the throttle to the elevation axis for my radar. I had to roll the rotator to the max end of travel both ways before it would auto-calibrate and work correctly. I'm not sure if this is a component of the software or if it's a hardware issue. Either way, I'm sure that those coming from an X-45 or X-52 will miss that detent.   Lastly (and most importantly), stick center compared to elevator position. With most of the sticks I've owned I found that stick center related to elevator center. Not so with the G940. I found that if flying straight and level that if I let go of the stick that I could expect a 10 degree nose down attitude. Upon mapping the rotators to trim I found that I could correct this situation. If you look at the close up of the rotators you can see about where the trim has to be to rectify the situation. The stick still jumps around a little when trimmed and doesn't work as well as it should. The good news is that I've been in contact with Logitech's support and it's a software issue. I've been told it can be fixed and that the Logitech software guys hope to fix issues like this by working with the developers of the sims we play.   Edited 8/31/09 by ruggbutt Mark from Logitech posted this on another forum: The issue described is from the slight force dead zone, which allowsthe stick to lean forward against the force feedback "spring". Thestick centers perfectly, but when you let go, the optical dead manswitch turns off game force and substitutes the default centering.There is some looseness, to avoid high power usage of the motors atrest. We are looking at tweaking the driver to have the stick rest atcenter. Its not a difficult fix.   We are also working with sim developers to improve the in-gamelooseness of forces. There hasn't been a good reason to put in extraeffort on force feedback until G940. We find that the developers areeager to incorporate better feedback now that the work will berewarded..   It's nice to see that Mark is active in the community and that Logitech will work on the centering. There's nothing better than being able to interact with the developers on a product that you would like to purchase. Out of My three criticisms of the G940 Mark shot the important one down in flames. Nice shooting Mark, I'm glad to see that you're on this. As are the slew of potential customers.   End edit   The last thing I'd like to discuss isn't a criticism. It's more just FYI. It has to do with the colored buttons on the throttle. I'm sure many of you have seen the flash movies on Logitech's site showing how the buttons can show the state of landing gear with colored lights. Currently this isn't available. From what I understand software is being written that reads the state of gear, flaps, etc that would translate into the colors you see on the buttons. I would also imagine that the sim you're playing would have to be able to send that info (probably via LUA programming) for that function to be available on the G940. However, you CAN run the joystick SDK (Software Development Kit) to change the color of the buttons or turn them off completely.   Retail price on the G940 is $300 U.S. This may seem steep for some but the G940 is built sturdy and should provide many hours of use. I'd like to thank Sarah at Logitech for providing me with the G940 to evaluate. Mark at Logitech answered my questions and walked me through the use of the SDK. My e-mails were answered promptly and this tells me that Logitech is on the ball with their customer service.   IMHO Logitech did their homework and released a product that mid to hardcore flight simmers would be happy to have as part of their kit. I predict that Logitech will sell a whole slew of G940's to satisfied customers.

    New Theme Available
    Fates
    By Fates,
      Just finished up another new theme for everyone. Big Shout out to Erik on the group icons! We plan on creating new sets for all the themes. You can select the Theme's skin in the lower left on any page.   Enjoy!

Portal by DevFuse · Based on IP.Board Portal by IPS


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