E for All expo report.

[Russian]

Hello from sunny California.

   

 I will use this thread to post my report from E for All expo; a replacement of extinct E3 show.

 

Since I've never attended E3, this was rather pleasing new experience to me.

 

Simmers are not the only ones with unique hobbies.

 

The future of flight sims; a combined booth of ED/DCS and CH-Products.

Inside the booth, there are three ‘displays’ for attendees.


 
 
On the left side of the booth, a generic cockpit with Black Shark is set for anyone to try out. Notice cockpit has 4 CH-MFP panels which add good atmosphere. On this setup Black Shark is running Arcade settings so people do not crash every 30 seconds. Here's a quick youtube video of this display. Notice additional icons on the monitor. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bKQml2Pm1E

 
In the middle, 20MM is busy 'landing' helicopter. This setup is running full beauty of AFM with  two Instructors chatting about upcoming product; Wags and EvilBivol-1. Image is projected on a 5-6  foot white screen, which unfortunately makes it difficult to record video. Here is a video of Wags  catching a missile. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2OyKO9CLYY

   
And finally on the right side we have FS10 running at amazing 5 fps on a utra quad-core super-uber computer.

[Russian]

Time to sleep. In the morning I'll post more info.

(Warning: as always WIP)

[Russian]

I spotted a very interesting device that might enhance flight simmers sensation of acceleration, deceleration and G-forces. It is a flak jacket looking ‘thingy’ that straps-on onto a body. It plugs into a little brick looking compressor with a small elastic hose that forces air into a jacket. Jacket has 8 release valves (4 front and 4 back) that when activated, release stream of air at max of 50 psi. It seems TN-Games are trying to market this device to first person shooter gamers and maybe driving sims. I tried it out using some silly game and it does enhance gaming quite a lot. I believe this is a perfect thing for flight/driving simulators. This device is expected to release soon at a cost of ~ 160$.  http://tngames.com/
 
 

 

 

Here's some stranger holding black compressor.   :wave2:

[Russian]

Notice damage done to landing gear. The damage model is more detailed than of Su-25T.


When landing, a sideway movement can 'catch' gear and flip Ka-50 over.



Crashes are wonderfully modeled, just as with Flaming Cliffs.

Mat showed me few models that have not been showed publicly. Probably later-on they will be released in higher resolution.


Here's a BlackHowk in its full glory.


It's even rendered inside.


New radar vehicle.









Notice image on TV screen. It will be possible to insert your own texture there.

[Russian]

After spending few hours piloting Ka-50 and few more hours watching others crash it, I can, with ease, say that ED/DCS once again raised the bar of flight simulators. Previous king of button fondling, Falcon4, finally has been beaten. To me it seems every single button was functional and clickable in the current build (although Mat said that everything has not been implemented yet); a start up procedure was a thing of beauty, a true simmers wet dream. I was in awe that detail even included BIOS check (Ka-50 uses 486 CPU) and time to acquire satellites in earth’s orbit for GPS system.
Helicopter simmers, rejoice! Finally you can get a proper FM for weird birds that beat air into submission. I believe new Ka-50 AFM is the best flight model in any publicly available simulator; it felt proper, smooth and fluent. AdvancedDM was also quite nice. Do not expect poor quality and horrible performance which seems standard to Microsoft now days. Flight is simulated properly in extreme and normal maneuvers and will bite new users that are not aware of aircraft’s limitations; a 300kph dive with abrupt movement will place a rotor blade into a position that will cut other blade and force aircraft into a spiraling death.      

People, who are skeptical about expected 9 month deadline between each aircraft should realize that creation of addon aircraft does not start after Black Shark gets released; the future aircraft are already being worked on. First expected aircraft to be released is (drum roll) A10. The images that I and 20MM have posted are approximately 5 months old and do not represent current progress. Since ED/DCS finally begun releasing information, new images and development update will resume as before.  

Some other things I noticed:

Trees no longer disappear or go transparent.

Mountains have less jugged ridges and are more circular

Mission editor will have triggers
 
Entire interface has been reworked, including joystick mapping

New engine will be implemented with A10 (hopefully)


http://www.simhq.com/_commentary/all_037a.html

Here's link to a first part of an E for All review which is written by a much better writer than I.

[Meatwad]

DROOOOOOL

[Russian]

On the first day before general public entrance, some award winning high school band made noise outside as wanting to attract more people by horrible music. Then inside a lobby, a ceremony was hold for the best costume out of only 4 people who showed up. The winners, a guy dressed in black outfit with a balloon like thing called Boo, was allowed to join the ranks of professional cos-players. After ceremony, the HS band and costume-players led everyone inside E for All. It seems on the first day only around 50-75 people were waiting to enter.  



On the second day, a Scottish band, 30 minutes before doors opened for general audience, played motivational music as before going to battle. With a crowd of 100-150 people standing around and enjoying music, band moved up to an entrance and everyone rushed in. The only other display other than BS that intrigued me was super-expensive vibrator chair with R-Factor. After driving it for few minutes, I frankly did not get a feeling as of being in a car, but more like sitting on a off balance dry machine. It did not assist me in any way. It actually made it harder to drive because wheel would get jerked out of my hands. G-25 felt nice, but force-feedback was turned off, so it didn't properly represent 300$ wheel.


Other then those two displays, I had no interest in Wii, 360s  and playstations. PC side showed nice hardware running UT3 and other games. There were Counter Strike tournaments and other games.Geeks were being geeks.  




 I met up with Jason and walked around with him for about an hour listening to his commentary about E for All, presenters and displays. He said this show was very small compare to original E3. Although I didn’t know better, to me it show was big enough.  For the rest of the show, I hanged around CH / BS booth testing FM of Ka-50 as I hovered around airfield and crashed over and over and over. Since I’m a Cougar guy, CH folks in good fun flamed me a bit. Yes, CH is more precise than my slightly modified metal joystick. Suddenly one hour before closing, an entire half of pavilion on PC side lost electricity. Sys-admin for CH, Michael, like a cool cat took out a pipe and started puffing away.



 Powerless future of flight sims


Big thanks to  
 Debby, Jason, Matt, Evgenii, Michael, Tom and Ghost
I had a lot of fun meeting online persons.

[Tac]

that jacket is neat.


Now if they can get the effect to be felt by small electrical impulses in your abs I wouldnt have to excercise.

A 4 hour session of AH2 a day and all these G forces would do the trick.

[Ack-Ack]

We got a bunch of passes for that expo at my work but no one claimed any.  IMO, it's just a waste of money.  Far more money is put into the booths and glitz then what is gained through any potential sales.  



ack-ack

[Vulcan]

Mmmm black shark cockpits gonna go nice on my headset

[Russian]

Originally posted by Ack-Ack
We got a bunch of passes for that expo at my work but no one claimed any.  IMO, it's just a waste of money.  Far more money is put into the booths and glitz then what is gained through any potential sales.  



ack-ack

Something tells me it's not for immediate sells but for 'deals' aka. give a card, take a card, we'll talk later.