Glad to see most flight simmers are as messy as I am...
Icemaw and hblair -- cool setups!
Turbot, what the
hell happened to your cat?!? Is that a scar, or just one weird-assed ear?
Being the Luddite that I am, I don’t have a digital camera and resort to a 1940s era Leica for “family pics”. I’ve never like cameras anyway…
But, I
do have a Webcam, for teleconferencing and such (when I’m not feeling Ludditish). Yeah, it’s a contradiction. I contain multitudes (thanks, Walt!).
Sooo… I made a quick vid of my attic office (I work from home) where I fly my sims, but it was 50mb. Ugh. It also showed me still in my dressing gown in the afternoon, so that’s no good (it's how I'm at my most prolific -- I once read something about it in Rousseau's
Meditations and it's stuck with me ever since)…
Lacking any other recourse, I used the Webcam to take lousy still shots. They’re low-res, out of focus, poorly lit, and badly positioned. Let’s pretend that’s on purpose, and it’s “artsy.” To continue in that vein, I assembled them in a collage:
Here, for your edification, are the pieces to the puzzle...
[list=1]
- Small shelf full of boxed flights sims and other aircraft crap. Glancing over now, I count over twenty sims. Then there are various WWII aircraft vids, and a cool WWI “Aces of Aces” game that had illustrations where players picked moves from a list and matched page numbers to resolve combat. I should scan pages of that sometime to play it online. Oh yeah. Aces High has this new fangled technology called "moving pictures." Never mind…
- Artwork a buddy of mine game to me. Not sure of the process, but I think it was a silkscreening. Subject is a German WWII ace, but I forget whom. Can anyone remind me who he is? It’s from a famous photograph and I think he was a good bloke (did something heroic or took a stand against something). I use it to remind me that what we’re “playing” was actually real at some point.
- What I wish I were doing. Rallying in Europe in a Peugot 206. This isn’t a pic from the room. I just stuck it in as “artistic license.” See above.
- Now we’re getting into flight sim stuff. CH Products Pro Throttle USB. Has served me very well. Not like that Suncom SFS split throttle that had a mind of its own and had lights/modes that changed randomly in an effort to appear Christmas-like. All the flight controls are sitting atop a HOTASS stand, of wooden construction, that is the single best flight sim hardware I’ve ever owned. Clap on, clap off: moves flight sim gear with ease to keep desk less cluttered (with flight sim stuff, anyways)…
- Microsoft Force Feedback Pro (original). Okay, start making fun of me. Had enough? I actually prefer it to the CH Products Fighterstick USB that I have because (a) it has FF and (b) the hat switch fits my hand better. Microsoft actually once replaced it for me years back because an older one had a button go wrong. They did it on my say so without even asking for the original product back. Wow. For all the criticism they take for being an evil monopoly and shoddy developer, they sure knew how to conduct customer service on that occasion. The stick has a game port connection, so I sometimes hook it up to a spare set of Simped-Vario pedals I have.
- X-Keys programmable keyboard. Very cool, and easy to use. I use it as a “back up” if I can’t remember what all the damned things I’ve programmed into the stick or throttle are. It has keys with labels, you see. You push them. And it’s programmable. Hence I referred to is as the X-Keys programmable keyboard… never mind…
- My German Shepherd. Ears back because she doesn’t know what the hell to make of the thing I’m shoving in her face to take the shot. She’s probably thinking “Why the hell are you using a Webcam to take pictures?!?” Or something similar. She frequently outsmarts me. She's in this collage because she's often next to my throttle, trying to convince me that it's time to go out. When her ears are up as they are most of the time, she looks like a cross between a dog and one of Speilberg’s gremlins – not the cute fuzzy ones, either. The ones with the big assed ears (a little like Turbot's cat, I suppose). When she's running really fast, she puts her ears back to reduce drag, and pops them out as an airbrake when she's slowing down. I'm not kidding... People sometimes tell me that it's really more about her mood, effort, and body posture when running, but I'm not fooled. I play flight sims, so I know all about drag coefficients.
- CH Products Pro Pedals USB. Notice a theme here? Actually, they’re very cool as each pedal has an independent pivoting axes for braking, plus the standard sliding axis. It’s why I use them instead of the Simped-Varios. Aces High was an early adopter of the DirectX 6 stuff so had independent braking for left and right sides long before most other flight sims. Happily, the low res doesn’t show all the dog hair caught up in the birds nest that are wires under the desk. Hey, there’s a steering wheel! That’s where the hell it went!!!
- Lastly, a close up of vessels for people fuel, i.e. coffee and coca-cola, respectively. I need the caffeine jolt to keep me trembling and sweating to add a sense of realism to virtual flight.
[/list=1]
That’s it. Wish I could show and tell you more, but I don’t have the talent to. Still, I think this unquestionable work of art might sell for a pretty penny at MoMA in NYC. I'm feeling generous, so I'll let this select community have first crack at it. Bidding is starting at $150,000...
Cheers,
phaetn
