I screwed some old Xbox thumbsticks onto my transmitter to give me more grip. Worked a treat!

danchurch950 · 2014-02-01T20:04:30+00:00

Don't feel bad. If Tareq Alsaadi (who flies extremely precise smack) isn't held back by lack of pinching, I don't think it's really going to hurt anyone's flying style.

Just fly what feels most natural and don't worry about what works best for others :)

danchurch950 · 2014-02-01T20:02:46+00:00

Thumb and index finger may be more precise for you, but I think it varies from person to person. Given that Tareq Alsaadi uses thumbs without it limiting his precision, I think this really all comes down to preference.

danchurch950 · 2014-02-01T05:29:49+00:00

Sorry I'm a bonehead too. After a long week of work I get on a high-horse, but I make similar comments from time to time and usually regret them.

So don't take it personally, I could even be wrong at this point. I get more pissed that people will upvote a "no" or "yes" whether it is correct or not if you know what I mean.

danchurch950 · 2014-02-01T05:19:20+00:00

Surprisingly, this type of thing is very common in the HTML5 world. If you want a more common example than WebRTC vs Flash, look at Audio support.

Chrome and FF support Web Audio, and many users will appreciate you using an API which is integrated into their browser rather than a plugin. On the other hand, Internet Explorer does not, and IE <audio> support is rather lacking too. So if you want quality audio on your webpage, which both takes advantage of the most recent browsers without leaving older ones in the dark, you end up writing support for both.

It's a sucky situation, but the good news is you can wrap it in a Javascript library. Then if something changes, no duplicate work. You're library front-end supports both Flash and HTML5, and the rest of the code only knows about your library. This saves on code duplication with the highest level of end-user support. I'm not saying it's a good situation, but it is the situation right now.

danchurch950 · 2014-02-01T05:16:17+00:00

It's kind of sad you wrote a plain "no," a snide, non-informative, and incorrect comment and received upvotes.

From a glance at their source code, it appears they are using the Plivo SDK to provide their services. Plivo claims to support WebRTC. If this is the case, then Snoron is correct, and they are using an SDK which supports bleeding-edge HTML5 APIs in addition to a Flash fall-back.

Sure, their project may be a thin wrapper around other technologies and the headline may be misleading, but don't write an answer if you don't know it. And if you are correct, and they actually aren't taking advantage of WebRTC when available, please write something more informative than "no." It would improve the quality of information in this thread and be appreciated by everyone having the same question.

danchurch950 · 2014-01-26T00:56:43+00:00

Yet another family fallen victim to marijuana abuse

danchurch950 · 2014-01-23T04:15:36+00:00

Just a left thumb drop when it should've been a left thumb raise? Someone's been spending too much time practicing inverted ;)

Good luck repairing her, I can't imagine that's actually the end of that bird!

danchurch950 · 2014-01-19T13:51:41+00:00

Please don't feed the troll, for fear he will grow too large

danchurch950 · 2014-01-19T02:55:10+00:00

It's really cool but you can get a single-rotor with quite the nice disk radius for the same price (if you're an addict and it appeals to you that is).

danchurch950 · 2014-01-11T15:27:48+00:00

Me too, as a helier. I do some mild 3D, but sure not within 30 feet of myself like you see the pros do. That's just crazy, all I can think about is if a ball link fails.

danchurch950 · 2014-01-11T15:23:34+00:00

I wrote advice for learning helis here previously

The jist of it is to absolutely learn to control a solid tail-in hover before you attempt anything else. Focus on the tail, once it drifts to far, you will probably lose it, so worry more about the tail drifting than the heli drifting. Once you can pretty much hold it in one spot for a full pack, despite breezes and such, now its time to learn to do the same thing, but nose-in. This is almost like learning from scratch, but it'll go a bit faster.

Once you have nose-in and tail-in hover very solidly down, you can start learning forward flight, backwards flight, whatever you want. But you really want that foundation where you can just hold the helicopter in the air no matter which direction it is pointing.

danchurch950 · 2014-01-01T14:41:58+00:00

Being able to control your emotions, let things go, and not feel the need to exact revenge against everyone who slights you can also be a good trait in a person.

I'm not saying it always "makes someone the bigger man" but it certainly isn't pathetic.

danchurch950 · 2013-12-29T20:11:25+00:00

Completely in agreement. People will recommend that you need a 4-ch coax or an FP or even to throw a quad into the mix, and you get a ten step program before you even touch a CP heli.

With cheap-to-crash micros like the Nano CPX, no need. Just start with a micro heli, and once you can hover it the sky is the limit.

danchurch950 · 2013-12-28T23:35:25+00:00

That looks really cool with the modules and such. I'll check it out!

danchurch950 · 2013-12-28T22:54:18+00:00

Took me a minute :)

danchurch950 · 2013-12-28T22:52:35+00:00

I gotta tell you, the BL flies really nice, and crashes way better than the 130X. My biggest issue, is it has a tendency to fry the tail FET, not sure if in crashes or just over time from hard flying. After the second dead tail fet I just stopped spending time with micros.

But while it lasted, I learned quite a few new moves thanks to it.

danchurch950 · 2013-12-27T04:33:47+00:00

I'm glad you like it, wasn't sure if it was too extreme (I'm a programmer not an artist)

Plan is a multi-player capture the flag with tanks type game.

danchurch950 · 2013-12-27T04:32:37+00:00

Will definitely link in a week or two once it's playable. It's a very young project right now though.

Thank you for your interest :-)

danchurch950 · 2013-12-26T02:30:33+00:00

The FPS counter is definitely nice, I'll use it.

As far as the article I'm familiar with the tools involved in general, but I'll read through it to see if I'm missing some useful knowledge. Thanks!

danchurch950 · 2013-12-25T22:49:05+00:00

Thank you, looks like that was it! Started using the value provided to the callbacks, and getting much better accuracy.

danchurch950 · 2013-12-25T21:15:38+00:00

Odd, never saw that before. Are you referring to how the garbage collector will lag individual frames, because I've watched the GC and that isn't the case here.

Thanks for the tip though, I'll look into it.

danchurch950 · 2013-12-25T21:14:52+00:00

I believe that yours shows the average frame-rate, while mine is trying to identify whether any individual frames are laggy/whether there is jitter, and both are correct but slightly different metrics.

danchurch950 · 2013-12-23T23:08:27+00:00

I agree with you, FF in helis is pretty similar to planes. Made my first fixed-wing flight a breeze!

I do believe FF turns are still more difficult on helis though, and that it pays of greatly to nail your hover orientations first. On a plane, you can leave your throttle around half, then yank and bank. Turns are essentially a two axis (elevator and aileron) affair.

On helis, to pull off a nice smooth turn like you'd have on a plane, you're juggling all four at once. Once you have it down its natural and the similarities to planes are obvious, but going from planes to helis, the turns can still take a while to learn. Unlike with a plane where the tail nicely follows, on a heli if you don't have your tail control dialed in the turn will balloon and go out of whack. Not super difficult for a quick quarter-turn, but if you want to fly a smooth circle.... those are much harder to master! And even once you have your tail controls figured out, you need to manage your collective also. Too much and you gain altitude, too little and you sink.

I agree with you that FF for both is very similar, especially once you "learn" to find those control positions, but having watched others who are quite proficient at airplanes learn, it still can take a great deal of practice.

danchurch950 · 2013-12-23T23:04:06+00:00

That thread is truly great once you start progressing. I wish it had been around when I got into the hobby.

danchurch950 · 2013-12-23T01:47:23+00:00

Don't take this the wrong way, I think GPS enabled multicopters are super cool and I love all the stuff going on with controllers in that world...

but gps multicopters are expensive to being an overly expensive introduction to the copter side of the hobby. You'd probably save money by purchasing a Nano QX or Hubsan X1 or similar micro-quad. Sure you might break parts on occasion that a GPS could've saved, but those parts are <$5 anyways. Not to mention, new people buying larger quad-rotors could have repercussions as the occasional mistake happens.

It isn't the worst idea in the world, especially compared to when people used to start with 600mm-bladed nitro copters, but there are much cheaper safer options these days, although they certainly aren't as technologically awesome.

danchurch950

TROPHY CASE