The three most dangerous phrases in IT a

1. It SHOULD work.
2. THAT shouldn't happen (or its corollary: Never seen THAT before.)
3. Works on MY machine.

I've heard them all the past few weeks.

The Condor 2 experience is truly amazing, as close to flying gliders as I imagine I can get without a full simulator. I learned some things about my flying a year ago that helped me competitively when I first starting playing with it. And I've learned even more this spring.

BUT--Condor is maddeningly frustrating to learn. I'm not anything close to comfortable with it. The concept of an intuitive user interface clearly doesn't exist among the developers of Condor, Condor World, Condor Club, Condor Updater, TeamSpeak/Overwolf, or anything else related to Condor that I've seen.

I'm not technically hapless. I've been playing with PCs since the DOS command line days and worked in the IT world for 20 years. I think the Condor experience is great. But don't misunderstand: it's a CLUB, with special handshakes and rituals and secret information that's passed along to new initiates after they've proved themselves both motivated and worthy.

Seriously, Condor and all of the related applications and Web sites must be LEARNED. Fortunately there are Condor experts who are only too happy to help. So the best way to start out is to find one of those experts or even just someone reasonably tech savvy who's already graduated to the multi-player experience (all the rage now that we can't race each other in the air for a while). There are also a lot of online guides. Some are helpful, others less so. It's like anything else on the Internet; you'll have to wade through a bunch of stuff and glean what works--for your PC, flying hardware (joystick, etc.), and operating system--and what doesn't.

It's even possible (though not easy) to set up your handheld device to run your favorite glide computer software (TopHat, in my case). I've got mine working reliably now but the process I developed to establish the BlueTooth connection is not documented anywhere else, to my knowledge.

There are also a bunch of shortcut keys to learn: some are intuitive, others you just have to memorize. AFAIK, they're in the downloadable Condor user guide which is a "must have". Print them out or put them on a keyboard overlay.

Don't give up. And don't be too exasperated by Condor experts who are baffled by the problems you're having. They may not have seen them before. They're probably just Condor fans, not technically solid help desk pros who know how to diagnose your problems methodically and quickly. So sometimes they tell you to do what most of us are inclined to do anyway: just keep trying, sometimes trying the same thing over and over again hoping for different results. In my experience with Condor, sometimes that even works! And sometimes what's worked in the past doesn't work today. Just keep trying anyway. It IS worth it.

Chip Bearden
JB