Condor Joystick/Rudder

On Jan 23, 10:50*am, "Ian Kennedy"
wrote:
I'm using Win7 64 bit with Condor and a Microsoft force feedback
joystick....no problem.

I am happy to report that my MSFF2 arrived today and works just fine,
including force feedback :-)

Bart

Condorks,

I'm finally ready to get set up Condor and I need suggestions for suitable computers. I'd like a laptop for portability and I don't want to spend a lot. Considering some of these $300 range new cheapo laptops or better yet cheaper and used. One of my computer gurus suggests that a non portable super cheap used windows machine might run the program better than any lap top. Lots of those avail at local university surplus.

I have a decent older Macbook and have read you might be able to run Condor on it with a Windows system within the Mac system. Anyone doing that? I'd imagine it to be sketchy.

Since I'm starting from scratch I can pretty much get whatever processor and ram suited to the task. I have a number of friends and students who ought to join the Condork Club too so lets figure out the cheapest and easiest way to bring them (and me) on board!

Matt

On Wednesday, February 6, 2013 10:09:33 AM UTC-6, wrote:
Condorks, I'm finally ready to get set up Condor and I need suggestions for suitable computers. I'd like a laptop for portability and I don't want to spend a lot. Considering some of these $300 range new cheapo laptops or better yet cheaper and used. One of my computer gurus suggests that a non portable super cheap used windows machine might run the program better than any lap top. Lots of those avail at local university surplus. I have a decent older Macbook and have read you might be able to run Condor on it with a Windows system within the Mac system. Anyone doing that? I'd imagine it to be sketchy. Since I'm starting from scratch I can pretty much get whatever processor and ram suited to the task. I have a number of friends and students who ought to join the Condork Club too so lets figure out the cheapest and easiest way to bring them (and me) on board! Matt

Hello Condork,

I originally bought a Dell D600 laptop, refurbished, and it didn't have enough guts to run condor well on multiplayer races in some of the higher detail scenery. It does meet all the minimum specs on the Condor website and it did do well when flying solo.

So i bought a Dell Precision m6300 refurbished off Ebay for pretty cheap. I bought it because its the same laptop that Frank Paynter flies with so i knew it would work well. It does, now the only excuse i have for getting beat is that I'm slow, not the computer.

On Wednesday, February 6, 2013 9:38:58 AM UTC-7, Tony wrote:
On Wednesday, February 6, 2013 10:09:33 AM UTC-6, wrote:

Condorks, I'm finally ready to get set up Condor and I need suggestions for suitable computers. I'd like a laptop for portability and I don't want to spend a lot. Considering some of these $300 range new cheapo laptops or better yet cheaper and used. One of my computer gurus suggests that a non portable super cheap used windows machine might run the program better than any lap top. Lots of those avail at local university surplus. I have a decent older Macbook and have read you might be able to run Condor on it with a Windows system within the Mac system. Anyone doing that? I'd imagine it to be sketchy. Since I'm starting from scratch I can pretty much get whatever processor and ram suited to the task. I have a number of friends and students who ought to join the Condork Club too so lets figure out the cheapest and easiest way to bring them (and me) on board! Matt



Hello Condork,



I originally bought a Dell D600 laptop, refurbished, and it didn't have enough guts to run condor well on multiplayer races in some of the higher detail scenery. It does meet all the minimum specs on the Condor website and it did do well when flying solo.



So i bought a Dell Precision m6300 refurbished off Ebay for pretty cheap. I bought it because its the same laptop that Frank Paynter flies with so i knew it would work well. It does, now the only excuse i have for getting beat is that I'm slow, not the computer.

FWIW, in an e-mail exchange with Uros several years ago, he said the software depends mainly on the CPU and not so much on graphics cards - his way of saying there's not much benefit to be gained from buying an expensive GPU card.

On Wednesday, February 6, 2013 11:09:33 AM UTC-5, wrote:
Condorks,



I'm finally ready to get set up Condor and I need suggestions for suitable computers. I'd like a laptop for portability and I don't want to spend a lot. Considering some of these $300 range new cheapo laptops or better yet cheaper and used. One of my computer gurus suggests that a non portable super cheap used windows machine might run the program better than any lap top. Lots of those avail at local university surplus.



I have a decent older Macbook and have read you might be able to run Condor on it with a Windows system within the Mac system. Anyone doing that? I'd imagine it to be sketchy.



Since I'm starting from scratch I can pretty much get whatever processor and ram suited to the task. I have a number of friends and students who ought to join the Condork Club too so lets figure out the cheapest and easiest way to bring them (and me) on board!



Matt

Using a Mac is totally possible. Use Bootcamp from Apple's website and get a copy of Windows 7 and install. This will take away disk space from OSX though as Windows will need it's own partition to live on along with the space Condor needs. So, if your MacBook is already short on disk space then it'd be an issue.
For me Condor takes 26.65GB with a multitude of sceneries installed and Windows 7 64bit takes 21.1GB with all the updates applied.

Your MacBook should have plenty of CPU to do a good enough job on most sceneries. The only limiting factors I can see are disk space, RAM, and video RAM when dealing with the large texture rich photo realistic sceneries like Alpi3.3. Most of the heavy duty sceneries have to be bought though so many amateur servers stick with free sceneries.

For a reference my system is a early model Mac Pro 1,1 (2006):
2 x 2.67GHz Xeon CPUs
*250GB HDD for Windows 7 64bit
*4GB RAM
*Radeon 5770 with 1GB video ram for Condor
*Nvidia 7300GT with 256MB video ram for OSX

With Condors graphics settings at the highest levels at 1600x1200 res it gets:

*Stock scenery (Slovenia 1.03)
-70fps w/ Radeon 5770
-40fps w/ 7300GT
-265MB RAM used

Even though the Condor developer Uros says CPU is the most important, which is true, a better GPU still helps...

I recommend this control console:
http://www.nadler.com/backups/ConsoleOverview.jpg
See ya, Dave "YO electric"

On Wednesday, February 6, 2013 11:09:33 AM UTC-5, wrote:
Condorks,



I'm finally ready to get set up Condor and I need suggestions for suitable computers. I'd like a laptop for portability and I don't want to spend a lot. Considering some of these $300 range new cheapo laptops or better yet cheaper and used. One of my computer gurus suggests that a non portable super cheap used windows machine might run the program better than any lap top. Lots of those avail at local university surplus.



I have a decent older Macbook and have read you might be able to run Condor on it with a Windows system within the Mac system. Anyone doing that? I'd imagine it to be sketchy.



Since I'm starting from scratch I can pretty much get whatever processor and ram suited to the task. I have a number of friends and students who ought to join the Condork Club too so lets figure out the cheapest and easiest way to bring them (and me) on board!



Matt

I just bought a nice Lenovo ThinkPad running Win/7 Pro. Condor will not run on this machine. Talked to Frank Paynter and he believes it is the light weight graphics card. I would have chosen a more powerful one but the computer came preconfigured with the Intel HD Graphics 3000 card.

I have Condor running on my other 4 year old Lenovo ThinkPad under XP Pro. Ir runs fine on that PC which does have a better graphics card. I would also be a little skeptical about using XP Mode under the VM Machine in Win/7. I put a couple of programs there ( e.g. my old version of See You )and they are very very slow loading. I doubt if Condor will like it there.

My best guess is that my problem is the graphics card as Frank suggested. Get a good one and Win/7 Pro running on any decent PC will do the job.

Jim - 77

How does one determine if a graphics card will be good enough? I'm thinking of buying one of the new cheap windows laptops available at Best Buy.

On Thursday, February 7, 2013 7:00:30 AM UTC-7, wrote:
How does one determine if a graphics card will be good enough? I'm thinking of buying one of the new cheap windows laptops available at Best Buy.

Although I pinged Matt off group, both BestBuy and Microcenter.com have refurb specials. As in everything computer and Internet regarding cheap, fast, and reliable, pick two! The HP i5 and i7 laptops with Beats audio are media platforms with HDMI output. W8 refurbs are showing up with 12GB of DDR3, 1TB HDDs, etc. I suspect those may be from returns where people gagged on W8 or it wouldn't run their proprietary software package (TaxWorks 2012 for example).

Frank Whiteley

On Thursday, February 7, 2013 9:00:30 AM UTC-5, wrote:
How does one determine if a graphics card will be good enough? I'm thinking of buying one of the new cheap windows laptops available at Best Buy.

I would email Frank Paynter(TA)...he knows this stuff really well. He is a friend from Caesar Creek...

I'm sure he will be happy to help

Jim Price - 77