319 I'm sure they have too many inputs

Drew 00:00

We were just popping off on a on a patented rant about audio inputs. Yeah. And we missed all that.

Paul 00:05

And we missed it all.

Drew 00:07

All I'll say, all I'll say is I unplug my Mac, I put it in the the bag that I take and it goes with me on my trip. And when I come home I can plug the little cord from the monitor, which charges it, but any peripherals I have plugged into the monitor, I have to unplug and re-plug in.

Paul 00:25

Yeah, that was always the issue with the 'Cause you have you have my old one of oh well yeah, the five LG Ultrafine five K. Yeah, that th that was a great monitor unless unless you wanted to use the ports on the back of it, which I basically just didn't. Uh and yeah.

Drew 00:44

I mean if uh just again, I can't really I can't really see I can't really show on camera the way that it's set up, but it's it's a big pain in the ass. Because I have I have just a regular lightning, regular lightning cable to charge my work phone plugged into that. And I have my webcam plugged into it. So I can't tell you the number of times I've come home from a trip and plugged in my phone and come down the next day and realized that it's dead because I never just unplugged it and plugged it back in from the monitor for it to detect that hey, there's a cable there.

Paul 01:17

You know, so I have uh uh I have a Caldigit TS5 Plus Thunderbolt dock that I use.

Drew 01:29

How did it

Paul 01:30

okay? Yeah. like amongst the best.

Drew 01:39

I'm gonna need a link because this is gonna be this is gonna be relevant for later in the show.

Paul 01:43

Okay, alright. Uh hold on. I have the TS5, hold on. They have a TS5 and a TS5 Pro. I have the TS5 Plus. All right, there's a link coming in here real quick. Okay. And let me just put that. There we go. There's the link. And I like it because again I have that one cable, but it has a lot of ports on it, lots of peripherals, and has an Ethernet port. And that's what I want to talk about. So the Ethernet port. The first time I plug in the Thunderbolt.

Drew 02:15

I'm sorry, which one?

Paul 02:16

I have the TS5 Plus.

Drew 02:18

TS5 Plus. Okay, sorry.

Paul 02:19

Go ahead. It's it's it's the it's it's expensive. It's expensive. Thunderbolt shit's expensive. Uh When I plug it in for the first time, it finds the the Ethernet port and it's part of the the Thunderbolt dock and it switches to use that.

Drew 02:36

Okay.

Paul 02:37

Every time I that my Mac sleeps and wakes back up, everything else that is plugged directly into it, my monitor, my keyboard uh speakers, a bunch of USB-C stuff. All of that stuff comes on and works flawlessly. The Ethernet port does not. I have to unplug and replug in and then the Ethernet port. Wakes up.

Drew 02:58

Huh.

Paul 02:59

At some point I may sit down with Claude and be like, what am I doing wrong? Or what is wrong? And see if he can figure it out, but I haven't done that yet, so

Drew 03:08

I gotta say, when you said cow digit, I thought it was gonna be like C O W like

Paul 03:14

Cow, Cow is Cal. C O Cow like California. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I've had cow digit thunderbolt ducks for a while and I recently upgraded to uh the thing is I have generally learned that a thunder Thunderbolt dock when used a lot lasts maybe about two and a half, three years before it just starts going bad.

Drew 03:34

And do you think it's because they run hot?

Paul 03:36

They do they do get real hot. They get real hot

Drew 03:40

All that data blazing through it. I I want to put a pin in that though, because it's going to be relevant to the conversation that happens later about docs and USB and things like that.

Paul 03:50

Okay, okay, okay.

Drew 03:51

All right. Where do we want to start here? I

Paul 03:53

that's to start the this the first top this one's gonna be real quick. Uh I just want a little bit of follow-up from our discussion last uh last episode about AI machines and our advice to Andrew. Uh Federico Vittici, who writes for MacStories. com. He is a big AI boy, and Apple basically gave him the same machine that Andrew was thinking about buying, just with some more storage. And he really put it through the paces of using it for local AI. Uh, it's a really interesting article. It also talks about his setup and what it was using it for. Uh he did compare he does have a 5090 gaming PC and he did compare it to that. And basically his findings were The 5090 is faster, but the 256 gigs of unified memory allowed him to load much larger models into the Mac.

Drew 04:50

Right.

Paul 04:51

So It's and there's charts and there's stuff and it's it's a really, really interesting article if you're a really big nerd. Uh I actually I sent the article literally came out uh the day before I published the podcast. So in between order uh recording it and publishing it. So I did s I did uh send it to Andrew. directly and saying like hey read this uh but it's a really good read if you were interested in local if you want to spend uh you know umpteen thousand dollars on a Mac Uh and a Max Studio M5 Ultra for local AI. You can look at this article and see exactly what kind of performance to expect and what models he used. It's a really it's a really interesting read. So

Drew 05:30

it was it was a really good article. It it touched on basically everything we talked about last week and those metrics Time to first token, generation speed. It is interesting to see what an improvement the M5 Ultra is over the M3 Ultra.

Paul 05:47

Yeah.

Drew 05:47

And then, you know, he basically broke it out over the different model sizes, which is great. So I I think there you go. And he used one of the Quen 38 models, which again

Paul 05:59

That's what you're reading.

Drew 05:59

I've actually been doing a little side project locally. You'd be Paul you'd be so proud of me. You'd be so proud of me. I'm learning so many things about TypeScript You don't even know.

Paul 06:08

TypeScript is for losers. Real men write JavaScript.

Drew 06:11

God damn it, you're the second person to tell me that.

Paul 06:14

No, I

Drew 06:15

'll

Paul 06:15

I get why. Yeah, TypeScript it likes yeah, it's it's I sorry. I'm

Drew 06:21

Aren't they kind of the same thing?

Paul 06:22

Well so they are because

Drew 06:25

it came from TypeScript, right?

Paul 06:26

Well TypeScript does not run natively in your browser. You have to run it through a compilation script step to produce JavaScript in which to run.

Drew 06:34

Okay.

Paul 06:34

So it's it's a it's a language that compiles to JavaScript and it adds type safety and a whole bunch of stuff that it, you know.

Drew 06:43

Stuff that John Kruger cares about.

Paul 06:44

Yeah, stuff that doesn't exist in JavaScript. JavaScript is like types, who gives a shit? Just just you f you're an adult, you figure it out.

Drew 06:52

You're a big boy. Oh man, I I can't wait to talk about what I'm building. I can't talk about it yet. I can't talk about it yet, but it's it's very close to being a real app with authentication and payment methods. and like Postgres, which is nuts. Um it's gonna be great. It's gonna be great. So yeah, great article. I'd be curious if Andrew does follow up with us.

Paul 07:13

Yeah. I haven't gotten anything back from you yet, but I'm interested to hear what he does. Do you want to move the concert talk first and then just talk digigames the rest of the way? Okay.

Drew 07:22

Yes.

Paul 07:23

Okay. Uh If you can't hear it in my voice, my voice is a little uh little little scratchy today. Uh that's because last night uh my daughter and I went to see good old Billy Corrigan and the Smashing Pumpkins at the Schottenstein Arena. And oh my god, Drew, it was an amazing show.

Drew 07:44

I'm glad. Absolutely. I was jealous. I was very jealous.

Paul 07:48

Incredible. Incredible. So I have never been to a show exactly like this. So, uh, there was no opening act. It was just the smashing pumpkins. And uh The the show was a celebration, I guess technically last year was the 30th anniversary of the album Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness. Uh came out in 1995 or six, I believe. One of those two years. Uh double album. Uh extremely good album. Uh So the concert was in two sets. The first set was nothing but songs from Melicali and the Infinite Sadness.

Drew 08:32

All right.

Paul 08:33

And then they they went away for twenty minutes and they came back and did another set which was more of a traditional like, you know, we're gonna play some deep cuts and then some of their their bigger hits. And it was literally like two concerts in one. It was like they started playing maybe around like 8. 15 and were done like at 11. 30. Like it was like And like every time, especially in the first set, like they would do like a bang. They they play like zero. I'm like, okay, that has to be the last song in the set. Then you would see guitar c guitar techs come out and they would trade guitars and then they would do two more songs. It'd be like, that's gotta be it. Nope, guitar techs come back out. Each Each guitarist probably had at least a dozen probably more. At least a dozen different guitars that they went through during the show. It was ridiculous. But it was like. It was it was real real good drew. It was real good. I that's the show was just that the the set was neat, the they They s they sounded really good. Uh, you know, I got to watch Billy Corrigan dance around in his little cause he wears those little dresses now. I don't know if you saw. Got to watch him dance around in a in in the dress. In between sets there was there was an outfit change, which I always appreciate. Uh Yeah, it was it was a really, really good show. My daughter enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. I don't think I've seen her see smile that big in a long time. So uh Yeah. It was it was really, really good. It was good. I'm still kind of buzzing from it.

Drew 10:14

Okay.

Paul 10:15

Oh Excuse me, my voice is

Drew 10:18

What time what time did they go on?

Paul 10:20

Uh about eight fifteen.

Drew 10:22

Okay. And they were done by

Paul 10:23

like eleven

Drew 10:24

thirty. Okay. Oh, so long show.

Paul 10:26

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, it was way longer than I expected to be. We got home like a little uh a little before midnight. Uh yeah, it was way and there's there was a 20-minute break in between the two sets. But they were they played for a long time. Uh I mean it wasn't the most elaborate set or light show I've ever seen, but it was just it was good. You know, they had interesting videos and lights and they sounded really good. Though I will say, so I can't remember I should know I should remember what her name is. So like obviously, you know, it's It's like three-fourths of the original members because Darcy left after she had her rep out with drugs and they have another bassist and they basically they tour with another guitarist and I cannot remember her name. But she is significantly younger than the rest of them.

Drew 11:14

Oh.

Paul 11:15

And uh The energy she had compared to the rest of the the the band was noticeable. Like she was

Drew 11:24

They're getting up there.

Paul 11:25

Yeah. Sh I mean, they're older than us, right? Like She was playing and dancing and moving around like this was like a like a job job job it was auditioned to be in the Smashing Pumpkins. She gave it everything and it was just noticeable because She was moving around and dancing and then James E. Haw just over there like, I'm gonna play guitar, I'm gonna take a step, I'm gonna push this pedal, I'm gonna walk over to the mic, I'm gonna sing sing the chorus, I'm gonna walk back over. Yeah. But

Drew 11:54

excellent.

Paul 11:55

It was still gre it was really good. It was really good. They did a they did a really good show. Yeah.

Drew 11:58

And obviously you said Arabella joy herself.

Paul 12:01

Oh she did. Yeah.

Drew 12:02

Now where were your seats?

Paul 12:03

Uh we were so it was in the shot, so we were in section like 123, which was kind of stage right uh along the side uh row L, so like the 12th row up. We could see the stage just fine. We were maybe 200 feet away from the stage, all things considered. Uh yeah, it was good. We could have gotten floor seats, but Some you know, she's not the tallest person. And so like I don't mind being on the floor because I can stand and see over people, but she can't. And yeah. And it was good because like it the crowd was into it like most people were standing instead of sitting, which, you know, like I I you know, some people get really upset, like you paid for a seat, why don't you sit in it? But like I like standing. I like moving. You know, getting into the groove. I jam. Yeah. Shake it a little bit. Yeah.

Drew 12:57

Yep. Yep. Shake it.

Paul 12:58

So it's

Drew 12:59

good. Now How many people do you think were there?

Paul 13:04

It was full. It was full. I don't know how many people fit in the shop, but it was it was f Well

Drew 13:11

normally normally in indoors like that, they have the stage set up on the floor.

Paul 13:16

Yeah.

Drew 13:17

They don't sell seats behind the stage.

Paul 13:18

No. You know, alongside it and behind, obviously they didn't have anybody in there. Yeah, exactly. But the rest of it was pretty full. And they had, you know, the floor was completely full of of seats as well. So I don't know how many people are in there, but I don't it probably wasn't sold out, but it was uh It was it was packed.

Drew 13:43

The Shantine Center has a maximum capacity of up to twenty thousand for concerts. I'm assuming that's because they put people on the floor.

Paul 13:50

Yeah, exactly.

Drew 13:51

Around nineteen thousand five hundred for basketball football and seventeen thousand for ice hockey. So you think they had twenty thousand people?

Paul 13:58

It was probably close. Yeah.

Drew 14:00

Really? So they were way up there.

Paul 14:01

Yeah, oh yeah. All the way up.

Drew 14:03

Wow. Okay. Okay.

Paul 14:05

Yep. You know, and like that's the tickets, you know, I mean, I think they started at a hundred bucks And went up from there. So that's that's that's quite a bit of cheddar.

Drew 14:16

And yeah, and I'm sure and I'm sure your seats were on the higher end of that. Oh ,

Paul 14:21

Yeah.

Drew 14:21

Yeah. As somebody who has bought my wife Rolling Stones tickets, I get it.

Paul 14:24

Yeah. Yeah. I I you know, I like experiences, I like life, music. I don't mind spending a little extra money to get a good seat and have a good experience.

Drew 14:32

I don't begrudge that at all. Concerts usually aren't my thing. I would have gone to that concert. I like the smashing pumpkins enough, but I think I would have gone.

Paul 14:39

It was really good. It was it was fun. Yeah.

Drew 14:41

Cool. Well, I'm glad you guys had a good time.

Paul 14:43

Yeah, it was great. So

Drew 14:48

talk about it.

Paul 14:48

Drew, how's the steam frame? I'll set you up there.

Drew 14:52

Yeah. Alright. So uh my steam frame came came today.

Paul 14:55

Okay. Today.

Drew 14:57

Today came up came today, so I haven't really had a a chance to put it through its paces, but let me talk you through the experience so far.

Paul 15:05

Okay.

Drew 15:05

So I have now owned headsets from Oculus, I have owned headsets from Meta, I have owned headsets from Pimax, and now I have I have oh uh I also have owned an a uh headset from HTC, and now this is my first piece of like actual valve hardware.

Paul 15:22

Yeah.

Drew 15:23

So remember My primary use for VR is seated experiences. We've talked about my flight sim addiction. There's a really good reason why I invested in this, and I'll get to that in a minute. So First of all, um credit to Valve, the setup experience, the driver installs, everything just works. The when you put this on It's Steam OS. So if you've ever used a s if you've ever used a Steam Deck, it's the same thing. It's that when you hit the button, you get that in front of you.

Paul 15:56

Yeah.

Drew 15:56

And you can navigate your library.

Paul 15:58

It's Steam it's a big picture mode. It's the primary interface. Yeah. Yep. Okay.

Drew 16:03

And you can either play games directly from it. So there is onboard storage and there is a There is a micro SD card in here somewhere, I think, if I wanted to add storage, but I'm not going to. That's not my use case. I will be streaming from the computer. So I I got it today in the afternoon, and when I had a little break between calls, you know, I unboxed it, I got it set up, I charged it, I had to sign into Steam on it, get it all updated and everything. And then it was really time to sort of like try it out and see how it works. So a couple couple quick first impressions. First of all, it's extremely comfortable. Compared to my other headsets, it is not heavy. It

Paul 16:42

looks very it's a there's a lot less to it than I've seen with a lot of other headsets.

Drew 16:48

Well, that's because The bulk of the weight is right here.

Paul 16:52

This is the battery. Okay. So the battery's in the back of the head.

Drew 16:55

Yep. So this this back head strap sort of fits up against the back of your head. This part is actually pretty light. It's not heavy at all. Now, in terms of like vision quality and lens quality and everything, I wear contact lenses. I I did buy the it's over there. Um I did buy the ergonomic fit kit if I do want to mess with it and try different headbands or different spacers, which is this piece right here, which it's really easy to take apart. It's just magnets. So like this is just held on with with magnets. So like it's really easy to like swap that stuff out. Yep. The IPD adjustment is totally analog. So this little dial right here is the IPD adjustment, which is the distance between your pooples, which helps with focus, it helps with comfort, doesn't make you as nauseous But it's also linked to software, so when I'm actually twisting this little dial, it's telling me what the actual IPD instance in the heads-up display is.

Paul 17:49

That's nice.

Drew 17:50

Which is really nice. It does have speakers, it does have it does have a microphone, whatever. Image quality so far is pretty good. It's not as good as the PyMax, I will tell you that from the jump.

Paul 18:00

Yeah.

Drew 18:01

But when you are using

Paul 18:03

different

Drew 18:04

Different tier. Now, having said that, you know, the menus and the things that I've done with it so far hasn't looked bad. I think it looks better than my meta quest 2. I don't have a quest 3, I have a meta quest 2. Definitely looks better than that, and I think the resolution is higher than the quest three. I have to go back and double check that, so don't quote me on that. The controllers. The controllers are pretty much what you expect. They're the standard little layout here. They're nice. They're just powered by batteries. They have um interesting side buttons here. Like on the side for like activating the laser pointer mode for doing things. Comes with a left and a right one perfectly fine.

Paul 18:44

Okay.

Drew 18:44

Okay. So I got it all unboxed. And I set it up. And then I was like, okay, the real test is going to be, can I put this headset on and stream a game? out there. And when I say out there, I mean

Paul 19:00

out out

Drew 19:01

there. Okay. What is that experience going to look like? So It comes with a wireless adapter. And the wireless adapter is regular USB. It's not USB-C.

Paul 19:15

Okay. USB-A. Okay.

Drew 19:17

So I thought about this for a minute and I'm like.

Paul 19:19

Gross.

Drew 19:20

Well, yeah, first of all, gross. But I I thought, well, how is this going to have the fidelity for wireless streaming? So what I did is it it took a little bit of futzing around because again I have the PyMax and you have and like Windows can only really know about one headset. So if you use OpenXR, which is like the open source headset VR library that games can use Windows can only have one registered. So it took me a little while to figure out how to tell it like, no, no, no, use use this. Don't use the PyMax. I had to like find that setting. But once I found that and I had I I had to pair the wireless adapter to the headset, again, easy. It's kind of like pairing Bluetooth. Uh you say, hey, pair it to this wireless adapter. It flashes a code on your screen. You confirm it on your computer, you type it into the headset with the on-screen keyboard. Everything works. So I fired up my airplane game and I sat here in my chair. And I got it to show up in VR. Everything looks good. I'm looking around, you know. A little bit of lag in the cockpit, uh just because I I I still need to dial in the the quality settings and everything. That that'll just take a little time to mess around with. And then I got up and I walked out there. So the first thing it did is it bitched at me. It's like, hey, yeah, you're outside your player.

Paul 20:43

Okay.

Drew 20:44

But All I had to do was dismiss that and then boom game popped back but game popped back up. Now it thinks my plane's over here, so I'm I'm basically walking around my plane out there.

Paul 20:56

Okay.

Drew 20:57

No lag whatsoever.

Paul 20:59

Really?

Drew 21:00

None. None. So I walked over by my steps, which are over to that side, out of line of sight. And and in the headset, you can pull up the dashboard and you can look at the streaming thing and you can see like what the latency is. It was like four milliseconds

Paul 21:16

That's incredible.

Drew 21:17

Pretty fucking good, buddy. Pretty fucking good. So that's pretty neat.

Paul 21:24

Uh-huh.

Drew 21:25

Okay. Now before I talk about stage two.

Paul 21:29

Oh, okay. Okay.

Drew 21:31

Um the last thing I want to talk about is, oh, what was I going to say now? I can't remember. Shoot. I forget what I was gonna say about the I there was one other thing I needed to talk about Oh, uh the see-through method. So it has cameras on the front, so you can see. It's a very simple toggle.

Paul 21:52

And you bought that color one too, you can set up on the top you didn't okay. I didn't.

Drew 21:55

I wanted to see what it was like without it. And and Frank.

Paul 21:58

So it's black and white By default, right?

Drew 22:00

Well, first of all, you can tin it any color you want.

Paul 22:02

Oh, okay. Okay.

Drew 22:03

So out of the box it's kind of like that valve, kind of like the Steam OS, like grayish blue. Okay. It's pretty cool. It's very responsive and not laggy at all. And what I was really interested to see, because I I had to keep going back and forth to get it to work the first time And I was able to do pass-through mode and still read what was on my monitor.

Paul 22:28

Incredible.

Drew 22:29

I just have a LED monitor. I don't have LCD, I don't have plasma, I don't have mini OLED or anything like that. This is just a regular LED monitor. I was actually able to see my mouse cursor and move it around. Could I read fine text with it? No, absolutely not. But I could see what was happening on my monitor and I was able to like go into pass-through mode and like walk out there so I don't walk into a wall and then seamlessly flip back to the game. It was uh beautiful. It worked exactly the way I wanted it to work. Okay. That was the big test. First of all, whether or not I was going to keep it, page, you know, part one was does that work as advertised so far? Yes.

Paul 23:09

Okay.

Drew 23:11

Now we can move. What was that? What was that noise? Oh, somebody messaged me on Facebook. I'm trying to sell something on Facebook Marketplace. I don't want to talk about it.

Paul 23:23

Okay.

Drew 23:25

So now we're ready to move to phase two. And that is I'm ready to build my simrig.

Paul 23:32

Oh, that's right, because the whole point of this is you don't want to have all the you want to be ab put the rig in a place where you can show up on camera, but still be able to play the game while yeah. Okay.

Drew 23:41

So so really if if I want to do this, I have two choices. The first choice is I take one of my desks, either most more than likely my work desk, because it doesn't have as many cables. It's really only for my work computer. I can still be on camera.

Paul 23:56

Yeah.

Drew 23:56

On that, and I can have that out there. That's not a problem. But I don't want to totally clutter up the the outside there, which that's gonna happen with plan B, but I don't have enough room in here to really do it right. Unless I'm willing to give up one of my desk, which I don't think I am. I like having this room to be work and play.

Paul 24:15

Okay.

Drew 24:16

So Now that I have the steam frame and it's wireless, I can just build all that out there where I have a little bit more room and then just have it.

Paul 24:26

Okay.

Drew 24:27

Okay. So I had to find an actual cockpit to house the equipment that I wanted.

Paul 24:34

Okay. Here we go.

Drew 24:35

So let's let's start there.

Paul 24:36

Okay. Okay.

Drew 24:37

So I found a company that came recommended to me and it's called Simfab. I'm going to go ahead and drop a I'm gonna drop a link into the show notes here. And let me know what image you see when it pops up.

Paul 24:51

Okay, let's see. Oh, oh wow. There's a lot of arms. That's that's that's a irresponsible amount of buttons.

Drew 25:03

All right. So here's the deal with SimFab. They are an extremely modular setup.

Paul 25:09

Yeah, no shit. Oh yeah

Drew 25:11

You basically decide what am I building this for and what hardware do I need. So play play with me for a second. So if you go up to the top menu, you go to Flight Sim. You're gonna go to DCS sim modular cockpit.

Paul 25:25

Alright, DCS that's the first one there.

Drew 25:27

The very first one.

Paul 25:28

Yep. Yep. Yeah, that's That's a lot of buttons, Drew.

Drew 25:33

Well, I want to see what actually pops up on the screen there.

Paul 25:36

Okay, so first I just see the cockpit. It's just a it looks like a gamer chair. And it's got like a the the little like foot base for obviously for like rudder pedals and Mm and some mounting points on the side and look looks like there's a crotch mounting point as well.

Drew 25:54

Correct.

Paul 25:54

Okay.

Drew 25:55

All right. So first things first. Yes. I I this chair comes with everything you need to mount your your flight control, so your throttle. your Hotez, you know, whatever. You can mount it in the center, you can mount it off to the side. There is a base plate for you to place your rudder pedals. And the nice thing about this company is they're like, look, we know what the most popular brands of stuff is, so we pre-drill all the holes. for most of the most common sticks and rudder pedals. And if you scroll down, you can actually buy add-on plates and it shows you like if you have this, buy this other add-on plate. It's like an extra twenty bucks for a piece of steel or aluminum or whatever. With all the stuff pre-drilled in it. So I could just buy this, pair that with my headset, and I am off to the races. The only thing this doesn't have that it doesn't come with is it doesn't come with a keyboard and mouse tray.

Paul 26:50

Okay

Drew 26:50

If you

Paul 26:51

clearly you can buy those.

Drew 26:53

Yeah, so if you if you click on the second picture here, you can see that they make this articulating arm. That can h that can hold like a drink, a keyboard, and a mouse.

Paul 27:03

Yeah.

Drew 27:04

I didn't buy that yet. I want to see how it goes first before I make that extra. That's like an extra $300, by the way.

Paul 27:11

Wow.

Drew 27:12

Yeah, so like I I was like, eh, let's hold off on that. Okay, so that's the base thing.

Paul 27:18

Okay.

Drew 27:18

But I didn't stop there. So if you go back to the flight sim menu

Paul 27:29

Okay.

Drew 27:29

On the right hand side, there is flight sim add-on modules.

Paul 27:33

There we go. Yeah. Now again we're looking at that picture of All the different plates. Oh my goodness. Okay. So here we go. Here's where you can start buying them. Yep. Yeah.

Drew 27:42

Right. So this is so depending on other panels you have or what you want to do, it's like, hey, these are the other things you need to get. So if you're scrolling through here, you'll see that there's monitor stands. There are universal adapters. There is a uh Uh Simfab RetroFat seat adapter where you can raise the seat up and turn it into a racing sim session. There's all kinds of spacers and all sorts of things, right? So What I need is I I I I want to buy some panels. I don't just want the sticks. I want some panels. Because otherwise I am going to have to rely on the keyboard and mouse a lot to do things, which is a little bit awkward. So before we talk about what I had to buy, let's talk about why I had to buy them.

Paul 28:30

Okay.

Drew 28:31

Alright. So first things first, this was the main other purchase that I made.

Paul 28:37

Let's see what do we got here? Well. Okay. Legend MIP or is that MIP?

Drew 28:47

Either one.

Paul 28:48

Okay. That's okay. So it looks like it's got Two screens?

Drew 28:54

Three.

Paul 28:54

Okay, oh is that on the left or is that also a screen?

Drew 28:57

Uh huh.

Paul 28:57

Okay. Three screens And then a little panel with some buttons, unmarked buttons on them.

Drew 29:05

No, they're marked. Aren't they marked? If you click the ICP panel, you'll see that they're marked.

Paul 29:10

Okay. Okay. Yep. Yep. They are.

Drew 29:12

And they light up.

Paul 29:13

They light up. Of course. Oh yeah, I d when it when you see it with all the the the things on there and uh the lights. Yeah that's that's uh that's something else. You got some you got some knobs to turn to it looks like

Drew 29:28

this. Okay, so this thing actually serves two purposes because it's actually two products in one. The first the first thing it is, is it's those three screens. And then there's that thing that says Navy Ace and then wind control carrier ace.

Paul 29:44

Yeah.

Drew 29:45

So what this is, is this is the upfront controls for the FA18C Hornet.

Paul 29:51

Okay.

Drew 29:51

So when you're in the simulator, you're actually looking at this.

Paul 29:55

Okay.

Drew 29:56

So you have that keypad, you have all of those things that light up, you have those three screens which show things like radar, navigation, weapon status uh radar warning control, fire control system, stores configuration, like all those panels do things and all those buttons do things. Now without this, you're on your mouse a lot and you're kind of clicking through things. You're taking your hands off the controls to you know fuss with your mouse, get the cursor to show up and do everything. So the nice thing about this is this is putting everything in front of you. So when I'm in the simulator, if I want to click the third button down on the on the right MCP, the right screen, because all those little gray things are buttons. I could just reach out and do it. Or if I need to use the upfront controls, which is like that numeric telephone keypad thing, I could just reach out and do it Okay. And they're active displays. So whether I'm in VR or not, those are actually showing what I would be seeing in the cockpit.

Paul 30:54

Okay.

Drew 30:54

All right. Now what makes this a little more expensive because they actually just sell a uh carrier ace MIP, it doesn't come with that ICP. So that ICP panel is actually for is actually for the F-16. Now I fly both aircraft. So rather than swapping out everything, this sort of just clips on the front, and I can sw I can easily swap between an F16 and F FA18 configuration just by taking that panel off and off.

Paul 31:21

Okay. Okay.

Drew 31:22

Right. So what do you use that for? So you those those upfront controls are really important like when you're doing navigation or you need to mark a point for like a bomb drop or something. Again. It's really awkward to do when you're flying because without this, I have to take both hands off of I have to take my hand off the thing that actually flies the airplane. Because I because that's where my mouse is. In a perfect world, I would keep one hand on flying the airplane and I would use my left hand to interact with this panel to make the adjustments or change settings or do whatever. So what's nice about that is if you flip back to the Flight Sim add-on, that main instrument panel add-on is what I needed to buy.

Paul 32:06

Okay.

Drew 32:07

So that Flight SIM number 12 MFD holder bracket kit, if you click on that, it actually tells you that it's, you know, compatible with Win-Wing MIP bezels and all that other stuff.

Paul 32:19

Yeah.

Drew 32:20

So it's made for that. It actually shows you a picture of that on there.

Paul 32:23

It sure does. Yep.

Drew 32:25

Yep. So that's that's where that goes.

Paul 32:28

Okay.

Drew 32:29

So that that down that now gets mounted on there. But I didn't stop there. So the other thing that I bought is I bought this because again, this is just one less thing I have to rely on a keyboard for is the PTO panel of takeoff. Panel of takeoff, PTO. This is a very Chinese company.

Paul 32:47

Okay. Okay. Ooh, that's got like a is that a big red button?

Drew 32:53

Well, it's a bit it's a big red lever. That's a good thing.

Paul 32:55

Big red lever. Okay, okay.

Drew 32:56

Landing gear, emergency brake controls, flap controls, jettison controls, tail hooks for landing on carriers. Yeah, all of that gets managed from there.

Paul 33:05

Okay.

Drew 33:05

And again, if you if you flip back to the sim fab page and you scroll down and you're like flight sim uh 10 left or right vertical. That's the other piece I want.

Paul 33:16

Okay. Okay.

Drew 33:17

And then that just clips onto the base, and now I have that panel right there too. So at the end of the day, I'm gonna have the upfront panels, I'm gonna have that other panel on the side. And I'm gonna have um my controls all mounted to it. So that'll be that'll be really fun. Yep. Now it's on wheels so I can move it around with kind of easy.

Paul 33:36

Okay.

Drew 33:36

Um it will it will probably not fit through my office door once it is built. It I think it'll be close. I think it'll be close. If if that side thing is on it, I don't think it I don't think it'll work. But I I mean that looks like it's gonna be pretty easy to take off.

Paul 33:49

Yeah. Yeah, it looks like it's just a couple. Yeah.

Drew 33:51

Okay. So now let's talk about logistics So obviously all this stuff's gonna show up at some point. So now the final piece of the puzzle, and this goes back to what we were talking about at the beginning of the show. My computer's gonna stay in here.

Paul 34:05

Okay.

Drew 34:05

So I need a way to have USB communication for all this shit to come back to the computer. So I was doing a little research. So there is a maximum run length of USB.

Paul 34:19

Mm-hmm.

Drew 34:19

Now powered gets you a little bit more, but I'm gonna need I'm gonna need some distance.

Paul 34:24

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Drew 34:27

So I found this.

Paul 34:30

Okay.

Drew 34:32

And I didn't buy it yet.

Paul 34:34

Okay.

Drew 34:34

Because I'm I'm I'm still doing research. But have you seen these?

Paul 34:38

USB standard ports. Hold on. Okay , I was gonna ask before you showed me this. I was like, are you considering doing USB over Ethernet?

Drew 34:50

Yes.

Paul 34:51

And that's exactly what you just dropped in the into the

Drew 34:54

Yes. So what this is, is this is a box that it's almost like you you have uh two terminal boxes so one of these be plugged into the computer the other one would be near my sim rig and I could I could breach the distance with a single cat six cable.

Paul 35:10

Yes. Yep. Yep.

Drew 35:12

Right So apparently it's zero latency up to a hundred meters. Which is pretty crazy.

Paul 35:19

That's pretty crazy. Yeah.

Drew 35:20

And And yes, this is expensive. This particular model, and I have I'm looking at all different models. I'm not set on this one. This was just like the first one that popped up in the Google search. This was $270. But here's the thing. The quality of life of having one cable.

Paul 35:36

Yeah.

Drew 35:37

One cable from my office. I think the real question would be, can I can I now hub off of this? I'm assuming I could.

Paul 35:44

I assume you could. Yeah.

Drew 35:46

Yeah.

Paul 35:46

Yeah.

Drew 35:49

So that that's what we need to figure out is how we're going to get there. But yeah.

Paul 35:55

Yeah.

Drew 36:00

Oh no, it definitely says that. It says cascade more. Connect USB three hubs to cascade more USB per yeah. So yeah, it would work for it would work perfectly

Paul 36:07

Yeah, 100%. Yeah. I I this is this would be exactly the way that I would I would go. Yeah.

Drew 36:12

Yeah. Yeah. Now I mean, look, I here's the here's here's the other elephant in the room, right? I bought this really expensive PyMax headset, and it looks amazing. So I think what will happen is we're gonna see how it goes. The quality isn't as good. I've already noticed that. But I think it'll be fine for what I want to use this for.

Paul 36:31

Okay.

Drew 36:32

And I I haven't really played with like pixel density or any of the other settings in the Steam frame yet to try to improve the quality. So like I said, I'm still dialing it in, and this is probably gonna take a week or so for this shit to show up, but once it does Yeah, buddy.

Paul 36:47

Superb. Superb.

Drew 36:48

This is this is this is gonna be this is gonna be a lot of fun.

Paul 36:50

Yeah.

Drew 36:51

So yeah, that was my big that was my big thing that I bought.

Paul 36:55

Okay.

Drew 36:56

All right. How's the game?

Paul 36:58

Have you played it?

Drew 36:59

No.

Paul 37:00

Oh.

Drew 37:01

I was out of town this week. I was out of town until like yesterday.

Paul 37:03

All right. So obviously Drew is talking about control resonant. I've got about 15 hours in as of today, I think. So obviously I'm not I have not beat the game yet It is okay. The it's I uh it's it is a out-of-the-box with default settings, even after the patches. It is a hard game.

Drew 37:33

Because it's more melee focused.

Paul 37:35

Yeah, it's just that that's it's very it There are some things that the game does not explain really well, and luckily for me, some of that stuff has been surfacing in my TikTok algorithm, so I've started to learn some things. Like uh but The the story is really good. The way that the game kind of escapes the oldest house into Manhattan that is done really well. Uh the it's getting to to uh g see returning characters come back is really fun and uh not to put like to so obviously like the big ones like Emily Pope, Arsh, Emily Pope, the new head of security or head of uh research. We got Arsh who was like head of security, Langston who did the ran the Panopcon, all there But it is, it's the thing that I found the most interesting. So obviously, okay, spoilers for control. All right, I'm not gonna spoil control resonant, but spoilers for control.

Drew 38:46

Okay.

Paul 38:47

Obviously Dylan, you play as Dylan in Control Resident, and Dylan is basically essentially for all purposes the antagonist of control.

Drew 38:55

He was the reason everything happened.

Paul 38:57

Yes. Exactly. Well technically it was Trench opened the the word of the hiss because I think it's a good thing. Yeah. Yeah. But he was basically in a big timeout because he raged and killed a bunch of people and then he became hiss infected and killed even more people So especially at the beginning, people fucking hate Dylan.

Drew 39:17

Oh, okay. That makes sense. Makes sense. And why not?

Paul 39:20

They hate and especially like Arsh just friggin' Hates him so much. Arish, Arish, or not Arish, Arish, the head of security. Yeah. Hates him. Hates him. And like all the you walk past FBC's employees and be like, what is that fucking freak doing here? And things like that Uh it is it's it's good it's good, Drew. You you you definitely you definitely are gonna need to play it. Uh I'm not I'm not too proud to say I did go in and uh go into assist mode and turn down the amount of damage I take and turn up the amount of damage I give just a little bit and I have found Things where I still, especially like on boss fights, it may take me a couple times to get through, but I'm not ready to throw my, you know, controller across the the the room and and break and break a TV or anything. Uh Yeah, the combat feels really good. Uh the the Some of my favorite interactions are up so obviously in the first game there is the board, these extra-dimensional entities that essentially are directing the directory. Did you ever play the Foundation DLC? I

Drew 40:39

think I think so.

Paul 40:40

Yeah, with with like the nail and stuff. And you obviously between the board and Jesse is definitely very tenuous. Uh even more so in this point. And uh okay, so slight, slight spoilers for control resin. If you don't want to hear it, just turn it off. I'm not gonna spoil a little bit. But so you know the the the weapon that you've seen the demos, the aberrant, the weapon that Dylan uses.

Drew 41:06

Uh-huh.

Paul 41:07

Some before the game starts Jesse puts the the board is in that weapon. They are no longer in the astral playing. They are trapped in this weapon. And that is why. Jesse gives the weapon to Dylan.

Drew 41:26

Oh, okay.

Paul 41:28

So the board is in there and uh They they have opinions.

Drew 41:36

Oh uh yes they do.

Paul 41:38

Uh-huh. And like there's one there's one part, one moment where like uh Dylan is talking to Emily Pope and she brings up the board and Dylan is about to say something about like, hey, like, I'm pretty sure the board's in here, and like they cut him off and basically just like, do not tell her anything about what is going on. And he's like, okay. Uh

Drew 42:04

wow.

Paul 42:05

Uh If you do play it, uh I will give you a couple of couple points of advice.

Drew 42:13

All right.

Paul 42:14

Uh So there's a lot of different there's different forms for the aberrant, both like your primary or secondary, and finishers. Uh you will obviously pick what like ones to unlock and ones that you like. I would continue you need to upgrade even the forms you don't use, you need to upgrade. Because the more upgrades you have, the more powerful you are. In general, and the higher your damage will be. So even if you upgrade forms you're not using, you still need to because that makes your it the damage on the forms you are more. It basically just levels up the weapon more. So Spend those resources, spend those points, upgrade things you're not using.

Drew 42:56

Okay.

Paul 42:57

You will uh you will once you kind of get past like the first boss You will get these missions basically to track down these faults.

Drew 43:08

All right.

Paul 43:09

Those are the most important missions you can do. They're technically side missions, and technically you can ignore them. Because those are the missions that unlock different movement abilities. And you will need those to succeed in the game.

Drew 43:25

Okay.

Paul 43:26

So that's my recommendation is kind of just ignore uh I mean you can go you can go out uh yeah yeah. So basically like the the missions come down in like these big chunks. There's the main story missions. There's these resonance, which are kind of like if you watch the trailers, like the bosses There's those. Killing residents also unlocks like new like secondary powers. There's side missions, and then there's the faults. I would put the resident and fault missions as your most important, putting the f the the fault missions first because you will unlock abilities that you need to You just you just need these. There's two key movement abilities you need to get in order to actually play the game correctly. And like the story it's not part of the story. You would expect something that critical to be part of the story. They are not There's side missions that you have to purposely do and go down to to get. Yeah. So I would yeah. I prioritize the fault missions. Uh and they're also they're they're good narratively too. They're fun. They're fun. They're a little they're they're weird. Uh Yeah, the the enemies are a little they the the the the reviews are correct, the enemies can be a little tanky sometimes, but You know, I mean again, I'm not I'm not proud I mean too proud to say. I did go in the accessibility stuff and did tweak things a little bit to make the game more fun for me. I don't have a mort I didn't turn on like one hit kills or immortality or anything like that. I'm still playing the game. I just liked it like I don't I don't I want to be a little less spongy and I want to deal a little bit more damage. And that's what those are the two things I tweaked Uh it's fine. It looks pretty. It's fast. The combat is it is is it the best combat in the world? No. Do I avoid combat encounters because combat is boring? Absolutely not. It's fun. Like, especially when you start getting some abilities and you're like, oh shit, there's the mold. I'm gonna fuck the I'm gonna fuck these mold things up. Let's go. Uh so the one big difference between combat-wise, even the fact that it's melee versus like uh ranged There are basically two classes of enemies, and you see them on like you have a little mini-map. There are your typical minions, and then there are, I can't remember what they call, but they're basically the bigger, bigger enemies. The little ones will keep spawning as long as the big ones are there. So you kind of have to prioritize killing the bigger ones first to end a combat encounter. The little ones will help you build up like your power meters and you know and stuff like that. So you and and plus like there could be dozens of them. But there are these bigger ones and sometimes the bigger ones are flying or they have armor or uh they're a possessed bus. That keeps spitting out hiss that you have to take off parts of the bus so you can destroy it. Yes, really you fight hiss buses. It's it's a thing. Uh

Drew 46:28

buses.

Paul 46:29

Yeah.

Drew 46:30

Okay.

Paul 46:33

It's good. I think I'm probably maybe a little bit more than halfway through the story. I kind of have a feeling where I know I I'm starting to be able to piece things enough together where I think I understand what is happening. I've read enough like things are starting to make sense. Uh I've also, yeah. I can't wait till you play it, Drew. We can get a little spoilerly and start talking about things. Uh

Drew 47:03

all right. Uh yeah it's on my list. Um I just uh this is gonna be a very busy month for me travel wise, unfortunately.

Paul 47:11

Yeah. It's okay.

Drew 47:12

I think I I think I might actually be home only one week this week. But it's it's it's currently in my Steam shopping cart. I just haven't I haven't bought it yet. And I know tomorrow night we have game. So really I'm looking at potentially Saturday or Sunday. And Sunday I have I have something to do and then Saturday, this guy keeps messaging me on Facebook Marketplace as I'm playing this. Um so I'll have to like figure that out. But it's it's on my list. Plus, I wanna do some more things with the same scene frame. They gave me a free copy of Half-Life Alex.

Paul 47:50

Which I've never played. I've never played that either. Yeah.

Drew 47:52

Supposed to be really good. And then there's a couple other games that I want to I want to try out and see how it plays on there, especially now that it's completely wireless. I think that'll be really cool to try. And especially because I can like stream while wireless, I'll get a really good sense for how long the battery lasts and things like that.

Paul 48:06

Yeah.

Drew 48:07

Uh only other thing I wanted to mention before we sign off for tonight. Uh, where is the podcast doc? So I don't know if you saw the news, but this is also video game related. Have you seen the news around Destiny 2?

Paul 48:20

I have not.

Drew 48:21

So basically, Bungie came out and said, No, we really like Destiny. We're not gonna kill it.

Paul 48:28

Really?

Drew 48:29

And they're bringing back All the vaulted content.

Paul 48:33

Oh.

Drew 48:36

So I dropped a I dropped a blog post in there. They basically came in and said, you know, look, we know Destiny 2 is important. It's a huge part of our franchise. We don't want it to die off like this. So we're gonna we're gonna continue to update it. It may not be as much of a live service game anymore. So it may not get regular updates. It may get small little things here and there. But Basically, it talks about, you know, here's why we did the things that we did. Here's where we see Marathon going, which marathon is not for me.

Paul 49:09

Yeah. I've heard I've heard that that's kind of the It's okay.

Drew 49:14

It's an extraction shooter. It's an extraction shooter. And you know, when I stream, it's so funny. When I stream playing Escape from Tarkov

Paul 49:22

,

Drew 49:23

There's two major theme. There's two major recurring themes on my stream when I play Tarkov. The first one is people come in and comment on my baldness. And say that I look like insert famous bald person here, which I don't.

Paul 49:35

Okay.

Drew 49:36

And the other one is they call me a giant pussy for playing PvE

Paul 49:41

Yeah.

Drew 49:41

And and my answer to them is, hey buddy, I've got a mortgage and I'm forty fucking six years old. I'm not a sweat I'm not gonna be a no-lifer and try to compete in PvP. I'm just not. I'm not good enough. I know that I'm not good enough. I like the game. I like the world. I like the gunplay. I like the core gameplay loop It's awesome. I'm gonna play PvE. I don't really give a shit. And if you're the kind of person that wants to come on the internet and join my stream and call me a pussy for playing PvE, that says more about you than it does me.

Paul 50:09

That's the stuff I always enjoyed in Destiny anyway, was all the PvE stuff. Right Yes, I I that's what I enjoyed. I like working with other people and fighting the computer. It's good. Yeah. It's good. Yeah.

Drew 50:20

And and and by the way, it's not a complete pushover. It's not. The hardest content in Tarkov, even if you're playing in PvP mode, is PvE shit. If you're playing Icebreaker, if you're playing Terminal, if you're fighting the Black Division. Those are bots. So you're playing PvE too, buddy, even though you're playing in PvP mode. So anyway , it's really interesting, but long story short They're bring they're basically bringing back all the vaulted content. They are gonna get they are mapping out a future for this, which really excites me because I remember I didn't play a lot of Destiny 1. I only did Vault of Glass was the was the most complex thing I ever did in Destiny 1 But they're bringing back the very first raid from Destiny 2, the Leviathan, which by the way is a fucking kick-ass raid.

Paul 51:14

Yeah

Drew 51:15

I'm so excited for this. And there's actually content in here because I played Destiny 2 at launch. Then I stopped. I got back into it after Shadow Keep. So there's like a span of game in there that I never got to play.

Paul 51:27

Yeah.

Drew 51:28

So I'm really, really excited for them to to bring this back, and I I probably will be back on my Destiny 2 bullshit. So

Paul 51:37

this this may be enough to pull me back in for a little bit.

Drew 51:41

Okay.

Paul 51:42

Maybe maybe maybe Yeah, we should record an episode, but we stream tests.

Drew 51:51

We have we have French of the shows that play that we can also play with them. So we're we're uh if it's me, you and them, that's four of the six that we need to actually do shit.

Paul 51:59

Yeah.

Drew 52:00

But Anyway, like they've ever since I've stopped playing, they have made major changes to like stats and armor and all this stuff that I don't understand at all. So it would be a little bit of a learning curve for me to jump back in right now.

Paul 52:13

Same, same

Drew 52:15

But getting to replay all that content would be fucking amazing.

Paul 52:18

Yeah.

Drew 52:19

Alright, let's let's pencil that in.

Paul 52:21

Yeah, let's I think that'd be good. That'd be good.

Drew 52:27

Alright.

Paul 52:27

Oh.

Drew 52:28

Well, that seems like a show, buddy.

Paul 52:30

It is, absolutely. Doingtheirbest. com. You can find all the show notes, uh links, all that wonderful stuff. And hey, thanks for listening.