Playing DCS with Genius MetalStrike 3D

Until recently, I used to  play DCS with the keyboard and it really sucked. Manoeuvring the plane was extremely difficult with the keyboard. But later I purchased a joystick and it really enhanced the entire gaming experience. Well the joystick that I purchased was the Genius MetalStrike 3D. Although in the system requirements section, it doesn't specifically mentioned that it is compatible with Windows 8.1 64 Bit, it sure is. What is most fascinating about this joy stick is that it has 4 axis of control. Which means that you can control, X, Y, Z and throttle with it. However I am still trying to get the throttle function work with DCS. The other keys on the joystick can be assigned specific functions so that you can do major control operations with the joystick itself rather than having to turn to the keyboard (Eg:- Throttle Both Down, Throttle Both Up, Wheel Brake On/O ff, Landing Gear Up/Down, Flaps Up/Down etc). Overall, In my opinion the Genius MetalStrike 3D works well with DCS even on Windows 8.1 64 bit.

Measuring CPU, GPU temperatures in Windows.

Have you ever wanted to measure the temperatures of your CPU and GPU ? Well if you are a gamer, then you might have wanted to do so especially after realizing how hot your computer becomes while playing games. The program that i am using is called realTemp and it can be downloaded from TechPowerUP.  I have set it up, to show the temperature reading on the notification area.

The temperature text in orange is the temperature of my GPU. The other 4 temperature readings are of the individual cores of my Core i7 processor. I can read all the temperature reading at once  from the notification area. If your notification area is already cluttered up with icons I do not recommend displaying them on it. You could launch it form the task-bar and view all the reading from one window.

The GPU temperature is showed on a button at the bottom left. This application even shows how far away  the maximum junction temperature for each CPU core is.

Opening multiple notepads in windows 8

In windows 8, searching for notepad and then clicking on the notepad result wont open a 2nd notepad window. Instead it would bring front the already opened notepad application. So if you really want to open two instances of notepad what do you do? Well the solution is simple. If you already have a instance running, there would be a task-bar item for it on the task-bar. Right click on the notepad task-bar item and select notepad from it and a another instance of notepad would begin running.

This technique works for other applications too.

You could do this from the command prompt too. Open cmd and enter notepad, a new instance of notepad would start running.