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scoobie

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Posts posted by scoobie

  1. To keep the party going...
    +1 for toggle commands

    "Stateful" commands are imporant, too, and I very much appreciate Aerges made them (which isn't so common in DCS), but toggles are equally important. Without an "interface" for toggling in Lua, we can't even write our own commands, hands tied.
    For example:
    - gun trigger "flap" open/close,
    - gun safety in/out,
    - master arm safety cap,
    - selective jettison stores safety cap,
    - emergency jettison stores safety cap,
    - jettison missiles safety cap,
    - probably a dozen others, these above are just off the top of my head.

     

     

  2. Hi, DimSim. Welcome to the Club Of People Thrilled With Control Assignment Commands Written By AI 😉. In short The PTWCACWBA Club. We need to think of a shorter name for the club.
    To answer your question: No, you can't throw a separate file in Saved Games... I mean technically you can, but while it won't break anything, it won't do anything, either.
    And no - there's no easy way around what you want to achieve. I wish there was!

    If you don't want to modify game files - which in itself is a viable option but requires a means to PRESERVE your changes across DCS updates - you may also use the "Quaggle's Input Command Injector" (link below). What the thing does is more or less what you're thinking about - it "injects" additional control commands on top of "official" commands in game files, using commands stored in separate files put in the Saved Games folder, exactly as you wish. Personally I don't use the mod, but frankly... I SHOULD! One day I'll get down to it.
    Then you might want to peek at Munkwolf's "DCS Community Bindings" (again, link below). It's a sort of control commands library that can be used with the aforementioned "Injector" (or without it). It contains thousands of handcrafted commands not available in DCS out of the box.

    https://github.com/Quaggles/dcs-input-command-injector

    https://github.com/Munkwolf/dcs-community-keybinds

    PS. I especially like it when a CRS or similar knob, in some aircraft, when driven by a rotary encoder or such, has a "step" not being a multitple of 1°. For example, 0.916541°. That's fun! 😄

     

    • Like 1
    • Thanks 2
  3. Haven't had the opportunity, got Gazelle only a week or so ago, so now it's time...

    I'd like to thank you all, people, for the missions in this thread! I'm having severe "Gazelle frenzy", she's so insane fun and thanks to your missions I can enjoy this Little Bee even more 🙂

    Yes, Cedar Spear was sooo coool, very well put together mission, thanks Don Rudi! 🙂 So far I've only taken the "easy" approach, but the "hard" one will come later.

    • Like 2
  4. Thanks! 🙂
    A small update. The texture guy will certainly know how it all works, but since I'm not a texture guy, it's all magic to me.
    UV/backlight are not enough for the "second texture" (that pale yellow one) to pop up. You need two things:
    1. UV light and/or instrument backlight turned on.
    2. Shine some external light on the instrument, maybe it has to be white light, but I'm not sure. It can be daylight or at night - the flashlight.
    Yesterday I was doing a bit of night flying and to my surprise the tachometer looked good with UV. Then I "grabbed" the flashlight and was moving it around the cockpit so I could see switches etc. and no sooner had I illuminated the tacho than the "second texture" showed up.
    Again, it's probably obvious for gfx artists, but I thought I should add this clarification here, just in case.

     

  5. I think it's the same in 2024.
    As for "repeated pressings"... if you can spare a 3-way latching toggle switch, for example on the throttle's base or wherever, then you can bind the crank to the switch and it will turn the crank on its own, no repeated pressings neccessary.

    I have these funny gear controls bound as in the picture lower down (2x 2-way toggles, 2x 3-way toggles), but you can have it arranged simpler: a button for "gear up/down ready" and the aforementioned 3-way latching switch, so you don't have to keep pressing hold the "crank button" until your finger goes pale. More info to be found in this post:

    My silly setup (fully elaborate, I'm not using this "gear up/down ready" feature):

    warthogdual-6-475349147.jpg

    • Like 1
    • Thanks 1
  6. I think you're not making yourself clear. The title says "when I pull back to 9 kts", the post says "when I'm flying 140 kts". Is it 9 or 140 then?
    The quotes you pasted below your post are - most of them - just wrong. Retreating blade stall is not when you approach 0 KIAS, but when going very fast.
    So at 9 KIAS - no. At 140 KIAS... I don't know (sorry), still haven't got down to Apache properly, but it doesn't sound too fast for the Apache. Check VNE on one of those MPD pages if it happens again (provided that the page on MPD is implemented). If you're above VNE - yes, could be retreating blade stall.
    But maybe what you're talking about is this... how do they call it... this "hard pull" manouver to go from fast cruise to a hover as quickly as you can? If so, it may be what they call "settling with power" and you just THINK it is stall. Or maybe you slow down below ETL incidentally having too high vertical velocity (downwards) and just enter VRS?
    Hard to say what exactly you're doing.

    • Like 2
  7. Yes, I get what you're saying, thank you for the explanations!

    BTW, just in case you didn't know (but you probably do): If you're looking for more icons, you may search for "Stream Deck" in the "User Files" on the main DCS website.
    The other source was... wait, where was it... there was a topic for Stream Deck profiles on the forums here. It must have been sunk in the sea.
    Anyway, if you get your hands on any SD profile, it is just a zip file and inside it there are all the icons, scattered accross multiple subfolders. You can just extract the file and harvest the icons. One thing though - their resolution may vary (SD swallows virtually any resolution and scales as neccessary), so they may or may not be good for a Loupedeck, I don't know.

  8. Hi, firefox!
    Thanks for the icons, you can never have too many 🙂
    I was thinking about Loupedecks a year or so ago. They seem to be really nice devices. The one you apparently got ("Live", right?) has 6 rotary encoders and 12 programmable "LCD buttons" together with additional "non-LCD buttons". In contrast, the best Elgato can offer if you insist on rotaries is "Stream Deck +" with 4 rotaries and 8 buttons only... not ideal.

    Is there any "DCS plugin" for Loupedeck available? You know, something like ctytler's plugin for Stream Decks? Such plugin allows the device to suck data from DCS and display it, so those "LCD buttons" on the device can reflect real position of switches in the cockpit or display any sort of other data.

  9. Hi, folks!
    This is going to be a little bit tiresome, so see if you meet the "conditions" listed below. If you do, you MAY be interested. If not, don't bother reading, you don't need the thing described below.

    1. You have a Stream Deck ("SD" hereinafter) or especially multiple SD's, and you also use Joystick Gremlin ("JG" hereinafter).
    2. You have many many SD profiles and many many JG profiles for all you precious DCS modules.
    3. Every time you switch profile on a SD to the aircraft currently selected in DCS, you Alt-Tab, bring up JG, File->Open, select profile for this aricraft, "Enable Profile".
    4. You're sick and tired of doing the JG part every time you pick a different aircraft.
    5. You are computer-literate at the level "3 of 10" or higher.

    OK, this was exactly my case, so I thought I would finally beat JG into submission. No programming required, except for a bit of Windows scripting foolishness.

    !!! PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK !!!

    Windows scripting may rip off your fringe or blow up your house, no one knows.

    Your "main DCS profile" on SD may look something like this:

    sd_main_screen.PNG

    Each of those colourful buttons MAY be a "subfolder" if you only have 1 SD, but it may be a "Multi Action" container, or it will surely be a Multi Action if you have many SD's. It's this thing:


    multi_action.PNG


    The Multi Action is virtually inevitable for multiple SD's because SD software does not allow a single profile be "shared" across multiple SD's. Each SD has to have a separate profile only for itself, so... if you want your, say, 3 SD's to switch to "Tomcat profile", you need to switch on "Tomcat profile for SD no. 1" on SD no. 1, "Tomcat profile for SD no.2" on SD no. 2 etc. Hence you use "Multi Action" to do all that with a single button press. For example, one of my Multi Actions hidden behind those pretty icons (in the first screenshot above) looks like this:


    tomcats_multi_action.PNG


    I have 3 SD's, so I need to switch profile in each - hence the 3 "Navigation: Switch Profile" commands. I'm not showing their details here.

    If you have your profile arranged this or similar way, you can relatively easily make your JG (Joystick Gremlin) switch to its own profile for a particular aircraft via an additional command in this very Multi Action container.

    For this you need 2 things:
    1. Add "System" "Open" control from the SD menu to the list of actions in the Multi Action container. We will make it launch a batch file.
    2. The batch file that will do the magic. More on it later.

    Ad 1. "System: Open" item.

    It's this:
    system_open.png


    Once you add it to the list of actions, you will have to specify the command for it. In my case it looks like this (example for the Tomcat):

    tomcats_system_open.png

    The command syntax is crucial. Mine reads this:

    cmd.exe /c "E:\musthave\gremlin_profiles\!RUN_PROFILE.bat" f-14

    The "cmd.exe /c " part is mandatory. It runs that black "command prompt" or "DOS" window and inside it runs the specified batch file. Next you specify the path for the batch file, enclosed in double quote marks. Then the name of your JG profile for this aircraft, just deprive it of ".xml" part. My profile's file name for the Tomcat is "f-14.xml", so I wrote only the "f-14" part in the command above.

    Ad 2. The batch file.
    First of all, I'm not a Windows scripting magician, so my file is crude, messy, and probably very silly, I barely understand what the heck I'm doing. If you're a better Windows script man, you'll probably want to refine it to your liking. If you're not, you will still need to change the path for JG itself and the directory where you keep your JG profiles. It is assumed you keep them all in one common folder.
    Here's the contents of the batch file for reference (I also attached the file to this post).
     

    @echo off
    rem SET DIRECTORY WHERE YOU KEEP ALL YOUR GREMLIN PROFILES:
    set profile_dir=E:\musthave\gremlin_profiles
    
    rem Below "Ctrl-G" character at the end of a few strings for "echo" is the "BEL" ASCII char.
    rem Use a proper text editor to see it (Notepad is not one).
    rem Such char nowadays makes Windows play one of the "system sound"/jingle (tested on Win10 x64 in 2024).
    rem I use it as an aural warning to the user.
    
    if "%1"=="" (
    echo Specify Gremlin's profile name without ".xml" as an argument to this batch script.
    echo Example: to run profile "F-16.xml" type: !RUN_PROFILE.bat F-16
    pause
    exit /b
    )
    
    if not exist %profile_dir%\%1.xml (
    echo Profile "%profile_dir%\%1.xml" not found.
    pause
    exit /b
    )
    
    tasklist /FI "IMAGENAME eq joystick_gremlin.exe" 2>NUL | find /I /N "joystick_gremlin.exe">NUL
    if "%ERRORLEVEL%"=="0" (
    echo Killing current instance of Joystick Gremlin...
    taskkill /F /IM joystick_gremlin.exe >nul 2>&1
    if "%ERRORLEVEL%" neq "0" (
    echo taskkill on joystick_gremlin.exe has failed, exitting!
    pause
    exit /b
    )
    )
    
    echo Starting Gremlin with %1.xml profile...
    start "" /D D:\Gremlin "joystick_gremlin.exe" --enable --profile %profile_dir%\%1.xml

    What the batch file does is this:
    A. It checks if an argument was given. If not - error/sound/stop.
    B. Checks if the file given as an argument (automatically appended with ".xml") exists. If not - error/sound/stop.
    C. Checks if JG is currently running. If it is, the script will try to kill the process. If this fails - error/sound/stop.
    D. Starts JG with the profile given to the script as the argument and automatically enables the profile.

    Remember you need to set your folders in the script:
    - "profile_dir" - a common directory for all JG profiles (mine is "E:\musthave\gremlin_profiles"),
    - JG directory in the last line of the script (mine is "D:\Gremlin").

    If you have spaces in your paths, some more tinkering may be required in the file. Maybe double quotes here and there, I don't know. I find Windows scripting messy, never felt like learning it properly.

    The block of "rem" commands near the top of the script describes how I achieved the "windows system sound" playing when the script failed. I hope the explanation there is sufficient. It's just a little gimmick. If the batch file succeeds, you will hear nothing and you may only see a very brief "task switch" from DCS to Desktop and back to DCS within a fraction of a second. If something goes wrong, however, you will hear that windows "jingle" to warn you, Windows will switch from DCS to the command prompt window with the batch file open, showing what went wrong.

    If it works for one of your aircraft, you may now copy-paste that "System: Open" command from one Multi Action to all the others, every time changing the last part - the argument with JG profile file name. Takes a few minutes for 40 modules 🙂

    Remember the batch file is run only when you trigger your Multi Action with that "System: Open", so, for example, when you only launch DCS and do NOT change the aicraft, your SD opens with the last aircraft (profile) you were using previously, nothing is going to launch JG for you. This means you must run it manually beforehand. Instead you may press one of your "Multi Actions" only to have JG launched, then "Multi Action" back to the aircraft you will actually fly.

     

    !RUN_PROFILE.bat

  10. Thanks, Hiob! 🙂
    Tag... who should I tag? I don't know these guys, except for the Finnish (?) hero who came to fix the Gazelle, Simo Häyhä of DCS - Kink... Kinkk... the guy with the name that must be a Finnish counterpart of Polish Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz, only harder to spell 🙂

    I'll try Kink then... @Kinkkujuustovoileipä Would you mind telling the texture guy to check the tacho texture issue? Looks rather bad at night. Screenshots are above.

    • Like 1
  11. Hi, folks. Does anybody else have such funny looking engine/rotor tacho?

    It looks normal when UV lights are OFF and "Panels lighting on/off" is in OFF position (the one below standby attitude indicator).

    But if any of these lights are on, another scale pops up on the tacho's dial - that yellow one, displaced (rotated) in relation to the white scale.

    The screenshots are from 1080p resolution (if it matters).

     

    no_lights.PNG

    with_any_lights.PNG

    • Like 1
  12. That's no big deal, but the code is waiting for the user to release the button and only then checks how much time has passed since the button was pressed. If it's >= 2 seconds, a long press action is triggered (e.g. "abandon waypoint data entry"). If less - short press action (e.g. "delete the rightmost digit in the display").
    That's not how such things are programmed in real life hardware, never. The code must continually (or at time intervals not less greater than, say 0.1-0.2 s) check the elapsed time and if it's >= 2 s and the button is still depressed, it has to trigger long press action ON ITS OWN, without waiting for the user to release the button. Of course short press is detected on button release, that works OK.

    You can test it easily. Select "BUT" ("WPT") on that rotary selector, press any waypoint number you want on the keypad, and press ENT. The top line of the display will start blinking.
    Now, press AND HOLD "EFF" ("DEL") button and keep it depressed as long as you like - nothing will happen, you may hold it for half an hour. Now release the button and only now data entry will get cancelled - the top display line will stop blinking.

    • Like 1
  13. There's a bit of confusion and I got caught, too. Kink wrote somewhere on the forums about the "precedence" of bindings they have introduced. It's just I can't find his post. It works something like this: if you're a co-pilot and there are bindings for particular axes, the Gazelle will obviously use those. If, however, there are NO bindings for some axes (we're talking axes available to both the pilot and the co-pilot), the Gazelle will take pilot's bindings instead.

    Initially (I'm new to the Gazelle) I made identical bindings, tune axes and such, twice - both for pilot and co-pilot. I thought that was how I was supposed to do it. It seems unneccessary. Yesterday I tried and DELETED the bindings for the co-pilot and I can still drive the helo from the co-pilot's seat - the bindings from the pilot kick in in such case. Pretty cool! Again, we're talking only the axes available both for the pilot and co-pilot - the cyclic, pedals, collective and such.

    So... if you happen to ride the Gazelle only in SP or "single crew" at least, I think it may be the smartest move to just delete such bindings for the co-pilot.

     

    • Like 3
  14. I'm just learning the Gazelle and since the manual doesn't say it explicitly (which may mislead newcomers), here's how it seems to work:

    1. Magnetic brake off ("DEBR. EFF." switch down) = no way of trimming at all and "TRIM" switch position doesn't matter.
    2. Only the magnetic brake on = only force trim available, click the button on the cyclic and the latter gets held in its current position (of course with a limited force, so you can still move the stick around).
    3. Both magnetic brake on and "TRIM" switch up = force trim works and trim hat works, use either as you deem neccessary.

     

  15. Just to confirm - I, too, have managed to achieve that strange drift after flicking the recenter switch pressing the recenter button. Interestingly it only happened to me once, most of the time the switch just works. OTOH it's worth noting I'm new to the beautiful Gazelle, so haven't had a lot of time and a lot of opportunities to experience that phenomenon.

    I didn't try buttons for training the camera, I'm using axes, so the only solution (one that I could quickly find) to stop the drift was to quit the mission. Not a perfect remedy 😉

  16. Not the main issue, but...

    On 9/7/2021 at 10:42 PM, Topgun505 said:

    night vision gain up and gain down did absolutely nothing (yes, I did double check to make sure my keybindings didn't get reset)

    Do you mean you pressed and held a joystick button bound to NVG gain up (or down) and saw no change in gain? If so, these bindings are probably "miscoded", they don't "auto-repeat", you need to keep TAPPING the joystick button (for example 45 times 😄) instead of holding it and you'll see that each tap increases/decreases NVG gain a tiny bit.

    I'll check at home if I can write different commands for NVG gain (maybe with "value_pressed" in them?) and maybe they will start auto-repeating, i.e. work with press and hold.

     

    EDIT: Yep, that was that.
    So the original command looks like this:

    {down = iCommandPlane_Helmet_Brightess_Up  , name = _('Night Vision Goggles Gain Up')  , category = _('Night Vision Goggles')},

    Replace the word "down" (the very first word in the line) with "pressed". Same goes to Gain Up command which is next to it in the file.

    Notes:
    1. Gain control will be quite fast, it takes some 1.5 seconds to go from minimum gain to maximum. You can't do anything about it - that's the dubious charm of "iCommandPlane" commands (they're hard-coded).
    2. Make sure you know what you're doing before tinkering with those Lua files. After all - it's still on Polychop to officially introduce this change.
    3. I'd recommend creating a new copy of the 2 commands (with "pressed"), instead of simply modifying the existing ones, and renaming the copies to something like "Night Vision Goggles Gain Up/Down Gradual" or something of this sort - give them names different from the original ones. Otherwise you'll get orange entries in the Controls window - it means there are multiple commands with the same name, but non-identical definition.
    4. I put my modified commands in SA342_CORE directory (/joystick/default.lua). I don't know about precedence (there are now 4 different dirs with control binding files), but SA342_CORE seems to work fine.
    5. Of course your changes will be overwritten (erased) with any update to DCS, so as usual - you need to come up with a patent to deal with it (mod managers, Quaggles's "Input Command Injector", version control system or whatever).
    6. Polychop said some time ago that they were going to introduce some more changes to input files, so maybe it's better to just wait for them? I don't know.

     

     

    • Like 1
  17. The other day I stumbled upon this tutorial series for the M-2000C. Published a few months ago on YT.

    The guy's called Reiver and honestly... while I may not be the most avid DCS:M-2000C afficionado, his tutorials just blew me out of the water. So comprehensive, well thought out, laid out, presented, I'm lost for words, really.

    If you want to learn about the Mirage, it's probably the best series I've seen out there (and I've seen some good ones already).

    DISCLAIMERS:
    1. If you're looking for "No BS 2-minute tutorials", please look elsewhere and, by the way, "no BS" tutorials are BS themselves. Just saying 😉
    2. No, I don't know the guy and he didn't pay me for advertising his work.

     

    • Thanks 1
  18. +1.73! Pretty please make the launcher optional to use.

    There are scientifistic proofs that mankind needs launchers as much as fish need bicycles, but more importantly (for me) I start DCS from a batch file. Not because I have nothing more interesting to do in my life, but because Smallflabby company "unlearnt" how to deal with USB devices and my old trusty Leo Bondar USB board needs to be reinitialized once Windoze has started (by means of "pnputil" command line tool). Then the batch file launches TrackIR software, Joystick Gremlin and StreamDeck software. One double click to deal with it all. It rocks!

     

    • Like 1
  19. Sorry, I didn't understand your goal. AFAIK the answer is "no, you can't", these special viewpoint-shifting commands are probably hardcoded in the guts of the module, but - depending on your hardware - you can work around it quite reasonably. In my case it works like this:

    1. I always use the joystick hat most convenient to my thumb for zoom in/out slow. I would do that before DCS was the thing, on my CH Combatstick, and today I still do it the same way in DCS on Thrustmaster Warthog stick (for me it's the TMS hat).

    2. In modules where I need to shift the view up/down (for dogfighting and/or AAR), I use the pinky paddle as a "modifier" and the same directions on the hat (with modifier depressed) as "cockpit camera move up/down". Not all modules in DCS are well suited to do it this way, but the Sabre is. So - "modifier + TMS hat up" = "cockpit camera move up"; "modifier + TMS hat down" = "cockpit camera move down".

    3. Some folks don't need it, but I feel I can't live without recentering (I think it's just a mental issue on my part 😉 ), so I also use the hat right direction for zoom center and modifier + hat right for cockpit camera center.

    Perhaps something like that would also work for you? Anyway, to the best of my limited knowledge, "cockpit camera move up/down" seems to be the only thing you can use.

    • Thanks 1
  20. Hi, I don't have DCS here, so I can't be 100% sure, but check the Controls menu for the Sabre - perhaps there are bindings for manaual seat up/down? If not, you can always use... I think it's called Cockpit Camera Up, Down, Center. These are generic controls available for all aircraft, so you can use it in the Sabre as well.

    Yes, that "auto raise seat on gear down" function (can't remember how it's called exactly) can be enabled/disabled in the "Special" menu for the Sabre.

    • Like 2
  21. Sounds a bit like science fiction, but if you're just asking a simple question "Would you like a Hi-Fi tank?", no ifs no buts, then the answer is SURE I WOULD! Planes, tanks, warships (surface, subs) and all that stuff - yes, of course.

    On the other hand, I feel obliged to confess I've always been into science fiction in general, and I suspect this might have influenced my answer to an extent 🙂 I mean... ED seem to have their plates full with aircraft and core game, so I can't see who and when would make such tank module. Now, if you modified your question and asked "Would you like your Hi-Fi tank even at the expense of development slowdown of aircraft or aircraft-related core game features?", then the answer would be no.
    I'm sure the very name of DCS indicates ED's ambitions (combat is air, but also ground and water), but so far it is what it is - a flight sim.

    Maybe if some tank nerds set up a 3rd party company and got down to making such module, or modules (tanks, SAM vehicles, IFVs and similar) - that could work. Maybe.
    Immediately after the realease of the first such module (let's say it happened), people would start asking questions about "the envrionment", assets, what exactly you can do with such tank in DCS, how AI behaves, why buildings and such don't look as good as in other combat-like games etc. etc., so I think it's a broader discussion than just making a tank module. A discusion at the verge of sci-fi. I'd love to be proven wrong, though!

    In a dream world, DCS would be air, sea, and ground, but if it can't become this without sacrificing the air part, I wouldn't like that, simply because DCS today is too good (though not perfect) a flight sim to get "dragged down" by side topics. These are all personal opinions, mind you.

    Heck, maybe Sonalysts will release "Dangerous Waters 2" one day? I wish.

     

    • Like 4
  22. Sorry for off topic, but...

    6 hours ago, BaronVonVaderham said:

    The “fake” CE clarification is in fact a China Export label. Yes they look very much alike, which is misleading, but it’s not a fake CE verification label. 

    You serious or kidding? I'm not sure. China Export label is only a Chinese way of saying "F.U. EU", it's a satire on EU regulations, and not a "legal entity". The idea was to put a distorted "CE", so people would think it is legit CE, and if your product is later proven non-conforming, you say: "What CE? This? Man, it's not CE, it's our own China Export badge. Incidentally it's somewhat similar to CE, but hey - we've got our own Chineese regulations that require this label in order for the product to leave China". Or whatever equally funny. You really think the striking resemblance of China Export to CE is incidental?

    Regardless of how much EU laws deserve satire (lots of them are a gloomy joke), a product w/o CE is illicit for sale in the EU (a product of those which do need CE label, a banana doesn't) and CE is not certification/verification, it's manufacturer's own declaration of conformity. It works "backwards" - first you must assess if your gear meets CE criteria for a specific product group/category and if it does, you label it "CE". Then, if anything bad happens, or even doesn't happen, but someone wants to annoy you, they may test your gear and point out that it doesn't meet "CE", despite the label. I've never worked for a joystick manufacturer (or any general puprose electronics), so I don't know specific requirements for such stuff, but I recon it's next to impossible to prove non-conformity in case of a joystick, and a joystick is unlikely to kill or harm its user. Anyway, if such scenario does take place, then, at least theoretically, you may be held responsible for that. And that's another joke if we're talking Chinese manfuacturers. So, "China Export" is not a real thing, let's say it's just a playful attempt to deny responsibility - just in case.

    You may also tackle the subject from a different angle. If we assume "narrow CE" is for China Export (a joke, but let's assume it), then the product doesn't have the required "EU-valid CE" (wide CE) on it, so it can't be sold in the EU (regardless of whether CE is smart of dumb). I may not be up to date with electronic gear, but I've never seen Chinese stuff in Europe which would have a PAIR of "CE" markings - one narrow, one wide, so... 🙂

     

     

    • Like 3
  23. 3 things come to my mind, but I'm using TrackIR, VR people need different solutions.

    1. Hand tracking devices. I've never used any, but maybe people with experience will chime in - are these devices more of a blessing than pain? I have no idea.

    2. If you have some space to use the mouse with your left hand, you might try and teach it to drive the mouse. I've tried it, used a separate Bluetooth mouse, but didn't really like it. Whenever I wasn't thinking about it, I always found that it was my right hand on the mouse, not the left one. Instincts. And the left hand was rather clumsy with the mouse. Yep, practice makes perfect, I know, but I just didn't like it and gave up.

    3. This is a very good solution, but doesn't solve the problem 100% - hardware button boxes and/or other similar devices. However, for MFCSs/MPDs/DDIs specifically you'd need specialized hardware, it exists, but I don't have it.
    I've got an own-built button box, very crude, built over a weekend, but it works. It sits directly to the left of my throttle, same size as TM Warthog throttle base. It's got toggle switches, a few buttons, and 7 potentiometers (with 1/2" knobs). Next, I've got 1 Stream Deck XL and 2 Stream Decks "+" (with awesome ctytler's SD plugin for DCS). SD XL is in front of me, on modern aircraft I use it primarily for UFC. Those two SD+ sit behind the throttle and to the left. Again, the aim is to operate all these with the left hand, so the right one can grab the stick at all times. Oh, I'm using tabletop HOTAS configuration, which is a not recommended setup, but that's what I've got now. If you had the stick in between the legs, I'm sure you could arrange such additional devices more equally - left and right, because you can easily switch hands and hold the stick with the left one for a few moments.
    All such devices let you quickly/easily use controls you need most when flying. I mean HOTAS is always the first choice, most important bindings, button boxes etc. are the second choice, only then come the mouse and/or keyboard keys. If you have a few such devices, the need for grabbing the mouse just decreases significantly. In fact, in simple aircraft (most warbirds), I don't need mouse/keyboard at all. I know some people are using smartphones, maybe also tablets with appropriate software to do the same thing. The choice is relatively broad, though obviously you need to spend money on such hardware.

    Lastly, modern aircraft will offer an autopilot, so if you need a longer session of heads down, you can set an orbit and flick/press/turn whatever you need with the mouse.
    And, lastly-lastly, that's why I'm loving A-10C II so much (even though she's otherwise boring to fly) - she's got awesome HOTAS system and lets you fly and fight "HOTAS mode only" out of the box, most of the time.

     

  24. I don't know what you mean, Crash. I was talking about the possibility of the pilot or co-pilot to look down through the blister window (left or right, respectively).

    On 8/18/2023 at 10:32 AM, Crash * said:

    BUT you can set that the Mi-8 should not use multicrew.

    How can one do that?

     

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