tjhowse

Glue on the ribbon cable? There must've been a change in manufacturing sometime during the run. Mine (06948), and at least a few others have no glue anywhere. If you like I could have a crack at fixing your base if you covered postage to/from Brisbane.

That wire provides an earth path for electrical charge from the metal of the handle of the joystick to the base, and then to the earth plane of your computer. Electrical charge can build up in an insulated piece of metal and discharge suddenly, causing damage or injury, hence that wire. In this case, it's probably there to meet a regulatory electrical safety standard. If you cannot reattach it I would not concern yourself overmuch. If you wanted to be paranoid you could disconnect the stick from the base when not in use.

I would disassemble the right quadrant of the throttle and have a peek inside. It sounds like one of the wires might've come off, it should be pretty easy to discover if that's the issue.

Return it under warranty. I didn't have that option when my slew stick failed, so I opened my throttle up and soldered a loose wire back on.

The focal plane of your eyes will be set on the screen, same as a normal monitor. The rift cannot render depth of focus.

Buttons are going to be a combination of SPDT tactile microswitches and 4/5-way hat switches. All the parts are listed here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aq6iGQSKjhLXdHlMeURranFkTHZMZ0JFeDlSUEJDSnc#gid=0

You might want to keep an eye on this project of mine: http://www.openjoystick.com You can probably crib a lot from my (open source) code and hardware design.

What are you using for your four-way switches? I've found this, which looks pretty good: http://au.element14.com/alps/skquaaa010/navigation-switch-4way/dp/1435773 And one that's clickable: http://au.element14.com/jsp/search/productdetail.jsp?SKU=1435775&MER=MER-BN-PR-PG-1435775

There's a lot of options out there now. You can get a commercial one off the shelf and working for about USD$1000. If you're a bit of a DIYer you can get a kit of a more advanced model for much cheaper. I myself went the kit route a couple of years back and it's been great. I spent about $600 total on parts. Nowdays the designs are much simpler, more robust and cheaper. I would look into the Prusa Mendel iteration 3 if I were to build one today.

I wanted a more authentic experience when trimming the P-51D, so I built myself a box with some custom-designed 3D printed trim wheels on it and hooked up a Teensy 2.0 microcontroller to provide the inputs. Works very very nicely. I documented the whole process in this video. Links to the models used in the 3D prints, the place where you buy the microcontroller and the code are all in the description. If I were to build another, I'd improve on the following: Print knobs in black, Design them exactly as per the actual knobs, with the markings in relief, and fill in the grooves with white paint, Use a nice solid aluminium enclosure, rather than plastic, Mount a USB-B socket on the rear, instead of just a hole, Daisy-chain the 5v and gnd wiring inside, rather than star wiring. Otherwise, I'm pretty happy with the outcome. All comments are welcome.

A few of the developers of the OR wear glasses. It ships with a variety of lenses to adjust the diopter for most common prescriptions, as well as an adjustable pinion to move the screen and lens assembly further from your eyes to make room for glasses if the lenses don't work for you.

I don't think a mouse would be that bad for immersion. It would be a matter of testing or preference as to whether being cockpit-stabilised or view-stabilised would be the better option. The leap is probably not as useful as everyone's imagining. The two main problems are the lack of an absolute position reference, reducing it to basically a mouse you have to hold your finger up to use, and the means of registering a click. No way in hell I would want to risk accidentally flicking the wrong switch. As for the pixels-per-degree question, I ran some quick calculations on my current setup. I have a 1920x1200 monitor, 520mm wide, 750mm from my eyeballs. Some quick trig shows that the monitor occupies about 40 degrees of my vision. That's 198 px/deg. The current dev version of the rift has a screen 1280 px wide, split between two eyes, over a 90 degree FoV. This gives a puny 14.2 px/deg. However the optics are structured such that ths distribution is uneven. This fact and the high sample rate headtracking (1kHz) further muddy the waters between direct comparisons. I think in terms of raw visual acuity the OR lags behind, but in terms of immersiveness it wins in spades.

The resolution IS pretty low, no doubt about it, but it's less of an issue than you might think due to the design of the optics. They're structured such that the centre of the FoV has a higher pixel-per-arc-second than the periphery. Spotting a distant bogey will likely be harder in the peripheral vision than in the centre, but seeing your instrumentation shouldn't be difficult. However don't discount the benefit of providing the human brain with input it's more accustomed to receiving. Formation flying is going to be much easier with actual depth perception, and the speck of a distant aircraft will more naturally trigger your brain's "woah, what's that?" reflex.

So here's my rough guide for lubing the hog: Disclaimer: I'm not a Thrustmaster employee; this isn't official advice. However I am a mechatronic engineer and I have written this procedure following my successful operation. You need: Phillips head screw driver. 3mm allen key or similar. Grease. I used Molykote EM-30L. Important attributes are a high viscosity and being plastic and metal safe. Lots of tissues. Ear cleaners. The knowledge that if you damage anything in this process, you'll void your warranty. Disassemble and clean everything: Unplug. Remove the stick. Four screws on bottom, remove base. Eight screws on top, remove metal ring, unclip plastic ring underneath. Undo the four screws by gradually loosening in an even pattern, alternating sides. Don't take them off one by one as the big spring will force the top plate up at an angle. Remove the top plate. Remove the black plastic outer cowl. Remove the big spring and clean off the grease with a tissue. I tried shifting the grease with isopropyl alcohol and ethanol, neither had an effect. A surfactant might work better, but I didn't want to try that for fear of water damage. Lift the ring off the joint and posts. Clean, including inside the holes through which the posts passed. Use ear cleaners for this. Remove the springs from the four posts and clean the posts and springs. Flip upside down and unplug the two small ribbon cables from the PCB. Undo the two screws holding the beige centre piece in place, through which one of the ribbon cables passes. Remove the center piece. This has the 2D hall effect sensor on it. Optional steps to make things much easier and safer, but potentially voiding your warranty: Undo the two screws holding the earth rings under the base. Put the screws back in after unhooking the rings. Unsolder the black earth wire from the PCB. Look inside the centre hole and note the orientation of the ribbon and back earth wire. Note they must be adjacent, not overlapping, to minimise the risk of damage. If they are overlapping, apply gentle tension to the ribbon cable and wiggle it into position. Applying gentle tension to the ribbon cable, pull up on the cup portion of the joint, whilst allowing the ribbon cable to follow it out. If you did the optional step, you'll now be able to entirely separate the ball and cup. If not, draw the cup out as far as you can. Use an allen key or similar tool to apply force to the insides of the pins indicated by OP. Pop them both out. This will require an uncomfortable amount of force. Be sure not to pinch the wires with the allen key. Remove the inner ball. Note the orientation of the notch on the underside of the inner ball. This notch must correspond with the direction from which the wires emerge from the stem in the centre of the cup. Clean everything: the inside of the cup, the inside and outside of the ball, including inside the peg holes, and the inner ball. Grease and reassemble everything: Grease the insides of the peg holes of the inner ball. Grease the stems of the pegs. Insert the inner ball into the ball, making sure the notch is on the correct side. Slide the pegs through the holes in the ball into the inner ball, ensuring the small key on the peg aligns with the keyed slot on the ball. Lock the pegs in place. Ensure the inner ball can move freely. It won't be super smooth, but this is not very important (see previous post). Apply a generous amount of grease to the inside of the cup and the outside of the ball. I suggest a 1mm layer all over both. The excess will work its way out the bottom and into the centre. Better too much than too little. If you followed the optional step, thread the black earth wire and ribbon cable through the inner ball and out of the centre of the base. Ensure the wires emerge from the centre stem on the same side as the notch in the inner ball. Apply gentle tension to the black earth wire and ribbon cable to ensure they are properly seated alongside each-other as they emerge from the centre stem. Slide the cup down over the ball. Any resistance you feel is the wires being squeezed through the hole in the top of the inner ball until they pop into the notch. DO NOT APPLY TOO MUCH FORCE. It should not be a struggle to get it on. You may wish to apply a small amount of grease to the wires to aid this step. Insert and secure the beige centre piece into the bottom of the base, ensuring the wires to the ball joint routes neatly through the gap. Grease the four posts. Put the four springs onto the posts. Grease the insides of the four holes in the ring using the ear cleaners, and the outside of the base of the ring, where it touches the big spring. Seat the ring over the cup and onto the four posts. It will require a bit of jiggling to seat properly. Do not apply force, it should slip on nicely once the correct position is found. Put the big spring onto the ring. Put the cowl over the big spring, noting the pegs in the top and bottom and their corresponding holes in the base and top plate. Push the thick metal plate down onto the spring, compressing it such that you can align the pegs and holes, then get the four screws in. Clip on the black plastic ring. Use eight screws to reattach the metal ring. Reattach the two ribbon cables onto the PCB in the base. Re-solder the earth wire. Unscrew the two screws and reattach the earth rings. Attach the base. Attach the stick. Work the stick around to all extremes, back to neutral and back out again to the extremes. This will smear the grease around and work any excess out of the way. And that's it! If anyone needs any clarifications, or has any questions, please let me know.

I got my grease in the mail today. Disassembled everything and noticed a pretty bad design choice. That wire routing ball is held in by those pins, but it must rotate when the stick is moved left or right. The pins rub against the ball as it turns. I lubed up the outside of the pins and the corresponding holes in the centre ball, then lubed up everything else and reassembled. Applying a small amount of tension to the colourful ribbon cable when socketing the cup over the ball is essential to avoid any more pinching than is necessary. The pinching problem occurs when the black earth wire is trapped underneath the ribbon. Tension ensures that the ribbon and earth wire sit side by side and slide in with only a small amount of force. It's super nice now. There's the slighest hint of stiction, but I think that might be from too much lube. When the excess works its way to the centre or outside it should go away. If it doesn't, I'm going to give the outsides of the bottom half of the pins a *light* sand to make them fit a bit more freely. That centre ball seems to be there for the sole purpose of guiding those cables, so it being a smidgen looser should have no effect whatsoever on the performance of the stick.

Do this for me: Set up a straight linear response curve on your throttle. Start up an F-15C and go full throttle. Your afterburner will kick in. Adjust your throttle down a small amount. Your engine RPM will reduce (you should be able to hear this and see it on your dials) but your afterburner will still be on, and remain on until you continue to lower your throttle past the AB cutoff point. I use various levels of afterburner frequently.

I'm afraid you're incorrect. The F-15C, as it is modelled in DCS:FC3 and in real life, has an adjustable power output past the point at which the afterburner kicks in. Your settings do not allow this range to be accessed.

I don't see how this could work. Could you please take a screenshot of your axis configuration on your throttle? The only way I could see this working is if you lose any throttle travel past the AB detent, and just stay at 100% or 101%.

That curve made a world of difference for me, but I've made a small improvement to your excellent work. :joystick: I found that the nonlinearity of the travel between IDLE and MIL made proper formation flying a bit twitchy, so I've tweaked the numbers to make the curve a bit more linear, whilst still handling the afterburner kick-in point properly: 0,3,6,11,22,33,46,59,71,85,100 No need to thank me! :D

I gave up developing it any further once I discovered that mumble doesn't presently have a way of interfacing to the client to adjust volume and apply voice effects to other users. I've started poking around the server side of things and it looks like it might be possible to do things more elegantly there, but still no possibility at this stage of static. Losing contact with people when they're too far away is doable, but multiple radios aren't, as far as I can tell. I'll keep poking around.

I already do this. The only reasons I have a screen saver set up is to blank my monitors such that I cannot see the reflected light from my screens under my bedroom door, and to save power. For the purpose of this thread, using a screen saver and configuring windows to turn off monitors in the power saving menu has the same effect. Neither are interrupted by moving the stick or pressing buttons.

I'm considering lubing up my warthog and I've got a potentially dumb question about your excellent howto. It regards the small ball inside the base side of the cup-and-ball joint. Why must it be removed? From my limited perspective looking at these pictures it seems that access to the two surfaces to which the lube must be applied can be gained without removing those two plugs or the centre wire-routing ball. What have I missed? Thanks, tjhowse.

I checked the power settings of all of the items in the red box. The "Intel® 6 Series/C200 ... 1C2D" device has the two warhog "HID-compliant game controller"s listed on its "Advanced" tab, but that particular device has no power settings tab. It's worth noting that all of these USB hubs are motherboard-based. I have no external USB hubs attached. The two devices of the warthog introduce four entries into device manager. Two "HID-compliant game controller"s and two "USB Input Devices", one of each type for the throttle and stick. None of these four devices have power settings available. The "USB selective suspend setting" is enabled. My readings about this setting indicate that it allows windows to shut down particular devices to save power. I don't think this has a bearing on my particular issue. Thanks for trying to help, rep inbound. I'm open to any other suggestions.

I went through and unticked all boxes on all of the USB root hub entries, and a few other similiar-sounding items. Unfortunately this had no effect, not in making that menu available on the wathog devices, nor in making the warthog interrupt the screensaver.

I fly FC3 and A-10C with a TM warthog, which means that there can be long periods of time during which I don't touch the mouse or keyboard. It seems that stick input or button presses from the warthog don't refresh the screen saver timer, meaning the screensaver can kick in mid-mission. I've googled around and found this thread which came to no satisfactory conclusion. Another site suggested ticking the "Allow this device to wake the computer" box on the "Power Management" tab on all devices in the "Human Interface Devices" list in device manager, but when comparing the hardware IDs it appears that the warhog USB devices appear in this list, but neither of them have a "Power Management" tab. I ticked that box on every possible device regardless, but the warthog still cannot clear the screensaver. I'm using windows 7 64b. For now I have worked around this problem by disabling the screensaver and monitor power saving, but I would prefer a more elegant fix. Preferably DCS properly preventing the screensaver turning on, similar to media playing programs such as VLC or windows media player, but I'm open to suggestions. Apologies if this has been solved elsewhere. Thanks, tjhowse.