Levinsky

Great find, much appreciated. Ken.

Lol this is quite clever LunaticFringe :smilewink: once I saw his other posts and understood found this very amusing. Never intended to respond to the OP message but your response was too good not to.

Looking good Pete - time to take it flying and cause some virtual mayhem :)

Pete, mate! that looks awesome. Well done - weekend well spent yeah? :) Ken.

Hi Gus, also - unfortunately I couldn't find a complete listing of functions (spent a lot of time looking :)). I use "strings" and "grep" a lot when trying to solve a particular problem. If I find any others I will post them up. I should probably start a thread for my cockpit build. Ken.

Hi Gus, yeah it's simple now.. but simple was not the right word when working it out. No documentation around this unfortunately. I installed cygwin and ran the Unix commands "strings" and "grep" over every file in the DCS folder looking for references of "chaff" and "flare". In the original export.lua (it's about 39KB) there is a section towards the end that has the code: LoGetSnares = {chaff,flare} Then through a bit of trial and error with that function I found out that it returns a table. If you put the code from original post into the processafternextframe function of Export.lua it just constantly sends you the chaff and flare count. Tested it by dropping chaff and it decrements along with what the cockpit was telling me. So for the CMSP panel. Pretty much everything is a known state from start except how many chaff and flares. My intention is just track when the switches or buttons are used on the panel and update both the sim and my own values driving the LCD display. You can also get the error/damage state of the counter measures and ECM gear so you can put the correct error message on or shutdown the display/panel if the sim is reporting your counter measures are out. I think with this I can avoid either exporting the display and chewing up another monitor port or using OCR. But will see. Will be cutting and engraving the panel soon so will report on how it works out. Definitely going with the Arduino for driving the LCD as I have more experience coding and working with Arduino. Ken.

Found the answer Hi guys, turns out it is pretty simple to get the chaff and flare count. local CM = LoGetSnares() default_output_file:write(string.format("Chaff count = %d \n",CM.chaff)) default_output_file:write(string.format("Flare count = %d \n",CM.flare)) Of course you could push this out to external app via UDP or whatever you want. I intend to use this for the counter measure panels to write to an LCD via probably an Arduino board. Ken.

Hi guys, anyone know of a way to get the current number of chaff and flares on a given aircraft? I can't see anything. I found this below but its rather cryptic and not sure it means anything. LoGetSnares = {chaff,flare} Ken.

Hi, try this from Staffi Ken. http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=1863464&postcount=8

Hi guys, Personally myself I'm building mine partly just for the fun and challenge of the build. Certainly flying in it (even in a half baked stage) is pretty cool as well. :) Ken.

Hi Tacno and Mike, appreciate all the information guys - its very helpful. I have been testing with my standalone install of DCS A-10C and not my DCS World so I don't break the setup I fly with. :). Looks like I will need to start testing with 1.2.6 though as I wasn't aware they changed it. Will test out what you both have provided - thanks. Ken.

Hi Duckling, thanks for the point in the right direction. Managed to get an Open Cockpits radio card interfaces and working nicely with DCS A-10C. I handled most of the smarts in my C# app as I also use that for the Open Cockpits CDU. Thanks, Ken.

Hi guys, been playing with exporting and setting the VHF AM radio through Export.lua and a C# app I'm testing with. The radio wheels/thumbs - They appear to work by sending the value you want to set them to. i.e. if you want the fourth dial to say "25" you need to send "0.25" to button 3016 on device 55. So I have a couple of questions I guess: Why does each dial for the radio have 2 buttons (is this for forward and back? If so I can't seem to see a difference in the values you send through) Is the only way to set the correct value is to have your application keep track of the value you want to set and just hard set it using a direct value? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Ken.

Hi Dooom, I put together a quick video showing the Open Cockpits 737NG CDU in action under DCS World/A-10C. It's not the best video (my first youtube upload) but you'll get the idea. I hope to add a better video soon. I am working on integrating the CDU back lighting into DCS as well and this should be working in the next few days - you flick in the in-cockpit lighting switches and the CDU back lighting is enabled. I also plan on using a CNC laser engraver to redo the buttons that control the CDU pages to the correct A-10C buttons. I will then remove/blank out the unused buttons so there wont be any confusion during flight :). Ken.

Hey Pete, I'm still excited over the ILS bars on the ADI. For some reason I didn't think it had them. The gauges seem to respond super quick too. I noticed the altimeter QFE display works as well. Ken.

Appreciate all the dedication and hard work ED. Matt the updates are an awesome addition most understand the context and realise "everything is subject to change". :) lol @ Scarecrow "say no to drugs"....that's gold mate - love it. :) Ken.

Well you know what they say about assumptions right? I think here in lies the biggest issue I've seen in this thread. I wouldn't presume to know what goes on at ED except a group of guys who could probably earn more money doing something else but are working very hard on something that no one else seems to be doing, that they are very passionate about and hope we'll all get a kick out of. Why would you assume anything? Again you're creating an assumption and then getting upset when ED don't live up to it. So we all know the world is full of change. Plans and priorities change over time - I think everyone understands that. Given a lot of the responses on this thread would you want to try and give "more solid" information if you were ED? I mean come on. So you think threads like this one will make ED share more information with us about their internal planning? If I were ED I would have just continued work on F-18 without telling anyone and just announce it. That way no one gets excited or disappointed. Guys it would be far easier for ED to say nothing. Honestly from this thread as much as myself and a great number of other people would hate to see the updates vanish - I'm starting to think it's the right thing to do. I'll leave everyone with something my grandfather used to say to me when I was young........ Fools should never be shown half finished work From this thread I'd say we all look pretty foolish. Ken.

Lol that's a great analogy

+1 Agree with you and leafer. Really appreciate Matt's (and ED) updates and their willingness to share information on future projects.

lol

But you knew all that before you bought the game because it was pretty well spelled out which aircraft had 6dof and which didn't etc. So if people aren't happy about that when they see the initial release notes,don't buy it - wait and see how it develops over time if you're so inclined. It's purely up to ED how they decide to release their products and it's purely up to you whether or not you buy them. Did you and everyone else stop to think (and I think someone else mentioned this earlier about 1 million pages back:megalol:) that perhaps ED is trying to divorce themselves of the link to Ubisoft with the lockon series. I don't know - but it could possibly be a strategy to start a clear separation of both product and source code for the SU-27 and F-15 (which have come from the lock on series) so Ubisoft have no claim to these - dare I say it "modules". Perhaps ED is trying to get that set in stone before they spend serious effort transforming those aircraft to A-10C level of fidelity. Perhaps ED can't afford to spend more time on lockon series (including FC3) because it's costing them money in royalties to Ubisoft which actually means they don't have that money to invest into DCS aircraft which in turn would give you what you want. It could be that (I don't know) or it could just be the simple answer - it's what ED want to do and it's their product. The point is that I'm sure they are smart guys that have a strategy around this.

Serious??? If there were a "few pennies" to be made out of hard core flight sims you are implying that there is serious demand for this around the world. If that were the case then there would be a glut of hard core flight sims. Instead we have a trail of wreckage that were flight sim developers.

So the fact that FC3 was re-written to be a module of DCS world which then provided us with the ability to create and fly missions with FC3 aircraft along with A-10C, BS, P-51, Combined Arms and now UH-1 Huey was just a pointless endeavor and not worth anything? That was one of the key points of FC3 - not to develop the aircraft to A-10C standard or all aircraft with 6dof cockpits. As Wags says - maybe not everyone wants to sit there and learn every little detail. Maybe they want to just fly and have some fun. Insert Implied Facepalm here (Google image search it - you'll understand) Nothing to say about this part - Just felt like you needed a hug at this point. :) Things change. As the Rolling Stones say "You can't always get what you want" :)

question - show me one other company doing what ED's doing where you can take your "conscientious customer" business? There really is no walmart for flight sims - so yes we have to support ED - I don't really think they are in it for the money. If there was big bucks to be made you'd see more hi-fi flight sims.

Hi, I've sat back for well over 12 months now and read threads like this one, often because like most I'm excited about new announcements and the possibilities they bring, some times you feel disappointment because of delays or whatever. Now days I have to be honest I look at some of the posts in these threads and think "get some perspective, life is full of change, delays and disappointments. Move on and enjoy what you have now". People get upset because they feel somehow wronged at the term DCS being used to describe anything less then A-10C fidelity. Well Combined Arms is labelled DCS and I'm not having a go, but it's not A-10C level fidelity. I guess you could argue the precedence has already been set that DCS doesn't always mean A-10C level. Here's another thought. There are lots of software developers out there. There are not a lot of software developers who will or even have the skill/knowledge to work on simulators like DCS. Therefore it's not always a matter of throwing more money at the problem to get what you want faster. You need skilled people with a passion and a dream of something great. They don't just grow on trees! Guys learn to enjoy what we have today and look forward to the fact we have an organisation (I'm not aware of any others doing what ED are doing) that have the passion and the skill to work on keeping our hobby alive. There will always be the "next module/aircraft" and I'm not saying for one minute not to get excited or feel disappointment - but just keep it in perspective.