Reticuli

When I was cleaning my pedals, the big center tension knob slid off for the first time -- I think from the suction of the vacuum or something. I slid it back on, and the tension adjustment still works fine. However, the centering is now gone. If I move the pedals, they stay wherever you leave them. Any ideas what's going on and how to fix this?

When compared to every other adversary helo in DCS, regardless of whether they're flown by a human or AI.

That gives me a sense of painting plastic model airplanes or doing new liveries for MS flight simulator series, and that's stuff I never got into. Never built & painted model airplanes as a kid and I've got X-Plane modded acfs that literally have no paint job... hah hah. I fixate on how well the helo will work with mass consumer HOTAS & pedals (I'm pretty forgiving of that to a point considering my use of PPJoy & GlovePIE) and can it be used to play effectively in a game that's entertaining & engaging. I mean, if the 3D model from the outside looked ugly or the real thing was manufactured by ISIS wouldn't matter to me. How does it fly, can I fly it naturally with the gear I've got, and can it fight well without being either too dominating or being dominated too much. That sweet balancing act is when you get situations where you just barely succeed through extreme focus and ingenuity, rather than it becoming just boring, rote procedurals. Some of the switchology I can take or leave, actually, as I don't bother with long start-ups or shut-downs. I might even go so far as to say I'd prefer the single-seat version mostly because I'm usually not interested in buddying up or having to change seats frequently. Might... If given a choice and you could do all the functions in the pilot seat of the 52, had the FLIR, etc, then obviously I'd be loving the 52. In EECH 1.16.2 the only reason I am more likely to fly in the 52 than the 50 when I have a choice is because someone tried to replicate DCS BS's drab EO target system and arguably way overdid it to the point you're more likely to find targets with the EECH Ka-50 HMS than with the EO. The weird thing, though, is they're calling it the N model and handicapping it like that with a really washed out FLIR that won't let you lock targets until you're right on top of them and getting shot down. But I digress...

I don't see how multiplayer vs single player has anything to do with it.

I don't see how there's going to be gameplay balance with the existing helos if the DCS Apache gets the Longbow radar.

The 52 would make sense if the Apache gets its radar, but otherwise I'd probably be content with the ka-50 just having better nightvision camera or, better yet, IR on the EO sensor and more predictable target acquisition, especially for airborne ones. The Iglas would be icing on the cake. I also find that helos in general aren't as stealthy at low altitude or near objects as they could be.

Now I know why I used the word "spring"... because it was previously used in the thread. I really just meant to ask about the centering point. Anyway, controls magnetic lock stuff makes more sense. I'm gathering now that the centering of the pedal tension is therefore moving around on it upon trimmer button release. So you could be 50% to the left, it'd hold that, require more pressure to push past, and tend return to that trimmed spot as you ease up pressure until the trimmer button is held down again when it has no particular favored 'centering' point and just a little resistance to movement. It looks like the only way hardcore players are going to get truly faithful recreation is with a force-feedback cyclic and force-feedback pedals. And I can't even tell for sure if the collective's got something going on, too, as they talk about the system ignoring movement of that within a certain threshold when altitude hold is on. I wouldn't be surprised if its collective gets a centering point during altitude hold and commands level changes like the old Penn State experiments with using a normal joystick for collective with vertical hold in GenHel running on MatLab for FlightGear. Regardless, FFB pedals seems an unlikely market, let alone collectives. Heck, forget faithful recreation, just not being a convoluted mess of a control system is going to be a challenge for the vast majority of people at home. Users are having enough issues with just the Hind, and that's more straightforward. The Blackshark has its quirks, too, just with centering or pressure sticks, and it doesn't even have the complication of a tail rotor and lack of tail-mixing to worry about with centering pedals. I'm definitely thinking ED ought to go with an optional RC/AH & newer-style of yaw modes. That'd certainly be a more useful alternative available control scheme than the 'arcade' mode Blackshark uselessly has. Probably 99% of DCS helo users would go with such new modes. The 1% of users with self-damped pro long-pole cyclics and also pedals without springs can obviously just go into the simulated Apache's MFD menu where you can turn off the force trim system completely, though.

So it's got a variable spring 'centering' that changes the center position based the force trim state? Hmm. Seems like an odd hybrid solution. Guardians should have moved over to that Enhanced Apache stuff they were working on. Guess the Army is going to have to wait for an X2 derivative or Invictus for the really good stuff.

I'm assuming now that the Apache pedals do not center but that they have at least a little bit of tension in them so they aren't going to flop around on their own. Correct? DCS Blackshark's oddly-named 'Flight Director' mode with all the SAS channels on seems to have rate-damping to slow the rotations, but they're very, very weak... like unbelievably, especially on the yaw. I rarely fart around with the force trim and trim release on the heading when FD is off. I might disable the yaw SAS channel when FD is off or just use turn-to-target. Sometimes I'd just toggle the yaw channel to reset that diamond/caret thing. But, heck, I rarely use the manual trimmer button. If I'm really in a situation where FD off is screwing stuff up and I'm not in a turning-to-target sort of situation, I turn FD on and just deal with it being looser with the autotrim PIE script.

With only these three helo trimmer modes available, even when functioning properly which they may not be yet on Hind, it's always going to be at least a little awkward with centering sticks and centering pedals (or twist on the flight stick). Default and centering helo trimmer modes are what you centering folks will have to put up with, and neither is without its quirks. There's just no way around that without either an outright fourth rate-command / attitude-hold mode or at least a crude auto trimmer feedback-style thing. If you can't get used to one of these existing modes enough, you don't buy FFB (use default first trimmer mode), or remove the springs or buy some expensive pro helo gear (use third mode for either), you'd instead need to use an outside intermediary utility & script to do the auto trimming to make it any more natural. And that's just going to fix the DCS cyclic issues. I don't think I've ever actually tried an auto trimming script for the yaw, rather I just used a yaw trim axis on a thumb rotary on my throttle for the Huey and Gazelle when I tried them. For the yaw without using scripts, if you have this Hind SAS yaw channel on I assume releasing trimmer is going to clear that designation. If you're using the SAS yaw channel this way, I would guess you do not want the Rudder Trimmer on in options, as having them both on with centering pedals would create a particular nightmare. If you have centering pedals or a twist on your stick without any other mitigation method, you're going to have to decide whether you want the SAS doing the yaw stuff or you want the Rudder Trimmer to be just holding the virtual background pedal position with that yaw SAS channel off, and in either case you're stuck awkwardly fiddling with a trimmer release button for something: the heading designation or the virtual background rudder trim. Neither is going to be as fun as it could be and not how helos with centering controls work. Yeah, they also have sophisticated digital FBW like an F-16, but the Hind doesn't have centering controls, either. So pick your poison, Realism Police. At this point, though, I think ED just needs to drop these dang three trimmer modes & the awful Rudder Trimmer check box, and instead give two selection drop downs: one for cyclic, one for pedals. Cyclic choices would be a new RC/AH (basically an auto-trimmer), FFB (current default cyclic trimmer), and Pro (current third no-trimmer) modes to choose from. Pedals would be Centering (basically limited-authority auto-tail-mixing that doesn't require manual SAS heading designation) and Non-Centering (old school) to choose from. No one will need the current second centering cyclic trimmer mode. No one will need Rudder Trimmer. Boom, everyone would have their trimmer needs met, and certainly there'd be less frustration and confusion among DCS helo users than there are now. I would bet not a single person in the world misses using the current default or centering trimmer modes with centering (or pressure) joysticks or having to fight the SAS (or rudder trimmer) with centering pedals (or twist). Anyone wanna claim you'd actually miss the current first two cyclic trimmer modes and you don't have either FFB or pro helo flight controls?

As far as I've ever read, only the bob-up mode shows that and it's based on when you enter that mode with the symbology switch, rather than when you released the trimmer. I've never seen information there's release trim symbology for the heading that's being held on the Apaches, rather the heading hold otherwise seemed intuitively based on when you stop the yaw rotation at lower speeds and it 'captures' the new heading. I thought at low speeds the pilot flying pushes past a threshold with the pedals to override that captured heading and induce a yaw. Stop the yaw, and again it's back to capturing this new heading. Maybe I'm getting the Apache manuals mixed up with the ADOCS, LHX, and Comanche whitepapers' flight laws. You're telling me at low speeds if you apply the pedals on the Apache to induce a yaw past that threshold from the current heading it's holding, rotate the aircraft 90 degrees, halt the yaw rate with the pedals, and don't apply additional anti-torque it's going to try and rotate back to the original heading 90 degrees to the other direction because you didn't manually-designate a new SAS heading? I'm not exactly sure what you mean by holding a coordinated profile in the context you're saying. If it's holding a heading, the aircraft is not coordinating with yaw based on any other input axis. Above a certain airspeed the auto turn coordination ought to mix-in yaw to center the ball when you apply roll instead of holding a heading anymore. Maybe you mean this in some other context, like just attitude & heading hold authority %? But come on, man, the DCS Blackshark FD mode heading hold authority is WEAK. The Apache manuals do talk about the pedals in relation to the force trim state, though, so I'm wondering if indeed it's either ignoring what the pedals are doing within a certain distance from when you last released the trimmer or if it's doing something with the pedal's tension to prevent movement... and then doing its own SAS rate damping or attitude/heading hold with this lack of new recognized pedal input.

Not sure what you mean by "actual' but I'm increasingly understanding that future modules will be using 2.7 and above.

Which is why I'm asking.

I'm still on Windows 7. Just curious.

Ok, that is very interesting. So the cyclical main rotor action would completely freeze in orientation at zero pressure. Thank you. On the pressure vs percentages, that should only matter at the pressure gauges vs the full pressure. Going by just a freeze of the pilot controls, it's for reducing the pressure and either how you drop some other set of values or convert it when it's shown on the gauge. You're just trying to crudely reduce the shown pressure until control become degraded (including completely frozen) based on amount of pilot controls handling and/or other factors. On the cliff being higher up and not directly related to controls usage (an 'other factor'), I don't see why that would be an issue, rather it means to me it's a bit faster and changes what's shown on those gauges when. You have rough controls increasing pressure drop until that cliff point, and at the cliff point it drops off rapidly. Still seems easily doable. As for the two separate hydraulics systems... you then need these pressure loss behaviors on each one separately, right, and then if both fail, that's when controls degrade, as you said if the mains is lost the common takes over automatically and if the common 'backup' is lost you're already on the mains? So that would mean you have two hydraulics systems that potentially incur damage to them separately. Each look they have their own separate gauges below the hydraulic valve lamps.