doveman

Actually it's been clarified in another thread that all third-party modules are EFM, which just means it's an External FM and not something ED have created. ED's own modules are designated either AFM, AFM+ or PFM and EFM modules can be anything between AFM and PFM. So have the devs always said that the Gazelle is only intended to have an AFM-level FM?

Well for a SIM I'd say it's a bit of both. Customers who've never flown IRL or at least never flown the particular aircraft are not best placed to say there's something wrong with the FM but still, if there's something clearly wrong that's obvious to even them, the fact that RL pilots have praised it won't make customers ignore the problems and buy it. I'd say RL pilot's feedback is useful but still needs to be checked against other data sources to avoid relying on it too much and reduce the risk of missing something that might only become apparent under circumstances that weren't tested. Personally, I'd be more prepared to buy an early-access module where the FM was spot on but the weapons systems weren't yet usable or there were no in-cockpit clickable switches, as at least I could (try to) learn how to fly her well and then learn how to deploy her effectively later, once the rest of the features are done. With a buggy FM however, there's a risk of getting a bad impression of flying her, picking up bad habits, having to relearn how to fly her when the FM is finally fixed, which rather puts me off as it's not an effective use of my time. So yeah, I'll wait for at least the FM to be right before buying a module as I'm not interested in buying an aircraft and then having to wait for the devs to get round to fixing it before I can start using it. Not trying to say anyone's wrong to buy modules early to support the devs though.

Thanks for breaking that down WinterH. I finally understand! It seems bound to cause confusion when ED's internal designations indicate the quality of the FM but the external one doesn't and I agree with the earlier suggestion to use EAFM / EAFM+ / EPFM so that customers know what to expect from a module.

I'm not sure that's correct, as I thought some ED modules were AFM/AFM+ which would make no sense if PFM=AFM. My concern about what the various labels actually mean for potential customers stems from the fact I was thinking of buying the Gazelle but then read reviews/posts raising serious questions about the quality of the FM, which makes me question what minimum standard I can expect from an ED-approved AFM third-party module. I understand some of the problems have been fixed now but the Devs are asking customers to be patient and wait for them to find the time to fix the rest. So as far as I can tell, an ED-approved AFM module can have fairly serious flaws in the FM and thus the label is quite meaningless to me and I need to wait and see if other customers report any issues with the FM to know if it's any good. I'm not aware of such issues arising with any of ED's own PFM modules, so I would tend to be less concerned about waiting for customer feedback before buying one of those.

So EFM=AFM but may be worse (or better) than ED's own AFM/AFM+ modules and sometimes EFM might even be as good as PFM? I'm certainly confused!

Sorry for the delay. I had to move my PC in order to decorate so haven't been able to do much testing. I did try adjusting the camera offset as per your instructions and found around 12 (or maybe -12) on roll was needed to zero it but that didn't solve the problems with the X, Y, Z axis. I'll make another video when I can.

It'll be great to have a manual soon. I'm getting a new inkjet with free instant ink for 300 pages/month for 6 months so I was looking at the DCS manuals to work out a total page count and was sad to see no Mi-8 manual.

I've got three monitors, my main one connected via DVI, my touchscreen connected via DP (it seems to work best that way) and my TV connected via HDMI. With all three connected I couldn't get Helios to work anymore even though the TV was disabled in Windows (it certainly used to work like that), as Helios shows monitors 1 and 2 but Windows had my main monitor as 3, my touchscreen as 1 and my TV (disabled) as 2. When I open the editor, it shows my main monitor on the left as 2 and the touchscreen on the right as 1. Most of my profiles load into the editor with the Helios screen as 1 and resetting to swap them over didn't make them work (they didn't work before resetting either). The only profile I could run was one that for whatever reason showed the main monitor on the left as 1 and the Helios screen on the right as 2 when loaded in the editor. Resetting the other profiles doesn't swap the numbers over to look like that, it just lets me move the Helios screen from the touchscreen on the right (1) to the main monitor on the left (2), which doesn't help. Anyway, disconnecting my TV got things working again but of course it would be nice if I didn't have to do that each time I wanted to use Helios.

Ah OK, if the red cross is mean to be there that's fine. I can't really fit the clip to the left of my headphones as I have my mic there and my PC is on the left, so I need the mic lead to be as well but it doesn't really matter. It's really working pretty well now with your mappings now that I've got it the right way up, as you can see in this video The main remaining crosstalk is on the Z axis when doing some other movements but maybe that's caused by having my camera quite high and having to point the clip up at it. Perhaps I can use the Camera offset settings to help with that. I only got Z output when moving in the Y axis but I see you have a large deadzone in the Y mapping, so I probably just need to reduce that.

OK, I'm officially a dumbass! Turns out I had the clip attached upside down, so the short leg was at the bottom instead of the top. I guess I thought it should go this way as otherwise the LED is on the inside and hard to see but it only lights up when charging anyway, not when switched on, so I don't really need to see it. The dimensions of the UTC are pretty much the default TrackIR settings, except for the -5 on the Z axis, as shown here http://s25.postimg.org/qq7ych3vj/ftn2.jpg so I think I had the right dimensions on the clip tab. Now I've got the clip the right way up, I've gone back to using the custom tab though, as it makes sense to use the exact dimensions. It's working much better now thanks. I've recorded two videos, the first with "Use camera center as translation effect" ticked and the second with it unticked but I don't think there's much difference. There's still a bit of crosstalk between the axis (I tested in this order: yaw, pitch, roll, Z, Y, X) but it's much better than before. I've had to mount the clip pointing up towards the camera as otherwise the top and middle LEDs were merging when I looked down. The calibration is still weird, as it now has the center of my head off to the right of my right ear where the clip is mounted. A friend told me they had trouble calibrating with OT, so did it with FTNoIR and just copied the numbers across, so I'll try that and see if that comes up with the right settings. EDIT: The FTNoIR calibration settings were a bit different but still put the center cross to the right of my head. I found that your mappings had been wiped due to me opening your config in an older version of OT though and now I've restored them there's a lot less crosstalk between the axis. I'll record another video showing the current results,

Certainly the calibration doesn't put the red centre cross in the centre of my head! If I manually input -70, 20, 0 for the calibration settings that puts it roughly where it should be but the calibration gives me -15, 711, 292, which puts it way above my head. Even using manual settings it doesn't work properly though, with yaw also producing roll and pitching also producing X, Y and Z.

Sorry for the delay, I had some trouble getting OBS to work again. I've uploaded a new video using your settings here It seems I was wrong about the settings being copied from the Custom to Clip tabs automatically, they just happened to coincide it seems as I zeroed the Custom settings and the Clip settings remained. I recalibrated at 1:20 but still have the same problem with lots of X,Y,Z output on Yaw and Pitch movements. In fact, when I pitch up I only get Z output! I tried to show the mappings from about 3:25 but the screen got clipped by OBS so ignore that part. You can see what's happening from the data output numbers on the main screen anyway.

Thanks Len62, I tried your config but after calibrating I still have similar problems with incorrect axis output. I can't get OBS to work at the moment, so couldn't make a video but will reboot and try again ASAP. I noticed that the settings from the custom tab are copied to the clip tab automatically (other than the -5 X settings which aren't available on the clip tab) so I'm not sure how OT decides which settings to use. Maybe it uses the settings from the last selected tab.

After getting fed up with using the 3DOF EDtracker, especially having to calibrate it every time I connect it, I bought HAV's excellent UTC https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=159647 My PS3 Eye picks it up no problem but I'm having issues with Opentrack generating X, Y, Z output when only yawing or pitching my head. I've done the calibration routine in OT as shown here but that hasn't helped. I've uploaded a video showing the problems. After centering, I yawed left and right, then pitched up and down, then rolled left and right. The camera is on top of my monitor, so a bit above my head but I imagine most people have it there and with pits with large screen TVs the camera would be even more above the pilot's head than mine is, so I wouldn't have thought that could be the problem. I've attached screenshots of my settings along with my OT config file in case it's easier to examine that. If anyone could assist me I'd be grateful. DCS (Pointtracker).ini.txt

No worries HAV, I'll ask around to see if anyone who's using Opentrack can assist me.

I haven't had much time to play with my UTC since I received but just had another go and I'm still struggling to get the right settings in OpenTrack. I'm getting loads of X, Y, Z output when only yawing or pitching my head. I don't know if the position of the camera, on top of my monitor so a bit above my head, is causing the problems but I imagine most people have it there. I've done the calibration routine in OT as shown here but that hasn't helped. I've uploaded a video showing the problems. After centering, I yawed left and right, then pitched up and down, then rolled left and right. I tried to show the settings at the end of the video but it seems OBS didn't record the popup windows, so I've attached screenshots showing my Camera and Model settings. EDIT: I've also attached my ini file for OT now as well (had to change the extension from .ini to .txt to upload it). ArmA3 (Pointtracker).txt

Thanks sydost. I actually managed to pick up another silver trigger very cheaply (it was packaged very badly, just wrapped in bubblewrap and paper and the USB plug was squashed but after I bent that back out it tested fine thankfully) so I'll probably just use the two silver triggers. I might put the grips from the silver trigger models onto the red trigger ones, as the latter have that annoying sticky rubber coating.

For anyone thinking of ordering one of these, I've received mine now and I'm very impressed with the build quality and how well my PS3 Eye picks up the LEDs, even without a visibile light filter (I've removed the internal IR filter), so I can heartily recommend it. I still need to work out the right settings to use in OpenTrack though. It might be complicated by the fact that my PS3 Eye is on top of my monitor, about 1ft above my ear and pointing down at it, so if anyone can advise what settings to use to make such a setup work well, or can just share their ini file, that'd be great.

Good point, a PC PSU could be a better option. The fan could be an issue, as whilst I buy expensive PSUs for my PCs that have very quiet fans, the cheaper PSUs often have quite noisy ones which I find annoying. If I'm only using it for DCS it wouldn't really be an issue as I'd have headphones on anyway but I wouldn't want a PSU with an intrusive fan running all the time to power other stuff. I do like the idea of using one PSU to power various stuff like my Raspberry Pi, small amp, etc. though and if it's an old or cheap PSU I'd be quite happy cutting the connectors off to take the output leads to a breakout board which could then go to whatever DC plugs are needed for the various equipment. I've got at least one old PSU I kept in case it came in useful. I did have a half-decent PSU on which the fan failed or got very noisy when it was out of warranty, so I replaced it with a quieter one only for the PSU to fail completely shortly after, which might have just been a coincidence but you do have to be very careful when replacing the fan to make sure it still cools as well as the original one. I wasn't particularly worried about that PSU not coming with a case as I'd be building various wooden boxes for the panels anyway, so I figured I'd just build one for the PSU but maybe it would need a shielded metal box or a plastic one.

Yeah, had the same problem with my UK Sidewinder X4 keyboard for years too. Only affects DCS and means we have to go through and map OEM102 everywhere that has \ mapped. I reported this ages ago in the hope ED could fix it but apparently not.

Just saw this on Amazon whilst I was looking for stuff to qualify for free delivery and wondered if it would be good for powering all the panels for a build like this? It can supply 3A on both the 12v and 5v rails and only costs £11.50 https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00HY3AA3S?psc=1

Indeed. Many thanks BodyOrgan

Received your PM now, thanks.

http://tacview.strasoftware.com/features/en/

I haven't received a PM, have you sent them yet?