Hempstead

Send me a msg... I still sell laser cut PTFE ring for this problem, as a community service. Still USD $8 apiece; haven't increased the price ever... even though my raw material price and mailing costs have gone up quite a bit. If you prefer to make it yourself... search for PTFE ring in this forum. There is a spec. for making it yourself.

Yep…. Or wear an “authentic” surplus G-suit with exactly 1g in something that flies at exactly 0 agl.

Pretty much.... except the CMS on the stick, which is an integrated all-in-one package. The trim is also slightly different, but still 4 mini-button. null

Why don't you just 3D print it? I know somebody did print the whole HUD unit in parts, and then glue them all together (crazy guy!). As a matter of fact, from your mockup... all you need to print is the part that sticks out. Take my 3D model, slice and dice just the parts you need and slices even more to fit in your 3D printer. nullYou will need a 3D printer these days for pit building anyway. Too much of a good thing to miss, even just for printing knobs.

My apology. The link didn’t seem to go through. hope we we get it through this time.

You can measure the front panel for it. But the answer is 10 degree.

Best not to do conversion to STL. Either use Solidworks files directly, or use other CAD file formats, like Fusion 360, etc. BTW, on the bottom of the HUD, there is a little horizontal “ledge” bump. That bump needs to sit completely out of surface of front panel, like in the attached picture.

Read this thread to get the mini-switch part # posted by Sokol, or buy the whole assembly from TM.

https://www.hempstick.org/The_Official_Hempstick_Site/F16_Tub.html Then, take the HUD model, https://www.hempstick.org/The_Official_Hempstick_Site/F16_HUD.html, and stick it in. Measure. Done.

No idea... but are you near sighted? If so, wear your prescription glasses, perhaps? You know, just going by your description.

Has anybody gotten this to run? All I got is the DCS splash screen. Any special Launch Options to put in or any specific version of Proton (I tried forcing it to use Proton-experimental, and the latest Proton-7.x.x)?

The left hand only Monkey On My Back Attachment, after checking the [VR] --> Only when the palm grip ... (or something like that), and turning off the tool tips, is actually quite good. I definitely will give up my slot for Point Ctrl. The need to check the box so it only activates switches when the palm grip is activated is because when the left touch controller is hanging next to the thumb, the virtual finger tips are perilously close to the landing gear switch in F16 when the throttle is advanced to the military power or further. This is particularly bad when doing aerial refueling where you constantly move the throttle forward/backward to adjust your position under the KC135. Well, I never like the finger tip activation thing anyway (hitting my finger tips hard on real world objects are quite painful.). Moreover, even without the attachment, I often accidentally hit some switches around RWR when trying to place the controller in front of my throttle/stick anyway. One additional tip to make this attachment is that you will need to have enough length of webbing for the controller to hang right next to your thumb comfortably. If you don't, you are going to have a lot of trouble trying to get it from your grip to the other side of your thumb. It will only cost you less than USD $17 in material, for two, (less if you 3D print the buckle). Give it a try.

The real implementation of the Monkey On The Back (of my hands) Oculus Touch Attachment implementation. It's made out of a piece of 3/4" Woven Webbing, and 3/4" plastic clip. Simple. Just two rows of simple bad sewing (two square and a cross sewing is probably what a profession product should have, but that might stiffen the part of the loop that I want flexible.), and a quick twist of stainless steel aviation safety wire to secure the sewn webbing end loop (uses an M2 screw for each loop forming when sewing) to the Touch Controller. That's it. Takes about 20 minutes to make it (I did say bad sewing... here also I am also admitting slow sewing). The make and usage needs a bit of a reminder. 1. You must have a bit of the webbing "hanging" length between the plastic clip and the loop end, otherwise you can't "swing" it clear your thumb and allow it to have the length to wrap around your thumb and hang there naturally by gravity. If you leave not enough length, it will twist and "strangle" your thumb, making it very uncomfortable. 2. You should "flick" the controller on/off by lifting your elbow up and hand down using the gravity to clear the handle part of the controller to clear your thumb. A bit of a coordinated "swing" of the elbow... otherwise, the handle part can get knocked around by your thumb and get tangled up. Don't use 1" webbing... thinking that the wider it is, the less it will get rotated. 1" is too wide for the space between your thumb and the root of the index finger, making it very uncomfortable. 3/4" is about the widest for my Large hand (measured for gloves). I hereby declare this design of mine in the public domain. Do whatever you wish with it. Attribution will be appreciated, but not required. Apology for the very unprofessional abrupt end of the video... I ain't no professional in this anyway. Edit: Note that you may or may not want to do the right hand attachment. Because, the movement of the right stick tend to trigger the Touch Controller bleeping/vibrating to signal you that it has just been activated. It's very distracting to me when I am doing aerial refueling, the right controller constantly nagged me for nothing. I mostly use the right hand controller for cold start and pretty much everything on the ground, but in the air, I tend to use left hand controller for pretty much everything. I did implement the right hand attachment as well for the sake of symmetry, but does not strap it on when flying, instead I place it in front of the stick as it was.

Ah... that problem. It's very annoyingly flexible, too flexible and over designed IMHO. Ok... here's the deal. KiCad has a very large document on parts/packages naming convention, officially called KiCAD Library Convention (KLC), here, https://klc.kicad.org/#:~:text=G1.,%2C a-z %2C 0-9 ). It's like it's designed by a very large committee to piss off everybody. It's called European Consensus, or a Camel (a horse designed by a committee). KiCAD differs from most other EDA software in that the parts in schematic do not specify (usually not, but could) the package/footprint. Ya, so they decoupled symbols and footprints. Yay... modularization! So, a resistor, is just an R, doesn't say if it's SMD or THT, nor the size. Unlike in Eagle, for example, you select an R-0603 in schematics. But KiCAD gives you the flexibility so that you could have one schematic with many different boards that allow you to use different packages in each component in each board for each of the possible combinatoric explosion that you would never ever need, theoretically. But in practice that rarely happened. And they implemented it with, by default, one schematics with one board anyway. Yes, sometimes it's nice to be able to say, oh... I can't source this part, so I can just replace the footprint with another part, and create a different board so when the first part came in stock I can just switch back to using the original board, particularly in these Pandemic days that a lot of chips are unavailable. But, you'd have to jump through some little hoops to get multiple boards out of one schematics. Not too bad, it's quite doable. Because of this, you'd be adding something like a generic SW_DPST. And then, you'd have to go to the footprint assignment tool to choose what footprint to use for it. Ah... and the confusion of the long names begin! I find this process very exhausting and error prone, not to mention those footprints all have very ridiculous long names, per the KLC. One little character read wrong and you end up with something very different from what you want. Don't believe me? Ok... find me the footprint of a common garden variety 1/8W through hole resistor, see the attached screenshot. And note the size of the scroll bar, as you are only seeing a small portion of the footprints in there. Thank goodness SMD resistor footprints names are much easier to decode. But fear not... the "committee" considered that... so you could just download some symbols that have their footprint specified. See... a camel can also do everything a horse can do, just not as well. And, with these "pre-ordained" symbols, you can still change the underlying footprints if you want! Best of the both worlds! Why didn't they just do that to begin with!!!??? *@&#^%@ It’s just that, if you do that, the symbol name and the footprint differ might cause some real confusion. So, what I find easier to do is to first download the Digikey library (GitHub) and install it. While you are at it, grab the Sparkfun library, and Adafruite library as well. It has a lot of common parts DigiKey sells, and foot prints are associated with the the symbols. This alleviate a lot of "that" problem. The next thing to do is every single part you have you will eventually need to nail down which exact part # to buy, so you could actually go to Digikey or Mouser and download their part symbols/footprints. Mouser uses Samacsys in the back, which requires you to download a Windows version of software called Library Loader and install it in order to search and download symbols and footprints. Technically, they have add-on/plugin so you can do the search/download from Samacsys in the EDA, like Eagle, but I have never been able to get it work right. Snapeda, UltraLibrarians (DigiKey uses this) are also two other good sources. Smacsys will even create symbols for you in a very timely manner if they don't have it and you request it on their website (my past experience is that I got the new symbols created the next working day, and no charge; YMMV). Short of that, you can always create your own symbols and footprints... it's an essential skill to learn anyway. It's not bad. KiCAD is actually quite alright in this. Moreover, with all those long and confusing names... for simple parts, it's often faster to just create the damned symbol and footprint than sifting through the large # of footprints that are very lacking in detailed description. Surely they have a pad for M2 screws! I ended up creating my own after a long frustrating search. Good luck!

That is not what the attachment scheme is supposed to solve. I am not using the Touch Controllers to replace my Warthog stick. I am using the Touch Controller as my hands to flip switches and dials, as designed by ED. Like I said, The attachment is only supposed to solve the problem of having to reach out to grab and fumble the Touch Controllers placed right next to my Warthog before I can use them to flip switches and dials, and for selecting comm options instead of pressing the F* keys. Moreover, this thread is about using a mouse ring as your hand to flip switches and dials in VR. What I was saying is… I don’t need a mouse ring to flip switches and dials. I use this attachment scheme to help me flip switches and dials with the Touch Controllers. Viper1970 is saying he uses two trackballs mounted in the pit to flip switches and dials. I considered trackballs as an option, but didn’t like the idea, because I will still need to reach out and fumble with my hands on the trackballs. I suppose with practice, one can minimized the fumbling and be proficient with trackballs. It’s really down to personal taste. There is no right or wrong answer here.

Here's another test. The difference between this one and the previous one is simply the way the lanyard is "routed." This one proves that a glove is not needed. A bit creative "routing" of the lanyard is sufficient. However, it also demonstrated that the lanyard needs to be longer and have two locking slides. Perhaps Velcro? Perhaps some more comfortable cloth tapes, ropes, whatever, and some finishing touches instead of just a twist tie. Edit: Actually, a lady’s bra strap would probably do well instead of the lanyard. But I think I can do better with some cotton woven twill tapes and 3D printed buckles.

Yes... I did replaced the whole trim, bought from TM -- the only source for it. So, either you buy the whole thing from TM, or you replace the mini-pushbuttons inside. My all optical replacement of my own design... is not for sale. But you don't really need to replace the whole thing unless the shaft or the case is broken. If it's just the switches/buttons... nullViper trim switch internally has the same design as throttle's MIC switch and other HAT switches -- 4 mini pushbuttons in each direction, see attached picture. The only difference is that it does not have the down push provision. So, its casing design is a one piece instead of 3 pieces. Please refer to this thread, where Sokol provided the exact part # for replacement of the mini-pushbutton. You will need to solder the wires though.

I highly recommend on learning KiCAD. I have been perfecting my CNC PCB milling techniques for years... I am able to produce consistent 10 mil tracks with 5 mils cutters (ok... 5 mils cutter are very expensive and very prone to break so I usually use 10 mil cutter if I could.). That's actually very difficult to achieve consistently. Any mistake, you pay the price of a solid carbide cutter. Lots of tricks to get it to work consistently... but I eventually gave up... not because I couldn't do it. The reason is mainly because of what OP alluded to... the via. My circuits are becoming increasingly complex (try design an RPi UPS circuit without via!). The need for via, a lot of them, is undeniable. I have some expensive copper via rivets, and anvils... very expensive, and they do work. But it's just too much work for other than a few via. Sure, you can use just a bare copper wire and solder instead of via... but the thing is that it's still very labor intensive. For a small one off board, or two, it's ok. More than that, it's a PITA! The same via trouble applies to chemically etched PCBs. I have been using Eagle for a long time, since the TM Cougar days, (I have several non-commercial licenses), and absolutely refused to go with the AutoDesk subscription model. I had also been playing with KiCAD since the 90's and completely dismissed it then. However, KiCAD has really grown up tremendously in the recent few years (V. 5+). It's now quite good for my purposes. So, I finally took the plunge and learned KiCAD, and am stopping any new development using EagleCAD. If you are in the US, I would highly recommend using OshPark PCB service. No fuzz, great services, and fast (ok, relatively fast). Let me tell you my bad experience with one of them Chinese board houses (this does not just apply to Chinese ones). I had been using OshPark for quite a bit... but I decided to give one of those Chinese board houses a try. So, I downloaded their ERC rules and ran through my circuit design. It's just a sensor board... not much really, there is no MCU or anything complicated on it. You know, a simple test case to run through the process, and all that. So, I submitted the order. And a day or two later. I got an email asking me to correct a violation of the board house rule, something about a trace too close to the annular ring. Fine, I corrected it. And a day later, I got another email about yet another violation.... I corrected it. Note that... OshPark had no trouble producing these perfectly. Whatever,.... this one violation/correction at a time thing went on for about a week and I finally had enough, and gave up and requested a refund. They politely apologized and promptly refunded, no bad feelings. But... Ok... I am not a professional EE engineer. I am mainly a software engineer, but a born tinkerer. I am quite sure there are a lot of good reasons why these board house rules exist. But, rigorous process is one thing... a process that is time consuming and border line bureaucratic is another thing. For goodness sake, just tell me all the violations and let me deal with them in one shot instead of one at a time. What is this? Chinese water torture? What I am saying is... those Chinese board houses, and other US board houses as well (even my Seattle suburb has 3 professional board houses, and I don't bother with them), they mainly cater to professionals who know WTH they are doing. People like us... are in the corner of who don't know WTH they are doing. And the professionals' volumes make it worthwhile to go through those professional board houses' rigorous rules. I am not saying OshPark is unprofessional. OshPark's business model is that they cater to small tinkers' like us. Collect orders and put them all on a whole board and send it to the professional board houses to be made. They are more tolerant to those little things that don't matter to us unprofessionals (or ignorant of them). And sometimes, I have some small violations that I know of, and deem irrelevant, OshPark would accept them and make them the way your design is... right or wrong, instead of rejecting your design and make a fuzz. Although I have never seen OshPark made PCBs came out unexpected, it could happen. Since OshPark caters to small "unprofessionals" like us, they make their process easier for us to get through than those professional board houses. What I am really saying is that if the Chinese board houses want to "invade" the business of the unprofessionals, they have a long way to go! My local professional board houses don't even try to get into that market. A warning about OshPark's service though. They are less rigorous in rejecting your design. So, you should make sure your design is really what you want. OshPark will make them exactly as your design file says. I had one design that was totally my fault... and I had to correct and reorder it. With EagleCAD, you can just drag the .brd file to OshPark order page and they will run a script in the back for generation etc... Can't do that with professional board houses! For KiCAD, OshPark does not accept the board file directly. You are supposed to export them as Gerber files and generate drill files, zip it up and drag it over to OshPark's order page. Easy peasy. Attached in the picture is two PCBs made by OshPark. On the right is a standalone 8-way optical PCB for stuff like MIC switch, and any HAT. It has a provision for pushbutton as well (same PCB, but have to manually cut a trace). All optical, including the pushbutton. The rest of the mechanism are all 3D printed, or made with simple tools commonly found in typical garages (and buy some special tools like a 4mm reamer). The transparent thing on the standalone PCB is a soldering jig. It's there to position the optical sensors accurately in position with positional tolerance around 0.1mm. This was originally designed in EAGLE 7.x. And I recently redid it in KiCAD 6. On the left... that shape should be familiar to you. It's for the F16 control stick, all optical (the upper left circuit is indeed for pushbutton for weapon release button, just populates one optical sensor instead of 4). It's also designed in KiCAD, using a replicating add-on so I don't have to re-layout the same traces (tricky enough for one) 3 more times. That, Eagle 7 cannot do (don't know about Eagle 9, and don't care). Just look at the circuits... 3 via holes per sensor. That's 48 via holes, plus 16 for Vcc and GND (sorry, this design require them to be via holes). That's total 64 via holes. And that's for just one PCB! I am not doing that by hand! And this is just a PCB for sensors, nothing complicated! With OshPark, minimal order is 3 PCBs. That F16 control stick head PCB costs about USD $19 for 3, plus free s/h if you select USPS. I opted for FedEx for about $8. They shipped it out about 8 days after I ordered it. OshPark is in Oregon. So, time your s/h time with that.

Replay is definitely bugged regarding carrier landing. I just recorded another track of carrier landing... replayed back immediately... touched nothing. The balked landing worked just fine... the last real landing, it did not veer off, however it does not catch the wire, and it started veering off. However, my F16 aerial refueling track files recorded and replayed just fine, new and old track files.

I quite like the way Oculus Touch Controller is implemented in DCS. It's not perfect, but it's useable. The laser pointer thing lets me not have to reach out to the virtual switch/button location and ram my finger tips into something hard IRL. Plus, the LeapMotion thing never worked on my machine (no video on Windows at all, never mind DCS). At a flick of my wrist, I can easily reach any button/switch in the cockpit. The only gripes I have are: 1. Every time I need to flip a switch or press a button, I have to reach out and grab the touch controller (it's right in front of the throttle/stick, right next to the TM logo) but still it's annoying having to fumble with the controller. 2. There is no HAT on the touch controller to bind to the dobber... Well, for #2, I configured the Left: Y as a modifier and then use the stick trim HAT + plus the Left: Y for dobber control; not ideal, but workable. But #1.... well in the redneck test in the video linked below, I simply drilled two holes in the touch controller's battery cover, uses a twist tie as hinge, and the factory lanyard as the anchor. This is just to test whether the whole idea is gaga... and where the attachment point is ideal. The final implementation will be sewn into the compression glove I wore in the video. I tried an USAF issued glove... don't like it... too thick for my taste. Up to you really. Edit: Flew an F16 aerial refueling with the redneck version. Worked great! The controller did slide on the lanyard... out of position. But a twist of the controller 360 degree, pivoting on the twist tie center worked great in preventing it from sliding on the lanyard. Of course, the final version sewn one would have this problem.

Are you saying you don't see this behavior in replay? Also, I should add that, while it's doing the veering right, I could see there is no input to the simulated control stick doing the severe right banking. And, the control stick would still show the small banking right/left, and the aircraft would bank right/left accordingly, just with that extra out of nowhere banking/turning right. I have not tried newly recorded track files... I should try record another track with this version and replay and see if it happens again to help ED narrow this down, instead of categorically blaming it on replay imprecision.

You may not need to replace it... yet. First, open it up and take the switch out. Carefully open it up, and make sure you take a picture of the wiring (color of wires, so in case you dislodge the wires, you know which goes to which in order to solder them back. The soldering and wiring is a bit fragile. Inside, there are four mini-pushbuttons sitting on each side, N-E-S-W, see the attached picture. You can buy some from SparkFun to replace them. Should be this one, https://www.sparkfun.com/products/97. But I can't guarantee it, as I can't find that bag of mine I bought. But the case dimension should be 7x7x3.5mm (excluding the button part. Note that you will need to modify the leads a bit and solder them in place. Or, if you are adventurous, you can open the mini-pushbuttons, and clean them up... reassemble, and you should be fine. I have done the cleaning with an air compressor and some electronic contact reviving solution like 3 times with my Warthog throttle MIC switch... (inside, they are all the same construction), before I had to buy spare part of the whole thing from Thrustmaster (something else broke). null

PTFE tape, if I recall correctly. You'd need some kind of one side bondable PTFE tape/sheet... Otherwise, nothing sticks to PTFE. Not epoxy, not superglue, pretty much nothing. You will have to find either one side bondable PTFE tape or find some other mechanical fastening method.

Well... I am seeing something like that too... I have like 6 track files for F18 carrier landings, all of them good landings. I have even replayed them for friends... no problem. But today, I replayed on of them... all good... until I turned final and the meatball overlay shows up... and it just veer right slowly, and keep turning right and descend, and eventually into the sea. Then I replayed all other 5... all the same... as soon as the meatball overlay showed up, they all do exactly the same to the right and into the sea. Imprecision can't be that imprecise! I am a programmer. I don't believe one bit this is imprecision or rounding error... I mean, common... going straight versus sharply veer right can't be explained with imprecision... no way! It's just too big a difference. Something about the replay changed and broke it! And all 6 track files???

Apology for necro'ing the thread. This is the closes thread I can find. 1. Just because it's close to RL is not a good reason for rejecting the problem. If it were, then, there is no justification for the carrier meatball overlay. RL doesn't use a Thrustmaster Warthog controller, nor does it use Q2 Touch Controllers. One simply cannot ignore the differences between RL and simulated situations and limitations. In other words, practicalities of simulator needs to be compensated. The meatball overlay is a good example that ED team does consider that. 2. In VR... particularly in Q2, it's almost impossible to see the indicator light. I myself could occasionally see the left U/D light, but have never ever seen the F/B light. 3. I am seeing a tanker bug I have not seen mentioned after some searches. That is, if I get too close to the belly of the KC135, sometimes it would tell me Return To Pre-Contact. And turn off the light, and will not contact with the boom anymore. What's worse... sometimes it doesn't say "Return to Pre-Contact", but turned off the light and will not contact anymore. Now, since it's so difficult to see the indicator light, I would have no way of knowing whether I need to "Abort refueling", and then "Ready for Pre-Contact" again. This bug is exacerbated by by the difficulty in seeing indicator lights in VR. I sincerely hope that ED will consider adding an indicator light overlay just like with the carrier meatball light.... and investigates/fixes the lights off, no contact, and no communication situation.