BluFinBima

Hi Phil, if you're running everything on the same machine, you don't need Iris at all, however the configuration file (iris.xml) contains co-ordinates for where the different viewports will be placed on a 1920x1080 screen. Cheers, Neil

Hi Gruman, I am in the UK. I'll PM you when I get a chance to dig out the boards and work out the postage. 3D printing is pretty messy for me too, but I don't really have any viable alternatives. This was my first filament move from PLA to PET-G and I had less warping and shrinkage as a result however the finish is still scrappy. If you have a Fusion 360 ID, I'm happy to give you access to the models. Cheers, Neil

Hi Gruman, I'll check the step files, I might have made a mistake while saving. I do have a few spare PCBs (there are two that are needed for the UFC) . If you're serious about trying this, then I am happy to donate the boards if postage & packing is paid. Cheers, Neil

Hi Gruman, The frame is actually in three parts, a thin facia, and a top and a bottom.

I’m not sure whether this will be of any interest, but under the heading of sharing alternative techniques, I thought I’d start a thread and see if any discussion results. This is a short story of my project to have a wireless (apart from power) UFC for the Hornet. I would love to have a full Simpit for every aircraft – who wouldn’t – but space / time / money all conspire against this. I personally feel that there is more immersion from the sensation of real switches, knobs etc, but compromises are part of life. I presume that if you're in this area of the forum that you probably agree with me. I wanted a mix of a virtual cockpit and some real devices so I wrote a native F/A-18C interface for Helios, and I started a project to create a hardware Up Front Controller. This is what I am presenting here. While the 3D printed UFC enclosure is very rough, hopefully you’ll get the idea of what I am doing. The UFC just has power going to it, and it has the potential to drive future parts of the cockpit via i2c (I am aware of the limitations and potential problems with the approach of using i2c, but it seems reliable in my set up). The UFC is controlled by an ESP32 board to get me the direct pins and interrupts that I needed for the encoders. Because there is only a single power connecter to the UFC, it means that it can be removed from the set up extremely quickly. Likewise, the Thrustmaster Cougar MFDs are also very easy to remove as they simply hang from the top of the screen, primarily to allow hiding of the USB cables. I rotated the rocker switches and 3D printed the hangers so the MFDs sit over the top corners of the 23 inch Dell touch screen. The UFC itself is pretty simple using DLG2416 displays (I like the dots). Unfortunately these do not have any programmable characters, but the result is OK IMHO. I would have preferred 16 and 7 segment displays, but I could not find suitable devices. The Comm Channel displays are 16 segment LED displays driven by the same Holtek HT16K33 that reads the keys and switches. Other things I would change if I ever revised the UFC design would be to replace the 2 x volumes and the brightness knob with potentiometers and put an i2c ADC onto the board – but I am happy enough with the encoders in the current design that I’m not planning to do this. I’m going to put a third Cougar MFD in for the AMPCD, but I’m still considering how I can do this while keeping the mounting discrete. The History of this Project I started out many years ago with the A-10C and Loz’s profile for Helios which was a a great place to start. After a while, I built a real caution panel based on the Holtek HT16K33 which was driven by an Arduino Pro Micro which communicated via a serial connection to a c# program which talked to DCS. Over time, the A-10C parts grew a bit and I had CMSC, CMSP, UFC, NMSP and a few other panels. The EOS project was a little too complex for my needs, and while DCS-BIOS is a fantastic option, for a number of reasons, I have chosen to stick with my own technology. Fast forward a few years, and the Pro Micro and c# program were replaced by an ESP8266 with more memory so that it had the capacity to do all of the parsing needed and the wifi communication allowed direct connection to the DCS exports.lua. When the Hornet came out, I decided that I again wanted to have a hybrid Helios cockpit, but I have always taken the view that offloading as much work from my DCS PC so that it can concentrate resources on DCS, was a good thing. Since I always have access to under-utilised PCs, I wanted the virtual cockpit to be on a remote machine like I had with the A-10C. Unfortunately this ruled out Capt Zeen’s Hornet profile because it uses keyboard commands which appear on the wrong PC, and the use of the A-10C Helios interface requires a lot of processing in the exports.lua on the DCS machine. Most of this project is already available on GitHub at /BlueFinBima/DCS-FA18C-UFC although this is not necessarily the best place for some of the files. I’m happy to make 3D parts visible on Fusion 360 on request. Schematics etc are Eagle format. I apologise for the long post, and I hope that some of you found some interest in this.

Hi Phil, In the repo for the AV-8B profile, there is a monitor config called AV-8B Config.lua. It is designed for my DCS PC so the viewports are crammed together to save space, but in IRIS\Iriris.xml the ScreenPositionX & ScreenPositionY coordinates for the viewports might help you with the positioning on your second monitor. Hope this helps. Neil

Hi Sobe, I'm not sure I have enough information to help. 1) What aircraft are we talking about? If you're using a Capt Zeen profile, you will need to use his exports regardless of whether you're using the viewports. Viewports are not part of Helios at all, Helios knows nothing about them, but obviously they can be used very effectively to enhance a Helios profile. If you are using an aircraft which has an interface in Helios, then you should use the exports from that interface. The exception is possibly the A-10C which is supported equally by the Helios interface and most combined exports.lua from other sources. The Helios exports.lua is possibly the smallest and best performing because it only has code for the A-10C. 2) I am happy to let others comment here as this is not a Helios question as far as I can tell. Helios performance should not be affected by the resolution of DCS or the number of screens being used by the game.

Hi ShadowVonChadwick, If you hit the same problem that I reproduced, it is caused by Control Center trying to tell you that you need to enable the Aero Desktop. If you turn on the Aero Desktop, then I suspect that the problem will disappear. If this works for you, then I'll wait for the next release of Helios before delivering the fix. Cheers, Neil

Hi Roger01, Where did you delete that line? HeliosExport.lua is not part of Helios, and I'm pretty sure that Capt Zeen's Hornet profile does a lot of processing in LUA to make it work with the Helios A-10C interface. If you're only using a few functions in the profile, you could always rebind against the Helios FA-18C interface. Cheers, Neil

Hi, new .net did not sort this. You can track https://github.com/BlueFinBima/Helios/issues/121 if you like. It should not be a big deal to fix once I get a chance to look into it.

I dug out a Windows 7 machine and I'm seeing a CLR20R3 Sig 9 is System.Windows.Markup.XamlParse. Unfortunately I do not have the ability to debug on that machine. My initial suggestion is to install latest .net framework from Microsoft and see if that changes the symptoms. Please let me know how you get on.

Hi Tiengo, Take a look at . Maybe it will make more sense after spending 3mins 14 secs watching the video.

Anyone got any thoughts on whether making the alphabetic characters case agnostic would be problematic - ie changing any capital letters to lower case? I am conscious that what might seem sensible for latin, might back-fire in non-latin characters.

New level of Helios Forgot to mention, anyone wanting to use the profile is advised to use the latest version of Helios 1.4.2019.0317 (or above) from https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3302014/. Be warned that I have changed the version numbering so the windows installer will report that there is a newer version already installed so you'll have to uninstall manually via "Add / Remove Programs". I apologies for this annoyance, but once you;re on the new numbering scheme, it will be easier for future installs, and for you to be notified that there is a new version of Helios available.

AV-8B All, apologies for this still not being available, but I have had no time to package and test. Some intrepid Harrier pilots spotted that I'd made it available in September on github https://github.com/BlueFinBima/DCS-AV-8B-NA-Profile and I have not had any reports of serious (or any for that matter) problems. For now, until I find time to get the Harrier back into the air and do the testing and write some installation documentation that is needed before packaging in a more consumable fashion, github should be your destination if you have the experience to work out how to get the viewports etc to work. Cheers, Neil

Hi ShadowVonChadwick, Short answer is no. CLR20r3 is a very generic error saying that it crashed. Try running helios as follows: from a windows command prompt, type: cd %programfiles% cd "Gadrocs Workshop\Helios" "Control Center.exe" -l debug Then see if there are any errors documented in %userprofile%\documents\helios\ControlCenter.log

Hi Sobe, This describes these items With a full (well almost) featured IFEI and UFC, there is no need to do the expensive exporting of the IFEI and UFC images.

Hi CBoB, The team is VERY small in size, we have day jobs, and we'd like to fly the fine aircraft in DCS. Unfortunately, this means that what we're able to accomplish is limited. We have delivered a generic interface which should help Capt Zeen (and possibly others) with creating profiles without bespoke aircraft interfaces but using it requires a lot of skill. 1.4.2019.0317 (https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3302014/) has shipped a complete IFEI and UFC for the Hornet which is demoed here but I think that what we will be able to deliver, at least from the BluFinBima fork, will be determined by the other commitments which the team members have. I cannot foresee a situation where there is an interface for every aircraft in the DCS world. At least 75% of the team has bought the Tomcat - read into that what you will - but whether there is any interface and gauge support in Helios is still being investigated. Cheers, Neil

Some of Capt Zeen's profiles partially communicate back to DCS via the keyboard interface.

Hi Sobe. You are correct. If you read the welcome text in the installer, it explains that because we've changed the format of the installer, (hopefully) for this time only, you will have to go to Add/Remove programs and perform an uninstall. Cheers, Neil

About Helios Exports.lua Having read through some of the posts here, I thought that I would make a general comment on the subject of Exports.lua. Firstly, it has to be said that this whole area is a bit of a mess, and it does not look likely that this will change (possibly ever). The problem is that Exports.lua is really the only way to get data into and out of DCS so lots of people try to use it. This is possible, however the world as it currently exists, is a free for all, and there is no architected way for multiple exports.lua to play nicely with each other. This is not a criticism of anyone's approach, just a statement of reality as I see it. Helios is no better than anyone else in this regard. It's interface design presumed that it could be king of the exports.lua heap, and this causes certain problems. The good CaptZeen had to work around limitations in the Helios code and he did this in part by pushing lots of extra code into the Exports.lua and also pushing code into the profile itself. His profiles are fantastic given all of the many limitations that he had to find solutions for. Sometimes Exports.lua creators created large exports to cope with many different aircraft, and again, there are some awesome results out there. Meanwhile, Helios remained solidly in the camp of 1 exports.lua for each Helios interface, and if you have two profiles which use different interfaces, then the Helios way of doing it is to change the whole exports.lua. This situation desperately needs to improve, however any change in this area *will* certainly break things that are currently working. I have a preferred solution, but this only works for me because I have relatively simple needs. When you throw into the mix that (as an example) two different implementations of a Hornet profile can have subtly different command codes and values, then the complications increase still further. So all this is a long way of saying that I understand a lot of the reasons why people have so many problems with the exports.lua, but this area is unlikely to improve significantly in the near future. For the time being, if you want to use a Helios interface, then the best starting point is to deploy the Exports.lua for that interface from within Profile Explorer. and then if a particular profile has extra needs from the exports.lua, read the instructions for that profile and change the exports.lua as directed.

Helios 1.4.2019.0317 is now up on https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3302014/ . It contains few external changes but there are internal changes that have allowed things like the Hornet IFEI and UFC to become available.

Hi Roger01, not that I am aware of (exporting directly to a remote computer). The way to achieve what you want to do is covered in and links to the required software are in the comments section of the video.

Hi @AndrewW, You've probably found the answer already, but for the Time/Set/Mode top fuel line is txt_T. Just wanted to let you know that I went with an approximation for the nozzle position based on fuel flow. It is not perfect, but is more or less in the ball park once a severe curve is placed onto the FF value. Cheers, Neil

Hallo Chriscache, Ich habe das gerade entdeckt und da meine Deutschkenntnisse null sind, fällt es mir schwer zu helfen. Ich freue mich, dass Sie das Problem behoben haben, aber ich muss gestehen, dass Sie nicht verstanden haben, warum das Windows-Update das Problem verursacht hat, es sei denn, es wurde die Firewall geändert. Die Fehlerbehebung in Helios ist nicht immer einfach - das ist mir sehr bewusst - und wir werden versuchen, sie im Laufe der Zeit zu verbessern. Die Netzwerkaufrufe scheinen relativ gut in "try / catch" -Blöcken eingeschlossen zu sein, daher kann "Control Center.log" hilfreichere Fehlermeldungen anzeigen, wenn in Zukunft ein ähnliches Problem auftritt. Prost, Neil