MoToad

Anyone have good setup for VKB HOTAS? Workin on mine but I haven't gotten very far. Do u split the throttles and use, say the outer for throttle, inner RPM? I've found the white six switch on my Mini works well for mixes. And the 'pinky' wheel on the throttle works well for boost as in supercharger. Haven't looked at WEP (water injection) yet but there are such an array of buttons available I am not concerned about that yet. Any thoughts? And, oh ya, lovin the VKB. The X56 was such a <profanity>show that the difference is night and day.

What he said.

A month later and I am truly glad that my x56 nightmare is over. I mean having the STECS thumb rotary as zoom work flawlessly with no jitters is worth it alone. Combined with the Tobii Eyetracker 5 is making DCS an enjoyment all over again. But I still have the one small bug that a lot of peeps have referred to and am still in search of answers. That's the mini stick on STECS as slew. Just haven't been able to slow it down enough yet. It can be a royal pain with my old jittery hands. I have adjusted the curve in settings several times but still haven't got it right. I just need to see it basically almost stop moving and I can work from there. The three main position switches on the Glad stick are mapped for DMS, TMS and CMS and I hope to keep them that way. But if the answer is to use the slew on the stick them I'll give it a try and move things around. Hope someone has some solid answers. And I have gone thru the VKB software and the axises (axees?) are working fine in there but I couldn't find the settings to play with them. And if I did would that countermand the way they are set up in DCS?

Well I guess that was all for nothing. Went back into the software and hit the default reset button, recalibrated and guess what? There it is. And It is a 4 way switch with push button. Going back into DCS now and I'm sure it will be there. It did come with a proper China hat switch you can swap out. Thinkin that would turn it into an axis.

After finally getting totally fed up with the X56 I decided to move on. The jitters, the ghosting there just wasn't any permanent fix. When After Googling and finding a massive legion of complainers I started to look at alternatives. Finally settled on The VKB Hotas combo for obvious reasons. In my price range, it will do all I need and upgrades, parts, etc., are limitless. Received yesterday, plugged it in and was happy to find all the basic problems were gone. I only fly DCS and IL2 and couldn't be happier. I am, however, looking at one switch problem. On the Mini+ throttle the main hat (top one for your thumb, says OTS beside it) does not work. Under the VKB device configuration software under 'test' it only shows the push button as working. Nothing for left, right, up or down. Going into the Button Wizard it does show those positions as not assigned. I really don't know what to do from here and am hoping someone can help. I was directed to the discord site but that's a bit of a Zoo for me and am hoping to avoid it. I am REALLY hoping it is not a faulty switch or wiring!

Had the Hotas for several months now. Love the hefty feel of it, hate the bad layout for 50% of the switches. First had stutter and ghost problems plugged into multi USB ports. Plugged directly into PC and got rid of it. But it caused loss of sleep mode. All Power management suggestions have failed as the allow check box is already checked under all the USBs. The 2 X56 USB devices do not have a power management box. So bought a powered USB multi port box and got the ghosts back and still no sleep mode. So, back to the PC plug in and changing the power button to use as sleep mode. One thing I found this morning that I guess I spaced on (because if it ain't broke, don't fix it) was bios update. PC is now about a year old and there was a lot of BIOS numbers between my version and the updates. (Asrock Z790 PC) So did the update and no change. So I can live with all the annoyances of the setup for now but gotta say I am close to packing it in. Looking at both the VKB and Winwing but will probably go with the VKB because of the twist option which I still use. Plus the Winwing, well WOW! Their website is horrible. Actually went thru the shopping cart process to get a final price and had what seemed to be unfixable problems with them not accepting my address. Think I finally got past the only to be told only the throttle was available. Just too sketchy. VKB it will be and hopefully I can lie to the prospective new owner of the X56 to get a couple of hundred bucks for it.

Seems like all the many problems I have had with my new X56 are the software. After uninstalling it I seem to be able to map pretty well everything in DCS. I am happy without it.

Allright. Quick follow up. Went back into the software and found the three position switch was unrecognized there. So I uninstalled it went back to DCS and was able to make the modifiers. Damn! I'm too old for this.

Also I was told Mi M2 and S1 are buttons 34, 35 and 36 respectively. These do show up in the manual input and was able to map those modifiers. But they didn't do anything. But there were also 34, 35, and 36 off settings. Leading me to think that these settings are for on/off switches. Does anyone know where I can actually see the corresponding X56 button layout for DCS?

Not working for me. X56 is 2 weeks old and was on the verge of sending it back because it would not install drivers. That was with the Logi software. Finally found the old Saitek software, actually I think it was X55 (blue symbol, not black and it installed the drivers. Even tried installing the Logi again(black symbol) but it still didn't work. So now I can use it (partially) in DCS, IL2, and Warthunder but still having troubles, mostly in DCS with several buttons. Like the lower axis wheel on the throttle. I get nothing. Button only. Saw a vid last night on making mod buttons with the mode switch. Just tried it and it doesn't work for me. Saw Jarrod's vid on using the software to set up the switches but I would rather leave the software alone. But now that the drivers show up in Device manager maybe I should uninstall the software and try again. I dunno.

Got it figured. All in all, the best way to insure accuracy is to find that hole in the clouds.

Not familiar with the LOS term. L for Laze? And for the easy missions I believe all steerpoints are spi. The bridge should be spi when I use that steerpoint. When I am able to see it it is.

Thanks for replying. I was thinking no one would. This is, of course, just my stubbornness in wanting to complete the first easy missions after training. I was able to take out the bridge with a 38 but am still having trouble repeating that with making the target spi (not locking on to the bridge for some reason. How do you clear the spi for a retry? Going under these low clouds for that would mean using up valued ordinance to take out the AAA. I can drop down below for the tanks and hit the AA and can direct the wingman to help but he likes to use more than one missle at a time.

Just getting back into DCS and retraining in the Hog 2. Question is; how do you play the missions with the cloud cover. If you are Lazing targets do you hover and wait for cloud openings? Seems it could take quite a while. The first 'easy' mission starts just after sunrise. Will the clouds dissipate after a while? Don't know if I have the time or patience to fly for hours.

Many years ago I owned DCS Blackshark. Is there any way of getting it back without paying again?