ronht

Thanks for the comments guys, I'm still learning what's possible with the mission editor. Glad everyone has been enjoying the mission. ron

I think it's great - thank you for your efforts. ron

Yes that would be me - :thumbup: That was a long time ago, I'm surprised anyone remembers. :D ron

Here is a mission I've been working on the last few days. Be advised that the mission opens with an opening scene of a recon flight and then you are placed in the cockpit on the runway ready to go in about a min. The briefing for the mission is below. Enjoy........ ron ----------------------------------------- Our limited forces have recently taken over the airbase west of the city and are awaiting the main force and supplies to arrive. Opposing forces east of the city have set up a road block east of the river on the main highway. It has been relativly quiet until this morning when a local Recon flight was surprised and shot down by a mobile SAM installation that must have arrived in the area of the road block late last night and the airport has been under rocket attack. Our aircraft availability at this time is low. 2 Mig 29's are awaiting parts from an inbound transport that is scheduled to arrive soon, however, the inbound transport has gone NORDO (no radios) and is unaware of the SAM threat. The remaining 2 Mig 23's are operational, however, aircover will be unavailable until the SAM threat is eliminated. Launch with your wingman and follow the flight plan route in an effort to surprise the SAM site from the hills to the north. Destroy the SAM site and provide support for two tank groups heading to the area to hold the bridge. Be advised that we have a rescue helicopter enroute to search for the crew that was shot down this morning. You should also be advised that we have received unconfirmed reports of a FARP that has been established to the east which could provide close air support. Once the SAM site is down we will launch air cover as it becomes available. Good Luck! Road Block.miz

Is there a way to increase the time for the joystick to return to center when trimming?

The issue all along has been about the fact that once the trim button is released, if the joystick isn't centered, input is immediately transfered to the simulation resulting in a pitch, bank or yaw change. Ideally, if you don't have a force feedback stick, you need to - Press the Trim button, (to hold the correction that was being manually input) re-center the joystick, then release the trim button. That way no additional input from the joystick takes place after the trim button is released. Ron

OK - I don't disagree with any of this in the real aircraft, however, realize also that the level of stabilization on the real aircraft most probably has different levels of stabilization based on the speed or whatever which is typical for these types of systems. The KA-50 has an aircraft style tail rudder rather than a tail rotor - so as speed increases the level of effectiveness of the rudder would increase and reduce the need for autopilot yaw stability augmentation and the opposite would be true for slow flight. Now, that being said, that is most probably where this simulation and the real aircraft diverge, because I'm not sure that level of detail has been implemented in the game. (No rant intended here so don't take this as my being unhappy in any way) Now back to the game - I keep the autopilot pitch and bank modes engaged at all times and use the heading mode as needed (mostly for cruise and hovering) Using the autopilot in this way gives me the best feel, control and precision results in the game. Hope this helps explain my earlier post. Ron

My recommendation would be If you don't have them already is a good HOTAS (joystick and throttle) with rudder pedals and TrackIR. They are a must to get the most out of this sim, and in my opinion, will give you more enjoyment than the prettiest possible graphics. After that spend the rest of your budget on the computer. ron

Here is what I've been able to figure out so far. The autopilot has various levels of automation which consist of: 4 stabilization modes - Pitch Bank Heading Altitude In addition to that the autopilot has 4 engagement modes - Desired Heading/Altitude Enroute waypoint following Auto Hover Auto target/shkval tracking When you look at the autopilot panel on the right you will notice the blue buttons for each stabilization mode plus two toggle switches - The toggle on the left is for baro or radio altimeter reference which is used for the auto-hover mode and the toggle switch on the right is for the autopilot navigation, route or manual heading modes. The autopilot can be engaged in various stages of automation and stabilization. First I leave the toggle on the left in the back position which is the radio altimeter reference for auto-hover. With most flying being done at low altitude in Black Shark, I believe that is the best reference to use for low altitude auto-hovering. Pitch stabilization and bank stabilization should always be on when maneuvering, and heading stabilization should be used when in route or prior to engaging auto-hover. Remember if your nose is not pointed in the direction you want once you enter the hover, you can turn off the Heading stabilization button and slew the nose around to where you want it and re-engage Heading stabilization. If you don't do this, the nose of the helicopter will try and return to the heading where it was when you first engaged it. The right toggle switch is the Nav mode. With this switch in the forward position, the auto pilot will track directly to the navigation, airport, or target waypoint that you have selected by the PVI (INS) panel, which is forward of the autopilot and data link panels. The buttons on the left side of the PVI (INS) panel determine which type of waypoints, airports, or targets you have selected. As an example, the top left button on the PVI (INS) panel is the Nav button so if you press that along with button 3 the autopilot would track directly to waypoint 3 and bypass waypoint 1 and 2. As near as I can tell, there is no auto-switching to the next waypoint in this mode. If you put the right toggle switch in the far back position, and you have selected a Nav waypoint on the INS panel, the autopilot will track the blue flight plan route that was loaded in the ABRIS and automatically switch waypoints on the PVI (INS) panel as you fly along. Both of these modes are annunciated in green on the overhead annunciator panel when engaged with an additional "Next Waypoint" notification annunciation just prior to reaching a waypoint. If you put the right toggle switch in the center position and engage the auto pilot it will simply hold the heading that you were on when it was engaged. Additionally it will also hold your current altitude if the blue Altitude Hold button is pressed. Finally, the target tracking/shkval mode is engaged with the auto-tracking button at the top left of the weapon mode panel located on the left side of the cockpit. Having a good understanding of how to use the auto pilot in Black Shark is very important to getting the most enjoyment out of this simulation. For example with a conventional tail, rather than a tail rotor, having heading stabilization engaged when at high speed or when maneuvering is not required and actually hinders your precise control of the KA-50 as compared to when you are flying at very low speeds at near a hover. The last thing you want to do is be fighting the autopilot when you need to be fighting opposing forces in the simulation. Hope this helps. Ron

Yes it will work fine. You will need a USE DirectX statement and a USE Hat as POV statement along with the axis statement. As was mentioned before just be sure no other functions are assigned to those buttons in the game. I can post an example in a few days if necessary, I will also post my Foxy profile later, I've been working on it for several days now and have it just about where I want it. Ron

OK - slight modification for those of you with rudder pedals. This Foxy statement below will affect the rudder axis as well as the joystick axis. Works best if you do all trimming when level and without using the "Trimmer" function in the simulation. Also remember RTCTL Enter will bring up the axis window at any time if you need to see what's going on. IMPORTANT - I recommend re-centering the Cougar axis between missions for best results. The reset is on the /I (S3 button) Enjoy - Ron Cut and paste into your Foxy profile for Black Shark. Note, this utilizes the S4 button on the joystick. You may use any button you like. BTN S4 /ITRIM(JOYSTICK, 0)TRIM(RDDR, 0) /O/PLOCK(JOYSTICK, LASTVALUE)LOCK(RDDR, LASTVALUE)TRIM(JOYSTICK, TO_CURRENT)TRIM(RDDR, TO_CURRENT) /RUNLOCK(JOYSTICK)UNLOCK(RDDR)

LOL - As the saying goes - "You just have to know when to LET GO!" :D

Yes this is correct, with joystick input and pressing the button this is assigned to until the joystick is centered again will result in no change in flight control input in the simulation until the button is released. It's basically just setting a new center for the joystick axis. Ron

Actually I have been experimenting with both and they do work together, just beware that when you "clear Trim" in the simulation, you won't have a real good idea of where the axis are going so it could be a bit of a wild ride snapping everything back to center. I'm still experimenting with this and plan to add the rudder axis statement as well. I'll let you know how that works and post the results here. Ron

Ok - there has been some discussion about the trim system used on the KA-50 in the simulation which takes a bit of getting used to. The reason is in the actual KA 50 the pilot is able to trim the cyclic to any position and leave the stick in that position. In the simulation, the "Trimmer" simulates this as best it can, however, some porpoising of the heli's attitude results because your joystick wants to naturally re-center. Now having said all that, if you have a Cougar joystick and you really want to see how the KA-50 should fly, there is a way to simulate the real KA 50 cyclic in Black Shark to respond very realisticly with the Cougar Foxy software. Simply enter this statement in your profile: BTN S4/I TRIM (JOYSTICK, 0) /O/PLOCK(JOYSTICK, LASTVALUE)TRIM(JOYSTICK, TO_CURRENT) /RUNLOCK(JOYSTICK) What it does is allow the Cougar axis to be reset to it's last axis value when you hold the S4 button and recenter the cyclic. This allows you to re-center the Cougar joystick without changing the aircrafts attitude or get the porpoising that you see using just the Trimmer. I can't say enough good things about what I've discovered with this simulation. I is MORE than worth the wait! Ron

Mine were located in: C:\Program Files\1C\Eagle Dynamics\Ka-50\Missions and can be easily deleted from there

Basically you create all the units you want in the mission. Those units that you don't want to show up at mission start need to have a "Hold Time" entered under their group or units mission start time. The hold time can be when you want that unit to appear in the mission or set for several minutes or hours later so they never show up unless a trigger is met. Now if you set a trigger zone with a rule that once your trigger zone parameters have been met, the units on hold will be activated into the mission before their "Hold Time" has expired. There are many ways this can be accomplished through the Trigger Zone Rules, it can be simply flying through an area, ground forces reaching an area or destroying all or part of a target or all of those things. The possibilities are varied and endless depending on what the mission designer is attempting to do. As great as Black Shark is to fly, this improved Mission Editor adds far more to this simulation than I had ever expected. My hats off to all the hard work that has gone into this simulation, it has definitely been worth the wait. :thumbup:

OK finally figured it out - WOW this mission editor is AMAZING when you see what you can do with it. I love the triggers, it's surprising just how many different ways a single mission can play depending on what happens when.

Fisrt of all, let me say that this is one incredible simulation and one that will be a MUST HAVE for everyone the least bit interested in these types of simulations. I've spent the afternoon playing with the Mission Editor which is MUCH improved over LockOn. While I know not to expect any product support until it's officially released here, I was wondering if anyone has figured out some of the Trigger Zone rules yet. I set up a Trigger Zone with the following rule: Once Unit in Zone (name of unit) (name of zone) Activate Group (name of group) The results I'm looking for would be when I fly through the Trigger Zone, 2 opposing migs launch off of an airfield on a CAS mission over the area I'll be in, however, the migs always start when the mission starts before I'm anywhere near the Trigger Zone. Just wondering if anyone else has been messing around with this yet. Thanks r

Need some help please. When I go to the PayPal to WMZ site to transfer money all I get is an error message stating - "There is an error in your WMZ" Any ideas what I'm doing wrong? Thanks for your help guys. Ron