GregP

You might want to consider just having your touchscreen monitor act directly as your cockpit without using Helios. That way you're not looking at two instrument panels. If you place your touchscreen below your main monitor, you could create a render area of say 1920x2160, and then in your main default cockpit view you'd have the HUD and canopy frame on the upper monitor and the instrument panel on the bottom monitor. Check out showing this working with a 4-screen T-shaped setup. It's SO much more intuitive and flexible than something like Helios.

Have you tried using the 'nosync' and FPS limiter options on the side monitors in your SoftTH config file? Both of these are intended to help lag. You might also try lowering the effective resolution being rendered on the side monitors, again through SoftTH.

Bolt-1, how many DCS modules have you bought and have loaded into DCS World? c0ff (ED dev) on previous page suggested long load times are related to module loading. This makes sense to me because I too have ridiculously long load times despite the fact that I have DCS on a SSD; but I have FC3, CA, A-10C, P-51D and BS2.

So last night I tried every suggestion that I've come across, and none of them affected my problem. I tried: - choosing a Windows 7 Basic theme - choosing a Windows 7 Aero theme - right-clicking on DCS.exe and under the Compatibility tab, checking and unchecking 'disable desktop composition' - checking and unchecking 'disable aero interface' in DCS - unchecking 'allow themes to change mouse pointer' in my mouse's properties menu - setting SoftTH's keepComposition to both 0 and 1 And nothing helped. The absolute only way that I've found to avoid this problem is to run in windowed mode. But this has its own drawbacks: - Crossfire gets disabled (admittedly a non-issue in DCS since it doesn't utilize it) - My cockpit doesn't scale correctly ... sorta complicated but, since my upper monitors have a different physical pixel size compared to my lower monitor (because the uppers are 27" and the bottom 22"), displaying the same resolution on each monitor (say 1920x1080) means the images won't match up at the boundary between the two monitors, since one is bigger than the other. To overcome this, I have to 'squeeze' the upper image such that it 'fakes' the same pixel size as my 22"; I do this by running a resolution of 6400x2160, even though my upper monitors' combined resolution is really only 5940 horizontally. But if I set my resolution to 6400 and run fullscreen, that entire 6400 horizontal res gets compressed and displayed on the smaller 5940 pixels' worth of screen space on the top monitors, and this scale then nearly matches that of the lower monitor. Problem is, when I run windowed mode, that 6400 doesn't get compressed into 5940 and so the left and right edges of the render window are not displayed, meaning not only do no FPS meters or other OSDs show up, but also that the upper and lower monitors are no longer scale-matched. Admittedly, this is a very specific problem, but still -- the bottom line is that I don't want to run in windowed mode and thus there is no way I can avoid this unable-to-click-exit-menu bug.

As far as I know, there is no way to force DCS to start a mission with an FOV more appropriate to Eyefinity/Nvidia Surround setups, i.e. something like 110 degrees, without then losing the ability to zoom in further than that later. In other words, let's say the view.lua has the following angles: CameraViewAngleLimits[P_51D] = {85.0, 155.0} And you change it to {110.0, 155.0}. Although your initial view upon entering the cockpit will be better because it's not so zoomed in, now you're never going to be able to zoom in further. My solution to this problem has been to just give up trying to force a default FOV; when the mission starts, I just zoom way out to what I want. As for your TrackIR problem, what DCS module are you testing this with? If it's FC3 and you're trying an aircraft other than the F-15C, there is no 6DOF ability in these cockpits and therefore TrackIR will not move your virtual head forward and backward the way you expect it to.

Sarge55, do you have keepComposition=1 in your config file? kobac, thanks for the suggestion, will give that a try. Any of you other guys use SoftTH also?

If you want to get a little creative, you could cut out the Helios middleman and use a touchscreen monitor to render the entire cockpit directly. I run a T-shaped 4-monitor setup where the lower center monitor is a touchscreen, and as you can see in I made, it provides a really intuitive way of interacting with the cockpit. You could just as easily use only 2 monitors, one for the upper HUD view and the bottom touchscreen for the cockpit.

My god ... I wish I had thought of that. I had resorted to taking individual screenshots of each pageful of commands and was referring to those when setting up my HOTAS, and man it was a major PITA!

Agreed, just having a list of exactly which files have changed would be incredibly useful to those who run mods.

UPDATE: I believe I have found the solution as detailed here. All credit goes to Terrorvogel for the solution. This has got to be the single most annoying problem I've ever had with DCS. In Wags' October 8 update about 1.2.1, he states that the cursor issue was now fixed; I'm not sure if he was talking specifically about the same issue I'm having, but for sure, it isn't fixed for me: When I go to exit a mission, probably a third of the time I cannot click on any of the options. For 'normal' users, the fix to this problem is to Alt-Tab out, Alt-Tab back in, and the menu is usually clickable. This doesn't work for me because I'm using SoftTH, and you generally cannot Alt-Tab out from a game running SoftTH. For SoftTH users, the fix to this problem then became to set keepComposition=1 in your config.SoftTHconfig file, and to make sure 'Disable Aero' was unchecked within DCS. I have both of these settings, but they only seem to fix the problem some of the time. Try as I might, I have yet to figure out the pattern of when it doesn't work. It's an absolutely maddening problem because, since I can't Alt-Tab out, and therefore cannot get to Task Manager, I have no way to kill the DCS.exe process and have to completely reboot my machine -- ridiculous! So what I'm wondering is -- has anyone else also continued to have this problem? Or has it been fixed for every single other user besides me? :)

Is that true in planes besides the A-10C? I know the A-10C module automatically recognizes and configures the Warthog, but I didn't know the other modules do that. As for my testing of the MAP_RELATIVE functionality, my quick tests last night seem to suggest that it's a better option than MAP_ABSOLUTE -- for one thing, the response seemed much more manageable even using the default axis response curve -- but I'll need to put more time into it before I can really say how much better it is.

It just doesn't look right to me ... why that angle? Seems like it ought to be rotated clockwise 90 or 180 degrees.

First off, in order for DCS to see your microstick axes as mappable in-game, in your TARGET profile you need to have the following DX axis definitions: MapAxis(&Throttle, SCX, DX_XROT_AXIS); MapAxis(&Throttle, SCY, DX_YROT_AXIS); Then in the DCS UI, you ought to be able to select JOY_RX and JOY_RY as your horizontal and vertical slew axes. I too have been annoyed with how sensitive these axes are though, even after significantly flattening their response curves in the controls UI. lunaticfringe, good find about MAP_ABSOLUTE vs. MAP_RELATIVE, I had completely forgotten about those options. Since the TARGET script editor manual states that MAP_ABSOLUTE is the default, I think you are correct that MAP_RELATIVE ought to solve this problem. It makes me wonder, though, why my cursor slewing in DCS A-10C always worked just fine without specifying MAP_ABSOLUTE.

UPDATE:: After further testing I found that snapview saving to other KP keys works, so to create a new center view you have to first save this new view to some other KP key, exit sim, and copy that key's section from SnapViews.lua to the [13] section of whatever aircraft you're trying to change. As I have done for the A-10C, P-51D, and Ka-50, I need to change the default center view for the FC3 aircraft so that they center appropriately in my T-shaped 4-screen setup. The process that I've followed for the other 3 aircraft worked as follows: 1) In \DCS World\Config\View\View.lua, set DisableSnapViewsSaving = false and UseDefaultSnapViews = false 2) Move view in-game 3) Press RAlt+KP0 And then your new snapview is saved in C:\User\Saved Games\DCS\Config\View\SnapViews.lua. But this process does not work for the FC3 aircraft; it seems that the saving process just does not 'take'. Anybody else try this yet, and/or know why it's not working?

Having tried this greasing up procedure twice now, I just wanted to come back and emphasize how important it is to get grease into the innards of the ball & cup joint. On my first attempt, I didn't want to try removing the cup and instead just (carefully) pulled it upward as far as it would go and greased around it. This greasing did help, but still I could feel quite a bit of stiction that eventually annoyed me enough to prompt a second try: this time, I removed the entire cup assembly and inner piece, cleaned and greased everything, and MAN, what a difference. SO much better than the first attempt. Bottom line -- grease that ball & cup joint! It may be a pain to remove -- the little 'pins' that keep the ball assembly together did indeed take quite a bit of force to push out, and I'd recommend that others try Corrigan's method above to using a screwdriver to tap them out rather than through raw force (also with a screwdriver) like I did -- but the difference in stiction is well worth it. One final note: for those wanting to try this, note that in Corrigan's pics above, he disassembled more than is strictly necessary ... I did not detach the circuit board nor the ball assembly from the base. So in some sense it doesn't have to be as involved as his pics indicate, if you're uncomfortable with disassembly.

Yup, just got mine today too -- I couldn't resist, even though I printed a spiral-bound B&W version a year ago and then a full-color binder-bound version at work a few months ago. :) But having it bound in a neat book format, with high-quality B&W, really is something else. Looks and feel great. Fantastic job, chaotikchiken!

EDIT: SOLD I've had this for about 2 years and it's great, but recently I got a CH Products Throttle Quadrant as I needed more levers in Cliffs of Dover. Amazon is selling this for about $50 these days, so I'll sell mine for $25, which includes the shipping cost as long as it's within the continental US. I'd prefer Paypal payment. (Apologies for the rotated pictures)

Why try to run Helios when you could just place it below your main cockpit view and render the entire cockpit on your touchscreen, allowing direct interaction with everything? Check out this video I made showing my setup: a 4-screen, T-shaped cockpit with the instrument panel being on the lower (touch)screen. Would be easy enough to set up with your current monitor...

WOW, that's incredible! Nice job! When will you start taking orders to build more? :) What was the total cost to build that, by the way?

Actually, I am indeed getting better FPS in Dishonored, Cliffs of Dover, AND DCS. :) But yes, obviously I could try rolling back to 12.9 ... it's just that I'd really prefer not to. And so I was wondering if there might have been something obvious that I was overlooking. I just can't believe that this worked a week ago and now doesn't. Seems impossible that new graphics drivers could affect this, but ... I guess I have to try. Damn!

A simplification: my method above for setting a new default view is needlessly complex. As pointed out by PeterP here, the process can be shortened as follows: 1. Press Num5 to reset your view to the current default. 2. Adjust your view to what you want as the new default but do not use any snap view keys in the process! 3. Press RALT+Num0 - your new default view should now be saved. Man I wish I had known this months ago!

PeterP, fantastic work with this mod. I finally got a chance to try it and I really like the way it feels. My results are a bit different from other people's because I already had a customized default view, and this brought up a question for me: In my already tweaked default view, I had pulled the eyepoint back and down such that I could see all of the HUD without having to move my head. I now can't remember whether the default DCS default view has this same quality, or whether part of the HUD is cut off; but either way, I wonder: would the real HUD and pilot position have been designed such that the pilot would have to move his head forward and down to see the entire HUD? This seems unlikely to me, and is perhaps just a limitation of the game itself.

The 'keepComposition=1' fix is no longer working for me. I have explicitly followed your instructions, PeterP: 1) Aero theme selected 2) Disable aero theme unchecked in DCS 3) keepComposition=1 set in config.SoftTHconfig And still, I cannot click on the menu that pops up when I hit 'esc' in a mission. This is on 1.2.1-6288. For the life of me, I can't think of a single thing that changed since I had this working a week ago -- other than that I changed Radeon drivers from 12.9 to 12.11 beta. PeterP, any ideas?

I keep forgetting to try it out whenever I start the game up, will have to do that soon. I've seen lots of people complain that they wish the devs had spent time fixing real problems rather than add an 'arcade' and anachronistic plane like the Su-26 into the game; I can appreciate that perspective, but I also read that the devs had been using the Su-26 as their benchmark for creating realistic FMs, under the presumption that, given that real Su-26 flight data was so easy to obtain, if they could build a virtual model of it that performed fairly realistically, then that meant their overall FM dev process was probably sound and therefore the other planes could also be expected to have similar fidelity. If all that's true, then really it probably wasn't too much work for them to make the Su-26 player flyable, since it was essentially already in the game. I wouldn't regard that as a 'cheap' attempt to placate frustrated COD players as many seem to do.

Just wanted to mention that I, too, recently tried the 'removing the big spring' thing and I agree -- totally different feel now; much, much improved. I may try to buy some washers to tighten the feel a bit more, and I do need to grease my WH up, but man ... I can actually move the stick precisely now and not strain my arm in the process. Great find!