GregP

Nice job, looks great!

There is indeed a 3-position toggle, for example here. These are what I used on my AHCP.

Fantastic work here, icemaker, but I think you're missing a critical 'f' above. :)

The DCS Wiki does a pretty nice job of explaining CCIP/CR modes and at least for me, clears up a bit of the ambiguity in the manual.

Agreed! I made these two changes last night and WOW, what a difference, totally worth the 1-2 FPS I think I lost. Thanks Kuky! Regarding 'clutterMaxDistance', though -- after I exit the game, I see that DCS has set it back to 500. Kuky, did you make your file read-only so that it wouldn't do this?

I can't immediately find any prices for it online, but have you thought about making your own, i.e. buying a 22" monitor and getting a touchscreen overlay separately? I did that for a 17" -- bought a new monitor cheap, got a touchscreen off of eBay, slipped it under the monitor bezel, and viola, I had a 17" touchscreen for about 60% of the cost of a native touchscreen.

No, no backlight with the 54-key version. Not really an issue for me, as I never fly with all the lights out. In terms of multiprogrammable, I think what you mean is something like a shifted and unshifted state, or different modes, and I believe the answer to that is no. Although I haven't delved that deep into the MacroWorks software, I'm pretty sure there's just a single definition for each key for each profile created.

The 270.51 drivers have given me a nice healthy 18% FPS boost, which brings me right back up to where I was at with Beta4 (for some reason the release version dropped my FPS by the exact same amount).

I'm using the 54-key X-Keys Professional and it works very nicely: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=70378

No offense taken, I'm in complete agreement with you. That's why I debated for so long, and did so much research on the net, before finally settling on the X-Keys. I wasn't at all happy paying $200, but, given that I imagine I will use this in sims for quite a few years now, and it's so easy to program, and is not sim-specific, I decided to just do it.

I've been debating for awhile whether it was worth buying or building something that could work as a UFC in DCS:W, and finally settled on one of the simplest solutions: buying a 58-key X-Keys Professional. At $200 it's a bit pricey, but its versatility will hopefully make up for it -- an important point for me, as I didn't want to put too much money into something that would be too DCS:W-specific. Programming it is fast and easy, and the keys have removable clear covers under which you can place labels. I used a template from their website and copied little thumbnails of the UFC/CDU/etc. keys I wanted from a DCS:W screenshot I took, then printed it out and cut them up. I've got the entire UFC, the CDU's FSKs & FA & CLR (pretty much all you absolutely need because so many of the UFC's buttons also control the CDU in FUNC mode), all the Navigation Mode Select Panel buttons, the LASTE autopilot function buttons, and the IFFCC switch (which I couldn't fit on the AHCP I made using TigersharkBAS's instructions in this forum). All in all I'm quite pleased with it. Simple, versatile, and feels fairly realistic.

Not only is it a good idea, but for me, was required to stop DCS from crashing to desktop.

This is hugely helpful, thanks! Might you also post your final Excel sheet with the key assignment matrix? That was actually more useful to me because it provided an easy way to determine what keys were still available for assignment to the UFC, CDU, etc.

TigersharkBAS, why not just build one? It ain't THAT hard. :)

No, it's a little bit different, a little further back, higher, and less panned down: Default: Snap[11][13]["y_trans"] = -0.041336805555555564 Snap[11][13]["x_trans"] = 0.36 Snap[11][13]["hAngle"] = 0 Snap[11][13]["viewAngle"] = 75.0 Snap[11][13]["vAngle"] = -23 Snap[11][13]["rollAngle"] = 0 Snap[11][13]["z_trans"] = 0 Mine: Snap[11][13]["y_trans"] = -0.046597290039063 Snap[11][13]["x_trans"] = 0.370751953125 Snap[11][13]["hAngle"] = 0 Snap[11][13]["viewAngle"] = 131.448216 Snap[11][13]["vAngle"] = -19 Snap[11][13]["rollAngle"] = -0 Snap[11][13]["z_trans"] = -0.001983642578125

Well guys, I've fooled around with this for a few hours and still haven't gotten it to my satisfaction, however, this is the best I've come up with so far. The viewangle parameter is probably way too high for single-monitor users, but looks good on my 3-monitor setup. It's not much of an improvement in terms of side panel visibility, but does significantly cut down on the 'skewed' look of things in the default view, with the HUD frame and MFCDs appearing more vertical instead of angled. My settings: Snap[11][13]["y_trans"] = -0.046597290039063 Snap[11][13]["x_trans"] = 0.370751953125 Snap[11][13]["hAngle"] = 0 Snap[11][13]["viewAngle"] = 131.448216 Snap[11][13]["vAngle"] = -19 Snap[11][13]["rollAngle"] = -0 Snap[11][13]["z_trans"] = -0.001983642578125 Default: Mod:

Right -- there's no doubt that this is a tough design problem, and we can be fairly certain that ED knew what they were doing when they designed it as is, and had good reasons for doing so. Nonetheless, it does indeed seem that having the eye viewpoint further back not only feels more natural, but leads to less fisheye effect. Seems worthwhile, therefore, to see if we can get all the HUD info to compress inside the new visible HUD area.

OK, I just tried the LWin+KPx method last night, and found that those key combos need to be held down, unlike the {RCTL KP0} DELAY(50) KPx method, which toggles them. It seems to me that toggling is better than holding down, because with the latter you can press other keys/buttons in the sim and have them be recognized, whereas in the former (I'm pretty sure, from past experiment) you cannot.

I tried Cayenne's settings and I too agree, they feel much more realistic than the defaults. I would, however, shift the view upward enough so that the top of the CDU is visible -- this reveals a lot more of the bottom of the HUD and doesn't seem to adversely affect anything else. I completely agree that the eye viewpoint would more intuitively be placed nearer the seat back, rather than the front edge, and doing so makes a tremendous difference as you pan around the cockpit -- the 'fisheye lens' effect is significantly reduced, and the visibility of the side panels seems much more realistic; I've always been frustrated at my inability to read the side panels right-side up -- they always appears almost upside down since with the default viewpoint, you're really looking REARWARD to see the bottom 60% of the side panels. But, as everyone has noted, the HUD gets messed up and is only minimally visible when you move the viewpoint rearward. There are a bunch of LUA files that control HUD format here: C:\[game]\Scripts\Aircrafts\A-10C\Input\HUD\ And I tried playing with a bunch of different parameters in (I think) HUD_definitions.lua, but couldn't get it working correctly. I was able to drop the font size, but have yet to find a way to compress the HUD symbology to fit into the smaller area of the new viewpoint's HUD. But I would guess that our answer lies somewhere in that folder.

By the way, I think I also read recently that the release version has added LWin+KPx as being equivalent to RCTL+KP0 and then KPx, which would be a simpler way to solve your problem above.

If I understand you correctly, I've got the functionality you're looking for in my Cougar profile simply by combining the 'snap view toggle' command with a delayed 'specific snap view' command. Try this in your button assignment in the TMM file, using Left MFCD as an example: Zoom_left_MFCD = {RCTL KP0} DELAY(50) KP4 Cockpit_panel_view_toggle = {RCTL KP0} And this in your TMJ file: BTN H3U /O /T Zoom_left_MFCD /T Cockpit_panel_view_toggle It's not a perfect solution, as sometimes pressing H3U will only do the 'snap view toggle' command instead of both that and the KP4 command ... you have to sort of 'nudge' H3U again after pressing and holding it up in order to get the KP4 part to work. Might be easier to use method below, actually, now that I think more about it.

My bad, I misunderstood your #1 -- you meant press and release the snap view button; I thought you meant just press it without releasing it.

Ah -- well if that works, then yeah, that's definitely simpler, aside from the fact that you have to hold the snap view button down the whole time. Doesn't that interfere with moving your view to the new desired position, though?

Let me preface this by saying that I use a 3-screen SoftTH configuration in DCS: A-10C, so you might see different results if using a different setup -- but I think it should basically be the same. In DCS, choosing the 'HUD' snap view (RCTL KP0, then KP5) gives me a zoomed in view of the HUD frame but the actual HUD symbology is way too zoomed in, with most of it lying outside the frame and thus not visible. With the betas and their inconsistent snap view saving behavior, I never quite figured out how to create a more useful zoomed in HUD view. Boredtechie posted a very useful set of changed snap views here for things like the MFCDs and CDU, which I incorporated into my SnapViews.lua file, but he didn't list a 'zoom HUD' configuration, and trial-and-error at guessing numbers for viewangle, rollange, hangle, etc. just got too frustrating for me, so I decided to find a way to make DCS's 'save cockpit angles' functionality finally work for me, as I'd yet to work it out. With the release version of A-10C I've now got it working, and thought it might be useful for others. Here's how: Assuming I want to overwrite the inadequate KP5 snap view: 1. If you haven't already done so, set UseDefaultSnapViews=false in your View.lua file. 2. Toggle snap views: RCTL KP0 3. Press the snap view you want to change: KP5 4. Untoggle snap views: RCTL KP0 5. Move/pan/zoom your view to where you want it; for me, simply using zoom in (*) and slightly panning the view up a bit got me a nice zoomed in HUD view. 6. Save cockpit angles: RALT KP0 7. Press the snap view you want to set: KP5 And that's it, you're done! Pressing RCTL KP0 and then KP5 ought to take you to the new zoomed-in HUD view. And you can go to your SnapViews.lua file to see what values for [11][6] creates this view, for easier setup next time.

I just last night worked out the proper sequence for 'saving cockpit angles': 1. Toggle snap views: RCTL KP0 2. Choose the snap view you want to change and press that key: e.g. KP5 3. Untoggle snap views: RCTL KP0 4. Move your view to desired position 5. Save cockpit angles: RALT KP0 6. Press the key of the snap view you chose before: KP5 Voila! RCTL KP0 and then KP5 should now give you the changed view you wanted. You can also, as you say above, now look in your SnapViews.lua file and see the values in [11][6] and save them for future reference.