blaster454

I wonder why there is no U.S. distribution yet? Are they selling well in EU?

Excellent job, Mnemonic! :thumbup: Combining this with Touch Pal might make this to be an even better sim than it already is! I am off to dl now and try to get some testing in :joystick:. Thank you again for sharing with the community!

EDITED: NOTE: For some reason, there is a space showing between the "O" and "U" in the phrase render_purpose.SCREENSPACE_OUTSIDE_COCKPIT when I look at the displayed post. There should be NO spaces in this line. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ There are no guarantees that this may not break something. It has not been exhaustively tested and you must be aware of what you are doing when making changes. Remember that you must not edit a Lua file with the default text editor ... use Notepad++ or similar. And always make a copy of the file that you are changing so that you can revert back to the original when things go wrong. If you look in the following folder: Ka-50/Scripts/Aircrafts/Ka-50/Cockpit/ControlsIndicator/ you will find a file named ControlsIndicator.lua. At the beginning of this file is the following line (ignore line breaks here, this is one continuous line): purposes = {render_purpose.SCREENSPACE_INSIDE_COCKPIT,render_purpose.HUD_ONLY_VIEW} This shows that the controls indicator is rendered only for the cockpit and hud-only screens. If you make the following change, the controls indicator will be displayed on external view screens. For me, it is shifted from it's position in the cockpit view. On my monitor it is displayed approximately 2/3 of the way across the screen, still at the bottom. My monitor is 1920 x 1200 and I am set up for a two monitor view using TouchPal. I've not tested this with TouchPal, on any other resolution monitors, or on any different screen set up. I just know that this particular case seems to work. Here is the changed line: purposes = {render_purpose.SCREENSPACE_INSIDE_COCKPIT,render_purpose.HUD_ONLY_VIEW,render_purpose.SCREENSPACE_OUTSIDE_COCKPIT} Note that this adds a third render purpose for the screen space outside the cockpit. And again, this is all on one line with no line breaks and there are no spaces in the line. Being very repetitious ;), there are no guarantees and you should be comfortable with editing Lua files. It might be possible to change the position of the display but I think this is probably not trivial. I hope this helps with what you were seeking.

Well, I'd assume that quality and reliability were high on the military product. I'd also assume it had to meet certain milspecs so there might be requirements for higher quality internal components. I'd also assume it would have to be pretty close to an exact replica including things like switch and button activation pressures and stick throw distance and maybe throttle friction resistance and maybe including things like idle cutoff position. I'd think you could probably compare the military versus commercial differences similarly to the TFC/ED Digital Battlefield versus DCS:xxx software products. I'd think that they get considerably more for the military oriented product. Not really sure but I do know that the HOTAS systems I've seen aimed at the military market have seemed to be considerably more expensive than the consumer solutions available (when there was an exact solution available for us :)). I'm not certain this would fall into the same class as the proverbial toilet seat but I'll wager it goes for a tad more than the current CH offerings. They might offer a consumer version but that would surely depend on the business decisions involving conversion cost and how much it impacted their more professional business. For now, I'm happy with my G940. What I do know is that it feels pretty good seeing the major controller players putting attention on the flight controller market.

Military grade components ... sure to be priced above flight sim pricing. Are there any official plans to release lower quality (= lower cost) components?

Is anyone aware of any other distributor who is stocking these? Simware want 26 Euros to ship to the U.S. -- ouch! :huh: I guess Thrustmaster is ramping these up for worldwide distribution pretty slowly. Wonder why?

I agree that this would be better in the general section. It's not really concerning game controllers and I think a lot of people might miss this excellent post if it's left here.

Manne, you don't need a touch screen, although I think that is the ideal solution. If you have a second monitor and can set it's resolution to 1024 x 768, then you can use the mouse to activate buttons on the TouchPal screen (exactly the same as when using Touch Buddy). It may seem the same as having to "click" on the main screen in the BS cockpit, but if you look at the TouchPal screen you can see that most cockpit information is concentrated within the viewing area so you don't have to move your viewpoint to see all needed information. Even if you decided to not use a touch screen or to click on the TouchPal display, I think it still offers a great advantage just to be able to scan most relevant flight and weapons control settings at a glance. It may not be realistic but it sure makes things easier :smilewink:. I have touchBuddy running on a client computer with a 15-inch touch screen and am hoping Gadroc will be able to develop the client-server version of TouchPal. Until then, I can run TouchPal on my main computer and get the same results as TouchBuddy (from a viewpoint perspective), but with a non-touch 17-inch monitor resized to display at 1024 x 768 (which it does fairly well).

Hi, dnnzed. This has to be set up in DCS:BS multi-monitor mode the same as DickDastardly's TB profile. I'm pretty sure you have to set the multi-monitor Lua files up to display the ABRIS and Schkval screens in the cutout portions (where you can see the desktop or another background). The big advantage with Gadroc's version is that it reads the Lua exports from BS and keeps the indicators in synch (and it's a big advantage :thumbup:).

Well, I certainly like mine and it's replacing my Saitek X52 Pro & Pro Pedals. It, like many new products, has it's bumps and quirks, but all in all it's one of the best HOTAS solutions available and the FFB adds a whole new dimension. I can understand how some may not like it but I don't understand how someone can completely condemn it and recommend not buying. I have had mine for 3 weeks now and am very content. And I learn something new about it every day :smilewink:. Look around at other reviews (good and bad) and then maybe ask specific questions ... there is beginning to be a body of knowledge for the G940 here at the DCS forums.

Well, I think that's a good reason to go to Porto for some of that wine ...err, the G940 :smilewink:. Portugal and Spain are still on my list of places I want to visit!

I wonder how many of us have adopted the G940 system from Logitech. I have had mine for a few weeks now and am slowly getting used to it. So far, I've tried it in: Black Shark (the sim I primarily bought it for) FSX (the FFB effects are pretty cool) Lock On FC (have not done a lot other than feel the joy of controlling the A-10 engines) IL2 (again, little more than some flying around and feeling the kick of the guns) Also, kudos to Alec for the great guide he started for us! :thumbup: I think it's going to be a very useful thread for getting the G940 going.

Nice write-up, thank you! :thumbup: I think you mistyped in the first part of your trimmer assignment ... did you mean keypresses T-Z-X? I implemented this and it does work ... but if I hold down the trimmer button then it appears to send multiple rudder commands ... still tweaking this one. Right now I am just tap the Trim control button when I want to trim whereas I used to hold it down while making changes. I don't see any way to implement the macro where it waits for the release of the T key before moving to the rudder pulses...that is a real deficiency for the Logitech profiler SW if true. :( One possibility might be a cycle command for the trim function where the first press uses a Keystroke Command "T" which will hold till you release it. Then the second cycle command can be the macro sending a "Z" "X" sequence pulse. But you'd have to remember to always tap the Trimmer control button after every trim...not ideal. On using the trimmer rotators, I created three zone commands for ABRIS (brightness) and Schkval (brightness & contrast) and then just assigned the zones to the trimmer wheels. It seems to work but I haven't tested at night yet.

Apologies if this is old news ...

I can only concur! And welcome to the G940 club! I've had mine a bit more than a week now and it is slowly becoming tuned (after many, many changes to settings :smilewink:). And the profiler SW takes a little bit of experimenting to understanding how it works. I think it is quite powerful and the only thing I'd like to really see added might be logical flag programming ... then this would be a power house flight system that would be hard to beat. And it is almost a starting over with flying the shark :joystick: ... I've always struggled with fine control and trimming, especially at low speeds and altitudes (I have a masterful collection of rotor blade pieces and bent gear frames :lol:). Yesterday, for the first time I was able to fly Para_Bellum's tutorial (from SimHQ) with no issues and feeling like I was in control. Still got a way to go but it is coming together. I've owned the Cougar with force sensing, the X45, X52, and X52 Pro and I can say that I am completely happy with the G940. The X52 Pro goes up on eBay after I return from holiday in October! FFB rules when flying the Shark! :thumbup:

Kirai, did you check to see if the file Eagle Dynamics\Ka-50\Config\Producer.cfg had ForceFeedbackEnabled = true?

Hi, Gadroc! Welcome to the G940 owners club! :thumbup: The problem may be that Black Shark uses two different executables: one for the GUI (launcher.exe) and one for the actual 3D engine (dcs.exe). The profile is set up with dcs.exe as the sim's executable so I don't think you can launch a BS session from the profiler. It may be that when you exit the BS GUI (to fly the mission), the GUI calls the DCS engine in a way that the profiler doesn't see or understand. This is pure guess work on my part but seems logical. You could try to switch the BS profile over to launcher.exe but I think you might need the -console command parameter for that to be valid. Not sure how to get that into the Logitech BS profile other than maybe editing the <GUID>.xml file that contains the profile (and that might not work correctly either). So far, I just make sure the profiler is open and the BS profile is loaded then start BS as I normally do. That seems to work. Hope this helps!

Throttle base: 19 cm wide at bottom, 23 cm deep, 5 cm high to base buttons, 18 cm high to top of throttle. Stick: same base dimensions, 26 cm to top of stick. All approximate :smilewink:. If you need precise dimensions to fit into a pit, I could measure more exactly.

Not sure about absolute accuracy but a lot of people have used this drawing. Attachment is from http://www.xflight.de/original/parts/center_console/mfd/mfd_draw_01.gif

Well, I have not seen that crash yet. I am running in WinXP. When I program a shifted function on the throttle and set the stick's pinkie trigger as a shift key, it works both in the GUI controls window and in game. That is, when I press the throttle button either in the gui or in the 3d app, the correct function is shown or executed. Maybe it's something with Vista? I agree that it is very nice to see the several profiles with (I think) complete Command lists. There profiles (more accurately, there are command definitions) for FSX, IL2, LOck-On, DCS BS, Falcon4:AF, Stalker, CFS3, and Crysis on my installation. Not sure if it recognized that those sims/games were installed on my machine or if it puts them in automatically. The actual mapping of commands to controls seems to have been done without much thought but that's not a problem as I would want to do my own mapping anyway. Some of the definitions for zone or POV or cycle commands seem to be a bit strange, but that is easy to change. The big thing is having all the base commands pre-defined. :thumbup: Some thoughts and observations on the profiler software so far: When you click a device control and then assign a command, the list of commands seems to come up in two formats (one a long vertical list with scroll bars top and bottom and the other a multi-column table with no scroll bars. I assume this is dependent on the number of commands defined. The scrolling action in the vertical list is not consistent either in context or with Windows standards: The list will not scroll with the mouse wheel. If you jump to a beginning alpha character (by pressing "h" for example) when you are jumping down into the list, you can then scroll down by moving the mouse over the downward scroll arrow. The same does not work when scrolling up into the list (e.g., from "Z" to "F") If I had a preference, I'd rather see all the command lists displayed in multi-column format (with a scroll function if the list is too long). It's much easier to scroll through the larger table. It seems to me that sometimes when I am trying to define something other than a basic command or keystroke (e.g., a zone, or POV command), when I try to assign a command the list of available commands is less than the full list of commands defined. For example, in the FSX profile, if I try to define a POV supercommand with the next and previous Category and View in Category assigned to N & S and W &E on the hat (S & SHIFT S, A & SHIFT A), the View Next Category and View Next in Category commands are available but the shifted commands are not. When I go back to the list of defined commands, they are all there. When in the device windows in control panel (either as part of setup or later to recalibrate), when I test certain controls, the FFB mechanism responds--sometimes with a fair amount of force :smilewink:. For instance, moving the stick POV hat causes the stick to jump to the cardinal positions. Pressing the trigger causes the stick to start dancing and requires some other button press to stop it. Not too sure what this means I seem to have problems calibrating the Mini axis hat. I go through the first step moving the cross cursor to all four corners. If I do it more than once it seems to round off the corners a bit and my impression is that it continues to round the corners slightly more with further manipulation. When I go to the next step, the cross cursor is always positioned to the northeast diagonally from center. I move it back to center and while holding it there (not easy :smilewink:) press the NEXT button to define the center position. When I later go back into the device screen in control panel, the cursor is still displaced upward and right of center (Not a lot, but not centered either). I noticed some strange behavior in game with the mini-axis stick. I programmed this in game to control the absolute Schkval cursor movement horizontally and vertically). I must have something set up incorrectly because the vertical movement is reversed (mini stick up = cursor down). Also, when the mini stick is moved, the Schkval cursor continues to move after the mini stick is released ... it's almost like there is an acceleration function present. I have to fiddle with the mini-stick to get the cursor to stop movement. I really like the way the FFB stick is working in BS, especially with the trim. I see very little play in the x- and y- axes after the stick is trimmed and the stick does hold it's position. And the sensitivity is pretty high ... so much so that I'm going to try to tune it down a bit (either the axis sensitivities or by putting in a small dead zone--not sure of the impact to trim yet so it's all experimental). The reason for this is that I find, after going into a hover, that when I try to use stick buttons or the Schkval cursor hat that it's pretty hard not to move the stick and cause some perturbation from the hover. This is probably as much my technique (or lack of :)) as it is stick sensitivity. I do know that it is very easy to control the Shark (as long as I can keep from getting ham-handed and going into oscillations :doh:!) I'm hoping that we can get a G940 "Tips & Techniques" thread going where we can share experiences and learnings. There also seems to be a lot of room for some unique programming with zone-, cycle-, axis-, and POV-commands ... it would be nice to share here, too. I too have everything set up in Logitech SW except axis assignments. I still need to tweak and understand some things (like when repeatable key presses are good or bad--and what degree of repeatability is best). It seems that it's possible to pretty closely set up the stick and throttle one-to-one with the KA-50 setup -- or at least pretty close. Nice job so far, Logitech! There is a lot of room for making the profiler more powerful but I'm not too sure Logitech will be interested because this is multi-use SW. It still bothers me to see it referred to as the "Wingman Profiler" :(

Downloading ... have not yet tested.

Has anyone successfully managed to build a usable mapped profile for Black Shark using a combination of the Logitech profiler (for rotaries, for instance, or maybe cycle commands or other assignments) and the in-game BS control assignments? I've tried this but am obviously doing something wrong ... they seem to fight each other?? With the improved shift function in v5.08, it might be better to try to build the complete profile in the Logitech SW. One question I have concerns who is controlling the devices? If the profiler is active with any profile loaded in it and a game is run that has controller assignments, who actually has control of what the devices do? If there's a conflict, does one win over the other? I wonder what others are doing with their G940's now in BS. Care to share?

Very nice, EinsteinEP! :thumbup: Even if this is a work-in-process (and what isn't :smilewink:), this is an excellent checklist based purely on organization and format. It seems obvious that a lot of thought went into this. This will replace my current checklist. And, FWIW, I don't think it's too many pages. Checklists need to be formatted for easy readability and quick reference (especially emergency procedures)--and I think this is especially important in a single-pilot airframe where the workload can get pretty heavy. I'd much rather flip through multiple pages and be able to quickly orient myself to the task than to try reading through a tightly compressed checklist (especially with "older" eyes :smilewink:). Thank you for your effort and especially for deciding to share it!

Thanks for the tip! :thumbup: Could you maybe explain the logic behind this? In this macro, you are sending two commands: the Set Hover Mode command and then a Right Rudder command. How would this be different from setting hover mode and then tapping the rudder pedal? And does it make a difference whether it's the right or left rudder you activate? And I guess I'm not sure why this provides such a stabilization? Would appreciate your views on why this works. Also, why do you say to record pauses for this macro? Do you intentionally pause between setting hover mode and hitting the rudder? For how long do you wait? I'm assuming here that the X key is repeating if you hold it down so I guess I have to ask if you do and for how long? I'll try this this afternoon but just wanted to ask about your through process here :smilewink:. Appreciate your sharing ... this is a good community and a good sim! And now we have a good controller in the G940! (Notice I said a good controller :) ... it's not perfect but I think it's a huge improvement over my X52 Pro).

I have had similar crashes to reboot (a "serious" error in Windows :smilewink:) both in Black Shark and in some other 3d games where the error diagnostics pointed to a "driver" problem causing the crash. So far it has been due to graphics drivers and updating (or in some cases, down-dating) usually solved the problem.