Help me please: Getting started with HELIOS

[DTWD]

Hello,

 

I have got myself a touch screen after seeing some amazing videos of people using HELIOS.

 

Now it seems that HELIOS was primarily designed for the A10 and later the BS. However it appears that other people have been extending it with new profiles and export scripts and have begun to include other aircraft, with varying degrees of success.

 

I also notice something out there called DCS BIOS (this seems something that should have been a 1st party development, so well done those working on that!). Coupled together, DCS BIOS and HELIOS would seem to be an ideal team. But for the moment it appears that there are many different profiles using there own export lua.

 

So where does one begin? Which aircraft are supported? I own FC3 and most of the DCS hanger, so I would ideally want something HELIOS for all of them, but I appreciate that might not be possible.

 

I know there is a significant difference between what's possible for FC3 and DCS aircraft (clickable vs none).

 

So in short:

 

1. Which aircraft are compatible?
   
2. Which aircraft have good panels and what are they? (I like the look of the Capt Zeen ones, but there doesn't seem to be a good profile repository so I am not sure what I might be missing)
   
3. Are any using DCS BIOS, or do they all have there own export.lua?
   
4. Is that a problem? I thought that you got one export.lua for all aircraft and thus there may be differences between the ones for each panel and thus you need to swap out the export.lua on changing aircraft?
   
5. Is it possible to run HELIOS and DCS full screen or do we still have to use windowed mode? (I read something about using software triple head to go or something, what's that about?)
   

I have many questions and I am not really sure where to start, but with a lack of time to test everything out I wanted to tap into the expertise on these boards, so I appreciate any help you can give.

[FSFIan]

3. There is no "glass cockpit" software that uses DCS-BIOS yet. Gadroc is thinking about adding DCS-BIOS support to Helios in the future.

 

4. Yes, there is only one Export.lua. However, (a) you can write an Export.lua file in a cooperative way so it can be loaded after another one and not step on its foot, which allows several programs that rely on Export.lua (such as Helios, DCS-BIOS and TacView) to work side by side and (b) an Export.lua file can check which aircraft is being flown and adapt its behavior accordingly, so it does not try to export A-10C data when you are in an F-15.

[HiJack]

What touch screen did you get? I'm also thinking touch screen but maybe in combination with a Raspberry Pi 2 running Windows 10.

[DTWD]

It's a Acer T272HL. As a monitor it's not fantastic, the colours aren't great and it's got a few other issues. However I got it for just over £200, so I was happy with the cost, after all it's a 27" touch screen!

 

In the end I got it as a touch screen interface device, not as a monitor per se. Next to my 27" dell it's terrible, but for controlling things it's great.