Joystick axis jitter filter

[Svend_Dellepude]

Hell, I have a TM Warthog that's less than a month old and the grey faux friction slider next to the apu start switch does this - and I use it for my zoom, so the noise makes it bounce a lot. Even high end stuff suffers from noise. Other sims have noise filters, and I highly recommend ED add it to DCS. It's merely a measurement in milliseconds where repeat inputs are ignored.

 

Try turning off the LED or go 100%. IIRC its a dimmer issue.

[Svend_Dellepude]

+1 Been looking for this for a long time, but unable to find any usable.

 

My suggestion is to make a filter that will average the percieved input over time, let's say 150-250ms, might even go higher.

It will not remove the jitter completely, but make your input look more smooth. Of course this depends of how severe the jitter is.

I actually suggested this with Thrustmaster some time ago in order to have some kind of compensation to the short throw and jerky movement of our desktop joysticks compared to the real ones.

 

The downside of this is of course that you introduce latency to your input, but if kept to a minimum I don't think it will be a problem.

 

I have tried a filter that just decreases update frequency. It's rubbish! Just makes input seems even more jerky.

[FragBum]

As long as it remains an option and can be completely disabled, I don't care.

 

+1

 

I know it doesn't help users with noisey pots on there gear but this sort of input processing should be done in the controller.

 

 

I used to solder a 0.22uf (ish*) capacitor from the slider to ground this extended the usable life of the pot but in all fairness if the pot is getting noisy it really is a down hill run to being buggered.

 

In code the simplest way I can think of is to compare magnitude and if the change from one sample to the next if the change is below a certain percentage of current value than it's likely to be okay if it's out side a certain percentage value than it's probably junk read ignore it, AKA a noisy pot!

 

You could then add some moving average but you likely don't want the time constant to be to long maybe max 10ms maybe 20ms or the delay will impact responsiveness of input.

 

Some of the older potentiometers could be cleaned lubbed and put back into service, modern plastic track sealed units are bin fodder these days.

 

My current cyclic uses the gimbal from a Logitech 3D Pro, which gives somewhere between 200 and 300 Hrs before I swear at it and buy another unit and hack it for the gimbal. (I have a few spare grips and bases etc now. :cry:)

 

This flight sim hobby is getting expensive what with keeping parts in stock for my kit, the up side is that is is way cheaper than the real deal. :P :helpsmilie:

 

* Depends what the value of the pot is and what capacitors I had on hand and how desperate I was to continue flogging a dead horse. :joystick:

Edited May 10, 2018 by FragBum
<typo>

[sniperwolfpk5]

+1 for the idea. I have x52 pro. The slider and other axis are useless for zoom in/out.

[Thymo]

+1 once from me too. I've got an X52 that suffers from this issue.

I'm starting to get to the point of opening my throttle up and either put a cap on it or just replace the pot.

[Lixma 06]

+1

 

ED please consider it.

[Harry_Haller]

110% for this! :D ED please consider it.

 

What we want - isn't that exactly the same as the Accela smoothing Filter in Opentrack?...

 

A slider where you can find your own sweetspot between latency/smoothing vs accuracy/sensitivity.

 

I'm new to dcs, and new to headtracking - spent the last days just tweaking and setting everything up properly - finally I think I got everything working nicely - only thing is zoom. Searched all over for a solution to make it smooth - 3rd party software and stuff like that-there is no solution...

 

The filtering option has been a suggestion for years - found a closed thread discussing this feature indepth from 2014...

 

This is really high on my whichlist - as the replay fix (but shouldnt be nearly as complicated ofc) - but as both this issues have been around since... 2008? I guess they aren't considered as problems?

[Mars Exulte]

This should be standard across the board. Really essential for some axises. Even my Virpil throttle has a jittery pot on the center roller.

[ono]

Yay, :thumbup: I also wish there was axis jitter filter option, as my X52 Pro throttle slider is almost unusable at the moment, and it seems most X52 users are affected.

Now I wonder how we can get this (rather simple) feature implemented. Do you accept donations? :D

[Japo32]

+1 specially for the view axis. In the warthog I have little in/out zooming everytime the axis is in the middle portion.

[Ant0ine]

+1. Must be activable/tunable independently on each axes.

[ac5]

:thumbup::thumbup:+++

Good idea.

[berniw]

I made a tutorial for fixing this with free software:

 

[Rabb]

Thank you very much, berniw.

It works great. I still wish that ED implements it in DCS. DCS is unique in a way that it is the only sim to my knowledge not having axis filtering.