Helios profile broken after adding more monitors.

[Cpt. Chaos]

Hi all, FNG here...

 

I had Helios (1.4.2019) working great with 2 1920x1080 monitors side by side, with Loz's A-10C profile. I've since added 2 more monitors but can't get things working again. I have 3 x 1920x1080 27" monitors side by side and 1 x 1920x1080 23" touch screen under the middle monitor.

 

Monitor #2 is my primary screen in Windows (7). The touch screen is monitor # 4. My arrangement is like this -

 

|``````````| |``````````| |``````````|

|------3------ | |-------2----- | |------1------|

|__________| |__________| |__________|

.......................|``````` |

.......................|-----4----|

.......................|_______ |

 

I have reset my monitors in the Helios profile editor and everything looks correct in there, but when I try to run the profile I get this error - "Cannot display this profile because it has an invalid monitor configuration. Please open the editor and select reset monitors from the profile menu."

 

Any suggestions I can try?

 

Thanks!

 

John

Edited March 31, 2019 by Cpt. Chaos

[RightStuff]

In profile editor change the monitor setup so that it reflects your new config.

 

Due to performance, put in Windows Screen Setup the #4 at the far right side of the other monitors, so that you have 4x1 instead of 3x2. Assuming #4 is only for instruments.

 

monitorconfig.lua has ro be edited, but I'm sure it will be worth the effort.

Edited March 31, 2019 by RightStuff

[Cpt. Chaos]

Thanks RS, I've followed your advice and here's where I'm at currently.

 

Monitor arrangement in Windows looks like this now -

 

|``````````| |``````````| |``````````| |``````````|

|------3------ | |-------2----- | |------1------| |------4-------|

|__________| |__________| |__________| |__________|

 

#2 is still my main display, #4 is the touch screen.

 

I've reset my monitors in the profile editor, everything looks good.

 

In-game resolution has been changed to 7680x1080 and my monitorconfig.lua has been updated to push my viewports to monitor 4. The game runs on 1-3 with the center on 2.

 

My Helios profile is loading again and my viewports are in the correct locations on monitor 4, but I can't actually activate anything by touch and the touch screen doesn't reflect changes when I mouse click things in the cockpit. None of the hidden panels come up when I touch or click their location on the screen.

 

I'm hoping I don't need to manually set the x and y of all the components inside Helios now... but that is what I'm off to experiment with next.

[Cpt. Chaos]

Well that took exactly no time to realize the x/y in the profile editor must be a child value of where the monitor actually lives, otherwise none of the images would be in the correct location. Now I'm stumped on why the panel is displaying in the correct location, but not actually taking input or updating from changes done via mouse in the cockpit.

 

Thoughts on that?

[RightStuff]

Glad to read, that there were almost no prblems while reconfugring.

 

I think, now the touch screen has to be reconfigured/calibrated.

 

Search in Windows Setup for this. It's something with 'touch' or 'pen' in the title.

Sry, not on my PC, though everything from memory...

[Cpt. Chaos]

Actually the touch screen is working properly and has been configured/calibrated in Windows.

 

I think I've overlooked some fundamentals so far....

 

Yes, my A-10C profile is exporting the control panel graphics to the correct monitor

Yes, my viewports are exporting to the correct monitor and location within those graphics

No, Helios does not seem to be communicating with the game

 

Some of my confusion is that there are really 3 separate things going on here -

 

viewports exporting to the correct location (handled by monitorsetup.lua (works fine))

remote panel graphics showing up on the correct screen (handled by the Helios profile (works fine))

communication between Helios and the game to provide interaction with the remote panel (handled by the Helios export.lua (not working))

 

I've been doing a poor job of separating those items so far, hopefully that is behind me now. The only issue remaining is getting the profile and game to work together. Thoughts on that?

 

.

Edited April 1, 2019 by Cpt. Chaos
to make more sense of the issue

[RightStuff]

Today I experienced the same issue:

Helios inputs are not sent to DCS.

Output was ok.

 

Solution:

Wrong order and dupes in export.lua

(Edit: Due to an update on VAICOM - not blaming on it. Screwed it by myself due to a minor edit on its line)

 

Maybe you want to take a look at that file as well?

Edited April 2, 2019 by RightStuff

[Cpt. Chaos]

Yep I looked there for my issue as well. Deleting and recreating resulted in no changes.

[Cpt. Chaos]

I finally got it all sorted out and working again.

 

I ended up rewiring my monitors so that my touch screen is identified as monitor #1 in Windows. For my video card, it seems it labels monitors by how they are physically connected to the card, as in which type of port/cable is being used. My card puts any monitor I connect via DisplayPort as #1, HDMI #2, DVI #3 and VGA #4. I don't know if this ultimately even mattered but was something I read somewhere.

 

One of the biggest frustration points about troubleshooting something like this is finding SO much information, much of it useless (at least to your own issue).

 

After uninstalling/reinstalling Helios, starting from scratch with Loz's v2.1 profile, getting the monitors reset in the Profile Editor and saving as my own profile, everything is working again.

 

There had to be some issue in the profile where, even though the graphics were being sent to the correct screen, the data stream was not. I had read some posts were people were manually editing their profile hpf and updating the monitor names, but my profile had no such entries, just <monitor> with x/y values. No way to tell which was which, other than the one with all the child values under it, which must have at least partially been working since the graphics were in the right place.

 

I'm just happy it's done!

 

Thanks for the help

[Cpt. Chaos]

I did some more experimenting with monitors and their assigned number in Windows. In the end, it made no difference how they are numbered, but changing them does break the Helios data stream, even if the graphics still show up on the correct screen.

 

The only reliable fix was to delete the Helios profile.hpf and start a new profile from whatever profile template you started with the first time (one of Zeen's or Loz's most likely).

 

These steps worked reliably for that process - https://github.com/BlueFinBima/Helios/issues/117

[RightStuff]

Interesting news and thx for mentioning them here.

Might be interesting for others as well.