Touch Portal App

[xoomigo]

On 3/26/2024 at 2:52 PM, virgo47 said:

But I've noticed that the COINS log knows the variant - those are the lines starting with Aircracft:

Do you think it would be possible to find that string (which is a unit type string, used also in SnapView.lua and other places) in some COINS common variable?

It should be doable. Just need to create a state similar to "Aircraft" parameter. Need to add to my to-do list.

[xoomigo]

Hi all,

An update to DCS-COINS is now available:

https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3319022/

Changelog:

• Repacked with the latest FlightPanel's DCS-BIOS 0.8.0 (DCS  Unified 2.9.3),
• Setup support for new DCS-BIOS changes,
• Addition of state "aircraft_model" (variant ID) - as requested by virgo47, and
• Fix for identification of SA-342.

Important: You need to upgrade to DCS-BIOS version 0.8.0 and Touch Portal v4 for this version of DCS-COINS to work.

Cheers!

xoomigo

[virgo47]

52 minutes ago, xoomigo said:

An update to DCS-COINS is now available...

Great, thanks! I've already downloaded it and before I'll let you know about the model addition, just a quick head-up:

Something is fishy with F86 Sabre, when I want to add it the following popup appears a few times in a row and the module is skipped:

I've tried to run it from console, but no output.

@xoomigo One more issue, CommonData.json does not get into the TPP file although the checkbox is by default checked (and disabled).

Edited April 10, 2024 by virgo47

[xoomigo]

52 minutes ago, virgo47 said:

Great, thanks! I've already downloaded it and before I'll let you know about the model addition, just a quick head-up:

Something is fishy with F86 Sabre, when I want to add it the following popup appears a few times in a row and the module is skipped:

I've tried to run it from console, but no output.

@xoomigo One more issue, CommonData.json does not get into the TPP file although the checkbox is by default checked (and disabled).

 

Ah, missed this - a result of the inconsistency of file naming convention used on the Sabre in DCS-BIOS. It had a space whereas others were standardized with a underscore. This came about due to recent changes in the BIOS.lua.

Anyway, this has been fixed with the latest update to the plugin. Kindly extract from the usual link and replace DCS-COINS_Setup.exe and it should work.

Thanks for the highlight!

1 hour ago, virgo47 said:

 One more issue, CommonData.json does not get into the TPP file although the checkbox is by default checked (and disabled).

Oh, okay. Will look into it.

[xoomigo]

Okay, done. Common data issue is fixed with the latest patch (usual link). Just make sure that the setup program version is 2404.03.

null

[virgo47]

30 minutes ago, xoomigo said:

Okay, done. Common data issue is fixed with the latest patch (usual link). Just make sure that the setup program version is 2404.03.

Thanks a lot, seems to work fine now.

There is still minor itch with module selection, the first time I do it, it does not offer my modules, but if I just go Back and Next (or Next and then Select Module again, not sure right now), then it autodetects my modules just fine. Not sure why, but this is hardly a deal-breaker.

Now, I'm going to play with that Aircraft Model.

[virgo47]

@xoomigo Thanks a lot for adding the Aircraft Model. It helped me to fix the button that was susceptible to strange behavior because of the both L-39 ZA/C events coming from the cockpit (in any of the variant), because now I can guard C/ZA event with corresponding C/ZA IF check. I'm pretty sure I'll use this for other pages in the future and it can be a be also used for hiding buttons that are not available in some variants (e.g. older P-47, etc.). I'm not going to hide ZA buttons in my L-39 page (that would be a lot of work that is not really essential), but this "type" information is a great help when some things behave differently. It works great! Big thanks again.

[virgo47]

@xoomigoSorry to bother you again but I've got a question about 3-way switches. The thing is, that sometimes they are strangely initialized, although otherwise they work just fine for both pushing to DCS and reacting to the actual events. This mostly happens when I switch "client" slots. E.g. I get into L-39C and my Spotlight switch in TP moves to a different position than in the cockpit. To use a concrete example:

FRONT_LAND_LIGHTS|front_land_lights|Front Taxi and Landing Lights Control Switch, TAXI/OFF/LANDING|1|0|UpTo2|0

What exactly does the order of values after the text mean? |1|0|UpTo2|0

Because this kind of 3-way switches (at least in L-39) have 0 for one of the ON positions (typically down or towards the pilot), 1 is OFF, and 2 is up/fwd position. For some reason, when I switch the planes to L-39 (or between the variants) I get wrong values for some of these 3-way switches.

I check the values in TP application, I don't claim to have all 100% right, but the ones I checked, I use 1 (OFF) as the default position, so something is definitely changing it to 0. From the verbose output, I see all-caps output such as:
FRONT_LAND_LIGHTS: 1

...but no event that should switch the state. But the TP app still switches my button. I even created a separate test page where I have only this single button, then I switch the plane to L-39ZA, I get this line (and no events):

FRONT_LAND_LIGHTS: 1

Yet the button switches to TAXI positon (value 0, instead of 1). The button looks like this:

I know the value-backed button looks complicated (but hopefully not to you ;-)), but only the events should be considered, I don't press the button when strange things happen. Pressing it makes it all right, eventually (when the state and value sync).

Please, do you have any hint on what can be wrong?

Edited April 10, 2024 by virgo47

[xoomigo]

6 hours ago, virgo47 said:

@xoomigo Thanks a lot for adding the Aircraft Model. It helped me to fix the button that was susceptible to strange behavior because of the both L-39 ZA/C events coming from the cockpit (in any of the variant), because now I can guard C/ZA event with corresponding C/ZA IF check. I'm pretty sure I'll use this for other pages in the future and it can be a be also used for hiding buttons that are not available in some variants (e.g. older P-47, etc.). I'm not going to hide ZA buttons in my L-39 page (that would be a lot of work that is not really essential), but this "type" information is a great help when some things behave differently. It works great! Big thanks again.

Glad that it's useful and serves your purpose.

[xoomigo]

5 hours ago, virgo47 said:

FRONT_LAND_LIGHTS|front_land_lights|Front Taxi and Landing Lights Control Switch, TAXI/OFF/LANDING|1|0|UpTo2|0

What exactly does the order of values after the text mean? |1|0|UpTo2|0

The PP record structure:

• Aircraft Parameter ID
• TP State ID
• TP State Description (DCS-BIOS description)
• Action Type
  • 0: No action
    1: "set_state"
    2: "fixed_step" DEC INC by 1
    3: "variable_step" -<num> +<num>|"suggested_step":<num>
    4: "action": arg:"TOGGLE"
    5: "hold"/"set_state"
    6: "connector/slider control/variable_step" (superset of "3")
• Action Step - increment/decrement value (if applicable)
• Enumerated list of options/Range of values
• TP Default (Starting) value

"UpTo2" specifies range from 0 to 2. Based on the option sequence in DCS-BIOS description, it should be 0 for "TAXI", 1 for "OFF" and "2" for "LANDING" - but I have found that it's not always the case.

I have set the PP value to default of 0 for almost all the parameters (on consideration that most users would just cold start the aircraft in DCS and that the switch of 0 value in most cases).

Note that when you changes between different variants of the aircraft (eg. between "C" and "ZA"), you are essentially still using the same base DCS-BIOS lua program. It does not "reset" to default when you subsequent switch into a different variant or reload the same variant. To restore to the defaults per PP file, you can do a generic "RESET" option from the Common Data module.

If you want to change to a different PP default, you can directly edit the PP file with a text editor. Eg. change your example above to 1:

FRONT_LAND_LIGHTS|front_land_lights|Front Taxi and Landing Lights Control Switch, TAXI/OFF/LANDING|1|0|UpTo2|1

And if you do, I can preset it every time in future DCS-COINS releases so that they would stay the same - save you the hassle of re-adjusting them again.

Cheers.

 

[virgo47]

4 hours ago, xoomigo said:

The PP record structure: ...

I have set the PP value to default of 0 for almost all the parameters (on consideration that most users would just cold start the aircraft in DCS and that the switch of 0 value in most cases).

Thanks, very useful info, I started to play with the defaults for the switches with the default set to 1 (middle position) - which applies to many in L-39, although not to all, of course. The results are much more consistent and the dashboard switches don't switch to the 0 position when changing the slots. I'll provide the improved L-39 PP file soon after I tune it a bit.

I wanted to ask about CommonData.pp as well. I've noticed that some ANGULAR_VELOCITY_* parameters are now sent very often, even when I just sit in a cold aircraft. What are these and do you want to send them? (I personally disabled them just to make my debugging sessions easier. ;-))

Thinking about that I realized that L-39 dashboard also needs IAS_EU (km/h) which is disabled by default, I even forgot to mention that people need to enable it, otherwise I'd need to provide some event that would calculate it from IAS_US (like I do for altitude which is not available in meters at all).

Please, do you think it would be a problem to enable IAS_EU by default? I regularly use it and don't see any problem with it.

Edited April 11, 2024 by virgo47

[virgo47]

@xoomigo I went through the L-39 switches and the attached PP file matches cold-started L-39 100% (I hope :-)) and hot-started with just one minor difference. Obviously, the defaults are not universal for each way how to start or fly the plane, but in general, when OFF is in the middle, it is a good default.

If you go over the differences, yes ENG_START_MODE for C and ZA is different, FRONT_BOMB_REL_SEL really is UP whenever I enter the plane (this one is not 3-way) and FRONT_ROCKET_MODE is also mostly set to 4RS.

Thank you in advance for accepting the changes.

L-39.pp

Edited April 11, 2024 by virgo47

[xoomigo]

46 minutes ago, virgo47 said:

I'll provide the improved L-39 PP file soon after I tune it a bit.

Please include only those lines which are modified. Will include as an exception to overwrite the generated results. Future revisions of DCS-BIOS could have added, removed or changed others. So other than the exceptions, these needs to be retained as-is from future DCS-BIOS lua file.

54 minutes ago, virgo47 said:

I wanted to ask about CommonData.pp as well. I've noticed that some ANGULAR_VELOCITY_* parameters are now sent very often, even when I just sit in a cold aircraft. What are these and do you want to send them? (I personally disabled them just to make my debugging sessions easier. ;-))

Frankly, I have no idea. I wasn't aware that they exists until now. They were not there originally when I got started with DCS-COINS. Any newly-added parameters from DCS-BIOS would be active by default. I will add them to the default deactivate list if they are not useful.

1 hour ago, virgo47 said:

Thinking about that I realized that L-39 dashboard also needs IAS_EU (km/h) which is disabled by default, I even forgot to mention that people need to enable it, otherwise I'd need to provide some event that would calculate it from IAS_US (like I do for altitude which is not available in meters at all).

Please, do you think it would be a problem to enable IAS_EU by default? I regularly use it and don't see any problem with it.

Sure, will do for the next bundle.

[virgo47]

1 hour ago, xoomigo said:

Please include only those lines which are modified. Will include as an exception to overwrite the generated results. Future revisions of DCS-BIOS could have added, removed or changed others. So other than the exceptions, these needs to be retained as-is from future DCS-BIOS lua file.

Sure, no problem, attached here are only the changed lines.

Also thanks for the future adjustments, no rush with those.

BTW: If I have some changes, like the lines I attached, is it enough to just slap them at the end of the original PP file, or do I need to fix the changed lines? That is, are the lines later in the file overriding keys mentioned before during the TP plugin file creation?

L-39.pp

Edited April 11, 2024 by virgo47

[virgo47]

I've updated the L-39 dashboard: https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3336442/

There are various tweaks and fixes to the button behavior and visuals, minor reshuffling of some of the buttons - but also rework of the secondary Alt page with button covers (again, me learning Photoshop):

Thanks to the Aircraft Model I was able to fix C/ZA discrepancies for the Start Regime button - and also indicate the variant in the upper left corner (for those who forgot where they sit :-)).

[xoomigo]

On 4/11/2024 at 5:52 PM, virgo47 said:

BTW: If I have some changes, like the lines I attached, is it enough to just slap them at the end of the original PP file, or do I need to fix the changed lines? That is, are the lines later in the file overriding keys mentioned before during the TP plugin creation?

Thanks. For subsequent changes, perhaps you can just send me the entire batch of your modified section - both new and old. I can then just overwrite my copy with yours without having to do anything else.

Will be cleaning up my codes before uploading to Github.  Will let you know when done. It will be publicly available.

[virgo47]

1 hour ago, xoomigo said:

Thanks. For subsequent changes, perhaps you can just send me the entire batch of your modified section - both new and old. I can then just overwrite my copy with yours without having to do anything else.

I'm not sure I understand completely... are the lines provided for L-39.pp OK? Those are all the lines that I modified. I assume you mean not to "forget" them if I have some changes in the future and instead cumulate those changes? I assume, that's because for you the baseline is the DCS-BIOS defaults (while for me it's the current state of PP files, because I don't see the initial one).

But GitHub will make it all so much clearer, so I'm really looking forward to it!

BTW: Originally my question about how to modify/patch the PP file was just for my internal needs on my end - for instance when I have some customization that is perhaps not best for public use (or not yet) and I just need to "patch" a new DCS-COINS. It was no suggestion, just a question whether the later lines override the sooner lines... (of course I can also try it, but you know the design).

[virgo47]

@xoomigo Today I started Touch Portal on Windows and on the tablet and did some other stuff before I started DCS - and in the meantime (while I did nothing with TP) I got this TP notification:

I hope you know what that E3081 may mean.

I saw some general slowness when editing buttons and lag 1-2 secs between switching pages, but the rest of the buttons work fine. The page switch is not a problem for me, but it could  be faster, of course - but this may be also impacted by the general complexity of the page (although I don't consider it extreme, really).

[xoomigo]

On 4/13/2024 at 1:16 AM, virgo47 said:

I'm not sure I understand completely... are the lines provided for L-39.pp OK? Those are all the lines that I modified. I assume you mean not to "forget" them if I have some changes in the future and instead cumulate those changes? I assume, that's because for you the baseline is the DCS-BIOS defaults (while for me it's the current state of PP files, because I don't see the initial one).

Yes, they are - okay. What I wanted to say was that any change to L-39 for me means blanket overwrite of the section meant for L-39, without having to identify, compare one-by-one how/what was changed and then making the change itself. So it means all accumulated changes that you have made since day one.

7 hours ago, virgo47 said:

@xoomigo Today I started Touch Portal on Windows and on the tablet and did some other stuff before I started DCS - and in the meantime (while I did nothing with TP) I got this TP notification:

I hope you know what that E3081 may mean.

This was a message from the 3rd party node.js API for TP. I had added some code to enable the 2-way slider update (adjustment in the knobs in DCS will also automatically update the TP slider) and also the TP hold functions - which inadvertently added some "noise" to plugin communication between DCS-BIOS and TP. The attempt did not pay off and I had left the code active - hoping that it was a TP4 issue and that future TP revisions may fix and make them work.

I will disable them as they are now causing them. Will release a new plugin version soon.

Edited April 14, 2024 by xoomigo

[xoomigo]

11 hours ago, xoomigo said:

I will disable them as they are now causing them. Will release a new plugin version soon.

 

Okay, it's done - DCS-COINS.exe patched with changes to Common Data and L-39 (as discussed with virgo47).

https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3319022/

 

[virgo47]

1 hour ago, xoomigo said:

Okay, it's done - DCS-COINS.exe patched with changes to Common Data and L-39 (as discussed with virgo47).

Thanks, L-39 seems great, but IAS_EU in commons was forgotten and is still disabled:

IAS_EU|ias_eu|Indicated Airspeed KM H|0|0|#Text#|0

I know I didn't deliver that one as an attachment, but I thought it was covered in the discussion.

BTW: I'll wait for whatever other changes pile up, you don't have to release it just because of this.

Edited April 14, 2024 by virgo47

[xoomigo]

20 hours ago, virgo47 said:

Thanks, L-39 seems great, but IAS_EU in commons was forgotten and is still disabled:

IAS_EU|ias_eu|Indicated Airspeed KM H|0|0|#Text#|0

I know I didn't deliver that one as an attachment, but I thought it was covered in the discussion.

BTW: I'll wait for whatever other changes pile up, you don't have to release it just because of this.

 

Ah, yes. I had missed that. Okay, I will accumulate it with other changes in the next release.

BTW, are you on the TP v4.2 beta-3 or beta-4 release? I am asking because the earlier issue of slow loading of the "Edit Control Screen" was only fixed in the beta release concerned, not the stable version.

[virgo47]

25 minutes ago, xoomigo said:

BTW, are you on the TP v4.2 beta-3 or beta-4 release? I am asking because the earlier issue of slow loading of the "Edit Control Screen" was only fixed in the beta release concerned, not the stable version.

Yeah, to clarify, I'm on TP v4.1 build 2 which is the latest stable. Everything else works fine, so I'll wait for the next stable thing probably.

[virgo47]

@xoomigo, hello. After some time with L-39, I returned to UH-1H. And the beast has all the volume knobs inverted. My memory is overloaded recently, but I recalled that we talked about it - the need to invert the sliders, so that 0 is max and 65535 is min. Please, is that feature still on your TODO list?

Currently, I'm using a nasty ugly trick with inverted colors - but this means I have to slide down for more.

EDIT: I'd also have some PP patches for Huey (duplicated "Volume" names from DCS/DCS BIOS are quite confusing), but I'll probably get more, so just let me know when you're about to release and I'll sum it up then.

I started the cosmetics contributions to DCS-BIOS - such as Description fixes, e.g. deduplication (adding specificity) or fixes of typos (e.g. Back vs Front for some L-39 elements). This means that when they release a new version and you'll use it, eventually some descriptions will be fixed. To fix it at the source (DCS-BIOS) makes more sense for these things.

EDIT2: What DCS BIOS build do you use? Is this the current official repo now? https://github.com/DCS-Skunkworks/dcs-bios

Edited May 13, 2024 by virgo47

[xoomigo]

On 5/12/2024 at 11:31 PM, virgo47 said:

@xoomigo, hello. After some time with L-39, I returned to UH-1H. And the beast has all the volume knobs inverted. My memory is overloaded recently, but I recalled that we talked about it - the need to invert the sliders, so that 0 is max and 65535 is min. Please, is that feature still on your TODO list?

Hi virgo47,

Yes, I had taken a look at doing the inverter function to reverse the min/max value for certain parameters. It was not a straight-forward change as anticipated earlier. And it will create additional CPU cycles in the processing of each DCS-BIOS event and action - which I fear may impact its performance in lower spec PCs.

On 5/12/2024 at 11:31 PM, virgo47 said:

I started the cosmetics contributions to DCS-BIOS - such as Description fixes, e.g. deduplication (adding specificity) or fixes of typos (e.g. Back vs Front for some L-39 elements). This means that when they release a new version and you'll use it, eventually some descriptions will be fixed. To fix it at the source (DCS-BIOS) makes more sense for these things.

EDIT2: What DCS BIOS build do you use? Is this the current official repo now? https://github.com/DCS-Skunkworks/dcs-bios

Excellent! I was also going to suggest the same - addressing the issue at the source.

I was using https://github.com/DCSFlightpanels/dcs-bios

but looks like that's the old name/link - DCS-FlightPanel is now known as DCS-Skunkworks and the link will redirect to the same link that you referenced. So yes, it should be the same repo. Let me know when the next version is released so that I do can a rebundling of the update.

FYI, I am caught in the midst of another project - my home automation is in a midst of a hardware and software upgrade... other half indirectly nagging to get it done ASAP. Facing a technical issue and will require some time to sort out in my limited spare time...

I will follow up with the promised release of my code in Github after that.

Edited May 14, 2024 by xoomigo