VIRPIL Controls

[imacken]

I haven’t modded anything. Just bound the 2 available flaps commands for up and down to the lever. 
I don’t know what all this double press thing is that non WH users are talking about or why it is necessary. 

[Ziptie]

3 flap positions.

 

UP

MVR (maneuver)

FULL

 

As others have stated, the TMWH has a 3 position switch, and is able to command all 3 positions.

 

Cheers,

 

Ziptie

[imacken]

I was asking about the whole double press thing that people are talking about. Really don't know what that is all about.

 

The other thing I can't figure out, is why I can't find anything in the Warthog lua files for the MVR position.

[Tippis]

8 minutes ago, imacken said:

The other thing I can't figure out, is why I can't find anything in the Warthog lua files for the MVR position.

It's because it's actually just two buttons. The TMWH flaps switch is an “on-off-on” switch, and you only bind the “on” positions. The MVR position is simply the absence of one of the other two — it gets activated when DCS recognises that either of the buttons that correspond to the other positions has been released.

 

So in effect, it doesn't have an UP, a MVR, and a FULL bind. Instead it has a “UP, else MVR” and a “FULL, else MVR” bind. The AP mode switch and engine operation switches: the middle position doesn't have a specific bind, but is instead activated when one of the other positions is no longer sending a button press.

 

And it's not just the A-10 and TMWH — this is how lots of hardware switches and in-game switch abstractions are set up: you have an on-off two-position or an on-off-on three-position switch, where bindable button presses are only sent for the “on” positions but the game can also be made to detect and react to when that “on” switch is no longer… well… on. The problem is that this is hidden on the developer end and not exposed in the keybind UI, which would solve just about everything ever.

[LeCuvier]

25 minutes ago, imacken said:

...The other thing I can't figure out, is why I can't find anything in the Warthog lua files for the MVR position.

It's the usual 3-position switch logic in DCS World, for use with maintained ON1-OFF-ON2 switches. You bind ON1 to "Toggle Flaps UP" and ON2 to "Toggle Flaps Down".

IF ON1 Then UP

ELSE IF ON2 Then DOWN

ELSE MVR

 

Unfortunately the bindings for "Toggle Flaps UP" and "Toggle Flaps Down" are only available for the TM WH throttle, and if you want to have them for any other device you need to paste these 2 lines into the "default.lua":

{down = iCommandPlane_FLAPS_UP, up = iCommandPlane_FLAPS_MNR_from_UP,name = _('Toggle Flaps Up'), category = _('Systems')},
{down = iCommandPlane_FLAPS_DN, up = iCommandPlane_FLAPS_MNR_from_DN,name = _('Toggle Flaps Dn'), category = _('Systems')},

Edited March 21, 2021 by LeCuvier

[imacken]

Honestly guys, I'm not trying to be awkward here, I just don't get it.

As I have said, I have my flaps lever on my CM3 throttle bound to 'Flaps UP' when forward and 'Flaps DOWN' when aft.  The lever works in all modules like that, except for the ones which have an axis for flaps, then it is bound to that.

(I also have a middle 'Flaps HALF' button bound on the lever for use in say the Hornet.)

I used to have a WH HOTAS, and I couldn't see what the middle MVR position did then, and I'm still struggling.

What would the point be in importing toggle lines into the default lua file?  Any benefit compared to just UP and DOWN?

[Yurgon]

On 3/21/2021 at 10:54 AM, imacken said:

What would the point be in importing toggle lines into the default lua file?  Any benefit compared to just UP and DOWN?

The default flaps commands available for mapping (called "Flaps Up" and "Flaps Down") move the flaps to the next position. These are bound to the keyboard by default.

So if your flaps are fully up, and you want them full down, DCS needs to see "Flaps Down", and then "Flaps Down" again. The first of the "Flaps Down" commands sends them from fully up to the middle setting, called "maneuver" in the A-10. The second "Flaps Down" command sends them from the maneuver position to the full down down position. Going back to full up would then require two "Flaps Up" commands. You can observe this with the flaps indicator in the pit, or by just looking at the flaps from an external view.

There's nothing inherently wrong with this.

But I guess when Thrustmaster designed the Warthog throttle and presumably was in contact with ED about the most efficient way to build the hardware, they figured that it would make sense to omit one sensor, namely the middle position for the flaps switch (like others have said, there are more switches that work exactly the same). So while the flaps have 3 settings in the A-10, the TM Warthog flaps switch has only two "buttons" internally: UP and DN (to be more precise: DirectX 22 and DirectX 23). The one advantage is that UP means up, so when the TM Warthog flaps switch is in the UP position, DCS will always move the flaps to the fully up position as well, and vice versa for the down position.

There is also nothing inherently superior to doing it this way; it does avoid some potential problems with the other way, while bringing some of its own.

Basically, what people have been saying is that when a TM Warthog Throttle is connected to the PC, DCS exposes two new keybinds that are only available for the TM Warthog throttle: "Toggle Flaps Up" and "Toggle Flaps Dn".

With new hardware working the same way as the TM Warthog, it would be great if ED just made these Warthog-exclusive commands available for all devices.

But until that happens, the "Toggle Flaps Up" and "Toggle Flaps Dn" commands will work a lot better with some hardware than "Flaps Up" and "Flaps Down", and in order to achieve that, it's a simple copy&paste of two lines of Lua code into another file.

So, if you've found a reliable solution to map the flaps lever to all 3 flaps positions in the A-10, that's awesome, and you don't need to do anything else. But if you happen to use a 3-position switch that only sends two DirectX buttons, you'd most likely need to copy&paste some code to the poper file in order to be able to use the switch the "proper" way.

One final thought: You do use the middle flaps setting in the A-10, don't you? From your comments, it sounds a little like you might only ever use full up and full down, which would be somewhat uncommon.

Edited March 27 by Yurgon
Attachments removed

[imacken]

Thanks, I’ll look at that in detail later, but how you describe the flaps behaviour is certainly not how it works for me in my CM3. 
When my lever is forward - as I’ve said a few times now - the flaps are fully up. When I move the lever aft, the flaps move all the way down. 

[Yurgon]

3 minutes ago, imacken said:

When my lever is forward - as I’ve said a few times now - the flaps are fully up. When I move the lever aft, the flaps move all the way down. 

 

So does that mean that you are not able to place the flaps in the middle or "maneuver" position?

 

Other than that, I sort of fail to see how that is relevant anyway. You indicated that you set up your Virpil controls in a very specific way, but since you never showed and explained in detail how it's set up and what commands exactly it'll send depending on the lever position and/or the virtual buttons, you're basically saying that you've done something, and it works somehow. As long as it works exactly the way you want it to, awesome! And if it doesn't, I don't even understand your problem (after reading all your posts in this thread twice).

[biotech]

13 минут назад, imacken сказал:

When my lever is forward - as I’ve said a few times now - the flaps are fully up. When I move the lever aft, the flaps move all the way down. 

No hold at '2' position?

 

[imacken]

I think the conversation had lost its focus, tbh. 
i don’t have a problem at all, certainly in my eyes. What I have been asking is simply why some people who don’t have a WH find it necessary to do double presses. 
I haven’t done any ‘very specific’ settings or methods at all. I simply bind up to a button and down to a button. Works perfectly. No double pressing or any other actions necessary. Same as all other modules. 
Btw, there are only 2 bindings - up and down - for flaps available to me, no third option. 

1 minute ago, biotech said:

No hold at '2' position?

 

Nope! Only fully up and down. It would be good if we had an axis bind for this. 

[Yurgon]

3 hours ago, imacken said:

Nope! Only fully up and down. It would be good if we had an axis bind for this. 

 

It's a 3 position switch in the real aircraft, so an axis would be fairly unrealistic.

 

In any case, I'd say you have your answer right there. Your controls don't work like in the real aircraft, you're missing the "maneuver" position which is usually used for take-offs.

 

3 hours ago, imacken said:

What I have been asking is simply why some people who don’t have a WH find it necessary to do double presses. 

 

When I map my UP and DN flap switch positions on the TM Warthog to "Flaps Up" and "Flaps Down", I need to hit either position twice in order to bring the flaps full up or full down.

 

I guess we need to go into even more detail here. Does your throttle lever emit DirectX buttons, and did you bind these in DCS? Or did you program them to emit keyboard commands ("f" and "Left SHIFT + f" by default)?

[imacken]

19 minutes ago, Yurgon said:

 

In any case, I'd say you have your answer right there. Your controls don't work like in the real aircraft, you're missing the "maneuver" position which is usually used for take-offs.

 

Correct. Can that be added by editing the default lua file?  I can't see the MVR position mentioned in the WH lua files.

 

19 minutes ago, Yurgon said:

When I map my UP and DN flap switch positions on the TM Warthog to "Flaps Up" and "Flaps Down", I need to hit either position twice in order to bring the flaps full up or full down.

 

Yes, I get that, what I was wondering is how/why the non WH users were doing that.

 

19 minutes ago, Yurgon said:

I guess we need to go into even more detail here. Does your throttle lever emit DirectX buttons, and did you bind these in DCS? Or did you program them to emit keyboard commands ("f" and "Left SHIFT + f" by default)?

Yes, it acts as both an analogue lever and DX buttons. I have mapped 3 buttons at 0-20%, 40-60% and 80-100%.  I bind the 0-20% and 80-100% in A-10C DCS for flaps up and down. No keyboard commands involved.

Edited March 21, 2021 by imacken

[imacken]

Ok, so I've sussed it out!

The reason I was seeing just fully up and down was that the lever was constantly sending the button signal to DCS.  So, it was going past the MVR setting and going fully up or down.

Now, if I push the lever forward and back to centre, the flaps go from down to MVR.  Similarly, if I pull lever aft and back to centre, the flaps go from up to MVR.

Sorted! Thanks for all your help.

[Yurgon]

2 minutes ago, imacken said:

The reason I was seeing just fully up and down was that the lever was constantly sending the button signal to DCS.

 

It actually sounds more like a repeating signal instead of a constant one, but yeah, that sounds like the culprit right there!

 

Glad it's working now.

[imacken]

Right, I still got it wrong. 

Turns out that it was working as it should all the time.  It doesn't go to full up and down with the lever forward or aft, it just moves one stop from full, i.e. to MVR in both cases. I have to do the lever movement again to get to fully up or down from the MVR position.

Jeez! Shows you how often I've flown the A-10C since I got my CM3!

I'll go and stand in a corner now. Sorry for wasting everybody's time, but at least I learned something.

[Yurgon]

23 minutes ago, imacken said:

it just moves one stop from full, i.e. to MVR in both cases.

 

Oh okay. That, too, would explain some things.

 

Anyway, to get it to do the right thing, this post holds all the secret there is to it:

 

 

[imacken]

Sorry to pursue this, but it doesn’t need any of that. It works straight out of the box. It was just me missing the point in the first place. 

[Yurgon]

1 hour ago, imacken said:

It works straight out of the box.

 

Then I misunderstood you, again.

 

So you're getting all 3 flaps positions out of your controls with just the default assignments? If you could tell us exactly which of your virtual buttons is mapped to which A-10C key assignments, future pilots with the CM3 can set it up the same way and not have to go through all the same hassle.

[imacken]

No key assignments are made. Buttons (or switches, if you like) are bound to flaps up and flaps down. Doesn’t matter if they are physical switches or virtual buttons, the effect is the same. 
So, just like on the WH, from full flaps, a press up of the switch moves to MVR and another press moves from MVR to full up. 
Similarly, from flaps up, a press down of the switch moves to MVR, and a second press moves flaps to fully down. 

Edited March 22, 2021 by imacken

[Yurgon]

1 hour ago, imacken said:

So, just like on the WH, from full flaps, a press up of the switch moves to MVR and another press moves from MVR to full up. 

 

A press up of what switch? You said you have a lever set up to provide 3 DirectX buttons. Let's say the lever is fully aft and the flaps are fully down.

 

Now you move the lever to the center position and the center button is assigned "Flaps Up" and the flaps move up one position and are now in the maneuver position, correct?

 

Next, you move the lever fully forward, and the button triggered by this is assigned "Flaps Up", and the flaps now move to the fully up position, correct?

 

Now let's say you wanted to move the flaps down one position, so you pull the lever aft to its center position, which is bound to "Flaps Up", yet the flaps miraculously move down?

[LeCuvier]

I think he uses the "Flaps Up" and "Flaps Down" commands which are available from "default.lua". These commands move the flaps switch in the simulated cockpit forward or aft one position at a time and they only require two pushbuttons. They would not work very well with the kind of 3-position switch we have on the TM Warthog throttle.

Edit: Just had a look at the CM3 specification and from what I saw it does not have the kind of 3-position flaps switch we have on the TM WH throttle. So using the Flaps UP and Flaps DOWN commands is probably the easiest solution for the CM3. I guess we've beaten this one to death...

Edited March 22, 2021 by LeCuvier

[imacken]

7 hours ago, Yurgon said:

 

A press up of what switch? You said you have a lever set up to provide 3 DirectX buttons. Let's say the lever is fully aft and the flaps are fully down.

 

Now you move the lever to the center position and the center button is assigned "Flaps Up" and the flaps move up one position and are now in the maneuver position, correct?

 

Next, you move the lever fully forward, and the button triggered by this is assigned "Flaps Up", and the flaps now move to the fully up position, correct?

 

Now let's say you wanted to move the flaps down one position, so you pull the lever aft to its center position, which is bound to "Flaps Up", yet the flaps miraculously move down?

No, sorry, you've got it wrong.  LeCuvier is correct.

 

I said above in my last post, that I bind 'flaps up' and 'flaps down', being the only flaps command available to me. (See attached).

 

Ignore the fact that I have this bound to a lever, that is a red herring. Again, as I said in my post just above, the commands can be bound to ANY switch or button.

 

Although not relevant, let me just clear up the lever thing. I also said in a post above that although I have 3 buttons bound to the lever - 0-20%, 40-60% and 80-100% - that only 2, i.e. 0-20% and 80-100% are used in the A-10C, one for flaps up and one for flaps down.  (The 40-60% is used in the Hornet for half flaps.)

 

So, back to the CM3.  Let's take an example. See the momentary toggle switches on the graphic labelled T5-T7 in te bottom left?  They are on-off-on switches.  So, I would bind T5 forward as 'flaps up' and T5 aft as 'flaps down'.  Then, starting with flaps in the fully up position, if I press T5 aft, flaps move to MVR, and if I then press it aft again, the flaps will move to fully down position and vice versa.  If the flaps were in the MVR position, then moving T5 forward would move them fully up. Similarly, from the MVR position, moving it aft would move the flaps fully down.

 

In essence, the switch moves the flaps one position up or down. I hope we are getting there now!

[Yurgon]

5 hours ago, imacken said:

Ignore the fact that I have this bound to a lever, that is a red herring. Again, as I said in my post just above, the commands can be bound to ANY switch or button.

 

The point is, you could use the analog lever axis to work exactly like the flaps switch on the real aircraft, by modifying your default.lua exactly the way the LeCuvier described, and then mapping the "Toggle Flaps Up" and "Toggle Flaps Dn" to the fully forward and fully aft virtual buttons of your CM3, the advantage being that the position of the lever then matches the position of the flaps, unlike the momentary T5 switch.

 

I mean, I really don't care how you set up your controls. But you've been sending pretty mixed signals about how you have set it up, how you misunderstood other's setups, misunderstood the controls and the flaps mechanics themselves, how all of that ties into the CM3 or not, and whether or not your flaps work exactly like in the real aircraft.

 

All I'm saying is, with what you described previously, you could set up the analog lever to almost match the functionality of the flaps switch in the real jet.

[imacken]

To be honest, I think this conversation has reached its limit. I would say you have consistently misunderstood what I have been saying/asking, hence the need for me to repeat my flaps process description more than once, both in specific and general terms. 
I do use the lever, and it does represent the position of the flaps, i.e. forward is up and aft is down. 
However, I appreciate your input. Thanks. 

Edited March 22, 2021 by imacken