RodentMaster Posted May 22, 2021 Posted May 22, 2021 It took me a very long time to find this very vexxing problem. I'm reporting it here for review and/or comment/fix. This has been plaguing me for months. I have found mapping mouse left, mouse right, mouse scroll up, and mouse scroll down, to be VERY helpful when in VR mode. However, with limited buttons and many many things requiring them, I have resorted to a logical modifier setup. I have "default" with no modifiers, and I have a modifier for "flight" and another modifier for "combat/action." On the side thumb 4-way hat of my stick (hat #4 on CH Fighterstick Pro) I have default set to mouse left/right/up/down. However, because these are mapped it does NOT play well with other modifiers. The problem is it's sporadic in how it fights back. I have mod7 (throttle) set to my flight options. Thus this handles flaps in/out, gear toggle, and wheel brakes toggles on that same 4-way head. Never had any problems running this with mouse buttons in default. However, I have mod9 (throttle) set to combat/action options, and this includes china hat aft/fwd as well as speed brakes open/closed. I ran into SOOOO many problems with these not responding. No matter what I did. I could not get it to narrow down the cause of the problem. Then even after I cleared binds but left the UI layer keys (where the mouse buttons are) it would not let me remap those speedbrake and china hat options to even non-modified buttons by themselves. For example, if "action" and "speed brake open" was changed to just non-modified coolie hat up, it still wouldn't work in-game. It kind of saved the screwed up nature of that command. I used hand editing LUA files, I used in-game control mapping, and I used JoyPro in various ways to test and narrow down WTF was going on here. I found the culprit just today. It's definitively the buttons mapped as mouse buttons screwing everything up. As soon as I cleared those out, every instance, every saved input setup I was playing with and saving/swapping to (about 5 total) all worked again perfectly. Sub-note: I'm not sure if this problem is based upon the nature of mouse clicks and maybe it thinks they're special and can only work with maximum of 1 modifier in-game, or if it's an issue with these being mapped in UI Layer instead of plane layer. It is possible that the mouse buttons thought they weren't being modified because they were in click mode or something. I saw the crosshair come up a time or two (not reliably repeatable) when I was looking at my air brakes trying to get them to open. I tried clearing the 4 mouse buttons out 1 at a time to confirm, and each mod9 + that-combo worked as soon as I did each one. I went back, did another, hit OK, tested, and went back and did the last two one at a time. In each case, it was the mouse keys preventing the modifier mapping from actually executing. I also have a third modifier on the joystick pinky button (not used as much) that I tried to map things to in order to determine if the problem was based on getting a modifier from a different controller, and this had the same problems, albeit while still allowing the mod7 modifier to function with flaps most of the time. It was very sporadic. Planes tested in, confirmed in, and corrected in (via deleting the mouse button default mapping and seeing immediate positive results seconds later): A10C, A10C II, F16C. P.S. I would very much love to get this fixed so it works like any other modifier mapping.
RodentMaster Posted May 22, 2021 Author Posted May 22, 2021 (edited) Follow-up and new conclusions: It's not specifically the mouse keys, though that may be part of it. It is the overall modifier behavior and unreliable behavior. If you read my previous post, I had to unbind all the mouse keys to get things to work that were modified mappings of those mouse keys. Well, in VR those mouse keys are vital, so I wound up moving the other modifer+ mappings to different key combos and leaving the mouse keys to be the ONLY mapping on that 4-way hat. That seemed to work. Mostly. I got my speed brakes back, I had to move flaps and some other items as well. As I'm at a premium of buttons and DCS A-10C II has an ungodly amount of things needed for it, I moved them to various places on the stick map I have drawn up. I moved "gear toggle" to a non-modified button on my throttle quadrant. I removed a couple of less-needed options from my map to make room. However, this same button when modified with throttle_but7 is my "right eng start" and no matter what I did I could not get this rt engine to start. It's really annoying. Also note when it screws up the command it screws up the KEYBOARD MAP AS WELL, so hitting the keyboard option was a no-go. It would not start my rt eng no matter what I did. I looked at the mapping in-game to see what other modified uses I had on this key. Only thing was the gear toggle. I removed that, hit OK, went back to my in-progress test-game, and what do you know? They rt eng started up just fine. I can also report that I cannot raise or lower my seat position because these are button7+ modified versions of my "act as ESC" and "VR Zoom" The crazy thing is that I have a modifier pinky switch on my stick for view-related things and when I hit it for spyglass zoom it's modifying the VR Zoom and that has no problems at all. Again, once it screws up my seat up/down mapping on those keys I can't even use keyboard shortcuts to toggle it up or down. I have to literally click the cockpit switch that allows me to do the same. Some things, however, have no clickable cockpit equivalent (like "start rt eng"). So I'm baffled as to how this system can be so screwed up with regards to modifiers. Some work fine, others won't work well at all. Once it won't work well, it salts the earth and takes away your keyboard option as well -- all while still showing under the controls settings screen and registering in there just fine, as if there is no problem at all. I have questions: Are there any known input mapping problems related to this? Are there a cap on modifiers? Is there a cap on how many different modifier-enhanced mappings you can put on a single button? (for example, button 1 mapped, modifier1+But1, modifier2+but1, modifier3+but1, etc) What are our limitations in this? Because from what I thought/saw, there were none. P.S. As a personal note: I swear, the god awful keybind mess that is DCS World never used to be this painful, and when they keep wiping your keybinds with updates, it's really driving me away from the game months at a time as I dread fighting the control mapping every time I try to get back into it. I'm not even combat capable right now with all the screwed up mapping, and flew one flight in an A10C II without boat or china hat switches. You have NO idea how impossible that would be without at least HMCS for TGP slave targetting. I can fly, mostly, but can't get any training done. Edited May 22, 2021 by RodentMaster
Flappie Posted May 23, 2021 Posted May 23, 2021 (edited) Hi I'm trying to understand your issue here, but I don't understand your settings. "On the side thumb 4-way hat of my stick (hat #4 on CH Fighterstick Pro) I have default set to mouse left/right/up/down". Do you mean you assigned your 4-way hat to slew left/right/up/down in the game options, or do you mean you're using an external program to make your 4-way hat act as a secondary mouse? By the way, here's a picture to help us communicate. Which one of these hats are you talking about? (sorry if numbers are not corresponding to yours, I don't know this controller) Edited May 23, 2021 by Flappie ---
RodentMaster Posted May 28, 2021 Author Posted May 28, 2021 (edited) A couple of different mappings with modifiers. Maybe I should outline it in a bit more detail, but I'll try not to write a novel. So, looking at that image, we have hats 1,2,3,4. I have 3 modifier buttons that act as additional modes. 1 on my stick, 2 on my throttle quadrant. Stick default mode: Hat 1 = coolie Hat 2 = DMS Hat 3 = TMS Hat 4 = mouse clicks/scrolls Throttle Mode 7 ("Flight" in my mind) Hat 1 = trim Hat 2 = misc Hat 3 = NVG toggle, VR re-center Hat 4 = flaps up/down, gear toggle, wbrakes toggle Throttle Mode 9 ("Combat") Hat 1 = CMS Hat 2 = boat hat + misc Hat 3 = slew Hat 4 = airbrakes extend/retract and china hat fwd/aft The examples of problems: Airbrakes wouldn't respond. Even if I cleared the mapping, remapped it, they would not work. Even the keyboard mapping for it would not work. It nuked that entire command somehow. This is because the mouse mapping on the same buttons. However, in the controls setup page you can press the right combo (mode 9+hat4) and it would register the airbrakes being pressed and jump to that bind option, and highlight it. It would simply not work in-flight. China hat also would not work in either direction (mode 9+Hat 4 also). However, flaps worked fine (mode 7+Hat 4) as did gear and wbrake toggles. It was also inconsistent as to which mods it allowed and which it nuked. I tried remapping it in-game, but it was unremappable and would do the same thing (register in the mapping menu, jump to it, but never work in-flight and the key presses would not work). One by one I tried a million things until I unmapped the mouse button options in default mode. One by one as I cleared those, that direction of the Hat 4 started working in other modes as well. This took so long because 1) even when I cleared out all the other options, I still needed the mouse-click options and didn't realize they were part of the problem, and 2) when I cleared them out in an active game session, it was already too late and they were nuked. Only when I 100% wiped my config and started clear without even setting the mouse options in UI Layer settings, was I able to use the keyboard options to toggle those air brakes. It led to some very disruptive confusion. In the second example, NVG was causing problems. Hat 3 was set to TMS. Mod 9+Hat 3 was set to slew. Mod 7+Hat 3 was set to NVG and VR recenter. I didn't have problems with recenter that I can think of, but didn't use it too often. When I hit TMS up in default mode, it did not trigger as TMS up but rather toggled my NVG on. I could slew all directions no problem. I just couldn't TMS up or up long to set any kind of SPI, and couldn't use china aft/fwd to assign SPI either (as you can imagine that hobbles the A-10s abilities GREATLY). However, looking in the controls it mapped fine, and NVG were only toggling with Mod 7+Hat3 under the settings screen. For a while I thought it might be limited only to the UI layer commands, because I had a throttle button 11 in default mode mapped to "escape menu" and I tried mapping the Mod7+Button11 to "lower seat height" but it would stop working. I had Button 12 to "VR Zoom" (also a UI layer option) and it was Mode 7+Button12 mapped as "seat raise height" and this also didn't work. I thought they were considered in the same class as the mouse keys click/scroll as they were under the same menu, so I didn't single them out. Most recently I mapped a simple button my my CH throttle quadrant to "toggle gear" (I was forced to make a lot of difficult choices on how to remap my setup to avoid mapping modes on top of that Hat 4 mouse-click option) and this is why I posted my reply to my initial post. The gear was Button 3 default mode. Mod 7+Button3 was R Eng Start. I never had that many problems before this getting that one to work. Now I did all of a sudden. Mod9+Button3 was my kneeboard quick glance and it also stopped working. Nothing worked. Until I cleared out the default mode bind for toggle gear. Then Mod9 and Mod7 worked fine. It's a very complicated problem and I don't fully understand everything behind it, but it's all very directly tied to the key mapping in the controls setup. Edited May 28, 2021 by RodentMaster Corrected a couple of notations about what I had mapped to which nodes.
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