Jump to content

Orion HDG and CRS knobs


stukemp

Recommended Posts

Hello all!

 

I have recently took delivery of the Orion throttle and I basically downloaded and used the winwing binds with a couple of alterations. Now question is as per title, why can i not manipulate the F-18 HDG or CRS bugs via the rotating knobs on the throttle?

 

I see that there is no axis type configurations to these in the settings but is there a way around it?

 

Thanks!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's not an axis, but a rotary encoder presumably, so for each click it makes, it transmits a single signal which can be mapped to a key press (different for left and right turn, naturally). 

i386DX40@42 MHz w/i387 CP, 4 MB RAM (8*512 kB), Trident 8900C 1 MB w/16-bit RAMDAC ISA, Quantum 340 MB UDMA33, SB 16, DOS 6.22 w/QEMM + Win3.11CE, Quickshot 1btn 2axis, Numpad as hat. 2 FPH on a good day, 1 FPH avg.

 

DISCLAIMER: My posts are still absolutely useless. Just finding excuses not to learn the F-14 (HB's Swansong?).

 

Annoyed by my posts? Please consider donating. Once the target sum is reached, I'll be off to somewhere nice I promise not to post from. I'd buy that for a dollar!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hmm, I see. I presume you're mapping it in DCS directly? One solution would be to use a middle man software (e.g. WinWing, Gremlin, etc.) which allows you to set more precisely press and release timings (e.g. for each click on the encoder, press this key combination for that long) which you could then experiment with until the switch on the bottom of the UFC is held long enough to move the CRS or HDG values by a single degree.

i386DX40@42 MHz w/i387 CP, 4 MB RAM (8*512 kB), Trident 8900C 1 MB w/16-bit RAMDAC ISA, Quantum 340 MB UDMA33, SB 16, DOS 6.22 w/QEMM + Win3.11CE, Quickshot 1btn 2axis, Numpad as hat. 2 FPH on a good day, 1 FPH avg.

 

DISCLAIMER: My posts are still absolutely useless. Just finding excuses not to learn the F-14 (HB's Swansong?).

 

Annoyed by my posts? Please consider donating. Once the target sum is reached, I'll be off to somewhere nice I promise not to post from. I'd buy that for a dollar!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 year later...

Did you get anywhere with this?

I have the same problem and SimAppPro's acceleration and interval settings do not help AFAICS. 

A 10 ms interval appears to be too short for DCS to register all the ticks, which means that you don't get a strong response - you're twisting the dial and not getting much movement even though input lag is minimal. Moving to 20-50 ms helps more ticks register, but introduces more input lag such that a large twist of the encoder can take seconds to resolve in DCS. Even if every tick registers, for things like HDG and CRS, one 'tick' or 'click' of the encoder should at most correspond to 1 degree for adequate control. Even if every tick registered, at the minimum 10 ms interval that's a theoretical best case of 3.6 seconds of twisting to do a full revolution of HDG or CRS angle. Real-life performance is worse as 1 tick appears to correspond to less than 1 degree and a good percentage of ticks are not registered.  I can't say I've noticed much difference when changing the acceleration between 1 and 5.

I'm starting to wonder about virtual mapping, macros and other possibilities. As far as I'm aware, there is a possibility of conflict between SimAppPro and Joystick Gremlin in certain cases so I'm not sure about that as a solution yet. The response of the encoders in DCS is surprisingly poor IMO - not sure where the blame lies though.  I've opened a support ticket with Winwing and will report back.


Edited by Monkeydonut
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Orion is not a Hornet throttle. They work much better (though still not super-well) on aircraft with actual knobs for those. I mostly use them for things like radio preset selectors or other kinds of knobs instead, particularly since they missed a big opportunity to make the wing fold knob a 4-pos selector (would've been a lot more useful that way). In fact, when you have a channel repeater up front, the having the channel selector down there is awesome for campaigns that use realistic comms.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It really isn't. Taurus was a Hornet throttle, and Orion drew on that, sharing its grip and many features. But it's not, by design, an F-18 throttle. Notice Master Arm is a 3-pos switch, the sliders don't correspond to anything in the Hornet, and the parking brake is more Viper than Hornet. It was meant to be universal from the start. Layout is also nothing like the Hornet, unlike Taurus.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was talking about the grip. The switches on the base seem to be a compromise. The wing fold is obviously a Hornet. They knew they were making an F-16 version and put the AP on it. It would appear an A-10 version might come too.

What makes them the intended throttle is the grip. We have a Hornet and Viper so far. The base will never be specialized to one plane but a compromise.

  • Thanks 1

Buzz

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree the Taurus is more specific to the Hornet but it's too expensive for my budget. Especially, after I just bought a new gaming system and monitor. Orion2 is all I can afford now. As long as the grip is right. I can deal with a compromise base.

Buzz

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i wanted to see if I could replicate the issue and maybe solve it in a short amount of time. Needless to say I fell in to the same trap. However I had already had these rotaries mapped to formation and position lights.  Since I use non of win wings labelings I put  switches and buttons where I felt it made since to me.

In the end I ended up using the pitch alt hold 3 way switch and the  Rol hdg sel. I felt those were more akin to things on the f16 than the f18. They actually make great heading and course switches.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Winwing support weren't helpful.  Apparently the hardware supports USB update intervals of 1 ms, but most games including DCS won't do better than 10 ms.  I couldn't really get much sense out of them with respect to potential workarounds re: virtual mapping or macros - I'm not 100% sure it can't be done, but nothing they said helped.  They did see that they would try to improve rotary encoder behaviour / options in the future.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 hours ago, Monkeydonut said:

Winwing support weren't helpful.  Apparently the hardware supports USB update intervals of 1 ms, but most games including DCS won't do better than 10 ms.  I couldn't really get much sense out of them with respect to potential workarounds re: virtual mapping or macros - I'm not 100% sure it can't be done, but nothing they said helped.  They did see that they would try to improve rotary encoder behaviour / options in the future.

In the name of curiosity I found a way to best replicate the course and heading knobs and it works in game.

Goal

  • One turn left or right “holds” the switch in the F18 for course/heading.
  • One turn left or right and back to center to mimic a click once for small course/heading change.

I did so by reading the USB data of the throttle base in a stand-alone python script, then send a UDP packet to DCS to set the switch for crs/hdg to a given state. Main take away is that by creating a wrapper around the Throttle, extra customization can be gained.
 

Cons, requires extra work to adapt to different aircraft or switches. And it’s not a great long term solution.

Pros, cool seeing something work and it was my first time doing something like this. Also shows there does exist a way to fed the desired effect, or the ability to override how Winwing handles certain USB events


Video link showing in action

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That was very cool. I'm not an F18 driver but at least now I know how the HDG and CRS switches work and why 3-way switches get talked about so much in these threads 😉

Honestly from what I can see you're not far off a working solution for the F16 HDG/CRS knobs.  Surely if you have a wrapper reading the USB data you can accumulate clicks from the throttle base, and then send a UDP packet at the set interval with the requisite number of signals for e.g., 5 presses of 'HDG CCW'.


Edited by Monkeydonut
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 10 months later...

I had the same problem in the dcs f18. i got the knob to work via adjusting the dwell time in the winwing app. One problem with that is the software stores the encoder clicks and executes them at the timing you specify, so if you give the knob a full rotation, you can get up, go make a cup of coffee then come back to see the bug still creeping around the compass rose at like 1 degree per click.

I also had the same problem in the Cessna 172 g1000 (and other planes in msfs) my workaround for that was to map the "increase heading" command to the push button function of the knob as well as the clockwise rotation of the encoder. So when you push the knob down and hold it, the the bug moves very fast around the compass. It can only go one direction, but it's really fast. Then when I get close I let go and use the encoder for fine adjustment.

However, I haven't  flown the f18 (dcs) in a while (been getting into dcs war birds and comercial airliners in msfs) so I haven't tried my Cessna workaround in the f18.

Also, I can't remember if dcs allows you to assign two controls from the same device to the same function like in msfs. If it doesn't, then you may be able to map the knob push to the propper keyboard key via the winwing software, so dcs will see it as a keyboard command. The problem with that though is that it will stay mapped to that key for every aircraft. So if you wanted to use it for something else, you'll have to map the function to that keyboard key (whichever it is). I'm not sure if the winwing app has that functionality. I mapped one of the buttons on my VKB flight stick to the keyboard via the VKB software (f9 key to re-center my Trackir. Then I learned that trackir has key mapping...). If not, I'm sure one of the third party mapping apps will do this for you.

Try the keyboard command. If when you hold it down the bug travels fast, then it may work. Good luck.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...
  • 5 months later...

Thanks @Bloodcell!

I ran into the same issue and your approach is a perfect workaround!
Use the push function and bind it to either left or right turn of HDG/CSL. Then when you are near your desired heading/course fine tune with the turn function.

Important:
Set the time intervall for the HDG/CSL knob to someting between 60 and 100ms in the SimAppPro.
Below or at 50ms DCS tends to jump an input from each "knob turn click".
Above 100 DCS tends to keep processing each click after another and you will watch the bug go on and on when you give the knob a turn of a few clicks.
I find 60-70ms a good threshold to fine tune.

SimApp.jpg

DCS.jpg

  • Like 1

Ryzen7 5700X 8x3,4GHz (Turbo 4,6 GHz)  ||  G.Skill 32GB DDR4 3600MHz  ||  Geforce RTX 3060Ti (8GB VRAM) ||  WD Black 500GB NVME  || Windows 10 64Bit
WinWing Orion 2 HOTAS 18  ||  LG Ultragear 32' WQHD  ||  Opentrack + Neuralnet Headtracking

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...