Random items for the wishlist

[phone]

Just throwing out some bits and pieces I thought of while playing/planning in DCS...

 

• Add two options to the controls mapping screen that cross-populates to all modules. FC3 Common Controls, and Full Fidelity Common Controls. Having to manually set the same controls/axiis to the same functions for every plane is both time consuming and monotonous. 25 buttons on my VKB Gladiator, 32 buttons on my button box, and 19 buttons on my Ch Throttle plus ministick. Make it easier, huh? That's seventy-six separate functions and six axiis I have to map across the ten aircraft I currently own. Half of those functions require repeated mapping, by hand, plane by plane, because I want pitch and 'weapon release' and A/G Mode buttons to be the same no matter the plane. Several FC3 planes aren't even mapped right now as I flat gave up.
• Common afterburner behavior. The F18 has finger lifts you can turn on/off/map, the Viper has a pinky lever that doesn't work and a Special Menu that acts as a toggle for burner always on/off, the MiG29 and F15C have nothing - run throttle to max and somewhere during the last bit of travel, the burners light. Yet all real aircraft have a detent/horn/push/pull/gate movement on the throttle to light the burner. Add a global option in Settings for burner behavior: F18 style with (common!) mapped button for the gate/finger lift, Viper style toggle on/off, or User Defined for those with expensive gear that allows user-set AB zones (slider w/ percentage and live throttle Z indicator needle.)
• DCS updater needs to be a separate entity and not tied to DCS's current mode of Online or Offline. I only go online to update, preferring to fly offline solo. Getting DCS to update means start DCS, change modes, game restarts without running an update, close game, use the updater, start game, change modes, game crashes randomly in 15 min, then I can actually play. Rather a kludge way of going about it when module auth could just be checked at each update or multiplayer connection attempt. If no connection is found, the game grays out Multiplayer on the menu while keeping known valid modules auth'd and active.
• Special Menu in Settings to set countermeasure programs by plane, and store the files in Saved Games so they are persistent. Gets around the whole data cartridge development issue and means people don't have to take time resetting their programs in-cockpit or hassle with a LUA file.
• Hire a human factors engineer so ^^^ all that needlessly complex lack of forethought doesn't happen again.
• Having to get within 2m of the sea/ground before seeing spray/dust on a fly-by is a little silly. Bump up the altitude some? One video clip for reference....

[upyr1]

19 minutes ago, phone said:

Just throwing out some bits and pieces I thought of while playing/planning in DCS...

 

• Add two options to the controls mapping screen that cross-populates to all modules. FC3 Common Controls, and Full Fidelity Common Controls. Having to manually set the same controls/axiis to the same functions for every plane is both time consuming and monotonous. 25 buttons on my VKB Gladiator, 32 buttons on my button box, and 19 buttons on my Ch Throttle plus ministick. Make it easier, huh? That's seventy-six separate functions and six axiis I have to map across the ten aircraft I currently own. Half of those functions require repeated mapping, by hand, plane by plane, because I want pitch and 'weapon release' and A/G Mode buttons to be the same no matter the plane. Several FC3 planes aren't even mapped right now as I flat gave up.

I have been asking for a common controls profile myself. The people who object fear you would not be able to fine tune them. 

19 minutes ago, phone said:

• Common afterburner behavior. The F18 has finger lifts you can turn on/off/map, the Viper has a pinky lever that doesn't work and a Special Menu that acts as a toggle for burner always on/off, the MiG29 and F15C have nothing - run throttle to max and somewhere during the last bit of travel, the burners light. Yet all real aircraft have a detent/horn/push/pull/gate movement on the throttle to light the burner. Add a global option in Settings for burner behavior: F18 style with (common!) mapped button for the gate/finger lift, Viper style toggle on/off, or User Defined for those with expensive gear that allows user-set AB zones (slider w/ percentage and live throttle Z indicator needle.)

As long as it is accurate or at least configurable 

19 minutes ago, phone said:

• DCS updater needs to be a separate entity and not tied to DCS's current mode of Online or Offline. I only go online to update, preferring to fly offline solo. Getting DCS to update means start DCS, change modes, game restarts without running an update, close game, use the updater, start game, change modes, game crashes randomly in 15 min, then I can actually play. Rather a kludge way of going about it when module auth could just be checked at each update or multiplayer connection attempt. If no connection is found, the game grays out Multiplayer on the menu while keeping known valid modules auth'd and active.
• Special Menu in Settings to set countermeasure programs by plane, and store the files in Saved Games so they are persistent. Gets around the whole data cartridge development issue and means people don't have to take time resetting their programs in-cockpit or hassle with a LUA file.
• Hire a human factors engineer so ^^^ all that needlessly complex lack of forethought doesn't happen again.
• Having to get within 2m of the sea/ground before seeing spray/dust on a fly-by is a little silly. Bump up the altitude some? One video clip for reference....

 

[cfrag]

9 hours ago, phone said:

Hire a human factors engineer so ^^^ all that needlessly complex lack of forethought doesn't happen again

Huh. And you never even mentioned ME - the place where unwary UX designers go to die. 

 

 

[phone]

To clarify a couple bits...

Common Controls could be a single-point mapper, like a pop-up or settings tab, that fills in the various modules for you. So when you set throttle to Z-axis, it just sets it globally across all modules. It doesn't replace mapping stuff module by module, just makes it faster to map common inputs to various functions (axis assign, master arm, landing gear, etc.)

Afterburner is similar to the above - no two modules seem to handle burner the same. This would let players set the behavior how they want it based on their control setup. Button press to actuate finger lift/detent for the mil power gate, toggle for on/off as their throttle has a built-in detent, or a manually set zone for those with adjustable detents.

Decouple the game online/offline state from the updater cause, damn...

The ME honestly needs to get out of Janes-era GUI. Long-shot item low on the list but yeah, gotta be on the honey-do.

 

[upyr1]

1 hour ago, phone said:

To clarify a couple bits...

Common Controls could be a single-point mapper, like a pop-up or settings tab, that fills in the various modules for you. So when you set throttle to Z-axis, it just sets it globally across all modules. It doesn't replace mapping stuff module by module, just makes it faster to map common inputs to various functions (axis assign, master arm, landing gear, etc.)

Afterburner is similar to the above - no two modules seem to handle burner the same. This would let players set the behavior how they want it based on their control setup. Button press to actuate finger lift/detent for the mil power gate, toggle for on/off as their throttle has a built-in detent, or a manually set zone for those with adjustable detents.

Decouple the game online/offline state from the updater cause, damn...

The ME honestly needs to get out of Janes-era GUI. Long-shot item low on the list but yeah, gotta be on the honey-do.

 

Agreed with the need for a profile for common controls. A lot of people try to shoot the idea down talking about how they like to fine tune the dead zones and curves. This really isn't a good argument against having a common controls profile. There isn't a single aircraft which I control the pitch and roll with my toe brakes. 

We can keep the individual profiles we just need a better default.

[SharpeXB]

On 4/19/2022 at 8:15 PM, phone said:

Add two options to the controls mapping screen that cross-populates to all modules. FC3 Common Controls, and Full Fidelity Common Controls.

Funny, you took something that seems simple in concept and made it more complicated by giving it two choices. 
On the surface this might seem like a good idea but in reality there are too many modules and systems and hardware types and player preferences to ever make this practical. Plus it would never be popular to mess with everyone’s setup that’s already been done. Yes if you look at the entirety of assignments it seems like a lot and it is a lot but it only needs to be done once. So it’s not a big deal.  

[upyr1]

2 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

Funny, you took something that seems simple in concept and made it more complicated by giving it two choices. 
On the surface this might seem like a good idea but in reality there are too many modules and systems and hardware types and player preferences to ever make this practical.

Your axis are universal your preferred sensitivity might be different for each module, but pitch, yaw roll, throttle and a few other controls do the same basic thing for any module. So why remap them?

2 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

Plus it would never be popular to mess with everyone’s setup that’s already been done. Yes if you look at the entirety of assignments it seems like a lot and it is a lot but it only needs to be done once. So it’s not a big deal.  

Again you are ignoring an easy solution. Which is ti set the profiles up so that the general profile only populates new modules when you first install them. It won't change old profiles unless you click reset to default.

[SharpeXB]

6 hours ago, upyr1 said:

Your axis are universal your preferred sensitivity might be different for each module, but pitch, yaw roll, throttle and a few other controls do the same basic thing for any module. So why remap them?

Because it’s only a few setting which are in common so why bother? 

[upyr1]

4 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

Because it’s only a few setting which are in common so why bother? 

It removes steps to setting up your controls

Edited April 29, 2022 by upyr1

[Tippis]

4 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

Because it’s only a few setting which are in common so why bother? 

Not so few when you own 40+ aircraft and 5+ devices that all want to auto-bind themselves to those aircraft in various (invariably nonsensical) ways…

Don't assume that your non-use of at most one module, and thorough unfamiliarity with that single aircraft (and its settings and options), is somehow indicative of generalisable to everyone else.

Edited April 29, 2022 by Tippis

[Northstar98]

On 4/20/2022 at 2:15 AM, phone said:

Just throwing out some bits and pieces I thought of while playing/planning in DCS...

 

• Add two options to the controls mapping screen that cross-populates to all modules. FC3 Common Controls, and Full Fidelity Common Controls. Having to manually set the same controls/axiis to the same functions for every plane is both time consuming and monotonous. 25 buttons on my VKB Gladiator, 32 buttons on my button box, and 19 buttons on my Ch Throttle plus ministick. Make it easier, huh? That's seventy-six separate functions and six axiis I have to map across the ten aircraft I currently own. Half of those functions require repeated mapping, by hand, plane by plane, because I want pitch and 'weapon release' and A/G Mode buttons to be the same no matter the plane. Several FC3 planes aren't even mapped right now as I flat gave up.

While I personally don't have a problem setting up all of my controls the way I want, it would be good to get a user configurable default profile for some common controls that are universal across modules.

I guess it's difficult and it will still require some set up, but at least you only have to set these once and have them apply for multiple aircraft, so you don't have to do the same thing each time.

On 4/20/2022 at 2:15 AM, phone said:

• Common afterburner behavior. The F18 has finger lifts you can turn on/off/map, the Viper has a pinky lever that doesn't work and a Special Menu that acts as a toggle for burner always on/off, the MiG29 and F15C have nothing - run throttle to max and somewhere during the last bit of travel, the burners light. Yet all real aircraft have a detent/horn/push/pull/gate movement on the throttle to light the burner. Add a global option in Settings for burner behavior: F18 style with (common!) mapped button for the gate/finger lift, Viper style toggle on/off, or User Defined for those with expensive gear that allows user-set AB zones (slider w/ percentage and live throttle Z indicator needle.)

+1, don't see why this couldn't be a common setting.

On 4/20/2022 at 2:15 AM, phone said:

• DCS updater needs to be a separate entity and not tied to DCS's current mode of Online or Offline. I only go online to update, preferring to fly offline solo. Getting DCS to update means start DCS, change modes, game restarts without running an update, close game, use the updater, start game, change modes, game crashes randomly in 15 min, then I can actually play. Rather a kludge way of going about it when module auth could just be checked at each update or multiplayer connection attempt. If no connection is found, the game grays out Multiplayer on the menu while keeping known valid modules auth'd and active.

I thought it was decoupled, and the updater is an application. I'm trying to check but the new OB seems to take 3 and half years to start up.

On 4/20/2022 at 2:15 AM, phone said:

• Special Menu in Settings to set countermeasure programs by plane, and store the files in Saved Games so they are persistent. Gets around the whole data cartridge development issue and means people don't have to take time resetting their programs in-cockpit or hassle with a LUA file.

+1, though I imagine this will come with DTC functionality.

Right now I have my programs in a .lua file on my user area, contained in a folder that includes the full path (Eagle Dynamic\DCS World\blah blah blah) so I only have to copy one folder and it overwrites everything.

On 4/20/2022 at 2:15 AM, phone said:

• Having to get within 2m of the sea/ground before seeing spray/dust on a fly-by is a little silly. Bump up the altitude some? One video clip for reference...

+1, especially for helicopters.