correct as is Hornet Radar TDC Slew

[Captain Chuck]

HI, 

Since the very last OB update a couple of days ago - F-18 Hornet

The TDC slew when using the Hornet radar has become really fast. For instance, when slewing across the screen to place the cursor over a target it travels quite fast now and is hard to be precise with it. In fact it is unusable because it has become so sensitive. I have the TDC slew set to a mini-stick but it is the same using keyboard commands. 

It was not like this until I downloaded the update yesterday.

Of course, I tried fine tuning it in the control settings but that also slowed down the TDC when using it on the SA page to ridiculously slow. It is only the radar that has this problem. I haven't tested it out on any other aircraft. .....and only in Multi-Threading.

[Saruman]

It's an intended thing. Problem is they didn't consider people use different hardware and keyboard too, so they should have implemented a customisable slew speed instead of this...

I'm really curious if ED asked their consultants before the change or made it only because of 2 seconds of a video on Youtube with radar slewing so fast without even knowing which model of F18 was depicted or if the radar was in test mode by ground crew (the slew turned off the radar in that video) or the aircraft was actually airborne.

Inviato dal mio BLA-L29 utilizzando Tapatalk

[Captain Chuck]

40 minutes ago, Saruman said:

It's an intended thing. Problem is they didn't consider people use different hardware and keyboard too, so they should have implemented a customisable slew speed instead of this...

I'm really curious if ED asked their consultants before the change or made it only because of 2 seconds of a video on Youtube with radar slewing so fast without even knowing which model of F18 was depicted or if the radar was in test mode by ground crew (the slew turned off the radar in that video) or the aircraft was actually airborne.

Inviato dal mio BLA-L29 utilizzando Tapatalk




 

Intended?..... That's crazy! ......It's too fast for me to move and lock on to. That means either I can't shoot a missile at anyone or slewing the TDC on the SA page will be like pouring molasas.   They just did this with the last update, right?

[Saruman]

Yes, they intended to do that, it's in the patch notes. Reason is a 2-years-ago request on F18 forum by some users, supported by 2 seconds of a Youtube video where cursor, on an unidentified BUNO and model of F18, slewed so fast, but you could not understand, by watching those 2 seconds, if radar was in test mode by ground crew (radar was turned off by simply slewing in the video, that's very suspicious) or if it was in actual working mode (I hope ED asked their SMEs for confirmation before the change).

Some users are now even asking to fasten FLIR and SA cursor too on F18 forum (request was moved in wishlist by Nineline).

I cannot fly anymore proficiently F18 due to this change and I am really furious this time with ED, because I support the team by buying a lot of modules and I would have appreciated a more reasonable and mature approach on this 'feature'.

Even if real slewing should be so fast (and it's an 'if', until an official statement about confirmation by SMEs), we are on a sim, not on real plane with real HOTAS, therefore we emulate the real thing with a limited hardware and not a lot of us own a top-tier 350$ throttle with sensitive hat-switch for slewing, so a custom slider for slewing speed would have been a more intelligent and inclusive customer-care solution by ED.

Saturation and curves on axis are not a real solution too, because you can indeed limit a bit the actual speed of cursor on radar by playing with them (I did it setting saturation to 60/100), but cursor moves like a turtle on SA and FLIR page then.

Besides, ED seems to have forgotten that they implemented TDC slewing by keyboard bindings too, so they let user theoretically slew by keyboard.

Well, I challenge ED's staff to slew by keyboard the cursor with the actual lightning speed.

Inviato dal mio BLA-L29 utilizzando Tapatalk

[Captain Chuck]

Well...I'm as pissed as you are about this.    I now have to spend so much time  with my head in the radar dinking around with the cursor that I get shot down by every half-assed pilot. Maybe I'll have to take up The Air Warfare Group's offer to fly WWII Mustang with them istead.

[BIGNEWY]

Hi, 

this is not correct as is, the faster slew rate is intended 

 

[VIXEN413]

in the Hornet, the throttle grips are made by Mason industries and use OTTO switches allround. 

the TDC is a non moving (or barelly moving) force sensing ministick (look for it, U can buy it on Mouser for 750USD).

Now, the way it works by registering force applied giving as a result a cursor speed movement makes sense for the sensitivity U have from such a device. U can be precise like that. 

TDC on Virpil (CM 2and 3), winwing f18 throttle or also Thrustmaster mod for the tdc will all use ministick like the ones U find on xboxes where, due to the deflection and moment arm, it is very difficult to be precise around the center and you will overcontrol almost everytime... 

That's why this change has made Cursor operation on our hotas way more difficult... the speed and sensitivity of the TDC now in game does not fit with harware on sale for home sim use... 

I worked around the issue by using 60-70% curves on those axes to slow it down near the center to keep a bit more dexterity but even then it's harder the it used to be... 

the real fix is the 750$ OTTO ministick... Right... 

 

[AvroLanc]

I'll add the counter view here....

The new TDC behaviour is an excellent improvement. The old TDC slew rate was far too slow on the Radar page and far too fast on the HUD/JHMCS. It was very very difficult to do a HUD TDC designation. 

That was now been solved. HUD TDC movement is now really nice, and the Radar ATTK pages are now much faster/easier to use, especially using the TDC to bump range and azimuth. It's a little more sensitive for fine control, but the old 'warthog nipple' is crap in any case. The mini-stick on the Virpil CM3 works much better. You need good hardware.

All-in-all a very positive change.

[bonesvf103]

5 hours ago, BIGNEWY said:

Hi, 

this is not correct as is, the faster slew rate is intended 

 

I think you mean "is correct as is", right?

OK, maybe for the radar TDC, but what about for say, slewing the AGM-65F?  It is now extremely hard to fine slew the seeker head to the target as it easily overshoots with it going so fast, and in the heat of battle,  you spend way too much time getting a lock and can get shot down or otherwise damaged.

v6,

boNes

 

[wilbur81]

The new change is more realistic in terms of getting the cursor around the display quickly, which is a great improvement. However, as has been said above, the problem now is that the small movements/corrections are quite difficult with the current hardware available to most of us. I have the Winwing Super Taurus throttle...which I love; but the TDC has little bits of movement around the center that do not register as movement in DCS with the Hornet's cursor, (I do not use a dead zone) which is a problem as I need those tiny movements to register. So it is now more difficult to make small, precise moves on the Hornet's radar. I've tried playing with the Axis curves, but haven't yet found something that I like.

[Cathnan]

+1 for the idea to make the sensitivity adjustable. I think with 100% setting having it as fast as it now is will still be in spirit with the realism. But the possibilty of slowing it down with a slider accounts for the fact that we do not have the military grade force sensing hardware this behaviour is meant for.

Actually I like this change because selecting things with the tdc cursor now doesn't take forever as it did before. But I still would appreciate the slider option. to account for the hardware reality. Even with my Winwing Orion with the Hornet grips, that has excellent accuracy with the slew thumbstick it's really hard to be precise.

[Czar66]

Please make the slew rate speed adjustable. Some slider on special options and such would be great. The lower value could be the previous values, the maximum or near maximum would be the current. So it would let the user to decide the ergonomics accordingly with their hardware just like the realistic Maverick slew having to depress TDC and many other options on special tabs across multiple modules.

It is not really an aid as you'll lose slew speed across the screen so efficiency wise wouldn't be overpowered and wouldn't affect the simulator's realistic approach.

[MARLAN_]

You can slow it down I believe by adjusting the saturation in the axis tune, however because ED has a bug where the SA page TDC was not matching the same speed, it will end up even slower.

[MarkyMark]

Radar slew speed go weeeeeeee 

It’s a bit of a curveball to get used to, but I’m used to it after a couple hours flight time. 

[Swift.]

In my mind the ideal solution from a user experience standpoint would be to have a series of sliders in the special options to adjust the TDC sensitivity on all formats:
HUD
ATTK
AZEL
SA
HSI
TPOD
GRID

Because although the new speed does make it easier to do things like bump ranging on the ATTK format, its going to be absolute hell to try and enter MGRS with it, at least unless you have a force transducer for your slew control. It seems that instead of trying to cater for all controllers and ending up with a one size fits none solution, ED should just let the player decide what they want, especially when it comes to issues like this that are wholly dependent on hardware being used.

[MARLAN_]

1 hour ago, Swift. said:

In my mind the ideal solution from a user experience standpoint would be to have a series of sliders in the special options to adjust the TDC sensitivity on all formats:
HUD
ATTK
AZEL
SA
HSI
TPOD
GRID

Because although the new speed does make it easier to do things like bump ranging on the ATTK format, its going to be absolute hell to try and enter MGRS with it, at least unless you have a force transducer for your slew control. It seems that instead of trying to cater for all controllers and ending up with a one size fits none solution, ED should just let the player decide what they want, especially when it comes to issues like this that are wholly dependent on hardware being used.

That would be a fantastic solution for ED to implement.

[wilbur81]

1 hour ago, Swift. said:

In my mind the ideal solution from a user experience standpoint would be to have a series of sliders in the special options to adjust the TDC sensitivity on all formats:
HUD
ATTK
AZEL
SA
HSI
TPOD
GRID

Because although the new speed does make it easier to do things like bump ranging on the ATTK format, its going to be absolute hell to try and enter MGRS with it, at least unless you have a force transducer for your slew control. It seems that instead of trying to cater for all controllers and ending up with a one size fits none solution, ED should just let the player decide what they want, especially when it comes to issues like this that are wholly dependent on hardware being used.

Indeed... I like this option. 

[toilet2000]

2 hours ago, Swift. said:

In my mind the ideal solution from a user experience standpoint would be to have a series of sliders in the special options to adjust the TDC sensitivity on all formats:
HUD
ATTK
AZEL
SA
HSI
TPOD
GRID

Because although the new speed does make it easier to do things like bump ranging on the ATTK format, its going to be absolute hell to try and enter MGRS with it, at least unless you have a force transducer for your slew control. It seems that instead of trying to cater for all controllers and ending up with a one size fits none solution, ED should just let the player decide what they want, especially when it comes to issues like this that are wholly dependent on hardware being used.

This is very similar to what Deka did for the JF-17. Works great!

[VFA41_Lion]

It would be nice if ED could separate the Radar/SA TDC bindings from the FLIR TDC bindings so having to slow down the radar cursor axis wont also make the FLIR slow to an unusable crawl.

[Captain Chuck]

9 hours ago, AvroLanc said:

I'll add the counter view here....

The new TDC behaviour is an excellent improvement. The old TDC slew rate was far too slow on the Radar page and far too fast on the HUD/JHMCS. It was very very difficult to do a HUD TDC designation. 

That was now been solved. HUD TDC movement is now really nice, and the Radar ATTK pages are now much faster/easier to use, especially using the TDC to bump range and azimuth. It's a little more sensitive for fine control, but the old 'warthog nipple' is crap in any case. The mini-stick on the Virpil CM3 works much better. You need good hardware.

All-in-all a very positive change.

Your solution is that because you have "good hardware" then everyone must have good hardware just to have this one thing about DCS as you like it. When the real solution is for ED to design the sim so we can ALL go to settings and change the speed of the TDC for each function according to out needs so we can ALL have DCS as we like it.

We don't need to upgrade our hardware from mid-range to ultra high end, just as we don't all need to rush out and buy the latest high-end gaming PC & outfit.. If ED was to take that approach the player base would be very small indeed.

 

 

Edited April 17, 2023 by Капитан Чук

[Captain Chuck]

15 hours ago, BIGNEWY said:

Hi, 

this is not correct as is, the faster slew rate is intended 

 

Thank you for that. Please, pass it on to your marketing team that the shortcut they have taken is a mistake.

Edited April 17, 2023 by Капитан Чук

[AvroLanc]

16 minutes ago, Капитан Чук said:

Your solution is that because you have "good hardware" then everyone must have good hardware just to have this one thing about DCS as you like it. When the real solution is for ED to design the sim so we can ALL go to settings and change the speed of the TDC for each function according to out needs so we can ALL have DCS as we like it.

We don't need to upgrade our hardware from mid-range to ultra high end, just as we don't all need to rush out and buy the latest high-end gaming PC & outfit.. If ED was to take that approach the player base would be very small indeed.

 

 

 

The only real solution is for each DDI format to have user custom slew rates. The change ED have made is a step in the right direction. An improvement…. I was calling this out as a positive.
The warthog nipple style TDC is notoriously bad and there’s no real way round that. It’s was far from ideal 13 years ago when when I replaced my TM Cougar with a Warthog and TGP control became so much more frustrating. Luckily 13 years later we have other options. ED is very slowly making progress, maybe we’ll get the ideal solution sooner or later. 

[Captain Chuck]

41 minutes ago, AvroLanc said:

 ED is very slowly making progress, maybe we’ll get the ideal solution sooner or later. 

In the meantime, I just got back from flying my beautiful but primative P-51D.....I could get used to that again!

[Captain Chuck]

10 hours ago, bonesvf103 said:

I think you mean "is correct as is", right?

OK, maybe for the radar TDC, but what about for say, slewing the AGM-65F?  It is now extremely hard to fine slew the seeker head to the target as it easily overshoots with it going so fast, and in the heat of battle,  you spend way too much time getting a lock and can get shot down or otherwise damaged.

v6,

boNes

 

Yeah I think they jumped the gun on this change! I haven't even even tried slewing weapons with it like this yet. I can see how that would make it near impossible to lock on to a tank or truck or something. Especially if it's moving. 

[Ghosty141]

I personally don't see the problem as long as you use an axis for the TDC since you can just change the curve and saturation as well as deadzone in the axis tune setting making it as slow as it was previously again.