JCTherik Posted May 17, 2023 Posted May 17, 2023 Think of any 3-way switch that has Top/Mid/Bot positions. Those are the possible bindings that I've seen in DCS for such a switch: 1. Top 2. Mid 3. Bot 4. Toggle Top <-> Mid 5. Toggle Bot <-> Mid 6. Toggle Top <-> Bot 7. Toggle Top->Mid->Bot 8. Toggle Bot->Mid->Top 9. Hold for Top, else Mid 10. Hold for Mid, else Top 11. Hold for Bot, else Mid 12. Hold for Mid, else Bot 13. Hold for Top, else Bot 14. Hold for Bot, else Top 15. Switch up 16. Switch down ... i hope I didn't forget any... But developers do, and lot of those are missing in many airplanes. Not everyone of those bindings will be very useful for every switch if you're looking at the virtual airplane switch alone, but when you look at the variations of people's hardware, I'm sure pretty much every combination has some use, and there may be even more that would be useful but don't even currently exist. Wouldn't it be nice if we could just open the switch bindings, see that it has 3 positions, and then be presented with 3 separate sets of keybinds, one for each current position of the switch, and define which other position each keybind should lead to? As a great bonus, it would greatly benefit if the bindings could specify OnPress, OnRelease, OnPressRelease, OnHold, etc., and if the same physical hotas switch could be bound to multiple keybinds with different events. Example: A switch has 3 states, thus I get presented with 3 separate profiles for that switch When it's in the Top position, I set that my Button1 would move the switch to the Bot position. Once it moves to the Bot position, the binding profile for that switch changes, and in the "Bot" profile, I may have the same Button1 bound to this switch moving to the Mid position. And in the mid profile, I'll set the same Button1's function so that it moves the switch to the Top position. Thus, I get a binding that cycles Top->Bot->Mid. This is pretty simple, but I can freely choose which direction it cycles and I only need 1 button. In other words: State - Binding -> NewState Top - Button1 -> Bot Bot - Button1 -> Mid Mid - Button1 -> Top For more complicated switches, like covered switches, those would need more profiles, and the menu would have to be aware of all the possible states. The dust filter in hind has 2 positions and a cover that will force it down, thus it's a 3-state switch: Up, Down, DownCovered. Tomcat's master arm would be a 5-state switch: Up, Mid, Down, MidCovered, DownCovered. Obviously, UpCovered state for that switch doesn't exist, since upon closing the cover from the Up position, the switch will flick itself to the MidCovered position. This kind of system would allow people to simply set sensible bindings which would for example use a single button for the tomcat master arm, by binding a long-press to cover/uncover and a short press to toggle between the possible states, like this: MidCovered - short -> DownCovered DownCovered - short -> MidCovered Mid - short -> Up Up - short -> Down Down - short -> Mid MidCovered - long -> Mid DownCovered - long -> Down Down - long -> DownCovered Mid - long -> MidCovered Up - long -> MidCovered (the tomcat switch is moved to master-arm off if the cover is closed while master-arm is on) ( Up, Mid, Down are the uncovered positions, short = Button1.onPressRelease, long = Button1.onHold ) Those kinds of simple macros would be super useful, would definitely drastically reduce the amount of people posting bugs/wishes about missing keybinds and would make it much easier for players. On a related note, can we get a finer control over the curves, setting saturations from left and right, etc? I know all of this is probably going to get forgotten anyway, since there's a lot of important stuff to do, but we can dream 2
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