Possible to get a slip indicator on screen hud indicator?

[wolfstriked]

Is this something that people who fly warbirds think would help them? I find it a bit hard to need to zoom out far enough or look down with head tracker so you also see the slip indicator. If you zoom in say when doing a ground attack the slip indicator will be impossible to see. In real life with its much larger fov the slip indicator is pretty much easily in view all the time. More importantly in real life we get the seat of the pants feel. I was watching a video where instructor tells student to close eyes and then does coordinated and uncoordinated maneuvers and asks is plane slipping or not and the student can tell exactly where the ball is by seat of the pants. We dont have this in a sim so I think a ball indicator like we have with the controls indicator when you press SHIFT+ENTER keys and centered in bottom of screen would help out a good bit.

[scoobie]

Great idea! Yes, I KNOW it can help, because I tried something similar and it helped me.
Unfortunately I have no idea how to achieve this the way you suggest - as a kind of an overlay on the screen.

If you have a Stream Deck, you can arrange a sort of poor man's slip ball on it. Description below.
If not - maybe someone more knowledgeable can come up with a recipe for a screen overlay for slip. I'd like to have such a contraption myself.
If not - I understand that this is a wish list topic, it's just such topics have a tendency to grow bigger and bigger. And then bigger some more

Spoiler

I concocted numerous "types" of slip ball representations on the Stream Deck.
One type proved particularly helpful when I was trying to get the feel for the rudder in a specific warbird.
I don't have a screenshot to share. I posted this a few years ago here on the forums (with screenshots), but I can't find this post now.
Anyway, imagine that "[ ]" is a button on the Stream Deck.
My "student's slip ball" type was simply a row of 7 buttons.
These buttons won't be used for pressing, they'll work as lights only.
The central button works only as a "direction separator" - to space out left slip from right slip a little bit, just to improve clarity. This button can display, for example, airspeed or flaps/gear configuration or whatever, or it might be left unused. I'll mark this button as "[-]".
All other buttons, to the left and right of the central button, indicate slip in the form of white "bar graph".
Below "[ ]" is a black button (uniform black background icon), and "[X]" is a white button (uniform white background icon).
So, here's how it looks like - a few examples.

No Slip:
[ ] [ ] [ ] [-] [ ] [ ] [ ]
Small slip to the left:
[ ] [ ] [X] [-] [ ] [ ] [ ]
Bigger slip to the left:
[ ] [X] [X] [-] [ ] [ ] [ ]
Big slip to the right:
[ ] [ ] [ ] [-] [X] [X] [X]

Now, if you imagine that each "X" here is in fact a quite big, bright white light, and if your Stream Deck is somewhere inside your peripheral vision (mine was right under the monitor), you'll realize you can see slip while normally staring at the screen. It worked pretty well for me.

Of course it's a strange idea in general, I admit, and people cringe when presented with the idea of "squandering" that many buttons on the stream Deck just for the slip, but warbirds are simple and don't need many buttons on the Stream Deck, at least not in my case, I also have a button box and other stuff to bind whatever I need, no problem (in a warbird).
My version ran on Stream Deck XL, but if someone has the "normal" Stream Deck (5 buttons in a row), then maybe 5 buttons, or in other words 2 "notches" of slip indication in each direction, will work good enough, too? I don't know.

 

Edited June 25, 2024 by scoobie

[wolfstriked]

That sounds interesting but I don't have a steam deck sadly. I was also thinking that maybe it could be tied in with the crosshair so that when you are uncoordinated the sight is off to the side slightly BUT with stuff like the K-14 crosshair moving all around in hud that is not possible. Sadly this most likely will remain an unfulfilled wish on the list.

[kablamoman]

If you pay close attention to whatever you’re using for an attitude reference (some element of the reflex gunsight usually works great for the warbirds), you can see it deviate left or right in yaw with speed, power and roll changes. When you know to look for, and actually see the deviation, it becomes pretty easy and almost second nature to correct.

Helps of course to still glance down at the ball just to be sure you’re coordinated initially, so you know where exactly to hold it, but with a bit of practice you can do a surprisingly good job of flying with zero sideslip just by looking out the front. 

You can also use the k14 pipper (keep the lead computing element in line vertically with the static center reference) for a bit of extra help, too.

I would recommend more focus be given to these techniques, rather than over-reliance on the inclinometer.

I know it wasn’t quite the question being asked, but figured it may help some as it’s related.

Edited June 27, 2024 by kablamoman

[wolfstriked]

I can definitely feel when the plane is slipping by what you say and know what you mean. Thanks for the tip about the K14. An indicator is just for times when your heads up or down and cant see the gunsight but I doubt it will ever be added.

[kablamoman]

1 hour ago, wolfstriked said:

An indicator is just for times when your heads up or down and cant see the gunsight but I doubt it will ever be added.

It would be neat if they had generic UI elements for instruments you could toggle on and off, scale, and overlay onto all the different camera views. Maybe one day.