Fire handle - hold to pull!

[Frostiken]

A few times this has come up, including just now when I couldn't figure out why my damn APU would only spool up to 60% before dying. Due to nuances of TrackIR and the UFC buttons being very close to them, I find myself occasionally inadvertently pulling the fire handles, which terminates fuel flow to the selected engine. Needless to say this is slightly more than an inconvenience if it happens during flight.

 

In an effort to alleviate accidental engine shutdown in-flight, can we get a one-second 'hold to pull' feature put on the fire handles, as a sort of 'Are you SURE you want to do this?' feature?

[Frostiken]

Also, should really be a feature on all the emergency handles, but since the canopy jettison doesn't work (why not?) and you don't pull the seat handle to eject...maybe food for thought for future upgrades / modules that anything that will catastrophically affect flight should probably have a 'safety' on it.

[Napa]

Nicely put. "Safety" functions just for sim experience. When you're in hurry to push some buttons, pulling the wrong one is catastrophic.

[genbrien]

they should add an handle for the ''Tail is on fire''

Just saying :music_whistling::D

[Haggart]

I don't think this is good. If I'm in an emergency, I've many things to do, and in the 15 seconds to ground contact I don't like to use many of them to hold out a fire handle in a shaking cockpit for 3 seconds, while the fire is spreading more and more in this 3 seconds.

[213]

develop a habit of using active pause.

[sobek]

develop a habit of using active pause.

 

Yeah you go ahead and try that in MP. ;)

[Frostiken]

I don't think this is good. If I'm in an emergency, I've many things to do, and in the 15 seconds to ground contact I don't like to use many of them to hold out a fire handle in a shaking cockpit for 3 seconds, while the fire is spreading more and more in this 3 seconds.

 

I love how 'one second' turned into 'three seconds' for the sake of arguing against it...

 

First of all, if your engine is on fire and you're spinning towards the ground, the fire handle is not the handle to be concerned about pulling.

 

Secondly, even in the ultimate oh-shit emergency, pulling the fire handle is not very important. The aircraft will not explode if you leave the fire burning for another ten, twenty, even thirty seconds or more, and will have little to no effect on pulling out of a catastrophic dive.

 

Thirdly, losing an entire forty-minute sortie because my TrackIR shifted while I was trying to click the UFC is far, far more an inconvenience than dying after I was shot down anyway.

 

Anyway, next time you have one of these 'critical emergencies', try not blowing the fire bottles - the engine will remain burning without much of a problem, and in fact you can still use power from the engine to recover, so all things considered pulling the handle is probably NOT the thing you should do.

Edited July 4, 2011 by Frostiken

[PlainSight]

A few times this has come up, including just now when I couldn't figure out why my damn APU would only spool up to 60% before dying. Due to nuances of TrackIR and the UFC buttons being very close to them, I find myself occasionally inadvertently pulling the fire handles, which terminates fuel flow to the selected engine. Needless to say this is slightly more than an inconvenience if it happens during flight.

 

In an effort to alleviate accidental engine shutdown in-flight, can we get a one-second 'hold to pull' feature put on the fire handles, as a sort of 'Are you SURE you want to do this?' feature?

 

Why don't you map the fire handle buttons to some separate key(s)?

 

I've mapped UFC keys to numpad part of the keyboard, clicking those buttons is really time-consuming. If i had a fire emergency on every flight, i'd do the same with fire handles. I've only mapped the eject button.

[REL]

Also, should really be a feature on all the emergency handles, but since the canopy jettison doesn't work (why not?) and you don't pull the seat handle to eject...maybe food for thought for future upgrades / modules that anything that will catastrophically affect flight should probably have a 'safety' on it.

 

canopy jettison doesn't work - Wait until the next patch... :smilewink:

 

pull the seat handle to eject - Good idea!!! ... special wish list thread worthy IMHO http://forums.eagle.ru/forumdisplay.php?f=147

 

:thumbup:

Edited July 4, 2011 by REL

[OB1]

Why don't you map the fire handle buttons to some separate key(s)?

 

I think your missing the point. Its about accidentally pulling the fire handle when your clicking around the cockpit with your mouse..

 

I must admit I have accidentally pulled the handle a few times but I have not done It for a while.. Play long enough and you become more and more careful pushing buttons.. Suffice to say I have gotten used to it.. But I thing a 1 sec hold feature would be ok, even better if it was optional. Either way I wouldn't complain, I have gotten good at flying the aircraft with 1 hand while the other is clicking buttons..:joystick:

[EtherealN]

I'm very torn about the 1-sec hold thing... Usually a fire occurs when being fired on, and I don't want to have to have my hand off of my stick to maneuver the mouse for 2+ seconds if I'm taking fire and looking at having to make a forced landing in hostile territory. I want to just slap those as required and resume the business of flying the plane.

 

I mean, I can see the logic to the feature request, but I think it's one of those that solves one problem but creates another.

[Frostiken]

Alright, how about a compromise:

 

A] All emergency handles are immediately actuated with a right-click, but take one second to hold with a left click.

 

or

 

B] Single-clicking on a handle does nothing, but clicking both mouse buttons on a handle will actuate it immediately.

 

I think I like the 'both button' solution the best, almost zero chance of accidental actuation while not consuming any time to perform. Of course, then we're going to have 1,000 threads of people going 'Y TEH HANDUL NO WERK?!'

 

For what it's worth, I have no idea how terrible an engine fire in real life is, but engine fires seem to have, besides reduced power output, almost zero effect on things for a very long time. If you watch AI planes, oftetimes they'll take damage and keep flying with a burning engine. In one case, a Sukhoi of some sort took two AIM-120s and flew about fifty miles back to base with its engines engulfed in flames. I personally have never actually had some sort of fuel explosion from a burning engine, so I wonder what the engine fire modeling actually is, if there even is any. I imagined engine fires being a lot more dangerous than the sim seems, since as I mentioned, I usually don't extinguish fires for a while anyway since getting SOME power out of an engine is a lot better than getting NO power. As you said, you usually get a fire in combat and I need all the power I can get.

 

Well to clear it up, I have no doubt there's something modeled, but it has never felt like a particularly dangerous situation to me, so maybe whatever modeling is there is taking too long to engage due to bug or design oversight. Or, maybe aircraft can fly with a burning engine like nothing's wrong...

 

Regardless, due to the position of the A-10s engines, I imagine an uncontained fire wouldn't really do much damage anyway, since it's not like they're surrounded with vital wiring that can get burned through, or avionics parts or even major airframe components. As always the real threat would be the fire spreading to the tanks but does that even happen in-game?

Edited July 5, 2011 by Frostiken

[EtherealN]

Hm. That's actually a pretty interesting idea. It would probably have to be the right-mouse since I don't think there's logic built-in that would let it do the both-thing, but making it a right-click might be pretty easy - directional logic for switches based on mouse button is already in there.

[Rusty_M]

meaning a left click would be the equivalent of attempting to push said handle.

[digitaljjd]

Not a fan of this. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. This is like saying, I don't know why the gun went off officer, I just had my finger on the trigger and pulled it. Then it fired. Clearly there must be something wrong.

Edited July 6, 2011 by digitaljjd

[RAF74_Raptor]

they should add an handle for the ''Tail is on fire''

Just saying :music_whistling::D

 

 

More like handle for omg I just lost my tail. :lol:

[Frostiken]

Not a fan of this. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. This is like saying, I don't know why the gun went off officer, I just had my finger on the trigger and pulled it. Then it fired. Clearly there must be something wrong.

 

Really? Seriously? How does this feature hurt anything, or are you just arguing for the sake of argument? That's the worst comparison ever. Difference between clicking the '9' button and pulling the fire handle can be as few as a dozen pixels. If this inconveniences you SO MUCH, are you going to throw a ragefit if it becomes a feature? If not, why are you arguing against it?

 

[159th_Viper]

Really? Seriously? How does this feature hurt anything, or are you just arguing for the sake of argument? That's the worst comparison ever. Difference between clicking the '9' button and pulling the fire handle can be as few as a dozen pixels. If this inconveniences you SO MUCH, are you going to throw a ragefit if it becomes a feature? If not, why are you arguing against it?

 

He is entitled to his opinion and voiced it - You need to relax and wind your neck in a wee bit. Consider this a fair warning ;)

[Snoopy]

I don't think this is good. If I'm in an emergency, I've many things to do, and in the 15 seconds to ground contact I don't like to use many of them to hold out a fire handle in a shaking cockpit for 3 seconds, while the fire is spreading more and more in this 3 seconds.

 

I agree....the T handles are very easy to pull real life as well. I have never accidentally pulled the T handles and use trackir exclusively. Emergency procedures shouldn't be hard to do. Also, I wouldn't mind the ejection handle being animated but wouldn't want that to be the only way to eject.

[Irregular programming]

I am also against this, pulling the handles happened to me maybe once or twice when I first got the game. Just forgetting the whole "I really need to stop this fire in my engines fairly quickly" issue I have against this it also does not make any sense from a user perspective. Basically what you are suggesting would be completely counter intuitive.

 

No one would pick up this game and say, hey these handlebars, I better click three times for these to actually function.

 

Also I think you are overstating the issue at hand here.

[digitaljjd]

Gobble! Gobble!

 

 

 

 

LOL! Couldn't resist that. :D Turkey anyone? Maybe some anger management perhaps? Relax man. Not everyone wants it changed and Thanksgiving is still 4 months away.

 

P.S. I'm not arguing against it, just making a point. I haven't had a problem and like it the way it is.

Edited July 6, 2011 by digitaljjd

[mvsgas]

If you guys pull the handle by accident, just push them back in. As long as you don't use the fire suppression system, the only thing that happens when you pull the handle is you cut fuel to the engine. (Paul correct me if I'm wrong please.) So if you click on the handle;"O crap, let me click on it again" Have you guys tried that?

[sobek]

If you guys pull the handle by accident, just push them back in. As long as you don't use the fire suppression system, the only thing that happens when you pull the handle is you cut fuel to the engine.

 

The problem is that causes a flameout and an inflight restart is not something i'd want to do on a regular basis, especially since the engines now seem to take damage when they flame out at full throttle.

 

On the other hand, i've never pulled a handle on accident... :)

[mvsgas]

Alright, how about a compromise:

 

A] All emergency handles are immediately actuated with a right-click, but take one second to hold with a left click.

 

or

 

B] Single-clicking on a handle does nothing, but clicking both mouse buttons on a handle will actuate it immediately.

 

I think I like the 'both button' solution the best, almost zero chance of accidental actuation while not consuming any time to perform. Of course, then we're going to have 1,000 threads of people going 'Y TEH HANDUL NO WERK?!'

 

For what it's worth, I have no idea how terrible an engine fire in real life is, but engine fires seem to have, besides reduced power output, almost zero effect on things for a very long time. If you watch AI planes, oftetimes they'll take damage and keep flying with a burning engine. In one case, a Sukhoi of some sort took two AIM-120s and flew about fifty miles back to base with its engines engulfed in flames. I personally have never actually had some sort of fuel explosion from a burning engine, so I wonder what the engine fire modeling actually is, if there even is any. I imagined engine fires being a lot more dangerous than the sim seems, since as I mentioned, I usually don't extinguish fires for a while anyway since getting SOME power out of an engine is a lot better than getting NO power. As you said, you usually get a fire in combat and I need all the power I can get.

 

Well to clear it up, I have no doubt there's something modeled, but it has never felt like a particularly dangerous situation to me, so maybe whatever modeling is there is taking too long to engage due to bug or design oversight. Or, maybe aircraft can fly with a burning engine like nothing's wrong...

 

Regardless, due to the position of the A-10s engines, I imagine an uncontained fire wouldn't really do much damage anyway, since it's not like they're surrounded with vital wiring that can get burned through, or avionics parts or even major airframe components. As always the real threat would be the fire spreading to the tanks but does that even happen in-game?

Adding to engine fire info.

I don't work on the A-10 nor have I ever worked on High bypass turbofans, but every engine is different on fires and what they can withstand. For example; some of the F-16 engines may get a fire after shutdown, it is a known thing, and to correct it, you make sure is not self sufficient and not spreading, if is not you let it burn.

As always I'm digressing, my point is you should not run and engine with a fire, T handle shouldn't be your first choice, put the Throttle to off, if that does not fix it then pull the handle. Some aircraft will and can blow up very quickly due to engine fire, but there are other factor like to that as always. Again, not an expert, just my two cents.