Help needed before its too late for my TM HOTAS

[baba69]

Hey fellow simmers,

 

I am a simmer coming over from the dark side that is car sim racing!! I am a pilot by day and night and have just begun getting into combat sims. I have DCS World along with P51, A10 and FC3. I also have the THM HOTAS warthog which has brought me to the brink of setting it on fire!!

 

I have tried everything to get the controls to work, tried target, tried loading profiles etc..nothing seems to change the controls. The funniest thing is that the thrust/throttle levers seem to think they are rudder pedals!! And i cant change that!! Plus i cant make the throttles do just that or for that matter i cant make anything work and i am stumped. I have gone through alot of resources and i guess I am in need of some friendly help!! Or I will be giving away my TM!!

 

I would appreciate any advice or help or any threads that i may not have already gone through, sims are awesome and need to be enjoyed!! The sims we use at work are all about stress and i am searching for some sim fun!!!

 

Thanks alot everyone

 

baba

[dburne]

Hi baba, welcome to the forums!

The Warthog is really an awesome setup, I absolutely love mine!

I am going to assume, you have already installed the drivers , and installed the Target software. Don't forget to check for any firmware updates from within Target, I know with mine there was a firmware update for the throttle. Fwiw, I always install the software onto a seperate partition on my hard drive, to keep it out of the system partition so I don't get into any permissions issues.

 

First, if you have not, read through the Target manual. Then, read it again a couple more times. The Target software is very powerful, and there really is quite a lot you can do with it. I would suggest just going with the gui programming, in advanced mode. With advanced mode, you can assign modifiers which make it much more versatile, along with chain commands. Once you sort of have a grasp of target, keep the manual open if you can while you play around with it, start off slowly with the basic commands, you can always build upon them later as you go.

 

Now in regards to A-10C, it is plug and play for the most part for DCS-A10C, so no need to do a Target profile and go through the software to run A-10C.

 

The first thing you will want to do, without target running, is to launch A-10C and go into controller options. Make sure, you select A-10C Sim.

Then, click on the drop down list to the right of A-10C Sim, where it says "all", and select "axis". Here, you will want to look for anything strange, like say your joystick throttle axis being assigned to rudder pedal axis. Different combinations of hardware can sometimes cause confusion for the sim, for instance it assigned some really wierd stuff to my Saitek Rudder Pedals, that I had to clear out. Make sure your axis commands are assigned appropriately to your hardware.

You really should be good to go then. Now it is a little different if you use a profile in the Target software, then it combines the stick and throttle into one virtual device, and the sim would re-allocate assignments based on that. So you wouldn't want to have a profile running in Target for something else, and launch the A-10C, it would mess up some of your assignments.

 

That really should do it, for A-10C just use it as intended, for other flight sims, you can assign commands from within the sim, or alternatively learn and use Target, the latter while having somewhat of a learning curve, is much more versatile in what you can do with it, imho.

 

Hope this helps, and have fun!

[agrasyuk]

. When you run target profile it combines both throttle and joystick into one virtual device. I'm not sure how dcs maps that virtual device by default. As poster above said check your mappings in game . Defaults can be a bit strange sometime,

 

But why use target at all? I don't even have it installed. Perhaps for other Sims it can be of use but for DCS it maps beautifully without any kind of additional profiler software.

[dburne]

Agreed, I do not use Target at all for A-10C as I mentioned, but I do like and use it for other sims.

[baba69]

Hey Guys,

 

Its morning this side of the world, so slowly getting through the day!! I used to have Target on my comp but i deleted it after having all these problems, so maybe i will re-instal and play around with it a bit. I honestly didnt even play A10 just for the fact that i was so frustrated with getting the setup for P51 going!! I did as you said D, i went into axis conrols and checked all that and there was nothing that looked wierd, but i was still stumped over why the throttle levers were acting like rudder pedals. Even when i re-assigned controls, like the flap lever, it didnt work, so i got even more frustrated!!

 

Today, i will try again, taking deep breathes and being in a zen like mode!! I appreciate the help guys

 

cheers

[baba69]

Great news, i downloaded Target and all, gave myself one last attempt before setting up thru target, went into DCS World with A10 and that worked flawlessly, so i had a look at the controls and axis there and then went into P51 and looked at the controls and axis but before i was only looking in the P51 simple, i also looked this time in P51 Real controls and saw the problem, the rudders for what ever reason were mapped to the thrust levers!!! Fixed that and its working...sort of!!! But now i get to experiment and try and make it work for my liking!!

 

Thanks for the help guys and hangin in with me, HOTAS is stayin....for now!!!

 

:thumbup:

[dburne]

Congrats! Yeah as I mentioned it seemed to assign some weird things to my Saitek pedals, once I got those cleared out everything worked as designed.

Enjoy!

[Sci2]

If you ever change your mind just send it overhere and i will take good care off it :)

 

Just kiddin

Have fun with the hotas now its working!

[baba69]

Hahaha roger that Sci2, i will keep you posted!! Thanks D, appreciate the help..was wondering D, how do you like your rudder pedals? Am looking at getting a set, thought about the Saitek Pro Flight combat pedals, any idea's? Will also get trackir as it looks like i need it!!

 

:smartass:

[agrasyuk]

The warthog throttle is nothing but yet another joystick that happens to have its axis in form of levers. Only one reason for those levers to act as rudder - hey mapped as such. Yes ED could have been nice and have given a WHG better default profile with the mustang. But in reality it is your responcibility :).

 

You will indeed need pedals, otherwise steering is by keyboard . Saitek is the popular choice, probably because not much competition exists. I went with their combat pedals. They do the job

Edited November 29, 2012 by agrasyuk

[Sci2]

:thumbup::music_whistling:

 

Hahaha roger that Sci2, i will keep you posted!! Thanks D, appreciate the help..was wondering D, how do you like your rudder pedals? Am looking at getting a set, thought about the Saitek Pro Flight combat pedals, any idea's? Will also get trackir as it looks like i need it!!

 

:smartass:

[dburne]

Hahaha roger that Sci2, i will keep you posted!! Thanks D, appreciate the help..was wondering D, how do you like your rudder pedals? Am looking at getting a set, thought about the Saitek Pro Flight combat pedals, any idea's? Will also get trackir as it looks like i need it!!

 

:smartass:

 

Glad to help!

I got the Saitek Combat Pedals, at the same time as I got the Warthog a few months ago. I really like them, so far have performed very well, and having toe brakes is a very nice feature. You can adjust the tension of the pedals with a knob on them. I also like the fact my heels are resting on the floor, much more comfortable than the TM Elite pedals I had prior, that were the cup type where you put your feet in them.

 

The only think I run into, is some sims seemed to like to assign some weird stuff to the pedals for some reason, as previously mentioned - not just in DCS but other sims as well, but easy enough to correct from within the sim.

 

I also highly recommend the Track IR5, having it along with pedals would compliment your setup very nicely.

[agrasyuk]

Yep, pedals are yet another joystick with 3 axis. software thats is not programmed to recognize the name of the device by default will map it to roll, pitch and yaw making the first flight very exciting as you touch your pedals :)

 

Btw, by default the trim hat on TMWH is mapped as view in a10. Make sure you remap it (in case you want to trim with trim hat of course :) )

[Eight Ball]

You will indeed need pedals, otherwise steering is by keyboard

 

I'd just like to say that, IMO, TrackIR is a lot more needed than rudder pedals.

 

Don't get me wrong, rudder pedals aren't useless but you can easily control your aircraft without them (talking about plane, helicopter is another story)

I've had rudder pedals for a while before my kitten ate the wires. That was like a year ago and since then I'm playing without it just fine.

 

On the other hand, and I think this is shared by many, if my TrackIR was broken I would stop playing till I get it fixed.

 

So if you have to make a choice between the 2 go for TrackIR !