[Separate Mixture axis problems]

Yeah I figured out I can remove the "detent" zone by calibrating the two center values to be the same: I calculated the center of my travel (min: -10,000, max:16384 = center at ~3000, etc) and put the dead zone there.

Then I realized that I had to adjust the "response curve" to -15 (center-flat, exponential) in order to get what most appears like a linear travel on the mixture control, judging by the OUT value. If I have it up at 0, even with a "zero" dead zone and the center set at approximately half-travel, I will still get mixture OUT values "jumping" from say 4,000 to 11,000 as soon as I pass the center. Only by changing the response sensitivity can I get it to work.

Ruahrc

[Separate Mixture axis problems]

I have run into a problem while trying to assign my various joystick/throttle levers to various axes via FSUIPC. A brief search of the forum did not reveal any immediate results on this topic either.

I'm trying to assign the 6 levers in my CH TQ to the 6 levers in the Default DC-3. Throttle and Propeller I can get no problem.

When trying to do the mixture, however, I have trouble. Since I am trying to assign two levers to two mixture controls, I am using the "Mixture1" and "Mixture2" controls rather than the generic "mixture" control. Here's what I run into:

Since the separate mixtures have both a min/max and a center zone (Min, Idle, and Max) the throttles, once calibrated, do not progress smoothly from 0 to 16384 as reported in the "OUT" box. It appears as if the "Idle" zone actually corresponds to a mixture of 8192 (50% rich) whereas the "Min" corresponds to 0% (Cut-off). Therefore when I calibrate the "Idle" detent to the physical detent in the CH TQ, the output jumps quickly from 0 to 8192 in the space where the physical mixture lever is moved from full down to the detent. Then if I push the lever forward past the detent the OUT value increases gradually to 16384.

The problem with this is that since the Idle detent corresponds with 8192, the lowest usable mixture value I can assign to the engine is 50%. If I try to go lower, I will enter the cut off zone and cut fuel to the engine.

What I'm looking for is to calibrate it such that movement from the absolute bottom fo the throttle into the detent is cut-off, then any advancement forward past the detent should proceed linearly from 0 to 16384, giving me full mixture range.

Note that when I previously applied calibrations to my other aircraft (i.e. default Cessna) I did not have this problem, since I could assign the solitary mixture axis to the generic "Mixture" command. Also, there is no trouble with turboprops either using "Mixture1" and "Mixture2" because 50% corresponds well to "Low Idle" (Also you don't adjust the mixture of a turboprop). I have only reached this issue now that I am trying to calibrate for a twin-engine, reciprocal aircraft.

PS I did a quick test and also encounter this trouble on the default Baron 58, which again requires a 0-100% mixture working range.

What's the solution for this? Any way to disable the idle detent in the separate mixture controls?

Ruahrc

[Having trouble with some axis calibration: CH yoke]

Thanks for explaining that- I was getting caught up I suppose because the words "minimum" and "maximum" do not make much sense when paired with "elevator" and "ailerons". Therefore I was reading the menus like "minimum aileron"... and didn't know if that was left aileron or right aileron or what...

The UI is in fact inconsistent regarding this because on some dialogs (for example the throttle ones) the labels are clear, i.e. "feather", "idle", etc. and refer to the in-game position of that particular control. Other dialogs, however (example, aileron and elevator) are merely labeled "min" and "max" and apparently refer to the value of the controller input as read in the "IN" box. This tripped me up, and personally I think it woudl be a bit clearer if you modified the aileron and elevator labels to read something like "left", "right", "forward", "back".

Anyways that clears up that issue.

Next issue- I am having a bear of a time working out these "aircraft specific" controls. It seems like I set up a set of controls for a particular aircraft class and it works great. Then I load up a different aircraft and go back to the FSUIPC dialog to configure the controls for that new aircraft. Once I have that finished, I switch back to the first aircraft only to find that the assignments I have made are either missing or have been overwritten to match that of the second airplane I configured.

More specifically, the "button assignments" work fine. It is only when I get to the axis assignments that things get screwy. The way I planned it was to assign the most basic axes to be common to all aircraft (pitch/yaw/roll/brakes). Then, all of my levers and buttons will be specific to each aircraft.

I followed the documentation and am able to navigate the axis assignments page in order to create a new axis assignment, but I am unsure as to the proper order of operations regarding the "aircraft specific" checkbox. It seems like sometimes I will check the box first, then make the assignment, and it looks okay. But then I move on to the next axis, (the box is already checked now) and when I select a new assignment for that axis, the box unchecks itself! And I have no idea of telling when a particular assignment gets saved, and whether or not it was saved as a global or specific assignment. Furthermore I am unsure as to how to review the current assignments for a particular aircraft, in order to make sure I have done it properly.

When exactly do changes in assignments get written to FSUIPC.ini? As soon as they are made? Or when you press "OK"? etc. What if I make manual changes to FSUIPC.ini, how do I see those updated changes in the FSUIPC options dialog, do I need to reboot FS or something?

If you could shed some light on what I might be doing wrong I'd appreciate it. I am happy though that I got my basic axes working... now just need to figure out the levers and "aircraft specific" configuration!

Ruahrc

[Having trouble with some axis calibration: CH yoke]

Edit: the thing with the aileron calibration must have been a fluke too: since I tried to re-calibrate it and it behaves just like the elevator calibration does.

BTW I have dis-assigned all axes in the FS assignments menus, FSUIPC should have complete control over all of the control axes.

Lastly: I noticed that I was getting some jerky movement with the ailerons, whether or not the "filter" checkbos was checked or not. I cannot observe any effects of using the filter checkbox on any of my axes (this was also the case in the previous version of FSUIPC 3.5.3 where I had things semi-sorted out control-wise, but the pitch/roll axis were still being a bit fiddly).

Ruahrc

[Having trouble with some axis calibration: CH yoke]

I just got a CH yoke, pedals, and throttle (whopee!) and am trying to get them all calibrated up in FS. I am using the latest FSUIPC 3.558.

What is happening is that I can't seem to be able to set the elevator axis using the "Joystick Calibration" dialog. Here's what I'm doing;

Go to the "axis assignments" tab.

Move the Yoke forward/back, until it is detected.

Select "send direct to FSUIPC calibration"

Check the first box, and select "Elevator"

from there I go to the Joystick Calibration tab:

Press "Set" under the Elevator heading

Here is where I run into trouble. Instead of setting it up straightforward like I was able to do with the Ailerons, Rudder, Brakes, etc.- I run into problems. I try to set a center null zone first using the centre "set" buttons. That works okay. Then I pull the stick all the way back, and press the "min" set button. The "IN" box reads 254 or 255, like it should. I press the min "set" button and instead of assigning the value of 254 to the min box, it puts the value 254 into each the Min, and both Centre boxes. I then push the stick all the way forward and the "IN" box reads 5 (or whatever), and if I try to press the max "set" button, there is no effect. I can press the reset button and try this again using different ordering (set the min first, or set the max first, etc) but eventually I press one of the "set" buttons and it overwrites my center values, throwing the calibration off. The "out" box is recording correct (but unusable, if that makes any sense) values according to the listed min/centre/max values, but since those are messed up it pegs at either 0 or 16384 or -16384.

I was having the exact same type of problem using my old version of FSUIPC (3.5.3) but it was happening with both the elevator and aileron axis. I was able to do the aileron axis okay this time with 3.558 but the elevator is messed up.

Do you have any ideas what is going on? I'm using the USB versions of the control devices btw. I am just using the buillt-in WinXP drivers for these devices (plug'n'play, autodetect) and have not installed CH's control software (I would prefer to do it all in FS and FSUIPC)

Ruahrc

PS, I plan on making some custom button/lever assignments for different aircraft that I own. Naturally I would take advantage of the "aircraft specific" feature for this. My question is, is this tied to the "title=" entry in the aircraft.cfg? And would I be able to manually manipulate the fsuipc.ini file to be able to copy/paste these assignments for multiple aircraft titles? I ask because for example if I have a particular aircraft that has 5 liveries, each would have a unique title and would thus require me to set FSUIPC up with each livery, unless I could manually copy/paste previously defined assignments and just change around the "title=" part or something in fsuipc.ini. But this may be the subject of a new topic just to keep things orderly (and once I get past this current problem)

[Missing Texture causing CTD]

Hah oh the irony! That was supposed to be my job but I never made it very far due to "inflight medical emergency". Looks like fate left it to beaver1 to encounteer it... hehe

Nice detective work beaver1 and thanks for the quick fix, Holger!

Ruahrc

[FSGenesis + Misty Fjords mesh workaround!?]

Heh the yin and yang of flight simming... whereas you like to keep your default/generic folders clean- I go to overarching lengths to avoid adding scenery layers :)

I'm wondering if the 3rd party (a'la FSG or RT, etc) mesh is split such that it takes more than 1 bgl to cover all of the MF area, and you start a flight from outside MF's area- fly in, and then fly in to a point that a new 3rd party mesh bgl needs to be loaded, will the display error correct itself? So you start the flight and see 3rd party mesh... fly into MF but the 3rd party mesh remains- but once you cross into the area of another mesh bgl FS will keep the MF mesh since it had already loaded it and therefore you will be seeing MF mesh from that point on.... I think the only way to test this though would be to somehow carge up a mesh bgl into multiple parts...

Anyways, welcome back, hope you had a good vacation!

Ruahrc

[FSGenesis + Misty Fjords mesh workaround!?]

Hm the plot thickens...

I think that if you put both the FSG mesh and the MF mesh in the same folder like I described, you won't get consistent results. It seems like if you start your flight within MF (i.e. load FS at an airport or location within MF) FS9 will load the MF mesh on top of the FSG mesh. But if you fly from outside MF's coverage area and then during your flight, enter MF, the FSG mesh will be displayed. Makes sense, sort of, since if you're outside the MF coverage area the sim will have previously loaded the FSG mesh. But if you begin your flight within MF, it will load the MF mesh because it has higher "read-priority" than the FSG mesh?

Anyways just thought I'd point it out...

Ruahrc

[FSGenesis + Misty Fjords mesh workaround!?]

You're right- it wasn't really an issue to begin with :) although I did notice some visual improvement by applying the tweak. There are a couple of lakes around Ketchikan which have reduced "cliffing" when using the Misty mesh, as well as some river valleys I found around Stewart. The FSG mesh seems to be laterally offset from the Misty mesh by maybe 30-50 feet? It's small but on the steep shorelines it can become noticeable.

Ruahrc

[FSGenesis + Misty Fjords mesh workaround!?]

Hey guys,

After a long time saving up them little pennies combined with a rather timely sale at PCAviator, I at last got the Misty Fjords addon which I had so long planned on getting (haha just one of a list of many "will get it eventually" addons). Wonderful stuff, nicely done.

Anyways reading up on all the mesh issues in the sticky thread.. I found my self in a sticky situation. All of my FSGenesis mesh is manually installed to my hard disk in scenery\world\scenery. The result is that all my FSG mesh is in the same location as it would be if you were using the auto-installers, but I do it manually so it doesn't create registry entries or start menu shortcuts.

So it is not possible for me to locate MF's scenery layers below that for compatibility, since it's practically the bottom of the list. I read in the sticky mesh thread that you're supposed to extract your FSG N.America mesh and place it into a second layer which you can then elevate above the MF entries.

But I think I have found a better solution? Instead of transplanting my FSG mesh into another layer, I transplanted the MF mesh into the same layer as the FSG mesh (scenery\world\scenery). Now from what I can tell this solves the problem. Misty mesh shows up in Misty areas, and FSG mesh takes over where Misty mesh runs out. No shuffling of scenery layers or separating the North American FSG files from their friends. Since Holger had the incredible foresight and common sense to intelligently label his files with meaningful descriptions :), it's easy to make the switch- all you need to do is the following:

go to the Misty Fjords landscape\scenery folder, and move the 4 files that begin with mesh_* into your scenery\world\scenery folder. That's it! Relocate all your FSG mesh back into scenery\world\scenery and remove the obsolete North america FSG mesh layers from your scenery library.

Now for the meat-and-potatoes discussion- why does this work? I thought of trying this method out when I remembered that when two mesh files in the same folder have the same LOD they are layered automatically in one of 2 ways:

mesh file with smaller coverage will be drawn on top

OR

mesh file with latest alphabetical name (i.e. if it begins with Z it has highest priority) will be drawn on top

Problem is I don't know exactly which of the 2 is doing it, or if it's something else. Does anyone with more experience in mesh know? I have a suspicion based on some rudimentary tests that it is the naming convention (in which case is good news since then this fix would apply to any mesh, because you can always rename the MF meshes to be like zmesh_*.bgl)

Anyways I got very good results by simply moving the MF mesh files into scenery\world\scenery where all my other mesh is. If you are in a similar situation as mine try it out and maybe you can shimmy down your scenery library by 1 entry :)

Ruahrc

P.S. I apologize if this is common knowledge and has already been figured out. Like I said I just got MF so I was just experimenting on my own :)

[ut_mf_v4 shoreline problems]

I don't see a ut_mf_v4 on FSAddon anywhere either. In fact, the ut_mf_cp patch available on FSAddon is quite old (dated 10, April 2005) and predates UT Canada v1.2 (making it not work)

I tracked down ut_mf_v3 from a thread over at the UT forums... but can't really find any reference to a v4 patch anywhere. Could we get a linky please?

In fact I think it would be a great idea to sticky the UT compatibility patch for us new MF users?

Thanks!

Ruahrc

PS- disregard please. silly me. Somehow the link I picked up from the UT forums took me to an FSAddon page which looked exactly like the one you get if you manually go to fsaddon.com and click download>misty fjords. Except the page Iw as looking at contained the old old UT/MF patch. Downloading v4 now...

[New Sky textures?]

Those are some great pics! Maybe I should pick up MF sooner than later :). So many add-ons to get... hehe.

Why are these textures not suitable for other areas other than MF? Just curious..

Do you have any recommendations for upgrading sky textures in general? I have been looking around for some better ones and even trying to make my own but I don't think I have the proper facilities (i.e. adequately powerful photo software) to do so.

Ruahrc

[New Sky textures?]

I read about how there are new sky textures included with Misty Fjords. Is there a place where I can find some shots featuring these new sky textures? Or could someone post some comparison shots? I have been looking around for some good sunrise/sunset replacement textures. I have dabbled a little with making my own but only with limited success.

Ruahrc