Uncontrollable flight until I Rescan my axes

[snomhf]

I have been using a registered version of FSUIPC4 for about about five months now. This problem doesn't happen every time (maybe 50%).

When I start a flight, my plane is uncontrollable. It does not respond properly to any of the controls. If I immediately go to the FSUIPC module and go to the "Axis Assignment" tab and do a "Rescan" on my ailerons, elevator, rudder, and sometimes trim axes and then return to the flight, everything will be fine. It's as if FSUIPC needs to be "notified" of my controllers else it will not set them up properly. BTW, I use FSUIPC exclusively to control all my axes and have all controllers disabled in FSX itself. My buttons are all controlled via CH Control Manager and the only thing FSUIPC controls is my axes.

Though this is not a serious problem (I generally just treat having to go through this process as the "check for proper control surface movement" part of the pre-flight checklist. I am curious however why this happens and why I don't see postings of others having this problem.

Any ideas?

Thanks so much!

-mark

[peterhayes]

Mark

A couple of things to check: in FSX

Make sure that you have NO axes assigned in CHCM

Are you running the CHCM in "mapped" mode?

Do you have any axes assigned (incl the keyboard, mouse) in FSX - they must all be removed.

Can you calibrate the game controllers in Windows?

Duplicate assignments of axes can cause some of the problems.

Do you have a CH TQ attached? Just moving all of the levers very slightly prior to flying can be quite useful.

Personally I would use the CHCM in direct mode and map all buttons and axes either in FSX or FSUIPC (unless you have some very complex assignments).

PeteD will probably give a much better response.

PeterH

[snomhf]

Mark

A couple of things to check: in FSX

Make sure that you have NO axes assigned in CHCM

Ah, I do have my mini-stick on the Pro Throttle mapped to the mouse in CHCM. I'll try disabling that. I don't really need that anyway.

Are you running the CHCM in "mapped" mode?

Yes.

Do you have any axes assigned (incl the keyboard, mouse) in FSX - they must all be removed.

No. I was careful to make sure there is no controller references at all in FSX.

Can you calibrate the game controllers in Windows?

Yes. That works just fine.

Duplicate assignments of axes can cause some of the problems.

Thanks. I'm pretty certain that is not that case. I'm really careful with these things. I'm a pretty experienced user of CH and the CM but reasonably new to FSUIPC (the registered version anyway). I will double check that.

Do you have a CH TQ attached? Just moving all of the levers very slightly prior to flying can be quite useful.

Yes.

I'll experiment with that and see if it makes a difference.

Personally I would use the CHCM in direct mode and map all buttons and axes either in FSX or FSUIPC (unless you have some very complex assignments).

PeteD will probably give a much better response.

PeterH

Thank you very much for your good advice Peter.

I am pretty experienced with CHCM and use a lot of pretty complex assignments that I'd hate to lose by going direct mode. I really doubt that CHCM is the issue anyway since I don't configure any axes there (except the PT mini-stick which I am going to delete).

This is really a pretty minor annoyance. As I said, it's much like a check-list item. I'm just techy enough to want to try and fix it though. :)

I am really amazed at how much better it is to let FSUIPC manage my controllers than FSX. Things are rock solid! That was not the case before. There always seemed to be a bit of a sluggishness to the controls and a bit of a delay somehow. It was especially noticeable when flying helicopters. Much, much better with FSUIPC.

[peterhayes]

Mark

It may be worth asking Bob Church on the CH_Hangar Forum in case he has a different take on this problem?

Another thing I found every time you add another plane to FSX I had to recalibrate otherwise the controls went haywire!!

I've now simplified my flying to using a mixture of FSX and FSUIPC and like you I find everything is easy to calibrate and use.

Regards

PeterH

[snomhf]

Pete,

Good suggestion. Bob is my buddy. I talk with him all the time. I should have thought about asking him about this.

thanks

-mark

[snomhf]

FYI

I have discovered that by moving a couple of controls while the flight is loading cuts down the occurrence of the axes not getting scanned properly. It now only seems to do it maybe one out of ten times.

[Pete Dowson]

I have discovered that by moving a couple of controls while the flight is loading cuts down the occurrence of the axes not getting scanned properly. It now only seems to do it maybe one out of ten times.

It sounds like they are on USB ports with "power management" enabled. When Windows has that option it removes some USB power from devices which appear to be "asleep" until they wake up again, and this causes erratic readings initially.

Regards

Pete

[peterhayes]

Hi Pete

It may not be a power issue - I have found with the CH controls (particularly the TQ) that if they are in a certain position when FSX (FS9) starts --(usually at the detent) that they are "not seen" by FSUIPC (3 or 4). That is to say the axis assignment for all the levers on the TQ are "greyed" out, and if you go to calibration, you can't calibrate any TQ lever. As soon as you move any lever slightly they are immediately "recognised" by FSUIPC and everything's fine again. Bob Church offered an explanation (you were away on one of your holidays) which I think is somewhere on this forum. [Edit - just checked - its not here so could be on CH_Hangar] Its a real mystery - one of those flight sim enigmas. This occurs irrespective of using the CHCM software, Assigning axes in the FS, and/or assigning axes only in FSUIPC, and it also affects button assignments (ie you can't assign/change them until you move one of the TQ levers slightly). It also occurs whether you are connected directly to mobo USB or powered hub. It doesn't occur every time that you start the sim.

Regards

PeterH

[Bob Church]

Peter et al,

The need to move the levers is usually that until the stick data changes, the CM sends no reports. Most sticks only report data changes, there's nothing else that's really of interest.

When FS first starts, it's apparently defaulting everything to zero or whatever. FS has no data until an axis or button on the controller changes value/state and it sends a report. It should only take movement by one control on each controller, and in a lot of cases one of the values will be bobbling (127, 128, 127, 128, .....) anyway and that's enough. You're feet are on the pedals and your hands are on the yoke, it would be very unlikely that they wouldn't move by at least a count.

OTOH, with the Quad, if the levers are in the detents they're dead stable because they're in deadzone, and it's likely that the endpoints are stable too so no data goes to FS and you're running on the default value until something moves. The pedals will do that too about half the time if your feet aren't on them.

Would that explain what you're seeing?

Best regards,

- Bob

The StickWorks

http://www.stickworks.com

[peterhayes]

Bob

That's it exactly - thanks for posting!

Regards

PeterH