FSUIPC, PMDG and throttle calibration issues

[Morten]

Hi there

I recently in another post learned that calibration of joysticks handling PMDG aircraft tend to make unpredictable troubles:

"If you want to assign in FSUIPC, for PMDG aircraft Send to FS as Normal Axis AND select the "Axis_" controls. And do not calibrate in FSUIPC no matter where you assign"

In my case, most of my avionics are controlled by commercial "joysticks", consisting of yoke, spoilers, mixture, pedals, etc, which have calibration tool software along with the equipment - However my 4 throttle quadrant consists entirely of homebuilt equipment! 
Would anyone perhaps have any suggestion to into which alternative tool I successfully would be able to calibrate this throttle quadrant when FSUIPC is not an option?

Regards,
Morten       

[Pete Dowson]

1 hour ago, Morten said:

Would anyone perhaps have any suggestion to into which alternative tool I successfully would be able to calibrate this throttle quadrant when FSUIPC is not an option?

You can certainly try calibrating in FSUIPC. Many folks actually do with throttles and have no problems. The axes which give folks most problems are the flight controls -- aileron, elevator and rudder. What tends to happen is that the PMDG aircraft read thet values before FSUIPC gets them to calibrate them, so giving the sim two potentially different inputs.

Pete

 

[Morten]

Okay, then...! In that respect I can certainly recognize the "funny" part of the yoke suddenly going completely bananas just before landing, about one out of 10 times (as mentioned to you before), but as irritating as it is, I can actually deal with that by just setting the sim on pause and replugging the USB connection and all returns to normal again...almost rutine! :)

However dealing with a throttle quadrant that I have to re-calibrate in FSUIPC because the calibration has been lost every time I startup the PC and fly the PMDG in a new session, is pretty damn hard to deal with!  

Giving this another thought... if no one else has that kind of problem, I guess it potentially could be due to the fact that this selfmade quadrant was originally made as an analog "joystick" plugin - then during time I put the analog plug into an USB adapter which worked just fine up to and including Win 7 - but with Win 10, here was when problems started with "forgetting" calibration settings!       

Gordon  Bennett! Just having a new session after rebooted the PC several times and NOW, all of a sudden, the quadrant within FSUIPC calibration suddenly remembers all  data! Absolutely, having no clue why this relatively old problem suddenly, all at once, now is disappeared??!!
The only thing I can think of is a newly Win 10 update this afternoon! 
Will however, of course, monitor this "miracle" the next couple of days and see if things are staying that way....!    

[Pete Dowson]

1 hour ago, Morten said:

a throttle quadrant that I have to re-calibrate in FSUIPC because the calibration has been lost every time I startup the PC

This doesn't seem in any way related you your first post at all. 

I don't know any way that could happen. FSUIPC stores the calibrations quite clearly in the settings file, the INI file. How are you detecting that these are "lost"?

Perhaps you need to post your FSUIPC INI file so we can see what you've got.

Pete

 

[Morten]

23 hours ago, Pete Dowson said:

This doesn't seem in any way related you your first post at all. 

Pete, it is related to the thread that you closed the other day:

Quote

B. FSUIPC keeps to forget my separate throttles per engine Joystick Calibration. Which means that I have to recalibrate my throttles all over again when starting a new sim session. Obviously pretty annoying!

 

From this thread:

 

[Pete Dowson]

12 minutes ago, Morten said:

it is related to the thread that you closed the other day:

But not your first post in this thread, which was merely asking about recommendations for PMDG in view of other posts about the way PMDG unusually handles control axes.

On your changed subject since that first post:

On 4/15/2020 at 8:40 PM, Morten said:

by just setting the sim on pause and replugging the USB connection and all returns to normal again...almost rutine! :)

This is patently NOT the same as "losing all calibrations and having to recalibrate"!

If unplugging a USB device and plugging it in again "fixes" things it must only because that device has lost proper contact with the drivers in Windows. This can happen if you let Windows operate its annoying "power management", so make sure you disable that on all USB devices (hubs etc) in Device Manager. It tends to be enabled by default.

Basically a re-initialisation of the link would do the same job, so if visiting FSUIPC axes tab and exiting again by "OK", without re-calibration, does the same thing for you then that's most likely the problem.

If it isn't then I think you have a USB problem of a different kind. the fact that you get 'erratic' behaviour first seems to point to this.

On 4/15/2020 at 8:40 PM, Morten said:

Just having a new session after rebooted the PC several times and NOW, all of a sudden, the quadrant within FSUIPC calibration suddenly remembers all  data! Absolutely, having no clue why this relatively old problem suddenly, all at once, now is disappeared??!!
The only thing I can think of is a newly Win 10 update this afternoon! 
Will however, of course, monitor this "miracle" the next couple of days and see if things are staying that way....! 

And are they, so far?

Pete

 

[Morten]

9 hours ago, Pete Dowson said:

And are they, so far?

No, unfortunately not staying that way.

[Morten]

I will check out your other suggestions regarding to USB problems and see if this helps.

9 hours ago, Pete Dowson said:

Basically a re-initialisation of the link would do the same job, so if visiting FSUIPC axes tab and exiting again by "OK", without re-calibration, does the same thing for you then that's most likely the problem.

Will also check this

[Morten]

Reconfigured both Throttles and Yoke to "direct FS assignment" and disabled  power eco bull savings on USB ...
All problems seems so far solved by those actions 

/Morten   

[Morten]

Problem seems now to be solved!

Turned out to be caused by USB overload and/or an involved USB hub