Has anybody here ever had the trim button being stuck? I've had it a few times now and can't quite f

Has anybody here ever had the trim button being stuck? I've had it a few times now and can't quite figure out what is causing it. I'm using the TM F-18 grip and sometimes the trim seems to go to full deflection, usually just the roll trim but today I also had the same happen to the pitch trim. I checked my keybinds and there are no double bindings. Dcs control inputs isn't showing that the button is depressed so I'm not sure what's going on. Could it be a button issue? An issue with the Rhino maybe?

BBoggy Has anybody here ever had the trim button being stuck? I've had it a few times n...

walmis•5/29/24, 10:00 AM

Which aircraft?

BoggyOP•5/29/24, 10:01 AM

Av8b

BoggyOP•5/29/24, 10:01 AM

But I had some roll trim issues in the F5 as well

walmis•5/29/24, 10:03 AM

The button glitches would appear as a erratic flickering if it were the case. But as I've noticed an increase in trim related issues recently, maybe a DCS update introduced some kind of bug

walmis•5/29/24, 10:03 AM

🧰support

Wwalmis The button glitches would appear as a erratic flickering if it were the case. Bu...

BoggyOP•5/29/24, 10:25 AM

Interesting. What that guy described is exactly what I had. I managed to fix it by pressing the trim button in all the directions a lot and the runaway trim disappeared.

Wwalmis From physics perspective the force (=dynamic pressure) increases with the square...

Grover•5/29/24, 11:49 AM

100% correct. And actually the bellows system make it like ^2 of airspeed. So it's almost dead while stationary - just the friction forces are keeping it from falling

Grover•5/29/24, 11:51 AM

this is a plot of the pitch forces during take off for the F-4B (the system is almost the same with some changes to the viscous damper and some additional springs - both removed in tge later models)

Grover•5/29/24, 11:51 AM

this is for 2 units nose down

Grover•5/29/24, 11:52 AM

check how little force change is required between neutral and full aft < 120 knots

Grover•5/29/24, 11:53 AM

and then for high performance turns, sufrace level, 8.5 G, you can have gradients as 6-8 lbf / G -> so forces around 50 lbf

Grover•5/29/24, 11:55 AM

And when you realise, that you don't need full deflection for that 50 lbf, you'll see that the gradients change by a factor of 25-100 from stationary to dogfighting

Grover•5/29/24, 11:56 AM

And then you realise that for the aileron it's something like 14 lbf (off the top of my head) for full deflection, flat - so doesn't depend on speed.

Grover•5/29/24, 12:04 PM

And finally, the default way a DCS module can communicate with any FFB stick is by providing the neutral position and force gradient multiplier. Through my tests, I found it limiting as nice feel required high gradients, but that caused signal clipping. However, sky is the limit, and we will see what we can cook to make more data available to the Rhino and make it more accurate.

GGrover And finally, the default way a DCS module can communicate with any FFB stick is ...

Number481•5/29/24, 12:26 PM

Just wanted to say thanks for jumping in here. Its always nice to hear directly from module developers and good things usually come from open conversations. I don't think anyone wants HB to sacrifice realism for the sake of one specific FFB device, but in my experience so far, it seems the realistic force curves don't translate well into the force range that the average FFB device can produce. There aren't a lot of FFB devices out there, and maybe I should dust off my sidewinder to see if the behavior feels different, but I imagine the general feeling would be the same across pretty much any FFB device.

Again, thanks for chiming in!

AndyHill•5/29/24, 12:36 PM

I think it's just amazing how much effort blur put into ffb considering how niche it is

Grover•5/29/24, 12:36 PM

Absolutely they don't, and that's why I bumped the roll forces up by some factor long ago (long ago - that's why I don't remember the precise value). OTOH, the toolset that we have is a bit limited. But finally, I think it also requires a shift in expectaions and understanding of how the devices work. For example, with driving wheels, it's much easier, because most of use drive cars. I know that sport cars have different feeling and you can't compare sport cars with everyday cars directly, but at least we (racing sim users with no real life racing experience) have some sort of experience to which we can refer. With flying, we come from being conditioned by decades of using spring-centred sticks, and it's sometimes very distracting and if feels awkward when a stick is almost numb - I mean no reaction. For example, we like a nice centre detent because it makes us feel reassured that we have no deflection etc, while in real life 'no deflection' is a bit more abstract, because everything is much less precise - for example the aircraft is a bit crooked and requires some constant aileron input.

AndyHill•5/29/24, 12:38 PM

how about the other stuff in the F-4 control options, I think there's at least an option for limiting maximum force the pilot can use or something like that

Grover•5/29/24, 12:39 PM

And I'm sharing all these thoughts because on so many occasions I had to re-evaluate my previous understanding when working on the F-4E, that I'm no longer the same person

AndyHill•5/29/24, 12:39 PM

it's a rather complicated question considering how easy it is to fling a joystick around compared to real controls and make the planes do some really funky stuff

Bob Bushman•5/29/24, 12:39 PM

Grover•5/29/24, 12:39 PM

Sometimes I regret I even thought about trying to understand the controls system and making them 'realistic'.

AAndyHill it's a rather complicated question considering how easy it is to fling a joystic...

Grover•5/29/24, 12:40 PM

Oh yes, that's why it's there, but that's for the non-FFB users

They don't know how to use the force

AndyHill•5/29/24, 12:41 PM

what setting should FFB users have?

AndyHill•5/29/24, 12:41 PM

of course I don't think my Rhino setup can give me 30kg of pull so is there still room for modeling pilot limits?

Number481•5/29/24, 12:42 PM

in general, I love it... my one suggestion (for all of the $0.02 its worth) would be to add some (or some extra) dampening to the bobweight effect around 1G.. maybe its realistic as is but it seems... bouncy?

Grover•5/29/24, 12:42 PM

But also that's true - my initial assumption was that in real life no one would break so many wings so easily because it would require some effort measured in pounds of force (or Newtons for more sane unit system users)

AndyHill•5/29/24, 12:42 PM

in addition to the stick being rather heavy, real pilots have other subtle cues tellint them that what they're trying to do might not be perfectly reasonable

AndyHill•5/29/24, 12:43 PM

like losing consciousness and such

AAndyHill in addition to the stick being rather heavy, real pilots have other subtle cues ...

Number481•5/29/24, 12:46 PM

hmm... FFB blood pressure cuff around the neck might be a good way to simulate it

Grover•5/29/24, 12:46 PM

Oh it is bouncy and my understanding is that it was bouncy. That's one of the aspects I wanted to address in that longer article about the control systems. Some of the flight characteristics of the aircraft - I mean pitch stability related - isn't pure aerodynamics or even STAB AUG - it comes from the control system + pilot 'interference'. So IMO you can't achieve proper aircraft stability in simulation without addressing how the controls impact that. And the reports show that it shouldn't be neglected.

AndyHill•5/29/24, 12:48 PM

I think a cuff around the balls might be very effective

AndyHill•5/29/24, 12:49 PM

anyway for me the F-4 force feedback was fascinating from the start, I loved how I felt the plane talk to me all the time, I just had absolutely no idea of what it was like in reality

Grover•5/29/24, 12:49 PM

Also that's why I think the real life pilots have less problems and less complaints because they are more fluent at controlling the aircraft and then those inertia/G effects on the controls are less annoying. While we, the happy flight sim users doing RedBull-like-air-races-through-the-hangars-and-landing-on-a-dam, we like to yank the controls left right up and down.

AndyHill•5/29/24, 12:50 PM

and for us the ffb stick is usually the only thing giving any kind of physical feedback at all, whereas real pilots are absolutely flooded with all kinds of sensations while maneuvering

AndyHill•5/29/24, 12:50 PM

btw what do the force gain controls in the special menu actually do?

AndyHill•5/29/24, 12:51 PM

do they increase the forces (up to what point) or do they just make the system stronger at the lower end and max out earlier?

Grover•5/29/24, 12:51 PM

just a plain multiplcation applied to the force gradients

AndyHill•5/29/24, 12:52 PM

is there a maximum value it'll do?

Grover•5/29/24, 12:52 PM

Because, as I wrote previosly, this is all what we have when communicating the FFB related values to DCS

AndyHill•5/29/24, 12:52 PM

my religion mandates that I fiddle with every setting everywhere and especially try to max out everything

AAndyHill is there a maximum value it'll do?

Grover•5/29/24, 12:53 PM

No, there isn't, but I think there's some cap, but I don't know if it's DCS, Microsoft, or manufacturer driver side

AndyHill•5/29/24, 12:53 PM

I think there's a limit at the very least at DirectX end

Grover•5/29/24, 12:53 PM

I'd think there is

GGrover No, there isn't, but I think there's some cap, but I don't know if it's DCS, Mic...

Number481•5/29/24, 12:54 PM

the max coefficient on an FFB device is 4096... my testing of the roll gain was that anything around %300 maxes it out.. similarly %300 on pitch makes the force max out pretty quickly at any speed

AndyHill•5/29/24, 12:55 PM

oh crap I need to be playing football in 3 minutes

AndyHill•5/29/24, 12:55 PM

figure out the perfect settings for my specific system while I'm away

Grover•5/29/24, 12:56 PM

Anyways, I hope we can find some cool ways to do some direct communication to the stick, and also as soon as I have the Rhino, I'll tune all default values knowing the details of the implementation of the F-4E, share it, and then continue discussing with you to optimise it and find the best values, or different sets of value, for the best realism and/or feel

GGrover Anyways, I hope we can find some cool ways to do some direct communication to th...

Number481•5/29/24, 12:58 PM

I hope you've reached out to walmis

Grover•5/29/24, 1:01 PM

Oh yeah, I DM-ed @walmis earlier this week, and we're on it

so big thank you

Has anybody here ever had the trim button being stuck? I've had it a few times now and can't quite f

Similar Threads