anyone find a way to increase the
anyone find a way to increase the stiffening effect of the rhino with increasing airspeed in IL2? I love the new stick (and I did read the manual) but I don't feel much difference in airspeed-induced-centering-force going from 200 km/h to 500 km/h in test flights. Can provide more details of course, but figured maybe someone here knew. Didn't really find anything using the search of the discord. Thanks!
26 Replies
@DaisyBlossom
First thing is I would say is to make sure you understand the max that the Rhino is even capable of.
- With no game running...
- Make sure your Master Gain and Spring Gain sliders are at max
- If the spring or master gain are connected to the adjustment pot, ensure it is at %100
- In the Effects page, enable the spring effect at %100 for all axes.
The spring force generated in this condition is the max spring force you will get out of any game, regardless of how good/bad the games FFB implementation is.
Second,
For IL-2 , the spring effect is completely owned by the native FFB implementation.
- You can get a sense of what "%" the game has set the spring force to at any given time by looking at the active spring effect in the configurator debug tab - the "Coefficient" value is the intensity of the effect with a range of 0-4096 - If the effect is at 4096, then the game has set the strength of the effect to max and you are hitting the limitations of the Rhino (or the limitations set by the master/spring gain/adjustment pot sliders) Third, If the game is not maxing out the spring gain, or you want to alter how the spring gain changes, the upcoming TelemFFB version has a custom curve feature where you can set exactly what you want the spring gain to look like over a given speed range (there's a dev/preview build in #š§Ŗtelemffb-dev )
- You can get a sense of what "%" the game has set the spring force to at any given time by looking at the active spring effect in the configurator debug tab - the "Coefficient" value is the intensity of the effect with a range of 0-4096 - If the effect is at 4096, then the game has set the strength of the effect to max and you are hitting the limitations of the Rhino (or the limitations set by the master/spring gain/adjustment pot sliders) Third, If the game is not maxing out the spring gain, or you want to alter how the spring gain changes, the upcoming TelemFFB version has a custom curve feature where you can set exactly what you want the spring gain to look like over a given speed range (there's a dev/preview build in #š§Ŗtelemffb-dev )
This is incredibly helpful! Thank you! My last experience with FFB was from using MSFFB2 with Condor to train for my actual glider pilots license and I recall it did a really great job of emulating the super limp feeling of the stick when barely or not moving vs stiffening up at airspeed and that was just across the range of maybe 0-150 km/hr in the glider (which felt very accurate from my own real world flying experience)
But totally possible this comes down to a better implementation coming out of the base flight sim software
And nothing to do with the rhino software/ hardware as I'm sure both are far more capable than the old MSFFB2
I just know from flying real airplanes that you can really tell how fast you're going just based on how stiff the controls feel and I was holding out hope that this would be the case with the rhino. Sounds like it's possibly more of a case of whether IL2 does it right or not, assuming all the rest of the output in the debug tab checks out
Again, thank you so much for the detailed reply - will test things this evening
Ok so here's the deal- the stick can clearly put out some serious force when you crank the spring gain all the way up. However, in IL2 there's zero noticeable difference between 200 km/hr and 500 km/hr. I can't really see the coefficient value while flying as I'm in VR but I'll try to get my wife to watch it while I do a test flight some time soon. I hope that the implementation on the IL2 side isn't just this bad.
I set master gain to 100% and spring allowable gain to 100% including all DOF in the effects tab. It's incredibly stiff.
Then I load the game up and... It's still incredibly stiff even with zero airspeed
So I dial spring gain back using the pot on top of the base next to the emergency shutoff. But that only really changes the amount of centering spring force felt regardless of flight condition.
The centering effect should depend on airspeed
Make sure you donāt have the sticky flag ticked in configurator. That will cause the Rhino to ignore the spring effect from the game.
The spring should be limp at zero airspeed and increase as you gain speed.
The spring should be limp at zero airspeed and increase as you gain speed.
I do not have the sticky flag ticked - I read that tooltip and was afraid that it was somehow doing that even though it was unchecked
Could you screenshot your settings so I can compare? I'm fairly certain it's nothing to do with configurator settings but at this point I've read the manual twice and feel I'm grasping at straws.
the only configurator setting that could cause the spring to stay static like that would be the sticky flag.
Other things that could be the issue
- Make sure FFB is enabled in the game settings (obvious, I know)
- IL2 has problems with more than 8 devices. Unlikely to be the cause if your bindings/axis control is working properly howerver.
- vJoy has been known to cause FFB issues, though typically only with DCS.. worth a check though.
You'll probably have to bite the bullet and troubleshoot this without your headset on so you can see the debug screen in configurator. You can tell a lot about what is going on from that screen
Ok. I'll get it running in desktop mode and use the debug screen.
I do have vjoy running for a custom button box. I can scrap that.
Shouldn't be any issues with the DOF reality H3, right? I was under the impression that up to two telemetry streams was ok for IL2.
Worst case I'll do a clean windows install as I've been due for that for a few years.
Thanks again for your help.
The spring is handled by the game.. so nothing telemetry based would affect it. I would recommend not using TelemFFB until you get to the bottom of the spring issue though.. just to remove variables (and reduce the number of effects you will see in the configurator debug window)
IL2 has its own quirks... if you have it in window mode and the window loses focus (i.e. you try to alt-tab to the configurator screen), the game kills all its FFB effects. So you'll need the window open and configurator visible to really see what its doing.
should look something like this just idling on the runway.. notice spring ID1 is inactive (thats the "effects" tab effect which gets overriden when the game starts is own effect). ID5 is the games spring effect
(had to redo the screenshot).. as soon as I clicked my flameshot button in the task bar, the game started deleting its effects and the ID1 spring was showing active š
hah! so finicky! Thank you for taking the time to show all of this so clearly. You're making this all a lot less mystifying. I'll have to check this out in the morning and see what I can see...
So I moved my simpit over to my monitors and did some testing...
Apologies about the phone picture of a monitor but I didn't want to risk alt-tabbing like you said
I'm not sure why I have both ID5 spring and ID7 spring active
I do not have telemffb running, or at least I didn't open it myself. Possible, I suppose, that it decided to launch with IL2
ID1-4 are greyed out, though the above image does a poor job of showing that
ID5 appears to handle Y and ID7 handles X
And they do appear to be somewhat related to airspeed... it's just not the relationship I would expect
They maintain max coefficient at any airspeed above ~ 300km/hr
And down near the aircraft in question's stall speed the coefficient is still at about 2200!!! (indicated clean stall for 109F4 in the sim is 150-170 km/hr and you can see I'm riding that line in the screenshot)
Which is crazy, again as someone who flies a fair amount in real life you would expect the controls to basically be every bit as limp as they are on the ground when you're at stall
Now on the high end- what airspeed should the controls max out their coefficient... I don't know.
But for the low end they should definitely be single digit percentages near stall, not 50% of max
(also my engine was turned off for this experiment so there was no influence from prop-wash, though I'm not sure that's even modeled)
anyway maybe I'm the only crazy person who cares (assuming this is working as intended, which, perhaps it isn't. I don't know.)
It's probably aircraft dependent, as they all seem to have their unique characteristics. Poor gain mapping is a common complaint for both DCS and IL2 native FFB implementations. That's the primary reason for the new Advanced spring mode in the upcoming TelemFFB 2.0. You can have a go with the latest preivew here https://discordapp.com/channels/965234441511383080/1230919462144835674/1413582276578639893
Make sure you read the two linked messages in that post to understand whats new and important in the dev build.
Here's what the feature does... It will be a little awkward to use with IL2 because of the way the game behaves when you change focus but there's not much that can be done about that...
Interesting. Still curious if the behavior I was demonstrating is indeed "working as intended" within the standard rhino software. It seems to me that if the software knows what airplane you're flying and what the clean stall speed is there would be no reason not to reduce static spring coeff down to nearly zero at that level
The Rhino software doesn't have any bearing on the behavior at all beyond how strong a given coefficient value actually is (based on master/spring gain sliders). It simply applies the spring effect as commanded by the game
The TelemFFB feature above overrides the game spring based on how you configure the speed/gain curve.
I understand, however at the most basic level the rhino software is theoretically adjusting spring coefficients based on airspeed, and perhaps by model of aircraft being flown. I'm saying I've tried multiple aircraft and without fail they all show a debug spring coefficient around 40-50% of the max value as the plane is stalling and a wing is finally dipping over.
That does not seem like "working as intended". Can you confirm?
the behavior in the video you posted seems to be at least similar to what I'm experiencing which, again, does not match my experience of how small single engine airplanes actually feel when doing these sorts of maneuvers
I canāt speak for the game developers. However the rhino is doing exactly what the game is telling it to, so from a rhino software perspective it is working āas intendedā.
The video I posted was just a showcase of the TelemFFB feature. The gain curve nor the speed range were given any thought by me. It is designed to give the user the ability to define a better gain curve than the game developers if they are so inclined.
The video I posted was just a showcase of the TelemFFB feature. The gain curve nor the speed range were given any thought by me. It is designed to give the user the ability to define a better gain curve than the game developers if they are so inclined.
so you're saying the spring coeff is coming directly from IL2, it's not calculated in the rhino software based on airplane and airspeed?
Correct
bizarre. that is not at all how I thought it worked. ok. that changes a fair amount.
is that dev build of telemffb likely to be "live" some time in the near future? I have plenty of other stuff to troubleshoot in the meantime if so
otherwise if the time between dev build and release is months I will dip my toe in
Honestly the biggest thing holding me back from releasing it is my lack of time to work on the documentation. There is so much new and different that itās a pretty big undertaking.
totally fair
do you guys have like a patreon or something? I am more than happy to throw some money at this if it helps in any way.
offline editor GUI upgrade alone is worth paying for, this is much better
Nahā¦ I do it because I enjoy it. Iāve thought about setting something up in the past to fund new modules for development purposes for aircraft I would otherwise never buy (like trying to make AP work on the $100 PMDG aircraft). But at the same time, I donāt want to have a sense of obligation for the project.
All good! I do really really appreciate what you guys are doing, though! I will put some comments about the dev build in the appropriate channel.