A fix for Full Axis throttle mapping

[Evil_Echo 11]

BIS knows all about it. The rant does nothing to help them or us.

[trekari 10]

Any word on fixing this, devs?

[Evil_Echo 11]

Contact the devs via CIT or the local distributer in your country.

[Gruman 123]

@Trekari

What do you want the DEV to fix? This isnt a bug. The game let you assign one Axis. You should blame the manufacturer of your (and mine) Joystick to divide the throttle into two seperate axes. In my opinion this should be able to change within the profiler of the certain Joystick Systems. Maybe send a message to Saitek or Logitech, cant be to hard for them.

What would be nice if BIS would bring a Analog Throttle (0-50%) & Analog Throttle (51-100%).

Until then, the fix works perfectly and im happy. Thanks again TheHarvesteR

[=wfl= sgt bilko 10]

Maybe I'm missing something here.

I have a Logitech Attack 3 Joystick.

Flying Helis, I bind Z- to "Increase thrust" and Z+ to "Decrease thrust" instead of the "analogue thrust".

Pushing throttle (Z-axis) upwards/away from me will, gradually increase thrust and leaving at any (pos) position will give fixed positive thrust.

Pulling down/towards me will decrease, leaving at any (neg) position will give fixed negative thrust.

Setting thottle in middle position will level out.

I don't know about the impact for airplanes since I rarely fly anything else than helis in ArmA2.

Edited October 27, 2010 by =WFL= Sgt Bilko

[PogMoThoin 10]

Maybe I'm missing something here.

I have a Logitech Attack 3 Joystick.

Flying Helis, I bind Z- to "Increase thrust" and Z+ to "Decrease thrust" instead of the "analogue thrust".

Pushing throttle (Z-axis) upwards/away from me will, gradually increase thrust and leaving at any (pos) position will give fixed positive thrust.

Pulling down/towards me will decrease, leaving at any (neg) position will give fixed negative thrust.

Setting thottle in middle position will level out.

I don't know about the impact for airplanes since I rarely fly anything else than helis in ArmA2.

This isn't the way a real chopper works, its not like a jet, there should be no decrease thrust at all. As You stand 0-50% thrust in a chopper does absolutely nothing for You in game without this fix. Being at 1% is the same as being at 49%. The increase thrust should be mapped to the full scope of the throttle 0-100%, not just the top 50-100%

Edited October 27, 2010 by PogMoThoin

[=wfl= sgt bilko 10]

What you describe is what happens if you bind Z axis to "Thust (Analogue)" and "Brake (Analogue)" ingame.

And you're right there is no brake.

What I'm saying is that I bind Z axis to "Thrust increase" and "Thrust decrease" (default Q resp. Z) ingame.

- Pulling collective pitch up will increase uplift (thrust) by equally changing the rotor blade angle, making heli rise vertically.

- Pushing collective pitch down will decrease uplift, making heli drop vertically.

- Finding the balanced position of colletive pitch will make thrust neutral as in no positive or negative uplift, making heli hover.

Either way, my point is for Helis: do NOT bind Z axis to "Thrust/Brake (Analogue)" ingame BUT to "Thust increase/decrease".

Edited October 27, 2010 by =WFL= Sgt Bilko

[PogMoThoin 10]

What you describe is what happens if you bind Z axis to "Thust (Analogue)" and "Brake (Analogue)" ingame.

And you're right there is no brake.

What I'm saying is that I bind Z axis to "Thrust increase" and "Thrust decrease" (default Q resp. Z) ingame.

- Pulling collective pitch up will increase uplift (thrust) by equally changing the rotor blade angle, making heli rise vertically.

- Pushing collective pitch down will decrease uplift, making heli drop vertically.

- Finding the balanced position of colletive pitch will make thrust neutral as in no positive or negative uplift, making heli hover.

Either way, my point is for Helis: do NOT bind Z axis to "Thrust/Brake (Analogue)" ingame BUT to "Thust increase/decrease".

^^ Which isn't the way it is be IRL, this fix makes it behave like the way it does in a real chopper. You'll have the full use of the throttle for uplift, not start at a neutral position in the middle

[helkish 10]

@Trekari

What do you want the DEV to fix? This isnt a bug. The game let you assign one Axis. You should blame the manufacturer of your (and mine) Joystick to divide the throttle into two seperate axes. In my opinion this should be able to change within the profiler of the certain Joystick Systems. Maybe send a message to Saitek or Logitech, cant be to hard for them.

What would be nice if BIS would bring a Analog Throttle (0-50%) & Analog Throttle (51-100%).

Until then, the fix works perfectly and im happy. Thanks again TheHarvesteR

It doesn't let you assign one entire axis, it allows you assign only part of the axis (either + or - ).

This is actually is a bug. I've been playing flight sims for a very long time.

99% of the games out there allow you to map Yaw, Pitch, Roll and Throttle to an axis.

Have a look at this screenshot from Falcon 4.

http://img.pilpoils.be/setup.jpg

You can clearly see the throttle is mapped to an entire axis.

Here's more screen shots of other games:

http://jetart.free.fr/FAQ/joystick1.jpg

http://homepage3.nifty.com/ysflight/ysflight/manual/ctlassign.png

[=wfl= sgt bilko 10]

^^ Which isn't the way it is be IRL, this fix makes it behave like the way it does in a real chopper. You'll have the full use of the throttle for uplift, not start at a neutral position in the middle

No! Neutral only means that uplift is balanced with gravity = heli hovering.

The throttle on a joystick (at least on my Attack3) is split into two sections.

You have Z- above mid position and you have Z+ below mid position.

To make sure to use "full throttle" (as in BOTH Z- and Z+) you have to bind BOTH of them. This is done by:

- Bind Z+ to "Thrust decrease" (default bound to key Z). This covers uplift 0% to ~50%

- Bind Z- to "Thrust increase" (default bound to key Q). This covers uplift ~50% to 100%.

This way:

- Throttle positioned all the way down = no uplift (heli will drop due to gravity).

- Throttle positioned all the way up = max uplift overcoming gravity (heli rising).

- Throttle positioned somewhere in between = balance uplift and gravitiy (heli hovering).

If your preference is to have more uplift by pulling throttle down, you have to reverse the binds.

Why don't you just give it a try (and make sure that Z-/Z+ are not bound to "Thrust/Brake Analogue").

Whether heli is hovering exactly in joystick mid throttle position or not, has nothing to do with joystick but rather the flight characteristics implemented to the ingame model.

Edited October 29, 2010 by =WFL= Sgt Bilko

[TheHarvesteR 11]

Just to clarify, the old Increase Thrust and Decrease Thrust actions have some sort of AI attached to them... they attempt to balance out the throttle so there is less input required from the pilot. i.e. you put the throttle to 50% in a heli and it's a perfect hover. That's just not realistic.

It's even worse with airplanes, these actions act more like an autopilot speed hold than an actual throttle... notice that when using Increase/Decrease thrust, if you apply 75% throttle, the engines will rev up with you pull the nose into a climb, and will even deploy the airbrakes if you nose down... that's because the AI behind that control is trying to maintain the same speed. Increase/Decrease thrust is not throttle, it's a speed hold... 75% throttle with those actions are actually 75% of the airplanes max speed.

That's why BIS introduced the Thrust/Brakes (analogue) actions for us pilots. They allow 1 to 1 joystick mapping to the aircraft throttle, with no AI trying to keep airspeed. It's much more realistic, but it suffers from a serious flaw, which is what my fix addresses: You cannot map your entire axis range into Thrust(analogue), you have to divide it into half thrust, half brakes, which is still not realistic.

So what my fix does is not expand the actions to read the whole range, but REDUCE the joystick range into a compressed version of itself, so that ArmA will read it just the same, but your required input will have been maximized.

Yes, this means that half of the virtual axis will be unused. that's how it's supposed to work. (good thing virtual joysticks are cheap ;) )

No, this does not mean you're killing off half of your physical joystick's travel. This actually enables you to use ALL of it.

One point worthy of note, is that maximizing the throttle will logically leave no room for the brakes. This is good, and realistic. Real airplanes have separate controls for brakes, so the best course of action is to remap your brakes onto a button or, if you can spare one, map them to another axis on your joystick.

I hope this makes it clearer :)

good to see my topic has sparked up this much interest... maybe BIS will someday address this issue so this kludge won't be necessary.

Cheers

[=wfl= sgt bilko 10]

Ok I see what you mean now. I thought this was all about the common mistake to only map Z+ (or Z-) leaving you with just half the throttle movement active.

When it comes to BIS "Thrust/Brake(Analoue)" addition, I think it was mainly for fixed-wing aircrafts. I agree - the implementaion is half-done and "Brake(Analogue)" should be mapped to something else since it's a separate action IRL.

[WillaCHilla 10]

Thanks very much for this detailed tutorial, TheHarvesteR! -Tested it today in the morning and it runs flawlessly.

Besides of creating a .bat-file to start GlovePIE in combination with arma, you can do the same with the ArmA II Launcher by SpiritedMachine (under "external apps").

[Gruman 123]

Otherwise, you can throw in this into your shortcuts target line:

 /run x:\xxx\ArmA2Joystickfix.PIE /tray

And throw that one into your Autostart folder. You never have to care about it anymore :). When you start arma, its allready there. Perfect :)

@=WFL= Sgt Bilko

I flew some time with increase and decrease thrust, and when i swapped over to this Fix, it was so much more better. I suggest you give it a shot, if you dont like it, you just have to redefine two keyboard keys and uninstall glovepie and PPJoy :bounce3:

[Cyborg11 10]

Thanks for that fix :)

Did the same with the slider (on my X52) for the brake.

PPJoy1.analog2 = (MapRange(-Joystick.Z, -1, 1, 0, 1))
PPJoy1.analog4 = (MapRange(Joystick.slider, -1, 1, 0, 1))

I wonder if it's possible with GlovePIE and PPJoy to use the mouse wheel to zoom in/out instead of using the FreeTrack/TrackIR Z axis :o

[trekari 10]

That's nice that the COMMUNITY has found a fix for DEVELOPER laziness.

I prefer to see bugs fixed by the people who introduced them, personally.

[slimSpencer 10]

did see the other Thread first and wrote there about dxtweak2.

Just wanted to inform you.

[TheHarvesteR 11]

did see the other Thread first and wrote there about dxtweak2.

Just wanted to inform you.

Just saw the link you posted. Now that's a really helpful bunch of apps there :bounce3:

I hope you don't mind me reposting the link here, just for safekeeping ;)

http://www.wingmanteam.com/latest_software/gadgets.htm#DX%20Tweak%202

Thanks!!

Cheers

[alef 0]

The current CIT "feature" request to fix this has sat in open mode for over a year, without an ETA or developer assigned to fix the problem.

I also hope it gets more attention. It's now assigned, which not real matters for "featuers", and have no idea if will ever be taken into account.

Personally, I use scripts like this one, and I would like that other people can really use air vehicles this way (full axes) without all the complicated stuff behind.

[TheHarvesteR 11]

Thanks very much for this detailed tutorial, TheHarvesteR! -Tested it today in the morning and it runs flawlessly.

Besides of creating a .bat-file to start GlovePIE in combination with arma, you can do the same with the ArmA II Launcher by SpiritedMachine (under "external apps").

Hadn't seen that there was a new version of SpiritedMachine's Launcher... I use this launcher too, and was using the FRAPS auto-launch to launch TrackIR instead... this new 'external apps' panel is far better

Oh, and I found another scenario where this fix is very helpful... If you have rudder pedals, you probably have, like me, set them to be also your brakes/gas pedal, no?

Well, the Saitek Rudder pedals have 3 axes... one for the main rudder action (heel back/forth) and two other axes for the toebrakes... these toebrakes can also double as gas/brakes... but the same half axis issue arises here because (on the Saitek pedals at least) each toebrake axis is it's own full axis... so ArmA will ignore half of it's travel.... mine's ignoring the bottom half, so when I start flooring it, I have a 50% deadzone before any gas starts to flow.

Seems minor at first glance, but remember these are axes you use with your feet, and lack of travel there makes for a VERY hard time trying to find the right amount of pressure your foot should apply...

Anyhow, the fix is still the cure here... only wanted to share another use case with everyone :)

Also, on another note, this fix made it to the A2 Bug Tracker as a workaround for the original bug.

Does this mean this is now an 'official' workaround? ;) :D

Anyways, the issue is assigned there, and it has a target version... :bounce3:

Cheers

Edited November 8, 2010 by TheHarvesteR

[alef 0]

Also, on another note, this fix made it to the A2 Bug Tracker as a workaround for the original bug.

Does this mean this is now an 'official' workaround? ;) :D

Anyways, the issue is assigned there, and it has a target version... :bounce3:

It does mean nothing. I'm just trying to push this ticket hoping it will be ever taken into account. And it's not the target version, is the affected one. It means in what version the bug happens of the feature refers to.

Nothing is "official" on CIT unless some guy from BIS put's his words in there.

[TheHarvesteR 11]

Ahh I see... That's what reading email before actually waking up does for ya.. I was pretty sure I read 'target version'.... gotta get me some coffee...

Anyways, Thanks for bumping that issue, I've been following it since it was posted :)

This fix works and all, but the real solution is what's posted there. Hopefully the devs will someday notice it.

Cheers

[trekari 10]

Dear Bohemia:

When can we expect for you to get off your asses and fix this problem? Two patches have been released since *I* was made aware of the issue. That's long enough in my book for you to have done something productive about it.

So what's the g-ddamn holdup?

Thanks.

[Scrub 0]

Wow. Self-important jerk much? I'll give you the response I give to my customers, that BIS will probably make into 'nice' words:

An emergency on your part doesn't necessarily constitute one on mine. (theirs)

Piss off already with that attitude.

[TheHarvesteR 11]

This is why this fix is here... So that we DON'T have to nag BI about this little issue... (it's a petty detail as compared to what they're handling on most days)

Why not try and follow the fix, instead of whining for a patch?

And please, don't ever call a development studio 'lazy' again. Game designers are one of the hardest-working people you'll ever meet. I seriously doubt they're, as you so candidly put it, 'sitting on their asses'.

Ok, now... back on topic :)

Cheers