HTC... Input options?

[Midnight]

Been working on a design for a home-built cockpit. In doing so, I have come up with a few questions to HTC about possible additions to game inputs that would allow further realism for those that wanted to take advantage of it.

1. Right now, many of the actions in game are toggles instead of two seperate controls.
     A. Engine on/off
     B. Gear up/down
     C. WEP on/off
     D. Tail hook up/down
     E. Bay doors open/close
     F. Dive brakes extend/retract
     
Would it be possible to have these functions split and be mappable to two different keys or buttons?

The reason is that with programmable sticks, sometimes the toggles can get out of sequence with the stick making it harder to effectively program more complex macros.

2. Would it be possible to get the rudder, aileron and elevator trims mappable to analog inputs?

Any indications if this could / will ever happen HT?

[SKurj]

for most players with a keyboard and 1 jstick toggles are the best alternative...

Some errm other flight sims use 2 buttons and its aggravating to say the least..

use buttons on yer cockpit for those +)


SKurj

[Chairboy]

I agree w/ Midnight, I've been thinking of the same thing and have been facing the same problem.

In response to your concern, Skurj, he can leave the default settings the way they are, but just providing optional map points for Activate and Deactive primitives for some of the toggled stuff would be great.

Eg, for gear mapping there could be:

Gear Toggle (this is same as we have now) - Default G
Gear up - Default unmapped
Gear down - Default unmapped

The above changes could be done pretty quickly if the code isn't too hacked together for gear events and stuff.

A more complicated enhancement I would like to suggest would be providing an interface for getting various data points via UDP.  This way, someone could write an interface to output the data to whatever hardware we wanted.

For instance, provide the following data:
primary_gun could be a bool or single byte value that says the main gun is firing.

secondary_gun could be the same for the secondary gun.
engine_running could be same for whether the engine is on
ias_value could be a word w/ a numeric representation of the indicated airspeed
gs_value could be the absolute speed
fuel_one
fuel_two
fuel_three
fuel_four (etc) could indicate percentage of fuel remaining in each tank

These and various other data points could help some of the more hardcore simmers have AH reporting data to instruments in their cockpits, like what X-Plane does.

I don't know if there would be a huge demand for this, but it would make for some pretty kicking demonstration cockpits at conventions.

[Innominate]

What I'd like to see is a keyboard control for trim.

While holding the key down, your stick would control your trim, when you release the key, your trim is locked at tha t positon.

Would make adjusting trim much easier than trying to do it on the keyboard.

[LoneStarBuckeye]

Innominate:

On the off chance that you have a Cougar HOTAS, this is very easy to do using the axis lock commands.  I wrote a profile that locks the joystick and rudder axes in place when the "trim" key is pressed and uses the joystick and rudder inputs to change trim.  When the "trim" key is released, the controls revert to their normal functions.  It worked just as intended, but, in practice, I did not like it, because I found that I often wanted to be able to change control inputs and trim settings simultaneously.  Nonetheless, I can send you the code if you like.

- JNOV

[Midnight]

Originally posted by Chairboy

A more complicated enhancement I would like to suggest would be providing an interface for getting various data points via UDP.  This way, someone could write an interface to output the data to whatever hardware we wanted.

I am in the process of designing a piece of hardware/software that can get *some* of the things you are looking for.

To actually get full status indicators would totally and completely KICK ASS.

PLEASE,,, PLEASE HTC?

[Innominate]

Originally posted by LoneStarBuckeye
Nonetheless, I can send you the code if you like.

- JNOV

How about throwing in the cougar so I can use it?

[LoneStarBuckeye]

I might consider it, but I've already sent it back to Thrustmaster.