Hardware X52, Fly-by-Wire and RCS thrusters...

[Moach]

Hi...

having some trouble here... i can´t seem to get this going on properly...

i have a Saitek X52, with lots of hats and buttons... very nice... ok, Orbiter won´t care for them on it´s own, so i´m using fly-by-wire....

fly-by-wire, doesn´t support my rudder pedals, so in comes JoyRide, which i use only for that axis

ok, i got all axes working now, perfect, right? not quite...

here´s trouble:


i was trying to get the throttle-mounted hat to control the Linear RCS thrusters, so i don´t have to switch from linear to rotation all the time...

fly-by-wire configured, and it works... as long as i keep RCS OFF

should i turn it on, all strange things start happening... the trhusters start firing erratically, in ways that make no sense...

if i pull up on the stick, both up and down rear thrusters fire simultaneously - not going very far now, are we?


if i try to use the RCS hat to move to the sides, now only the rear or the front thruster fires, causing the ship to spin instead of simply moving sideways


obviously there´s some conflict going on here... but i keep trying different cominations and coming up empty, so i figure i´d ask:


has anyone successfully set-up a simulataneous LIN and ROT rcs control using the joystick hats? - and most importantly, HOW?


cheerz

 

[Hielor]

do you have the joystick disabled in Orbiter?

 

[Moach]

Not at the moment.... but i tried that, and it didn´t make a lot of difference, so i turned it back on... same old...

 

[Kodiak555]

Make sure that the X52 is plugged into your computer BEFORE you Boot it up. If you plug it in afterwards, the system won't have installed it and Orbiter won't see it either. Had the same problem myself, so I know.

Lee

 

[Hielor]

Not at the moment.... but i tried that, and it didn´t make a lot of difference, so i turned it back on... same old...

If you have the joystick enabled in Orbiter, the commands may conflict with the ones from FBW

 

[Moach]

the X52 is always plugged in... so that´s covered...


now, im have yet to try again disabling the stock joystick support.... but now right now, gotta leave for college or im gonna be teribly late...

 

[Moach]

yeah same...

have it disabled now... but it seems FBW doesnt like it when i turn on the RCS on the ship... if i leave it off, it overrides it and no problems...

but now i CAN´T switch if off... since i have to override it to get it working, RCS is always on for rotation, so i cant have the stick move only the control surfaces


i wanted to have it act normally for the stick, responding to whatever RCS mode i have set on the ship (off, ROT, LIN) and use the throttle hat as always LIN

can that be done?

 

[Hielor]

yeah same...

have it disabled now... but it seems FBW doesnt like it when i turn on the RCS on the ship... if i leave it off, it overrides it and no problems...

but now i CAN´T switch if off... since i have to override it to get it working, RCS is always on for rotation, so i cant have the stick move only the control surfaces


i wanted to have it act normally for the stick, responding to whatever RCS mode i have set on the ship (off, ROT, LIN) and use the throttle hat as always LIN

can that be done?

FBW unfortunately does not respect the off/rot/lin setting for RCS. If you assign an axis to RCS it will always cause the RCS to fire.

 

[Wraith]

Now there's a very interesting thing about X52 drivers. You have a lot of extra buttons that are unavailable under "normal" operation:
Clutch button, tiny button near mouse stick, throttle wheel press, throttle wheel up and wheel (those are also reported as buttons too!), and even the three buttons near the display.

All these button suddenly become available when you (surprise!) fire up the standard windows joystick dialog from control panel, eg:

The driver seems to enter the "raw mode" just to be able to report its every button and axis for eg. diagnostics. If you leave the joystick dialog as is, then suddenly all these buttons are available for use in games, because they are now being properly enumerated by DirectInput (raw mode!).
A draw back for that is that the 'mode selector' on the right side of the stick reports one of its "buttons" (selected mode) as pressed all the time which upsets some games.

 

[ThatGuy]

You could always use the profile editor to assign the RCS controls to the hat switches.

 

[Moach]

so what if i lose FWB, use only JoyRide and mapped keyboard commands?

i´m gonna try it when i get home... on my laptop right now... no X52 here


thanks for the help!:thumbup:

 

[Moach]

still having trouble.... without FBW, although there are separate keyboard commands for LIN and ROT RCS, which can be easily mapped to the X52´s hats, they don´t work unless the ship is set to that mode, so i end up switching modes anyhow, which is i was trying to overcome in the first place....


is there some way to use overriding commands for RCS without FBW?

 

[Hielor]

still having trouble.... without FBW, although there are separate keyboard commands for LIN and ROT RCS, which can be easily mapped to the X52´s hats, they don´t work unless the ship is set to that mode, so i end up switching modes anyhow, which is i was trying to overcome in the first place....


is there some way to use overriding commands for RCS without FBW?

[ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=1369"]Joyride[/ame] might be able to.

 

[Moach]

no... i tried, joyride only knows axes...

but i got it down now, working like a charm... all it took was a few lines of dll :yes:


i just made a plugin, it basically allows the default RCS keys to fire the thrusters as in LIN mode regardless of the mode switch´s position, basically a simplistic rewrite of the sample "remote control" plugin

uh... how do i upload stuff? :blush:

 

[Hielor]

how do i upload stuff? :blush:

www.orbithangar.com

 

[Moach]

ah, ok, i´ll post it up tomorrow... right now i´m laptop-bound

---------- Post added 03-30-10 at 03:17 PM ---------- Previous post was 03-29-10 at 07:23 PM ----------

alright, the zip with the plugin is up - not here tho... in the addons forum :thumbup: