-Hawkeye-

Update on the Virpil line. I also posted a related thread on the space sims area of the forum. They came out with a new base that can be used for conventional desk mount, called the "WarBRD", and it's compatible with their other grips. They also came out with an entire stick based on that mount, but it's a stick type designed for space type sims. I got tired of waiting for VKB and their lack of any assurances that you could ever actually buy a stick from them, and constantly pushing projected availability dates back. I was impressed with the build quality of the Virpil bases, which can be seen in the video posted in the space sim area. So I went ahead and pre-ordered a WarBRD base, and also ordered the Mongoose T-50 grip which is a grip very similar to the VKB Gunfighter MKII grip and is of course configured for flight sims. One other feature about it that I'm very happy with is that the new base is fully compatible with their long-stick mounting system, and of course the stick extentions; and it has the stronger springs included that you would most likely use if you were to do that. So you're not restricted to a desktop only type of unit. Also their HOTAS throttle looks extremely interesting, useful and high quality. I didn't purchase that at this time, but it looks like it could easily take the place of my quadrant if I wanted to do that in the future. The whole total costed just over $428.62 US, including shipping from Belarus. I'm excited to try this out when everything eventually arrives. I had to wait a while for my Milan Flight Gear pedals, and the wait was well worth it....so I'll wait for this new stick base also; but at least it's actually ordered and processing. I'll keep you updated if you're interested. Thanks again to Vonrd and Loopy for initially directing me to the Virpil line. S!

Could you describe your philosophy when it comes to using the gun sight? At times even any part of the outer circle is not visible on the glass, and yet you are still shooting accurately, most of the time at quite long distances. My only guess is that you might judge strictly by the tracers, but that doesn't seem likely since your shots are right on the money at the beginning of each burst. Perhaps you use an area of the windscreen which you have figured out, when viewing angles are high. It would make a good subject for it's own video, if you haven't already made one. The truth is I haven't been using all 6 dof for so long, I can't even fathom how I'm going to convert back, if operating that way proves to be a significant handicap on the WWII side.

Very interesting turn of events. It also lead me to have a look at the Jack Hunter section to learn more. Thanks!

I like Neil DeGrasse Tyson of course (see signature quote) and used to watch his series on cable. It was great the way that he showed how things were proven by science, and the history of how that happened. "The New Popular Ignorance" (I call it) that is taking our country by storm, in which people "don't believe in" scientifically proven facts, really bugs me. It is like a new religion here. I understand that the theories that those facts lead to are disputable, mainly by scientists that are researching other, equally promising theories; but the facts themselves are indisputable, and there needs to be some clarity made to the general public about what truth actually is. You can't choose whether or not to "believe in" it. You can only disprove them, or shut up and accept the truth. Origin theories do reach a lot, asking people to accept a tremendous amount of knowledge that they can't possibly understand without all of the background education that it would take to do that. However, the math behind the multi-dimensional aspect of this new theory has been proven (that's why they call them "proofs") and it is certainly an extremely interesting theory that could unify the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics, and everything else. Without understanding a thing about any of it, I wonder why people often choose to believe what their questionably motivated, biased and prejudiced leaders say, who call it all a big lie without any viable reason for scientists to do that, instead of a group of highly educated people who's very means of operating is based entirely on proving the objective truth, whatever that may turn out to be. Go figure.

This!

I watched the first video in all of the links you posted. The first 2 of 3 were the same video. The last one was an extension of the first. I liked them. The explanation of a quasi-crystal being a shadow of a higher dimensional crystal really helped....I don't know how I could have perceived it otherwise. Also the point reference example of how the "lies" work and how or why we only perceive things in 3D was also very helpful. It will be interesting to see if this new emergence theory is able to explain everything in existence. Areas that they've included are ones that I would not have even thought to question...such as consciousness and information, just to name two. I wonder how fast it will develop, or will it peter out like string theory apparently did. Bottom line is that it amazes me that there are people in our world who are able to think on such a level, even though much of it is of course built on previous human knowledge and discovery. Perhaps my sole reason for existing is (or was) to help support a world that can produce just a few of these individuals.

Without commenting at all on the accuracy one way or the the other of your analysis (I know nothing of the situation), I will say that it is very well written and succinct. I like the references and descriptive verbs you used. The point was driven home admirably One doesn't usually see writing of that quality on the internet often.

Still reading every episode Geezer; my thanks!

Once again proving what a fine fellow are! My best thanks to you, sir. One of these days I'll catch up and figure out from one of you the definitive file to get all of the latest skins from and actually see them (I do think Vonrd posted a pic of an ME-109 skin...thanks!). I must confess I am still lost in summer land and am viewing most of my sunsets and sunrises from the back of a boat. I look forward to rejoining with you all and picking up where I left off when the season winds down up here. S! and thanks again!

Outstanding work Brit! Very impressive! 😄

Once you flew that, could you ever fly anything else?

Read it, many thanks, Geezer!

For me, it works that way in RoF too. You may not realize it if you have both "engines" and "engine 1" controls mapped to the same buttons or axis'. It's my belief that the controls for "engines" are used when you're in a multi-engine plane, and then select common engines control (controls all engines simultaneously with one control) instead of individual engine controls.

This info was given to me by Vonrd last night. I actually didn't remember about this file until I saw it again....my purpose in dealing with it in RoF was to back up different controls maps. However, he told me that you can map controls in this file, if the in-game controls mapping utility doesn't recognize your inputs properly. The path to the file using file explorer is enclosed in red. Use Notepad to open the file, if it asks you what to use. The first column is the action; you'll notice the same action can be there up to 3 times consecutively....because in the game you can have up to 3 different button assignments, per action. The second column is the entry for the actual control. These vary depending on whether it's a keyboard key, an axis, or some kind of game controller button. The last column is for inverting an axis; it is just either a 1 or a 0, 0 being non-inverted, and 1 being inverted. The stuff after the double slashes is just notes describing what the control does in the game, and has no bearing on making the control work....it's just for informational purposes. First you'll need to determine what controller ID the game sees for each of your controllers. You can tell that by looking at the entries and seeing what it says for a function that you know. Next you'll need to determine what the game recognizes as the button number or axis designation for the button or axis you wish to assign. One way to do that is to go into the game, and just go to any field that does recognize the control movement, and see what it puts into the window (don't save it of course). If the control won't register in any area at all, you can use the logic of how you see other controls recognized, and apply that to what you're trying to use. For instance, for my throttle quadrant, I can see that in the game, it registers the button numbers as one number less than what my game controller software designates them as. In other words, button 11 in my game controller software is registered as b10 in the game; button 12 is b11 in the game. In any case, you'll see that it's going to take some observation of other examples within the file or detective work, or apply the same convention that the game seems to be using. When done, you probably shouldn't save the file directly with the same name (current.actions) until you have first saved the original, unaltered file under a different name (such as old_current.actions) in the same location. That way, if something gets screwed up, you can just rename your original file back to current.actions, and get things back to the way they started. Here's the path, and what the file looks like: Lastly, do not mess with any of this stuff if you don't feel capable of using or fully understand Windows File Explorer or Notepad. One little omission of a comma or slash, using an improper controls name, or adding a space somewhere by accident could mess up your game (hence, saving the original). Pay attention to detail! Good luck to you, sir. S!

Uhhg....no wonder I had no idea. That should NOT be checked by default! The people who do that kind of stuff would certainly know to check that, if they wanted to. Thanks for the education, guys. S!

Haha, I always wondered what that "seeded" setting was for I still don't know.... It did solve the problem, though. Thanks!

Ah! That is an advantage. Is it correct to assume the yoke has no centering spring or detent?

You'll still want to have a means to use the launcher though, so you can update. The game does notify you when your version isn't the most current, which is nice, instead of just giving you some error message, like RoF does.

You can't do anything about that aspect anyway, with what's currently available to you. In fact, if you were to "desensitize" the pitch axis, in other words a departure from fully linear toward an S-curve, you would actually have to push further forward on the stick, because it moves the elevator less at the beginning of it's throw, and then catches up later. Go ahead, try it....it's easy to put back to full linear. The point is that what's available in the game, is unable to be moved up or down on the Y (pitch) axis. Only that would change where the neutral part of the stick is with respect to the in-game elevator's position. Just keep in mind that although you would have to actually hold the stick further forward with a long joystick, the effort to do so would be less, due to the lever advantage of the long, over the short stick (given the same springs in the base). It was very interesting to see Chill confirm this, detailing the ease of movement of the real Dr.I's balanced controls (the ailerons being the most difficult to move). It's more of a position change in the joystick, than a hard effort to have to constantly overcome....at least that's the way I took his explanations. Also, if you have a long stick, the accuracy of your control is increased throughout the entire range of the stick's movement. If you use a response curve to do this, the accuracy is only increased in the center of it's movement....it's actually less than normal (linear) at the end. Response curves do offer you options that you don't get just using a longer, fixed stick. You can increase or decrease sensitivity, or response speed. Think of it as being able to lengthen or shorten your joystick at will, as you're moving it. That aspect departs from reality....but is better than having no other option.

Very interesting, and encouraging. Note that for FC, he is using an extended joystick though. This is what I predicted earlier. Lacking any fully capable response curve utility, this is the only thing that is going to mollify the inherent over-sensitivity of any standard gaming joystick. That's fine, because even lacking that, I find the FC Dr.I easier to control by far, than the RoF one, without curves. I still hope they'll come out with a response curve utility that equals or exceeds RoF's; but if they don't, you'll find that the people with extended joysticks will be able to fly the Dr.I and all other planes better. So it will be an important thing to know if they ever plan this, because the money spent to overcome that problem will be well worth it, in my book; but it will necessitate a big hardware reconfiguration in my case, and I would guess most others.

@ Lee, with respect to the "new joysticks found", when you created the new map and downloaded it to your devices, did you have it in "direct" mode instead of "mapped" mode? (or vice-versa). The first time you logged in, it sensed your controls in mapped mode, if that's how your original RoF map was made, and assigned your devices to 1, 2 or 3, or whatever....after you make another map and start the game again, if it's in direct mode, it will see those as different controllers and assign them new ID's (5, 6, 7, whatever). Anyway I noticed that happening to me when I decided to try using them in direct mode, to see if it sensed buttons in the controls setup utility of the game any better. It didn't make any difference. Anyway, I see you realized the solution. And yes, the launcher does hang for me (and others) too. A bug they need to fix. For people who ONLY have FC, it should be pretty easy to end up with the same controls as you had set up in RoF for the WWI planes. There's a lot you won't have to worry about if you don't have BoS, BoM, or the other WWII parts. I won't say that it's easy to make the IL2 controls mapping utility work, though; it's far buggier than RoF's. If your CH map is made to set your joystick buttons to act as keyboard buttons (instead of "DX buttons"), then your problems should be minimal. However if you just want to press a standard joystick button, a CH joystick for sure at least, many of the entries just won't work that way. @ Butzzell, if 777 is interested in what the problems are, the truth is that the main ones right now already existed before FC even came out, and are just part of the general BoX controls mapping bugs or inadequacies. If they would fix the logic of how the controls mapping works it seems like most if not all of the problems could be eliminated. The way they have some functions sense a pair of buttons in one operation just doesn't work well on toggle or hat switches that have a center position....if they would make it take 2 separate sensing operations the way it works in RoF, it would work better. Also, if they could make some or all of the functions work as either an axis or a pair of buttons, instead of making it a one or the other situation, that would help a lot too....again, it seems to work that way in RoF. Lastly, why the IL2 controls mapping utility doesn't sense the integrated switches on any of the CH throttle quadrant axis' is a fault that limits what you can do also. That's another thing that works fine in RoF, but not in IL2. I'm not sure if that is also true for Saitek throttle quadrants, or not; or whether it only applies to certain controls functions. What I do know is that prop feathering won't work off one of those switches, and neither will a blip switch. So that sucks, and those particular switches can't be reconfigured in the CH control manager, so there's no work around for me or others who might want to use them. Also I think you're very correct about the release. It was a very smart marketing ploy to offer the discounts to those who had spent the most money in the past. They got the game out for purchase to the most likely buyers, they got it out early, and I'll bet they got a big chunk of money right when they needed it most. Now I hope they apply that to FC and not the other games, and get the bugs worked out of all of them, and get planes out at a rate faster than 2 per year, and if they have to charge more money for the planes than they did in RoF, so be it. S!

That's great info, many thanks, Snaggle! Wish I had talked to you earlier. I used info from the first link to run gpedit and disable windows updates for now (although in the example, it is actually telling how to enable them). And, although I had already told Windows or MS to not give me feature updates until later, I did set the time period to 365 days (max), so that will help. As for the other troubleshooting options, I did try already or at least think about whether they made any sense; I did run the troubleshooter. For one, there is little or no chance that I have an update database error, I have downloaded the thing at least 8-10 times and it does the same thing every time. However. the last link you gave me does describe my problem exactly....thanks! However, I do not have any 3rd party anti-virus software; I only have what Microsoft uses. I also have tried to disconnect any and all external USB devices. It did not make a difference. I did run the troubleshooter; but in addition to skipping the database errors, I also have all of the previous updates (stack) which they are talking about. No help. I have also run DISM and chkdisk successfully as administrator from a command prompt, and whether they did anything or not, I doubt they found any errors; but if they did, they were fixed. As for the rest, I do not know what an "In Place Upgrade" is, but I will look into it; or I will try to force the upgrade, if it is anything different than using the ISO file to install, which already failed in the same manner as all the rest of the tries. Again, many, many thanks for the info! This is why we post here! I will keep at it (I still have the ISO file), when I have time. I guess I'm pretty sure it would work from a clean install, but have been unwilling to wipe everything and start over, yet. It's daunting to imagine having to reinstall everything and get my sims working again, along with everything else. S!

It's "IL2" not "ILS"....the original game was named after the famous IL-2 Sturmovik Russian ground attack plane from WWII. You aren't going to be able to import controls (or anything, besides skins) into IL2; IL2 is becoming an uber-sim which incorporates many titles under one game, so the controls have to be universal and all-encomassing for all of the planes, which up to the point before this FC addition, all were focused on WWII planes. Now certain new control functions have been added in this update, to accomodate the WWI planes that are there now, or will be coming (altitude throttle control, for one). Also at this point in time, the response curve capability in IL2 is far more limited and simplified than the one in RoF; so you won't be able to correct most of the problems with the WWI planes like you could in RoF (can't trim the nose down to fly level, for example, unless [later] it's a plane that has a trim wheel by design, like the S.E.5a, or Sopwith Triplane). However, for those of you that may have trim wheels incorporated into the hardware of your joystick, you can use those (I have this, but haven't tried it yet). If you do, don't forget to return the wheel (or wheels) back to center for other planes!! Also, the need to invert an axis isn't that big of a deal and is pretty common; it has to do with your joystick, they don't all work the same. It's easy to do within the controls mapping utility, if you haven't figured it out....it's not obvious the way they show that function....Kleigmann pointed it out to me. Also in IL2 there are certain functions that are designed to be mapped to an axis (the listing for those controls uses only a single entry), and other functions that are designed to be controlled by buttons (the listings have two entries, one for up and one for down, or increase and decrease, whatever). For the second type, the IL2 controls mapping utility can be problematic if you're trying to use a toggle or hat switch, because it will register the first direction you push it twice, and you'll never be able to get the second direction to register when it's sensing your inputs. This is because they tried to make it work in one single operation, instead of two separate ones, like in RoF, which works perfectly, of course. The way around this is to use your joystick utility to cause your joystick button to act as a keyboard function (such as the default keys that are usually already mapped in the IL2 utility). Then when you get back into the IL2 controls, you don't need to map anything more because the default keyboard commands are already there, and then when you use your joystick buttons in the game, it will act as those keyboard keys or combinations of keys....if you've properly programmed your stick. This will probably cause you to need a new, separate joystick map than the one you were using for RoF, for IL2. Still, the controls can be buggy, with things that stop working during a session, which worked before. Last QMB session I flew, my map wouldn't come up at all (keyboard "M"). Some of these problems can be related to your "realism" settings that you have set....for instance, if you can't get your mixture lever to work, you may have to use the shift-M command to toggle off automatic mixture....or disable auto-mixture in the mission realism settings, etc.

Update on this. The update has again come around, needing to be installed. There has been no improvement in their process; it still fails to install in the same way. I got with Microsoft Support and even had 2 technicians use remote support in order to try to get it to install correctly. The first one started checking compatibility and said my MSI X99S SLI Krait Edition motherboard is NOT COMPATIBLE. Seriously? I installed Win 10 on it from the time it was brand new, and it's worked since that time flawlessly, including every single MS update that's come out before the April "feature update". Now all of a sudden it's incompatible? It's not even old! In the middle of all those questions, the first tech dropped off line, and I had to start over with a new tech. The next tech checked the updates and then immediately began to download an ISO file to install the update directly. She was so sure it would work that she asked me to close the ticket before it was even installed. I said we'll see about that after it reboots successfully in version 1803. Well, the update killed the remote link of course, but she said she'd call back on the phone in 30 minutes. Meanwhile, the installation reached 80% or so and then needed to reboot. When it did, it acted exactly as it had done all the previous times. The blue Window comes on the screen, without any progress balls circling; then up comes a plain blue screen like a desktop without anything on it at all. At that point it sits that way without anything happening for about 5 minutes or so. Then the machine powers down to the off state. When you power it back on, the old version 1709 Windows starts back up without a problem, and you get a message stating that the update failed to install. Checking further, you can see in the installed updates another failed attempt at version 1803. It's been a couple of hours now since the last tech dropped off line, and I can see I'm not going to get a call back....not that it would do any good anyway. I have tried every damned thing I can think off; but the bottom line is that it just seems like it's never going to install on this machine. What does one do now? Build a new machine? Unbelievable. I can only let it sit telling me every day that I "need updates", until such time as it tries to force me to do it again....don't know how long that can go on. In any case, I may be out of business at any time depending on how this is going to act.

By default, the "Home" key is used for "move pilot head backward" in IL2. The "End" key is used for "move pilot head right" in IL2. These are the only key "conflicts" that I see. However, those "conflicts" did not cause any problems in RoF. I did not want to eliminate default functions because they are used to position the view, when saving views. In fact, I am wondering if it is even possible to save views in IL2. If not, this would be (another) huge step backwards. If any or all of you feel these conflicts are the cause of the problem, let me know. S!