Control settings for different planes

  • I still don't understand why you think that the requests I and some other people made would make it more difficult for casual players to set up their controls. As stated previously, you can still have a default controller configuration that is automatically applied to all aircraft, nobody has to setup anything and if you want to fly the 747 with a 10 dollar two button joystick you can do just that. BTW P3D (and presumably Xplane 11 too) also assign a standard configuration to every connected controller. And if you are happy with that you just leave it as it is. But if you want to change something to better reflect a specific aircraft you do that and then you can save your changes and create as many profiles as you want. Later when you change aircraft you just load your profile and off you go. This is way faster than activating and deactivating several controllers. At the moment I have seven controllers connected to my PC, and whenever I deactivate one the axis that I setup for it get lost and when I need it again later I have to reassign everything for this controller. In P3D I just select my aircraft and FSUIPC automatically applies the profile that I created for it. And even without FSUIPC I could save and load a profile for each aircraft.

    Regarding your question if someone really assigns different buttons to the landing lights on different aircraft, when I still had my old generic Homecockpit I did that. I assigned the switches to the lights in the same order as in the real plane (which is different between a Cessna, a Beechcraft and a Piper for example) and had little interchangeable plaques I could place above the switches so I knew which one did what. Also, the same switch that lowered the spoilers in the Lancair Legacy lowered the Water rudder in the Realair ACA Scout float plane. And many other differences.

    Long story short, before you invest development time in sophisticated automatic assignment algorithms or Virtual Cockpit 3D menus just let us save and load controller configurations. This should be achievable with minimum effort and would be a huge improvement already.

    Cheers, Fabian

  • Quote


    But I'm not yet hearing anyone that says: no I want the landing light switch in aircraft A to be on my switch 1 but it in aircraft B it should be on switch 2.

    I always have the switch for the parking brakes below the landing gear lever. When I put the landing gear lever on a different axis, for whatever reason, I put the parking brake on a different switch too. So I think aircraft specific switch configuration is neccessary.

    A standard controller configuration is good, but with higher user demands, there is also a need to create an aircraft specific controller configuration. It makes sense to create profiles and then assign them to the aircraft.

    IPCAS like it to make it simple. That's right for beginners and gamers, but for demanding pilots it is important to offer a comprehensive configuration. I think the most user of a flight simulator are demanding pilots.

  • HI Jay, welcome back I guess :)

    Profiles are one possible solution but there could still be an even better solution that just nobody has thought of yet. That is why I keep asking what you want to assign specifically and what things are actually different between aircraft. Because as I see it only the throttle quadrants have been mentioned so far and a few custom home cockpits that have a lot of controls that could be used differently for different aircraft. But I'm not yet hearing anyone that says: no I want the landing light switch in aircraft A to be on my switch 1 but it in aircraft B it should be on switch 2. Nobody actually likes assigning all these buttons and switches and we all tend to assign the same stuff on the same switches to not get confused with what they do every time.

    Just some ideas that I want to throw in here which would mean less menu clicky thingy and more powerful and intelligent assignments.

    Maybe we can detect that you have a throttle quadrant connected and then prioritize which controls you have on there. Then all you need to do is connect it via usb and depending on the aircraft the assignments switch automatically ...

    Hi Jan

    For me it's only the throttle levers but others have a good point with the light switches. Different planes use different layout.

    I quite like your idea but I'm afraid it would be more confusing, the system remapping assignments on it's own.

    I would just keep it simple and allow for few profiles that can be saved to a cfg file.

    That way we can even reinstall or update the sim and get out settings back from the file.

    Over and Out

    Jay

  • Just read the history on this post and think it needs to be discussed again now that the Honeycomb Bravo Throttle Quadrant exists.

    It sounds like today's answer is to rename config files for single, twin prop, twin jet, and jumbo jet, correct?

  • Hello. I have another reason for wanting to save configurations. I have always used Aerofly in VR mode, but just now I wanted to try out the non-VR version for the first time. Trouble is, with VR, I had a setup where all of my controlling was done on the yoke's buttons so that I didn't have to reach blindly for anything on my keyboard or quadrant. In non-VR play, I would want those same yoke buttons doing other things. So, I at least would want to save VR and non-VR configurations.