Good morning.
Can you tell If this product is compatible out of the box? It has levers for flaps, speed brakes, landing gear, parking brake, autobrake, ...
Thanks
TCA Quadrant Addon Airbus Edition
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- Official Post
Quote from our official website: https://www.aerofly.com/features/devices/
TCA Officer Pack
Aerofly FS supports the Thrustmaster Civil Aviation (TCA) Officer Pack Airbus Edition with the Airbus Sidestick and Throttle-Quadrant with Add-Ons out of the box with suitable assignments for a user-friendly and realistic experience. Simply connect the devices and take off.
I have the device here for testing and it works great especially for the A320. Some of the assigned functions like engine masters may not work yet on all aircraft though.
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Are there any inconsistencies in the calibration.
I mean, for example, that when I lock into climb mode, that the real lever does not lock exactly in the climb lock, but a few centimeters in front of or behind it?
So briefly; do the inputs of the throttle also match the throttle from the Aerofly Airbus?
Or can you even set this precisely in the Aerofly via software (as for example with the flybywire Airbus in a tablet)?
Thanks and regards
Werner
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- Official Post
We've mapped the detents on the physical thrust lever to the detents in the cockpit. We've tested this for several devices and it worked great even with the default calibration. There shouldn't be any need to adjust this unless your specific device varies greatly from the series production quality. The simulated detents have a bit of a deadzone so that it should fall right into the detent even if the input axis is a few percent off target.
The detents should work for the A320, B58, C90, Q400, LJ45, F15, F18 and others that I probably forgot now.
For me it was a simple plug and play kinda deal. Connect the thrust levers and sidestick to a computer without any installation of any additional software from the manufacturer or third party. Start Aerofly and the detents worked out of the box in all aircraft that have physical detents IRL. If that's not the case on your end please let us know of course because we want to offer the best user experience for these kind of hardware configurations.
Fun fact: the Thrustmaster device has detents at roughly 1/3 and 2/3. But the real world A320 and other Airbus thrust levers have detents on 1/2 and 3/4 roughly. That means by design the Thrustmaster throttle quadrant detents don't actually line up with the real world thrust lever angles.
I mean there are pros and cons to this,
Pros: You can use the first detent for the flight idle detent in turboprops which are around the 1/3 range. And you can use the second detent for full military thrust on aircraft with afterburner like the F18 and F15.
Cons: You hit the climb detent much earlier on the joystick than in the real world and there is less range between idle and climb which makes the throttle more aggressive. So for 33% of the way it's already at like 85% N1.
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Hello Jan,
That's what I call great support with a detailed background!
Thank you very much, so the handling of the mentioned hardware is clearly understandable for me and other Simmers.
Happy greetings
Werner
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Jet-Pack (IPACS) you mention in a previous comment that « The simulated detents have a bit of a deadzone so that it should fall right into the detent even if the input axis is a few percent off target. »
I’m running aerofly fs2 on a mac with the tca airbus edition quadrant and my experience is that both throttles should be very precisely positionnes in the climb detent, unfortunately. It takes me a lot of time to do that, and more than often i also end up with a LVR ASYM notice on the PFD because the throttles are not perfectly aligned (we’re talking less than one millimeter here !).
Is there a way to calibrate / specify the dead zone ?
Thanks for your help
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and more than often i also end up with a LVR ASYM notice on the PFD because the throttles are not perfectly aligned (we’re talking less than one millimeter here !).
This often happens on my PC as well ...
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So there is no way to calibrate the dead zone around the detents ?
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- Official Post
On mine I noticed a significant axis movement when the lever is already at idle. Basically when I move it with force it actually sends different signals than when I move it lightly. With a bit of experimenting I was able to calibrate the min and max values in such a way that both levers move almost identical. I'm not sure why that isn't the case right from the factory but by calibrating the min and max differently, i.e. stop a few % before the actual idle, you can affect where the detents end up.
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I think that the main issue here is that the simulator is relying on the axis value to check if the throttles are in the climb detent while it should rely on soft buttons 11 and 15, that are on when the two throttles are in the climb detent.
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For the record, i updated the .tmd file of the a320 to tweak the values for SnapMinimumX and SnapMaximumX for detent 3 on both thrust lever (using 0.50 min and 0.60 max) and it seems that it solved my issue…
Jet-Pack (IPACS), I’m not sure if that makes sense ?
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- Official Post
For the record, i updated the .tmd file of the a320 to tweak the values for SnapMinimumX and SnapMaximumX for detent 3 on both thrust lever (using 0.50 min and 0.60 max) and it seems that it solved my issue…
Jet-Pack (IPACS), I’m not sure if that makes sense ?
That does make sense, but that also affects other devices and VR hands. So there are side effects of increasing that snapping region.
Instead try adjusting the input_lever2 <[float64][Input0Detent0][0.55]> positions, e.g. increase it from 0.55 to 0.57. That value affects only the TCA quadrants and re-maps their first detent to a new value.
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That does make sense, but that also affects other devices and VR hands. So there are side effects of increasing that snapping region.
Instead try adjusting the input_lever2 <[float64][Input0Detent0][0.55]> positions, e.g. increase it from 0.55 to 0.57. That value affects only the TCA quadrants and re-maps their first detent to a new value.
Hello, where is this config file?
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Hi there. I also have the TCA officer pack but not the add-ons on the sides (speed brakes, flaps, parking brakes). So I want to buy them but the thing is I can't fly the Airbus efficiently atm, I'm using GA planes mostly. What I want to know is can I use the flap lever on GA planes like Cessna 172? As Cessna has 3 flap positions, the product has 4 total and 1 off position. Does it cause any issues on Cessna?
And some jets even have more than 5 flaps. Can I use other inputs when needed to extend the flaps to more than 4 positions?
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On the Cessna 172, the flap positions are assignedt:
- 0: 0
- 1: 1
- 2: 1
- 3: 2
- 4: 3On the BOEING B737-500, the flap positions are assignedt:
- 0………: 0
- 0+1/2.: 1
- 1………: 2
- 1+1/2.: 5
- 2………: 10
- 2+1/2.: 15
- 3………: 25
- 3+1/2.: 30
- 4………: 40 -
Display More
On the Cessna 172, the flap positions are assignedt:
- 0: 0
- 1: 1
- 2: 1
- 3: 2
- 4: 3On the BOEING B737-500, the flap positions are assignedt:
- 0………: 0
- 0+1/2.: 1
- 1………: 2
- 1+1/2.: 5
- 2………: 10
- 2+1/2.: 15
- 3………: 25
- 3+1/2.: 30
- 4………: 40Thanks a lot, man
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- Official Post
On the TCA flap lever you can remove the notches by removing a few screws on the bottom. Then you can have any flap position that you like.
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On the TCA flap lever you can remove the notches by removing a few screws on the bottom. Then you can have any flap position that you like.
Got it thanks
