Force feedback

Very cool. Low cost but a serious and intricate looking project all the same. I think for a DIY project i'll do something simpler first. I'll just get my 6Dof linear actuator powered motion platform built.

Wow, very nice indeed.

It could need a little bit more damping in roll but it must be already a huge improvement compared to static spring-centered yokes.

I never understood however why people using FF make it shake on ground roll. Of all of aircraft I've flown IRL, none of them had the stick or yoke connected in any way to the undercarriage.

Some aircraft like the Piper Cub or Super Cub feature non-balanced elevator controls, meaning that on ground without airspeed the stick wants to move full stroke forward.

Thus, when landing, especially on grass, you need to hold firmly the stick to your belly to prevent shocks from moving the stick forward, which may quickly become a "no future" situation...

But you have no such shaking effect on ground roll.

It's a little bit like in Baaaa Baaaa Black Sheep, with the control column strongly shaking when firing the machine guns...

Anyway, I like the airflow centering, allowing for realistic trimming.

IPACS approach has been very dogmatic so far on FF topic, hope they'll reconsider it in the future...

Cheers

Antoine

@ Antonie

FS Force pug-in used in the video actually supports "damping" feature but I didn't turn it on because I simply don't know what it represents.

I was messing around with the ForceTest program where you can test and feel individual forces and I didn't recognize what am I looking for in Damping.

It would be great if someone could describe this force a little..

In fact FS Force allows you to finely tune many different forces and save them to profiles that can be assigned to individual aircraft. For this demo I increased elevator weight value to show of Prop wash effect which as you can see wasn't there for some reason. I probably missed something within the profile settings and didn't really investigate any farther since. Mind you it was the first test flight:)

Regarding the "ground roll shake" I understand your comment but I thing it's just a matter of taste. Again this feature can be tuned down or turned off however for me this is actually the only force feedback connection to the air frame. I don't use any other shakers or butt kickers and flying in VR gives you great immersion but no physical evidence of your presence in VR. Ground shake on the other hand tells your brain exactly when the wheels leave the ground or touch down on it..

Thanks for your comments

Jay

I also have a question for Jeff or any admin person..

I don't know what I've done wrong but when I posted the link of my video originally, the video was actually shown under the text..

Then I edited the link and some of the text in the original post and the video won't appear any more. Instead there is only the link it self.

Does anybody know why?

Quote from Jay 737

@ Antonie

FS Force pug-in used in the video actually supports "damping" feature but I didn't turn it on because I simply don't know what it represents.

I was messing around with the ForceTest program where you can test and feel individual forces and I didn't recognize what am I looking for in Damping.

It would be great if someone could describe this force a little..

Damping can be seen like a friction that stops (damp) oscillation.

[Blocked Image: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZvsSz.png]

In your video, when you turn your yoke and release it free, it quickly turns back to equilibrium and overshoots in the other direction, then progressively damps the oscillation, a little bit like the light blue curve in the above figure.

Technically, the controls would recenter more or less according to the purple curve, without overshoot, or a very slight overshoot like the orange curve.

But the real control column behaviour, driven by aerodynamic forces of control surfaces in a flow is probably not so easy to reproduce without a very fast and strong mechanism and IRL you don't release the controls like that in flight.

So, I assume you'll want to find an optimum to have a realistic feeling while flying with the yoke in the hands, without exaggeratedly slowing down force response...

More about damping factor : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damping_ratio

Cheers

Antoine

Thank you guys for your answers..

@ Antonie - I will do some more testing now when I know what to expect ..

@ Jan - I've tried that several times but the video won't show up in the post. I do that via "insert link" button right?

Awesome, thank you Jan

I remember the good old times driving GP Legends cars with a FF wheel.

Whenever I would release the wheel in a curve, it would strongly oscillate, even worse than your yoke in the video.

But such a clearly underdamped setting was necessary to get a strong, immersive, force feedback effect in a curve, without overdamping when cornering or recentering the wheel...

You simply didn't release the wheel in a curve (which you'd never do IRL) and it was ok, that was my best compromise.

As the case may be you will need to reach a similar compromise with the available power in your FF system.

Eventually, that's really a question of feeling.

Keep up the good work.

Cheers

Antoine

guys I really appreciate your feedback because having spend last two decades flying any available PC simulator and building cockpit controllers, my actual real "piloting" experiences will fit into 90 minutes where most of these minutes were on R22 porkchop..

Therefore your feedback is really valuable to me. I'm gonna play with the settings a little and make some more videos. That reminds me, all the aspects of different forces can or should be tweaked via software suite. Keep in mind that the yoke's core is simply Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback 2 joystick so there are some limitations to it's capabilities.

What I'm relying on is the FS Force plugin that interfaces flight sim with the yoke. Well the FS Force is not perfect and not as complex as for example BFF's software suite however my intentions here are to bring more people on this subject so we can convince Russ Dirks (author of FS Force) to develop AF2 compatible version with "in depth" force simulation..

I've heard all the reasons why we don't like force feedback joysticks or even re-centering spring in the yokes but that doesn't mean we as a community can not come up with genuine solution that would simply work well and didn't cost two grand..

Jay

and that's exactly my point..

look at the driving sims. They have awesome systems for wheels, motion platforms, dash displays etc..

Everything developed basically by the community so why can't we do the same thing?

Instead of waiting for some bigger company to "investigate" this field of market at some point in the future, lets make it happen now..

We have 3D printers, free modeling environment, desktop CNC mills and most importantly, community of people with so much knowledge.

I mean, what's stopping us as a community from developing something that simply isn't here yet but everybody would love to have..?

just a thought though..

yeah.. all right :))

Quote from Jet-Pack

From my personal experience with with gliders the elevator behaves pretty much like in the video. But the ailerons are different more damped than shown. In our gliders the control forces are too low to significantly accelerate the stick, I can steer the aircraft with two fingers only and if I let go it barely returns to center. That is probably aircraft specific as well.

That's exactly what I wrote, except that there is no stick shaking during ground roll, but I understand Jay's point that it gives our brain a hint that we're on ground, why not.

In all aircraft controls are designed to provide an intuitive feel in the air. In some aircraft, forces may become high when totally untrimmed, but most aircraft remain perfectly steerable. Some aircraft like the PC-6 Turbo Porter, however, require an accurate trimming not to loose control - some have been lost that way.

I never experienced the effect you mention in sideslip, that may be specific to high wing span gliders.

The pre-stall buffeting is usually an aritificial aerodynamical (or sometimes mechanical) effect to warn the pilot, may be difficult to model accurately for each aircraft.

Anyway, we should first concentrate on the normal flight domain for a start.

Cheers

Antoine