Why adjusting control sensitivity is not the answer

[RALF9636 1,966]

You can actually decrease the sensitivity - not just adjust the curve- in a cfg-file.

Look here:

 

 

[JimmiG 244]

Oh dear, just a few days in and we're already editing .cfg files to fix things...

[eslader 1,784]

On 8/19/2020 at 10:03 AM, norman_99 said:

When a 50% roll input from a joystick or yoke is commanded, it should represent a similar input to the aircraft

I'll give you an example of why I disagree. I have a set of dusty old Saitek rudder pedals that I'm actually gonna dust off for this sim, and try to fix that stupid jamming problem the early ones had. I also have a TM TWCS throttle with the little rudder axis rocker on the back side.

There's maybe an inch worth of travel in either direction on the TWCS, and probably closer to 9 inches, maybe even a foot worth of travel in either direction on the pedals.

What this translates to is that right now, using the TWCS before I get around to fixing the actual pedals,10% rudder input on that thing is barely twitching my fingers. The input is so small that it's almost impossible to perform accurately and smoothly, with the end result that at 100% sensitivity I go weaving like a drunk down the runway, and in the air I end up crabbed sideways if I breathe too hard. Sensitivity absolutely has to be reduced, and the curved map that results is nice because I can still command full rudder inputs, whereas if they kept it linear in the reduction, I'd be gaining controlability at the expense of maneuverability. Yes in the real world rudder inputs are often linear, but in the real world rudder inputs also give you more than an inch worth of travel to get that linearity.

Now I do think that the controls need to be remapped at the core, because everything is too sensitive. I mapped zoom to a button on my joystick. The fastest click of the button zooms in too far. So I click the zoom out button as fast as I can, and my "head" ends up somewhere in the headrest.

It's like every input is amped up to 11. That's OK on the axes because we can reduce the sensitivity, but for button presses - I haven't figured out how to calm that down yet.

 

Edited August 20, 2020 by eslader

[cwburnett 1,809]

29 minutes ago, pao said:

At the end, there are 13 pages of posts and we still don't know what we should do with the settings....   Are we supposed, Rob, to keep the sensitivity to 0% (fully linear) ?     I hope that when add-ons comes out, the devs will advise what settings we shoud go for because this is going nowhere....

 

20 minutes ago, rjack1282 said:

This is the best discussion on this topic I have seen and I still don't know what to do with the settings if anything lol.  I guess we're still going to need more time for the experts to figure it out.

@pao and @rjack1282 I'm not saying I'm right, but maybe give this a try back from page 6 of this thread...

Or put simpler, try about 0 to -10% for roll, and -40% to -60% for pitch.

 

12 minutes ago, RALF9636 said:

You can actually decrease the sensitivity - not just adjust the curve- in a cfg-file.

Thanks for sharing that here, I hadn't seen that in the tips and tricks and will maybe give that a try as well, though I'm actually pretty happy right now...

[cwburnett 1,809]

19 minutes ago, bonchie said:

Sensitivity helps some, but because it's not linear, you get wild shifts at the farther ends of the axis.

They need a dual control where you can adjust sensitivity, but also the curve separately.

But there's no way to decrease sensitivity and have the full range of motion without a curve... mathematically, there's no possible way.

Some have suggested simply cutting off the end of the the control range, so lowering sensitivity but not allowing full deflection, but I don't think that's a good solution. There has to be a curve, which is frustrating, but true. I don't disagree that being able to customize the curve could be helpful, but I'm honestly not sure how I'd adjust it...

[cwburnett 1,809]

14 minutes ago, eslader said:

I mapped zoom to a button on my joystick. The fastest click of the button zooms in too far. So I click the zoom out button as fast as I can, and my "head" ends up somewhere in the headrest.

This can be adjusted in the camera settings, along with the speed of panning around with the hat switch.

[eslader 1,784]

1 minute ago, cwburnett said:

This can be adjusted in the camera settings, along with the speed of panning around with the hat switch.

Hah! I knew mentioning that in tons of threads would get an answer. 😉 The forum's moving so fast that no one replied to the post I made about it. Thanks for solving that annoyance for me!

 

[bonchie 2,305]

3 minutes ago, cwburnett said:

But there's no way to decrease sensitivity and have the full range of motion without a curve... mathematically, there's no possible way.

Some have suggested simply cutting off the end of the the control range, so lowering sensitivity but not allowing full deflection, but I don't think that's a good solution. There has to be a curve, which is frustrating, but true. I don't disagree that being able to customize the curve could be helpful, but I'm honestly not sure how I'd adjust it...

XP11 has two controls per axis. I can't remember what they are both called, but it allows more fine tuning somehow.

[cwburnett 1,809]

1 minute ago, eslader said:

Hah! I knew mentioning that in tons of threads would get an answer. 😉 The forum's moving so fast that no one replied to the post I made about it. Thanks for solving that annoyance for me!

 

I know, there's so much duplication it's hard to keep up, glad I could help! The front page turns over every 5 minutes, lol...

[Slides 1,552]

11 minutes ago, cwburnett said:

But there's no way to decrease sensitivity and have the full range of motion without a curve... mathematically, there's no possible way.

Some have suggested simply cutting off the end of the the control range, so lowering sensitivity but not allowing full deflection, but I don't think that's a good solution. There has to be a curve, which is frustrating, but true. I don't disagree that being able to customize the curve could be helpful, but I'm honestly not sure how I'd adjust it...

The answer might be too have a curve that becomes less responsive the further you go towards full deflection. Maybe. 

It should be linear the first 1/3rd of travel then increasingly less sensitive in the remaining 2/3rds. If it can be done.

[RALF9636 1,966]

8 minutes ago, Slides said:

The answer might be too have a curve that becomes less responsive the further you go towards full deflection. Maybe. 

It should be linear the first 1/3rd of travel then increasingly less sensitive in the remaining 2/3rds. If it can be done.

I imagine something like the curve editor that comes with TrackIR. You can set several points to define the curve and the maximum deflection.

[robert young 2,897]

I'm in the middle of some flight model tweaks for the Bonanza, and there is a way to go yet, but I have so far tweaked things so you can have a perfectly straight line in the sensitivity menu for controllers and have a well balanced input over the entire range of a stick, yoke or rudder pedals. As I suspected, the reason why people are having such trouble with control sensitivities is because the set up for individual aircraft is way to twitchy. It is a complicated process because you cannot just alter one global parameter like "elevator effectiveness". That's too broad a tweak though it does help a bit.

The ideal control setup is always linear. If you are having to create an extreme convex curve all you are doing is telling the sim to provide almost no input for the first third of stick travel, but all that does is force you to only use a tiny bit of movement so you don't get into the steeply rising exponential curve with the next portion of control travel..

This is a bull in a china shop way of masking the issue. Controls should be as linear as possible so there are no sudden surprises or spikes.

It might take a few more days but I will publish the tweaks as soon as they are reasonably good.

[virtualstuff 758]

3 minutes ago, RALF9636 said:

I imagine something like the curve editor that comes with TrackIR. You can set several points to define the curve and the maximum deflection.

Yep like that approach...

[Bob Scott 7,721]

9 minutes ago, robert young said:

I'm in the middle of some flight model tweaks for the Bonanza

Rob--what's the trick to make the .cfg mods work?  Do you have to switch to the legacy flight model/mode?

[robert young 2,897]

Just now, w6kd said:

Rob--what's the trick to make the .cfg mods work?  Do you have to switch to the legacy flight model/mode?

That's a good question. As far as I can work out, the "legacy" model allows you to adjust things like pfactor, torque and general ease or difficulty of the flight model using sliders, just as the "realism" menu did in FSX. It overides some params in the old .air" file and presumably what is now in the flightmodel.cfg of FS2020. I am working in Legacy mode at the moment, but I will try the tweaks to see if they are also in effect in the "modern" flight model mode.