Aerosoft Twin Otter control mapping are a bit of a mess

[MarkDH 234]

4 hours ago, Matchstick said:

Because when an engine goes I don't really want to have to mess around looking around the cockpit and then dragging a control with my mouse when I should just be able to move a lever without taking my eyes off the instruments ?

Does feathering a prop in MSFS actually have any effect at all?

[177B 730]

I love this plane already. And I have the Kodiak and the payware Porter.

This is a more complex plane. One big thing it has Auto Feather. and the mixture works very differently than a condition lever.

I had no problem setting up the Alpha and Bravo. 

I have also built an Air manager with all the dials, gauges and radios and it works perfectly.

I find it flies very nicely feels heavy and is slow to react to trim and power changes like the real thing. The Kodiak is a much smaller plane and really fun to fly as well. But this is great, one of my new favs.

I don't have a problem with the sound, I usually keep it low anyway.

In real life flying I use Bose noise reduction headphone so I really try to eliminate as much of the noise as possible in a plane. You can still hear or feel a change in the engines even with NR headphones. The worst thing in planes is the noise. So while simming I enjoy being able to turn sound down. This of course is just me, I know sound is very important to others. It is like I love MC's but I hate noisy ones. Maybe from thousands of hours in noisy planes.

Anyway I am very happy with this purchase, I have not found anything that bothers me yet.

Stay safe and sim on...

[Maaarp 10]

G'day all,

 

I too have mixed feelings about this aircraft. It looks great, sounds fantastic and from what I can tell so far, flies very nicely.

 

But AS have (AGAIN) made it very difficult to map external hardware to the cockpit.  This was the same as in the P3D version but at least then Spad.Next would let you record a macro to get around the problem.

 

It's frustrating not having the LVARs reflect the buttons you are supposed to be pressing. It might be me but I can only get a few of the cockpit switches to respond to hardware inputs. The really important things like Battery, Fuel Selectors (!!), Pitot heat, Fuel Pumps etc just don't move.

 

I suppose its something that the values are changing under the hood but this shouldn't be a surprise requirement from the user base.

 

Sheesh!

 

Warwick

[MarkDH 234]

47 minutes ago, Maaarp said:

But AS have (AGAIN) made it very difficult to map external hardware to the cockpit.  This was the same as in the P3D version but at least then Spad.Next would let you record a macro to get around the problem.

I (and others) have had success mapping switches etc for many things. The fuel selectors repond to the mixture axes, but are just ON/OFF. One thing to note is that many of the switches can be mapped and will function but without triggering any animation in the cockpit, so the switch/control won't appear to move. This was acknowledged in beta but probably isn't gonig to change. You can discover the Lvars with SPAD.neXt, which will list them. It remains a lottery figuring out which is which, though. Aerosoft did say it would publish a list in due course, so I don't know if that's still planned. Maybe they're in the manual, I haven't checked. Perhaps it is important to say, though, that many (most) of the switches 'work' but don't actually do anything, or do anything useful.

[Holdit 551]

18 hours ago, Matchstick said:

Positive news on Feathering - they now understand why you might want to feather one prop and not the other and are looking into how they can allow this.

*Boggle*

[Maaarp 10]

On 1/20/2022 at 9:18 AM, 177B said:

I had no problem setting up the Alpha and Bravo. 

I have also built an Air manager with all the dials, gauges and radios and it works perfectly.

 

Are you able to say how you mapped/setup the Fuel Selectors?

 

Cheers

[177B 730]

9 hours ago, Maaarp said:

Are you able to say how you mapped/setup the Fuel Selectors?

 

Cheers

I have not done the fuel selectors yet.

[MSFLYER5856 76]

The cockpit alone looks a bit of a mess from the vids Ive seen. I like the openess and ease of the Kodiak better. I also dont like the thick frame blocking the view.

[Matchstick 1,888]

5 minutes ago, 177B said:

I have not done the fuel selectors yet.

Have you done the Main Power and DC Power switches ?

[MSFLYER5856 76]

On 1/19/2022 at 4:55 PM, MarkDH said:

Does feathering a prop in MSFS actually have any effect at all?

Depends on your realism desire and settings. You can get peak power efficiency with a properly featherd prop.

[MarkDH 234]

20 minutes ago, MSFLYER5856 said:

Depends on your realism desire and settings. You can get peak power efficiency with a properly featherd prop.

That sounds like you're talking about varying the prop pitch when the engine is active, not feathering the prop. If you feather the prop it will stop turning and reduce drag. In FSX and P3D it had no such effect and hence feathering didn't make any difference. I don't know if it has any drag effect in MSFS.

[Kilo60 660]

On 1/19/2022 at 5:18 PM, 177B said:

I love this plane already. And I have the Kodiak and the payware Porter.

This is a more complex plane. One big thing it has Auto Feather. and the mixture works very differently than a condition lever.

I had no problem setting up the Alpha and Bravo. 

I have also built an Air manager with all the dials, gauges and radios and it works perfectly.

I find it flies very nicely feels heavy and is slow to react to trim and power changes like the real thing. The Kodiak is a much smaller plane and really fun to fly as well. But this is great, one of my new favs.

I don't have a problem with the sound, I usually keep it low anyway.

In real life flying I use Bose noise reduction headphone so I really try to eliminate as much of the noise as possible in a plane. You can still hear or feel a change in the engines even with NR headphones. The worst thing in planes is the noise. So while simming I enjoy being able to turn sound down. This of course is just me, I know sound is very important to others. It is like I love MC's but I hate noisy ones. Maybe from thousands of hours in noisy planes.

Anyway I am very happy with this purchase, I have not found anything that bothers me yet.

Stay safe and sim on...

 

Can you still start the Engines with the fuel pumps off?

 

 

Edited January 21, 2022 by Kilo60

[mtr75 653]

On 1/19/2022 at 7:36 AM, Matchstick said:

Now I've picked up the Twotter and given it a bit of a try out I'm trying to set up my controllers (HC Alpha and Bravo) to work with it as well as possible and it appears that despite being an experienced developer Aerosoft has made a UTTER mess of the controller mappings.

The most obvious example is for Prop Feathering - you can see here under section 4 that they have set a single in-game command - TOGGLE PROPELLER REVERSE THRUST- to turn on feathering for BOTH props at the same time with no mechanism to allow you to turn it on for a single prop.
MSFS has TOGGLE FEATHER SWITCH 1 & 2 commands which would appear to be perfect for this but Aerosoft have chosen not to use them.

And beyond this you appear not to be able to control basic functions like enabling and disabling the Main Battery with either keyboard or mapped controls.

You can try modifying the LVARs directy using something like Spad.next but while that changes the settings it's doesn't move the switch to match so you end up with a mismatch in the VC - it's better than nothing I suppose but still a pain in the neck.

All in all while the plane seems to fly Ok the first look at the systems behind the visuals is deeply underwhelming.

I fly the Aerosoft CRJ with absolutely no buttons or switches mapped, just the Alpha and Bravo control surfaces and levers. As @sd_flyer pointed out, pushing buttons and switches in a cockpit without looking at them is just not something a good pilot does. 

[RichUK 474]

5 minutes ago, mtr75 said:

I fly the Aerosoft CRJ with absolutely no buttons or switches mapped, just the Alpha and Bravo control surfaces and levers. As @sd_flyer pointed out, pushing buttons and switches in a cockpit without looking at them is just not something a good pilot does. 

I would obviously agree you should be looking at buttons and switches and not blindly switching, but if you have those mapped to external hardware you are still looking at them before you push/switch etc., right? I like to assign some stuff to external hardware so I am not chasing the button/switch with a mouse pointer when using track IR. I think it is much more realistic to reach down and look at a button/switch before physically touching it. Or am I missing something here?