Mustang-242

Clearing any cookies related to live.com solved the Insider log-in problem for me. I'd not been able to log in for some weeks. Using Firefox here. (Go to "Options > Privacy > Manage Data" then search for live.com and clear them all.) A great test to check if your local browser's cache/cookies are causing the issue is to open a new "Private window" / "InPrivate window" / "Incognito session" (name depends on your browser) and then visit flightsimulator.com and try to log in. I have no alpha invite (nor do I expect one due to my old hardware) but I can get into both the Insider area and the forums (although those are "coming soon").

Another near lifelong MS Sidewinder FFB user here! 😎 At first the FFB1, then the FFB2. Bought second-hand about 15-20 years ago and still as good as new. The variable 'spring' centring strength with airspeed in sims like Rise of Flight and IL-2 was always divine. The near-stall buffet effects were always excellent too. Even now, with DCS, I make do with the severe lack of buttons because I love the FFB, the ability to have 'off centre' trim as in real life (perfect for helicopters), and because it's so accurate and precise due to its optical sensors. Besides, DCS let's you assign a button or two as 'modifiers' so you can easily double/triple/quadruple the functions of the remaining buttons and the hat switch, making it a fantastic poor man's HOTAS 😍 I really hope that the new sim supports FFB early on in its lifecycle.

I agree completely that the new simulator needs this. Just look to DCS for a great example of a powerful control mapping interface. Any key or controller button can be assigned as a modifier (like Shift/Ctrl or Alt), which in turn can double/triple/quadruple the number of functions per button. I have a MS Sidewinder Force Feedback 2 stick. It's about 15 years old, well used but as good as new (that's worth another thread of its own). I use it as a HOTAS with DCS and can get a tremendous number of functions on the limited 8 buttons on the stick, just by using 2 of the buttons as modifiers. Then each of the remaining 6 buttons (plus the hat) have 4 variants: Standard (unmodified) function 2nd function with Modifier button 1 pressed 3rd function with Modifier button 2 pressed 4th function with Modifier buttons 1+2 pressed The hat switch is a perfect example. Using the modifier buttons on the joystick it could do the following things (for example): Unmodified = pitch and roll trim With Modifier 1 = flaps up/down (hat up/down), rudder trim left/right (hat left/right) With Modifier 2 = autopilot adjustment (e.g. bank control with left/right, vertical speed adjustment with up/down) With Modifiers 1 + 2 = look around or pan view (useful in case I didn't have TrackIR running) Conclusion: We need customisable modifier buttons!!! (And a snazzy control mapping screen to go with it.) It's a perfect solution for those who don't have expensive HOTAS controls, and great for yoke users too. It would even make an Xbox controller much more flexible for the future console users. Just saying 😆

You're not, I also noticed it and found it somewhat distracting. Hopefully it's an area that will be improved or optimised by release. I'm sure the team are aware of it already but worth a mention. Some of the other sims do it well with objects fading in/out with distance (XP), or scaling up from the ground (DCS) - as far as I remember - rather than popping into view.

While I fully appreciate that not everyone wants to 'maintain' their aircraft, for me this brings a huge amount of value to the simulator. Not so much the maintenance (which is more complex to model) but the persistence of the aircraft state. When I get in my car, everything is as I last left it. If the radio was playing, it will start when I turn on the ignition. If the tank was almost empty, it'll be empty when I get back in it. I want the same of my aircraft. Else, in a way, half the checklists are redundant because the cockpit state is always the same whenever the aircraft is loaded. From a procedural point of view all the items should be checked, but when I am already 100% sure that everything is set according to the default state, it feels pointless and I want to skip those checks. Real life is not 100% predictable, neither should the sim be (unless the user chooses so). If you want to imagine that you're flying a club's aircraft, or you're in an airliner, the switch status could even be randomised on occasion to keep you on your toes, if the previous pilot didn't complete their last-flight-of-the-day checks (optionally, of course). I would love to see in order of priority: optional aircraft persistence (switch state, fuel level, passenger/load weight) optional dirt build-up or paint wear (as another texture layer that appears over time - similar to the one implemented in Cliffs of Dover and Elite Dangerous) optional maintenance state (oil, wear & tear, random deterioration/failures) I very much doubt to see numbers 3 on the list implemented by anybody but third party developers, but 1 & 2 could be achievable by Microsoft for their future roadmap.

Your idea sounds a little but like The Skypark by Parallel 42. Adding in events at certain places around the world, that all members will see when they are in the sim in that area. The result will be that people gather together at those places to take part. I had a chat with co-developer Keven (of ChasePlane) at the recent Flight Sim Show at Cosford. He said that the run-up to such events might see lots of transportation jobs being posted for their community to fly. Players can contribute by bring in supplies to the airfield - each delivery then causes more 'scenery' to appear for all players in that area. Sounds a bit like AirHauler mixed with an MMO game. Could be interesting to be part of a larger community of events. Time will tell! Couple of links for those interested who might not have heard of this yet: https://fselite.net/previews/the-skypark-area-51-raid-previews/ https://orbxdirect.com/theskypark

I also thought it could be due to the engine vibration setting, but then I realised that this option probably 'translates' the viewpoint up/down/left/right slightly, but doesn't rotate/pan it. So it would make the cockpit & window frames jostle about relative to the horizon, but it shouldn't make the horizon or distant scenery move about. I could be wrong, just guessing. There are a lot of sliders so setting each one to zero should easily tell you if CP is the reason or not.

Well, you posted the question here in the ChasePlane support forum so I had assumed that's what you were asking about 🙂 I don't think you can assign keys to specific views in FSX/P3D easily otherwise, without ChasePlane or another camera add-on utility. ChasePlane is an excellent program for manipulating the camera and setting up custom views. I'd recommend looking at a few YouTube videos to get an idea of it before purchasing. Otherwise, I think you'd have to define new view points in the aircraft and cycle through them with the 'A' key (default key in FSX; I presume P3D is the same).

Hi Martin, Assuming you've saved a ChasePlane view for your centre pedestal, you need to go to Preferences > Control Assignments, then scroll down to the section called "Named Assignments". Here you can assign keys or controller buttons to specifically named views. For example, in the 737 I have two named viewed called "Overhead" and "Upper Overhead". By assigning a key (e.g. Numpad 4) which is assigned to the word "Overhead", it will cycle around any ChasePlane views that contain the word "Overhead". This works across all aircraft with views containing the keyword "Overhead". In you case, you might want to make a named assignment for the word "pedestal" and map it to your key/button of choice. The only caveat is that you should make sure you assign a key that is NOT used by your simulator, to avoid conflicts. Else you have to delete the command from your simulator's controls menu. Hope that helps. Martyn

I asked exactly the same question, exactly one month ago today (see link below). Unfortunately, I didn't get an answer (yet). I am fairly sure the answer is 'no' for the time being, but I do wonder how much work it would be to implement. The biggest problem might be fitting it into the neat and tidy interface! I sometimes use a joystick instead of my yoke, so ideally I'd like to assign the zoom in/out buttons to three controllers; yoke, joystick, PS3 controller. Luckily, I can use pan/tilt on two devices, because the hat-switch registers as buttons on the yoke, but the PS3 controller's joysticks are axes. Otherwise I would have the same issue as you on top of my zoom command problem.

It might not be the most elegant solution, but you could have two different key mappings and swap out the files before launching your sim. For FSX for example, the keyboard & joystick mappings are stored in this location & file: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\FSX\Controls\Standard.xml I can't remember if the sim allows you to directly export different profiles from within the game or not. If not, just make copies of this file for each configuration and swap them out as required. At least until someone comes along with a better solution!

Hi John, Glad to hear you got it working. Happy flying! Martyn

Hi rooitou. Now I understand much better why your experience was so different to mine! I only have FSX-SE on my PC, and before that only FSX boxed, so haven't had as many issues. Whether the myriad sims is related to the problem or the versions of SimConnect, I have no idea. I do recall installing several SimConnect versions on my FSX installs due to various add-ons requiring one version or another. I would have hoped they could co-exist without issues, but perhaps not in your particular setup. I started with the X-Camera tutorials this evening; almost 30 minutes for the first basic tutorial video and several more to go! Quite a time investment. I'll get there, until such time as there's an equivalent. My main reason for using X-Camera is because the default implementation of TrackIR in X-Plane seems to be atrocious. Too 'smooth' making it lag behind my actual head movement, and too sensitive in translational motion resulting in my head going out of the plane rather too often. I wanted it to rotate quite crisply and precisely, and I could only achieve that with X-Camera. I'm using a mixture of X-Camera cockpit views with the default external views (Shift-4 etc.) at present, and that causes some trouble, especially if I have a controller connected with view axes mapped. Then the external view gets locked into one position and cannot be spun around the plane with a right-click-and-drag of the mouse. I can only temporarily move the camera using the controller. It's... clunky. Here I much prefer CP's implementation of controller input which doesn't interfere with the cameras at all (unless you touch the controller). Like you, I found TrackIR was an odd thing to use in FSX with external views. It always worked for left/right orbit in spot view, but in no other direction. I will still use FSX, as I also have a moderate amount of add-ons that I owe attention to. I've been sat on the fence for about a year between P3D and X-Plane. I always felt XP was the sensible choice due to the more modern approach to how it was built, from the community-sourced airports, OpenStreetMap world data, simple handling of aircraft and plugins, more up-to-date nav-data and so on. P3D would have supported many of my existing add-ons and is graphically a bit 'cleaner'. But the P3D update cycles look to be hard work and the foundation of it is ESP/FSX which has a lot of aspects I don't like, so in the end I followed my head not my heart! Either way, one thing is for certain: Flight sims these days require 80% of your time for tinkering and troubleshooting and only 20% flying! 😁

You should either: Remove the zoom function in P3D for the +/- keys, then assign these keys to the zoom in/out commands under 'Control Assignments' in ChasePlane instead. or Assign controller buttons or alternative keyboard keys (perhaps +/- on the Numpad) to the ChasePlane zoom controls, and use those instead of the regular +/- keys.

Hi John, I have a Saitek yoke and don't have the issue that you mentioned. Are you running Saitek's own programming software? I wonder if that could be related somehow. As a test, I just tried to assign a command in ChasePlane to the mode switch, but it won't detect it at all (this is the three-position switch on the back of the right arm of the yoke, just to be sure?). I'm running Windows 10 with the default drivers that Windows found for my yoke, in case that helps. I'm on v1.0.38 of ChasePlane.

Interesting to hear of your experience. I would say mine is the opposite. I love ChasePlane and would say it's my most sorely missed utility in X-Plane. I've also been having a break from flight sims but have recently been dabbling with XP (I figured P3D would come with all the same faffing & limitations as FSX, so made the decision to abandon that family of sims going forwards). I find X-Camera rather confusing, even thought I am a confident user of IT. I can make basic cameras but many of the other options are rather confusing and not self-explanatory, and the interface is as utilitarian as a tractor. I know there are several tutorial videos but in my limited free time I admit I am lazy to be studying new things when I'd rather jump in to enjoying an activity. ChasePlane is so intuitive it teaches you by itself for the most part. I used to sit on the experimental channel but even then had very few issues. The stable one didn't change versions so much. Obviously your experiences are genuine but thought it was interesting that they were quite the opposite of mine, that's all 🙂

I've had a search for this but couldn't find anything conclusive. It does not seem to be possible, but I'd like to map the "zoom in" and "zoom out" commands to two separate controllers simultaneously: The up/down rocker switch on my Saitek yoke, for use when flying around with TrackIR. The shoulder buttons on my PS3 Controller (emulated as an Xbox 360 controller) for use with general camera movement and manipulation. I use the PS3 controller for smoothly flying the camera around with the two joysticks, and would like to be able to change the zoom without having to let go to grab the yoke. Likewise, when flying with hands on the controls, I don't want to have to let go of the yoke to use zoom keys on a PS3 controller. I think a fair few people use a spare controller for camera movements, so this doesn't seem like an uncommon type of request. ChasePlane has three assignment categories per command, but each is exclusive as far as I can tell: One keyboard input One controller button input One controller axis I've just had an idea as I'm writing this. I could use Xpadder to emulate a keyboard key for the zoom options on one of my controllers, that would probably work. But it would be nice if it was possible directly in CP already. There are other commands I could double-up on. It wouldn't work so well for an axis command as two twitchy controllers might 'fight' for control, but for button commands it should be OK. Nevertheless, are there any plans to allow key bindings for multiple controllers per command? I realise it might upset the feng shui of the interface a little bit 😆. (Oh, and having recently chosen X-Plane as my next sim after FSX, I do hope to see ChasePlane migrate within the next year. Just to add my +1!) Many thanks.

Fair points all around. I can't say too much in favour of X-Plane since I don't own it. I have used the demo version about a dozen times, and I mainly fly GA. The short time limit before the controls lock out is frustrating (whole point of a demo) and makes it hard to really evaluate and decide if it's the sim for me going forwards, but I did at least try bouncing a couple of aircraft along the runway and stamping on the rudder a few times to see how the ground physics worked. To my pleasant surprise it's possible to taxi the Baron on one engine without major dramas. In FSX that would be near impossible. Holding one wheel brake at low speed typical means you don't go anywhere, for starters... I've a good few aircraft for DCS but find I spend most of my time in the helicopters. The feel of those is incredible, including how they interact with the ground. I'm currently enjoying the Mi-8's Oilfield Campaign, which is full of civil activities 🙂 The newly added raindrops & wet windscreen effects are icing on the cake. (The rotor doesn't affect them but airspeed & flight direction do.)

I've never felt that the ground dynamics were good at all in the FSX lines of sims. The slightly 'on rails' flight models (lack of air movement in general) and poor ground physics are probably the main reason for me hesitating in moving on to P3D as my main simming platform. It feels like the ESP/FSX/P3D line are stuck in the dark ages there. (But the number of compatible add-ons I own for FSX are what stops me going elsewhere!) I agree that X-Plane feels a bit too lively on the ground, almost the exact opposite of FSX, but the X-Plane crosswind landings videos look very realistic in comparison with real life videos. At least the planes seems to exhibit some of kind of friction with the ground, unlike in FSX!!! You also see evidence of the ground 'pushing back' as the suspension works hard and the plane leans and rolls around. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Bk7b4x_ZR8 I think DCS is the sweet spot in the middle for handling. It feels lively enough and the ground can bite if you are too heavy handed. You can also burst a tyre too in some cases. But sadly the civil aviation selection is rather limited there... Martyn

I've had a few confusing sessions where I kept hearing loud 'splashing' sounds on the ground in external views. Eventually, I spotted some orcas just popping their fins above the tarmac along the taxiway. I thought maybe it was an AI traffic or scenery bug. Today, I had a zebra standing inside my aircraft as I ran through my start up! And then a super oil tanker filling the apron! (Which I was 'inside'). Eventually, I realised that ChasePlane's old April Fool's feature was responsible for making these objects appear!!! I've not done much simming over the summer so took me some time to figure this out... Glad I found this post to tell me how to remove it (and how to get it back if I ever wanted to), since the key bindings I used were 1, 2, and 3, so any time I responded to a radio call of ATC I was dropping animals objects! Thanks Keven, for the tip.

Please remember that ChasePlane is 'in development' and you have agreed to buy an early-access product. Given your frustrations at not having a smooth experience, perhaps you could consider waiting for v1.0 of a software release to avoid disappointment in future. The developers are listening to their customers, but patience is necessary. Good things come to those who wait. Although I don't like software which 'interferes' with the host platform, as CP does with FSX/P3D's view system, it is worth it in the end. And, if all we have to complain about is that on 2 days in a year we can't fly our flight simulators, we'd do well to remember our ancestors who had much tougher lives, fighting for survival against illness, war, famine and so on. When you think about it, we have little to truly complain about :) Regards, Martyn

If anybody following this thread hasn't heard yet, Keven confirmed the 'offline' mode will be added during November - all being well - when Beta 0.4.x is released. You'll also get lots more improvements and a very nicely implemented replay feature. I very much enjoyed the presentation at RAF Cosford yesterday (when this thread was mentioned). ChasePlane is exceeding my expectations with every update. Regards, Martyn

Indeed it's not the end of the world that ChasePlane is unavailable. I could still fly. But the fact TrackIR is also not working, which I can only assume is related, is a big problem. The pan-rate in FSX with my yoke's hat switch is painfully slow, even with the button repeat rate on max. A huge hinderance when flying a GA aircraft. I have previously disabled mouselook (space bar) in FSX's own bindings, to avoid conflicts with CP's mouselook, and I can't easily remap it because it's not called anything obvious in the FSX key bindings menu! So, yes, I could find a workaround for everything but it will take quite some time to faff around in .cfg files to make lots of adjustments, just to get some basic ability to look around quickly and easily. If TrackIR was still functioning then I would be quite happy without CP, but for whatever reason, TrackIR doesn't even know FSX-SE is running. I cannot be sure that CP is to blame for this but I am very suspicious, as I have not have problems with TIR & FSX before... Having been on the receiving end of technical support for many years, I am very patient with IT problems. Losing nearly all control of my views, both from CP and TrackIR, really is a big problem for me. All we can do is to be patient, I know the developers will work hard to solve this. They have demonstrated their dedication plenty since CP launched and for that I must congratulate them. Now they need to find a suitable compromise between online sync services, anti-piracy measures, and customer needs. I wish them luck! Martyn

Agreed, needs to be able to run offline even if it comes with a warning that any changes to cameras will not be saved, for example. I was left scratching my head this morning as I'm about to embark on another leg of my around the world trip, but ChasePlane refuses to work. Quick trip to the forums and I find the reason in this thread. Not good! It's probably the only bad thing I've found with CP so far, but it is quite a big one. Edit: To make matters worse, even TrackIR is not working in FSX now... not sure if that is the result of CP being offline due to the new TIR integration. So indeed it looks like I am grounded for now Martyn

I have half functionality with the OC and the J41, after a completely fresh install of Windows 10 and FSX-SE. (I also have the 737NGX though) I can install J41 liveries via the OC, but I can't configure the aircraft options - the page options but no changes are saved. To edit the aircraft options, I found that running the "PMDG BAe JS4100 Configuration Manager" from the Start Menu works just fine. Maybe it will work for you too if you have the shortcut available.