Controller has small range? - Zhen Hau / PPJoy & FMS A 8.5/Beta 7

[Cobra]

I've been using FMS 2 Beta 7 this weekend for helicopter training, and am finding it a great tool. (I've also tested Alpha 8.5 for this behavior, and it's the same.) I'm seeing what looks like a small problem with the calibration and wondered where this might be occurring. I can calibrate (Controls | Analog control | Joystick Interface | Mapping/Calibration) successfully, using the four channel controller from a dragonfly #4 heli kit, and PPJoy with Zhen Hua 5 byte protocol.

This works well, however I was surprised at the throttle response, as it seemed very quick and hard to get a smooth lift off of the heli's. I went back to calibration, and found that my total stick travel in all axis is about twice the calibrated range. This seems to give the effect that my throttle response is only active for the center half of stick travel, and the upper and lower quarter of the stick is unmapped.

This is true for all channels, and made pitch and yaw a bit difficult to control also. A small stick input gives a rather sharp response, which makes the smaller heli's very hard to control. The cobra model is reasonably fly-able. I also tried the 'exp' check box, and this seems to help a little. What does it do? Is that for exponentially mapped input controllers?

Anyway, my question is, is this something that could be adjusted in FMS calibration, do you think it's a problem in PPjoy in the protocol reading, or maybe the controller is really limited to output in only the center if it's stick range?

Thanks in advance for any help,
keep up the great work,
Kevin

[Michael Moeller]

Have you calibrated the virtual ppjoy joystick in the standard windows dialog?
If this does not help you can recalibrate inside fms over the joystick calibration from windows. Just open the channel setup dialog and press 'calibrate'. Follow the instructions.

Michael Möller

[Cobra]

I see the same behavior in the Windows joystick calibration and in the FMS calibration. It looks like the PPJoy raw output is only valid for the center 50% of stick travel, there is no change in raw values in the outer edjes of travel. So, it's certainly not a FMS problem. I'll look at the raw data and see if this controller even sends data for the outer portion of travel.

Thanks for the help!
Kevin

[isaksp00]

I am seeing something similar (sticks don't seem to provide ability to control full range of sliders before calibration). I will try to record and post the numbers out of the Windows calibration so we can compare.

I have not yet gotten to the point where the seemingly calibrated virtual joystick has any degree of control over the heli models. It may still be a channel mapping problem. I am also suspecting possibly the routine servicing the serial port is not getting enough time because FMS is eating too much CPU rendering and calculating (I have a pretty basic eMachines setup with about a 2 GHz-ish Celeron, and the standard graphics card, no upgrades). Symptom: when I start PPJoyCOM, and have the sound effects on, I hear fairly steady clicking. Once I start FMS it slows down noticeably the frequency of clicks.