Fighterstick won't roll

[Richard]

I am downloading my map, for someone to see and perhaps can find the problem I am facing and could offer me some advice.

I have all 3 CHProducts, fighterstick, hotas, pedals. The hotas and pedals work perfectly. The stick on the other hand is a different story, when I want to pitch up and down the plane responds most of the time. When I roll it responds very seldomly, almost never. When I 'm in external view to see what it looks like, the flaps ' flutter ' whenever I try to roll.

[MichaelCHProd]

Hey....I know you B)


Are your trim wheels centered?

[Richard]

I went to control manager, clicked the tab for the pro throttle. The 'centered box' is checked off. There is a check mark. It is on for all axis and sliders. Is that what you meant?

[Bob Church]

No. The trim wheel are tow plastic thumb wheels, one behind and one to the right of the stick handle (they look a little like the throttle wheel) that center the pots physically. Make sure they're in the center. Usually there's a detent at about the mid-position. If they're too far off, it could cause the lack of control in the roll axis.

- Bob

The StickWorks
http://www.stickwork.com

[Richard]

The 2 wheels by the joystick, got it. I checked them out and they are centered properly. I still have the same problem. The plane is still incredibly sluggish in the pitch and roll.

I checked in both LOMAC options and test/calibration in Control Manager, the 'marker' in the box moves appropriately all the way in pitch and roll whenever I move the joystick. According to both venues the stick works perfectly.

[Richard]

Forgot to mention, I went to IL2 and I was able to pitch and roll without any problems.

[Bob Church]

Well, I don't know. If it gives full-scale response in the CM test screen and in the LOMAC test, it must be giving you what's essentially full control surface movement. That ought to result in the aircraft exhibiting maximum roll-rate. For it to do something less sounds more like a sensitivity adjustment of some type in the sim itself. When the test boxes show that the cursors move full scale, it means the thing is delivering the biggest value that Windows will accept. The stick couldn't force it to roll any faster than that if it tried, Windows won't let it. It pretty much has to be something limiting the rate further along the line in the sim itself.

- Bob

The StickWorks
http://www.stickworks.com

[Richard]

It is quite perplexing. Before, it was working perfectly until I had the blaster virus hit me. I don't see how the virus could have any affect. It works in IL2, it works in the CM test secreen and in the LOMAC test as well.

Like I said above, it DID work before. I am totally confused about this. Therefore I don't think it is the sim. Normally I don't mind perplexing problems but this is going a little far. I'm at the stage of putting my fist through the wall if it meant fixing the problem because I just can't think of why this is happening. The hotas and the rudder pedals work perfectly. The buttons on the joystick work perfectly. According to the 2 tests the joystick works perfectly, but in the sim the pitch and roll are incredibly sluggish. I'll download the map if you want to take a look at it. By the way I am completely purged of the virus, it was professionally done so you do not have to worry.

[Bob Church]

I looked at the map, but there&#39;s nothing there that would slow things down like that. I was thinking (uh-oh<g>) there&#39;s a chance the virus screwed up DX itself. You might try a DX reinstall if you haven&#39;t and see if that helped. Another option, if you drop by the WingmanTeam site you should find a utility called DXTweak. Last time I looked it had a "Reset Defaults" button that would put things back to normal without the reinstall. Might be worth a try.

Try this. First, put the CM into Direct Mode. Next, look at the stick in the Text/Calibration screen. Over on the right, you should see the Raw Data display go from near 0 to near 255 on the Y axis as you move the stick handle left to right.

If that work, get back to the main GUI and just click "Download". Go back to the Text/Calibrate screen for Control Manager Device 1 and see what the Raw Data display is giving you in Mapped Mode for the same axis.

One question. You say it&#39;s sluggish but I wonder if you mean "smoothly sluggish" where any handle movement results in roll but it&#39;s slower than it should be, or is it "delayed sluggish" where you move the stick and it doesn&#39;t do anything, then moves at the full roll rate. In the first case, it&#39;s sensitivity, in the second it&#39;s more likely a delay in the packet itself which is is a different circumstance.

- Bob

The StickWorks
http://www.stickworks.com

[Richard]

Here are the results of the 2 tests you requested:

Direct Mode

axis centered left right top down
x 151 1 255 151 151
y 131 131 131 0 254
z 131 131 131 131 131

Mapped mode

axis centered left right top down
x 148 0 255 148 148
y 128 128 128 0 255
z 131 131 131 131 131

What I mean by sluggishness, I would slowly push the stick left for a left roll the plane would slowly roll left then stop. Continue pushing left it would resume rolling left then stop again.
If I were to slowly push the stick all the way to the left, the plane would roll then stop, resume, stop, resume then eventually stop when the stick is at its full left.

If I were to slowly push left then hold it in a position where the plane is rolling, it would eventually stop.

I hope I was clear.

You said something about the DX being affected by the virus. Is the DX within each game or in the computer.

Can the DX in one game be affected and not in the other?

I am able to roll my plane in IL2.

I have another flight sim, I am going to install it and test it out , I&#39;ll post the results in a short little while.

I am going on the phone to Dell support and inquire about the DX.

I do appreciate your time and effort in trying to help me fix this incredibly perplexing problem. :)

[MichaelCHProd]

almost sounds like your frame rate in LOMAC is really low.

[Richard]

I am sorry, how does the frame rate affect the pitch and roll.

[Richard]

Just spent the last 3 hours doing an extensive diagnostic check with the help of a computer technician. Nothing wrong was found.

A technician will call me on tuesday to set up an appointment so he/she can replace all the parts but the hard drive.

I don&#39;t know what else to say or do.

I am thinking of an option; uninstall and re-install LOMAC.

What do all of you think.

[Richard]

Something weird just happened, as it isn&#39;t weird enough.

I went into IL2 because the stick was working perfectly in that game. I have no pitch or roll control at all.

Question; Did you have to assign an axis to the joystick or does the game do that automatically. Hotas and rudder pedals work great.

Maybe I did something wrong in installing my joystick. Maybe I need to reinstall the joystick. I&#39;ll think about it. Is there a wrong way or a right way of doing it?

[Revvin]

Have you assigned the joystick axis in game?

[Richard]

It was working yesterday, now it&#39;not and I have not done anything in axis assignements. IL2.

[Revvin]

You need to map the joystick axis in the games you play

[Richard]

I know you do that in LOMAC, assigning axis.

In IL2, the joystick WAS working yesterday, now there is no pitch and roll.

[Bob Church]

>> Here are the results of the 2 tests you requested: <<

Okay. Well, the X center is a bit off calibration, it might want to tip the aircraft a bit to the right. The line from mapped mode:

>> x 148 0 255 148 148

should calibrate so all the 148s are nearer 128, but that would only make it tend to roll a bit to the right, it wouldn&#39;t stop it entirely. In any case, the stick is basically working if those number change smoothly as you move the handle.

WRT to the question about frame rate, if it gets down into the low teens or less, the stick will feel unresponsive. The stick only updates once per frame and whatever value it picks up at that point is considered to be in effect until the next frame. When the frame rate is low, it results in the aircraft responding slowly and overshooting because even if you center the stick, the sim will see if off center until the next frame. Usually the complaint is "My joystick doesn&#39;t work when I&#39;m near the ground....". What&#39;s happened is, the guy has the detail maxed in Flight Simulator and gets down into all the ground detail when he tries to land. The frame rate drops to 1 or 2 FPS and the aircraft gets uncontrollable. It doesn&#39;t slow the roll rate, though. Only the response time between when you move the handle and when it actually has an effect, and that causes overshoot and it feels like it&#39;s not responding.

>> What I mean by sluggishness, I would slowly push the stick left for a left roll the plane would slowly roll left then stop. Continue pushing left it would resume rolling left then stop again. If I were to slowly push the stick all the way to the left, the plane would roll then stop, resume, stop, resume then eventually stop when the stick is at its full left.

If I were to slowly push left then hold it in a position where the plane is rolling, it would eventually stop. <<

So if you push the stick hard left in one quick movement, it rolls left in one movement but the movement is slow (as opposed to a roll-stop-roll-stop while it worked it&#39;s way over there which would more likely be dropped data than slow response). It sounds like it it communicating then, which was what I was getting to, whether it&#39;s communicating continually or just doing nothing and then suddenly getting a good packet through that causes it to start the roll.

>> You said something about the DX being affected by the virus. Is the DX within each game or in the computer.

Can the DX in one game be affected and not in the other? <<

Yes, it could. There are two or three paths through DirectX that a sim might use depending on which joystick routines it called It&#39;s conceivable that it might work with some, not with others. Another consideration, if you reinstalled the OS you would be back to whatever version of DX shipped with the OS. If you&#39;d done DX upgrades along the line, you&#39;d need to do those again. DX is mainly part of the OS, but then the sims have to call DX functions so it can be affected by the sim even if it&#39;s not actually in it. And it&#39;s hard to say what the virus or the removal of it might have affected.

See what Dell has to say, maybe they&#39;ll have some insight. If you&#39;ve got some way to check the frame rate, you might do that, too, just to see if maybe Michael&#39;s right, it&#39;s a phenomenon that can be very misleading because it seems like the stick is working fine, but you can&#39;t control the aircraft and it&#39;s not really obvious why.

Let us know what you find out!

- Bob

[Richard]

I checked out the frame rates and the lowest it ever went was around 30, being real close to the ground. It would go as high as 100 or more.

If I were to quickly push the stick all the way left; the plane would start to roll then stop. It&#39;s as if the plane is getting the signal initially then would be cut. I would have to move the stick as if I had to look for the signal. The plane would roll then stop. I would move the stick again real quickly to once again look for the signal.

Question:

I have 2 cd&#39;s that came with the CHProducts that I have purchased:

1) They each have a picture of a propellor.
2)They both say Control Manager, and things like Flight Sim Yoke USB, F-16 Fighterstick USB, F-16 Combatstick USB, Flightstick Pro USB, and so on.
3) On cd has the writing in green the other in blue.
4) The blue one says 510-310F v5.3 and DirectX 8.0a
5) The green one says v5.4 and DirectX 8.1

I do not know which cd came with which product. Anyhow when I installed the products and the window asked me to put in the installation disk I put only one of them in for all 3 products. Cannot remember which one.

What if I put in the wrong one? I put the blue one when I should have put in the green one, the higher version.

I think this could be the problem. What if the hotas and rudder pedals work great with the 5.3version but the stick needs the 5.4 version. The stick is foced to deal with the version I probably used, the 5.3 version.

What do you think, does it make a difference?

As for Dell support, please refer to my post dated today at 8:23 pm.

[Bob Church]

>> I checked out the frame rates and the lowest it ever went was around 30, being real close to the ground. It would go as high as 100 or more. <<

Okay, that&#39;s plenty.

>> If I were to quickly push the stick all the way left; the plane would start to roll then stop. It&#39;s as if the plane is getting the signal initially then would be cut. I would have to move the stick as if I had to look for the signal. The plane would roll then stop. I would move the stick again real quickly to once again look for the
signal. <<

Okay. Then it sounds more like either a bad pot connection or some kind of USB trouble. Can you tell if it affects all the axes at once or is it strictly roll? USB would tend to lose a whole data packet, where a bad pot connection is only going to drop one axis.

>> Question:

I have 2 cd&#39;s that came with the CHProducts that I have purchased: <<

1) They each have a picture of a propellor.
2)They both say Control Manager, and things like Flight Sim Yoke USB, F-16 Fighterstick USB, F-16 Combatstick USB, Flightstick Pro USB, and so on.
3) On cd has the writing in green the other in blue.
4) The blue one says 510-310F v5.3 and DirectX 8.0a
5) The green one says v5.4 and DirectX 8.1 <<

I don&#39;t really know how CH has been ID&#39;ing the CDs, maybe Michael can shed some light. If the GUI says V3.00 or later in the upper left corner, you&#39;ve got the latest version of Control Manager and that&#39;s all that really matters, though. Any of the 3.xx stuff is the latest, the only differences were in support for the VPPro I think.

>> I do not know which cd came with which product. Anyhow when I installed the products and the window asked me to put in the installation disk I put only one of them in for all 3 products. <<

It wouldn&#39;t have mattered. Whichever install you ran, it put the files on the HD. Windows asks for the disk, but it doesn&#39;t actually copy from it. Actually, I&#39;ve got all the boxes that tells Windows which drives to search unchecked and I leave the CD drive empty unless it asks for the Windows CD. Windows doesn&#39;t search anywhere, just takes the files that are there, and it all goes quickly and works find.

>> As for Dell support, please refer to my post dated today at 8:23 pm. <<

Yeah, I saw the post. I don&#39;t know, bad something with USB maybe, but I&#39;m a little dubious that it&#39;s going to help unless they give you different equipment and things start to mesh. Replacing the system for a joystick problem sounds like overkill, it&#39; a bit like MS&#39; "...reformat your drive, reinstall Windows, and call us in the morning...". They&#39;re running out of straws to grasp and it gets you off the phone. There are motherboard/chipset combinations that are bad news and the best thing to do is to replace them with motherboards, etc. that are known to work well, Michael knows them better than I, but my guess is Dell is going to give you just what you&#39;ve got now and I&#39;m just doubtful that there&#39;s anything actually "broken" there. Incompatible for one reason or another, but it doesn&#39;t sound like something is really non-functional.

Was there any mention of the virus screwing up the CMOS? In XP, those settings are important for USB to work properly, but the defaults are generally not the best. The USBMan page would have info on how you should set them, you might look there and then check and see if maybe something got changed there in the process.

- Bob

The StickWorks
http://www.stickworks.com

[Richard]

Bad pot connection or some kind of USB trouble....

It affects the roll every time. The up/down pitch is affected about half the time.
Hotas and rudders are good 100% of the time.

As for CMOS I&#39;ll look into it tomorrow. First thing, what does CMOS stand for?

[Bob Church]

>> ...What does CMOS stand for? <<

"Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor". It refers to the RAM that stores the BIOS setup stuff, very low current. I&#39;m not even sure they still actually use CMOS, could just be EEProm anymore. Anyway, usually you have to hit DEL or something during the boot process and you get to the setup screen for the BIOS, you can set things like key repetition rate, who does the power management, that sort of thing. There are settings for IRQLs and things there that can affect USB.

With the axes bouncing that way, maybe it is something with the pot connections or perhaps a bad ground. If it were USB you&#39;d lose X, Y, and the throttle at the same time. If you rap on the stick (gently!) while it&#39;s in use can you cause the problem to come and go? A bad connection isn&#39;t going to care what sim is running, the test screen should be good enough to check for it.

- Bob

The StickWorks
http://www.stickworks.com

[Richard]

I&#39;ll have to enquire about the replacements. It sure to be the same things I have right now.

They did not tell me the cost, if there is one for this service. If it&#39;s free then I might proceed with it. If it&#39;s not then I&#39;d rather try and find a solution.

Do you think plugging the fighterstick to another USB port might do anything?

[Bob Church]

>> I&#39;ll have to enquire about the replacements. It sure to be the same things I have right now.

They did not tell me the cost, if there is one for this service. If it&#39;s free then I might proceed with it. If it&#39;s not then I&#39;d rather try and find a solution. <<

Sure. If it&#39;s free, why not. You don&#39;t want to end up buying a new system, though.

>> Do you think plugging the fighterstick to another USB port might do anything? <<

Well, it can&#39;t do any harm. You&#39;ll need to calibrate it again from the Control Manager GUI and not from the Windows Control Panel, you&#39;ll get a New Hardware Wizard when you do that. Other than that, it should fall right into line.

- Bob

The StickWorks
http://www.stickworks.com

[Richard]

I might just simply re-install everything and see what happens. I might do that tomorrow and I&#39;ll let you know what happens. Are you logged in tomorrow morning. I&#39;m in the pacific time zone, what about you.

[Richard]

You are right about one thing, I should not have to pay for it. I just bought this computer at Christmas and it did cost me a pretty penny. They better do it for free.

[Richard]

The only viable option available to me right now is to erase everything that is related to ChProducts; Control Manager, software for the hardware and so on. And unplug the joystick, hotas and rudder pedals.

I will start from scratch. Since the hotas and rudder pedals work properly I will replug them into the same USB ports. The joystick will be plugged to a different USB port.

Any tips any one might have to offer.

[Richard]

Well, I uninstalled everything related to CHProducts. Unplugged all the devices.

Followed the instructions to the letter:

1) replugged all devices (Windows XP)
2) Hotas and rudder pedals were plugged into the same ports and each got 2 double beeps. No bubble appeared on the bootom right indicating the device is installed and ready to use. The fighterstick was plugged into a different USB port and got a single beep and a bubble on the bottom right indicating &#39; found new hardware &#39; and ready to use.
4) Downloaded the control manager to desktop, unzipped it and clicked setup and followed the instructions to the letter.
5) I checked, in control manager and in start/control panel/printers and other hardware/game controllers, the calibration of all devices in both direct and mapped mode. The results were all positive.
6) Started LOMAC, went into options and made sure all axis was assigned appropriately and all graphs had a straight line from top right to bottom left. Clicked the test button to check for calibration and it showed all 3 devices working perfectly.
7) Clicked &#39;fly&#39; , the hotas and rudder worked, the pitch and roll did not work. it was just like before, very sluggish.

Point of interest: since I uninstalled everything including control manager. There are no maps in the control manager to download. The hotas and stick &#39;remembered&#39; all the controls I had assigned to the buttons. I had all 3 modes.

How is that possible?

[Richard]

How important is it for the joystick to be plugged into the same USB port it was plugged into initially.

[Bob Church]

It&#39;s not really important at all. The only thing is that Windows sees a device type plugged into a port as a particular controller. When you change ports, it&#39;s seen as a new controller (if it&#39;s the first time that device type has been plugged into that port) and so it needs to be updated via the Control Manager calibration thing. The Control Manager itself will sort things out as far as any of your maps, etc. are concerned.

WRT the assignments being there after the uninstall, it can&#39;t happen (famous last words :) ). Either it didn&#39;t uninstall or the assignments were made in the sim and not via the Control Manager. The Mode Lights will still track, that&#39;s a function of the hardware itself, but you shouldn&#39;t have seen three available modes actually working if the uninstall went correctly.

Since you&#39;re west coast, maybe a call to Michael down at CH tomorrow would help. He could walk you through a complete uninstall/reinstall, maybe something will turn up. He&#39;s just down north of San Diego, the call shouldn&#39;t be too expensive, and maybe that will turn something up, I&#39;m about out of ideas. It may be time to send the FighterStick down there and have him take a look at it, too, just to make sure we&#39;re not just chasing a broken joystick.

- Bob

The StickWorks
http://www.stickworks.com

[Richard]

Thanks Bob, I actually have decided to take the next step of making the call first thing tomorrow morning. I won&#39;t care about the time on the phone, I&#39;m all out of ideas.

I&#39;ll let you know what turns up in case someone else faces the same problem. I hope no one does because its been a hair pulling experience for me and I have practically lost all desire in this product and in the game.

[Bob Church]

I know how it is, sorry it&#39;s been so much trouble. It gets to be depressing after awhile and you just want to chuck it. There are just so many variables at the moment, it&#39;s just hard to know what to do next. It&#39;s a new install, but then again maybe it didn&#39;t uninstall so it&#39;s not. It worked originally, which would seem to rule out any inherent incompatibility, but then I&#39;ve not heard of any virii that played with the USB/HID/Joystick so why didn&#39;t it come back after you cleared the virus? USB moves data in packets that bundle all the axes and buttons together. There would be no way for one particular data value in the packet to get trashed and not have the whole packet trashed, at least none that I can see, yet you seem to lose individual axis values. That sounds like a hardware problem with a particular axis out in the stick, but then that should be easy to see in the test screens. All sorts of clues, but none of them seem to lead anywhere. It&#39;s been a frustrating thing here, I can well imagine you&#39;re about ready to go back to playing Solitaire and forget the whole thing. I wish I had a magic bullet that would fix it for you, but I seem to have misplaced it.

Anyway, give Michael a call and see what happens. He&#39;s very good at it, and sometimes you say things in direct conversation that you wouldn&#39;t think to mention in an email that provide a clue.

Let us know how it turns out.

- Bob

The StickWorks
http://www.stickworks.com

[Richard]

PROBLEM SOLVED !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

:thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

The profiles I had downloaded created 3 Control Manager Devices in LOMAC.

The mini-joystick apparently had the same tasking as the main joystick, pitch and roll.

Therefore whenever I would pitch or roll the game was recieving 2 mixed signals as the mini-joystick was remaining centered the whole time.

The axis on the mini-stick had to be neutralised.

I erased the programs I had, downloaded other ones where all 3 devices were combined.

I just spent the last hour flying in my F-15 shooting down 2 Russian SU-33s, 2 UKR Mig-23s and 1 Turkish F-4. Sounds like the problem got solved.


Many many thanks to everyone who tried to help me figure this problem out.

[Richard]

MY NEXT TASK:

I am in no rush for this one but I do have questions before I proceed.

I have the following: Fighterstick
Hotas
Rudder Pedals


IL-2 Sturmovik
IL-2 Forgotten Battles
IL-2 FB Ace expansion pack.

1) Download from Base Profiles:

Fighterstick with hotas and rudder pedals by Michael dated Feb 17/2004. 10th one down the list.

2) Download from PropSim Profiles:

Question: Does 1 profile cover all 3 games? Which one(s) do I need? The 2nd one or the last one, or both?

3) Download from CMC Files:

Question: Same question as number 2. Last one or 2nd last or both?

I am guessing that IL-2 is one game and the other 2 games are seen as 1.

Richard

[MichaelCHProd]

You don&#39;t need a BASE profile if you are going to get a Game Specific one from the Prop Sim Profiles Section.

There are differences between the default commands in IL-2, IL-2FB, and ACES. You would probably never notice, as the most common commands did not change.



Bob,
Nice job :salute:

[Bob Church]

Hi Richard,

>> PROBLEM SOLVED !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! <<

Hey, that&#39;s great! MS does that multiple joystick thing with FS and CFS and it gets very confusing when you don&#39;t realize that that&#39;s what&#39;s happening. I can see the thinking behind it - "Let&#39;s just respond to whatever stick moves and save doing any manual selection." - but I think it just causes more problems than it solves. Thanks letting me know, I can add it to my list of Windows Mysteries and next time it turns up maybe we can get it running a little more quickly.

Anyway, I am glad it was something that was easily corrected (even if it took awhile to figure out how). Hopefully you can start enjoying your new controllers now instead of fighting with the problems. It&#39;s a lot more enjoyable that way. :)

Have fun with &#39;em!

- Bob

The StickWorks
http://www.stickworks.com

[Bob Church]

Thanks, Michael!

- Bob

The StickWorks
http://www.stickworks.com