Anyone else noticed this controller bug?

[KG26_Alpha]

Well for what its worth I did a screenie of my MSFFB2 centring in hotas.

After moving the stick full around and then letting it centre it shows perfectly in the middle of the cross-hair red square under the green square, I can only assume that these other peoples sticks have faults of some kind or are not setup properly.

My stick is 9 years old and works faultlessly after daily usage of around 4-5 hours, shame they stopped making them

Here's my settings if anyone wants to try them

[rts_joystick]
X=0 1 4 9 16 25 36 49 64 81 100 0
Y=0 1 4 9 16 25 36 49 64 81 100 0
Z=0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
RZ=0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 0
FF=1
U=0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 0
V=0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 0
1X=0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 0
1Y=0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 0
1RZ=0 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 0
1U=0 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 0
1V=0 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 0

[MikkOwl]

Question to everyone (Letum, Julian, Aviar, KG26_Alpha etc): what version of the game do you have? As in, DVD, steam, direct2drive or whatever else is out there. Mine is the STEAM version.

Originally Posted by Aviar

I have two questions about your Input screen:
1. Is the green box ever initially centered or does it become uncentered only after you initially move the stick?
2. Just curious about the Yaw axis. Why is the green box over to the left?

Never initially centered. It follows a clear pattern - if joystick centered, green (and in-game) off-centered (the bug).
The yaw axis is offset because it reads my G940 stick TRIM1 wheel as yaw axis, and I had not centered it.

Originally Posted by Aviar

If you set Dead Band, then you need to watch the RED box, not the green box. The RED box will indicate your actual IN-GAME stick movement. The same thing applies if you set Filtering. The green box simply shows you the actual movement of your joystick while on the Input screen.

It is the opposite: the red box is the 'input' that IL-2 reads from your actual joystick position, while the green is the processed 'output' that is used to determine in-game control movements. However, if sensitivity is set to 100 all over, and no deadband is set, then there is only the green. That is when the bug appears to go away for me.

Originally Posted by Aviar

I tried my best to reproduce this 'bug' on my setup but I couldn't. That doesn't mean it does not exist. However, I do find it strange that when MikkOwl tried to record a track of his mysterious in-game stick movement, this movement did not appear on the track.

The actual aircraft movement is seen in replay playback. Can see it chance pitch and roll - the effects of the bug, but cannot see the control column move. Two possibilities exist: 1. the replay fidelity does not include control movements that are very slight visually, or 2. the engine believes that the column is centered when recording the replay (and technically it should be) and so plays it back as if it was - but it retains 100% fidelity of the aircraft actual movements.

Originally Posted by julian265

I set the roll and pitch axes of my stick to 50% dead band (in IL2), no filtering, and all 100% sensitivity sliders. I saw the green square move in the input setup section, for both roll and pitch, when the real stick was crossing the centre. I then watched a Beaufighter's and P-51's stick when on the ground, and could not see any movement at all in the column/stick, when doing the same movements as above.

Repeat the same above but set deadband to zero, then observe control column. And if you can, choose the Me-262 A1 in a 'scramble' mission starting on the runway, and go to gunsight mode (Shift-F1), as the control stick in the cockpit is then VERY close to the camera and from a more top down perspective.

Using deadband makes it go off-set, but it does not go back to center when one's joystick leaves the actual center. So, do it with zero sensitivities and zero deadband.

Originally Posted by julian265

I use a 4096 step BU0836A and hall effect sensors. Due to it's long throw, I normally use 100% sensitivity and no filtering, and have noticed (when keeping the wings level) that IL2 has a noticeable step around joystick-centre, when at any other position, it a tiny joystick movement yields a tiny in-game joystick movement. I've always thought something was a little wrong... along with the strange interpretation of power/pitch axes (I know from DIView that the stick is giving 4096 steps for these axes as well, yet IL2 gives me 2-3% increments).

Yeah, that strange 'interpretation' in the center is sure what it feels like for me, if I don't use 100% sensitivity and no deadband. If I make use of no IL-2 joystick tweaks, then it is okay. I can't tell 100% as there is the 'reversal bug' on the G940, making it slightly jumpy in certain conditions, and I do use curves (a lot of it) normally from the Logitech profiler, since the IL-2 native ones are bugged.

The 2-3% thing seems to be the way IL-2 reads the axes. I get it as well on devices that have 256 positions (while in-game throttle might have 120 positions).

Originally Posted by KG26_Alpha

Well for what its worth I did a screenie of my MSFFB2 centring in hotas. After moving the stick full around and then letting it centre it shows perfectly in the middle of the cross-hair red square under the green square, I can only assume that these other peoples sticks have faults of some kind or are not setup properly. My stick is 9 years old and works faultlessly after daily usage of around 4-5 hours, shame they stopped making them

Here's my settings if anyone wants to try them

As I asked in the first line in the post, let me know what version you have of the game (steam etc). Watching that screenshot it is absolutely clear you don't have the bug.

However, the hardware isn't faulty, for I have tried connecting and assigning all kinds of controllers to all kinds of functions in IL-2. It affects the rudders for example, and trims, throttle, pitch, roll, FLAPS - anything that can use an axis. Even using the Saitek Quadrant (as only connected device in an experiment), using a lever each for pitch and roll, shows the bug behaviour 100% reliably as any other controller. It is something to do with IL-2 itself as it only appears using controller tweaks native to IL-2; place the red square in the middle with any controller and it goes off-set. It does not exist when not using them.

[julian265]

Whilst there is a certain amount of misunderstanding of the input options around, as a mechanical engineer by qualification, with strong interests in electronics and programming, and having designed and made my own hotas, I don't think I have too many misunderstandings of this topic.

Because I don't use filtering, and set all sensitivity sliders to 100%, with no dead band, I don't see the original problem shown by MikkOwl when flying in IL2. However, I could reproduce it by following MikkOwl's steps, but only in the axis configuration screen, and not in the cockpit.

The problem I mentioned regarding level flight might not be related to the one being discussed.

Originally Posted by MikkOwl

Question to everyone (Letum, Julian, Aviar, KG26_Alpha etc): what version of the game do you have? As in, DVD, steam, direct2drive or whatever else is out there. Mine is the STEAM version.

Originally 4.07m from an Australian (same as European?) DVD, upgraded to 4.08m then 4.09m with UI 1.1 mod. My tests were done in modded 4.09.

Originally Posted by MikkOwl

The 2-3% thing seems to be the way IL-2 reads the axes. I get it as well on devices that have 256 positions (while in-game throttle might have 120 positions).

Indeed. My best guess is that IL2 checks for a match to certain percentages, whereas the controllers don't quite match the values that IL2 expects. For example, the controller might output 34.125%, whereas IL2 is looking for 34.000%, hence 34 is skipped. Just a guess, however.

Originally Posted by MikkOwl

However, the hardware isn't faulty, for I have tried connecting and assigning all kinds of controllers to all kinds of functions in IL-2.

I definitely don't have a hardware fault either, I have never seen this in other games or setup screens, or DIView.

[MikkOwl]

Did you try it without deadband in the cockpit? Especially using the view I suggested in the Me 262. It should be noticable obviously in most aircraft, but some more than others. One problem I found is that it's not easy to hit the dead center position of a stick on my G940 in particular, when trying to do the cockpit testing (since there were no squares to guide me and it has 'slop'). Putting in some curves from outside of IL-2 made it much easier though.

The control impact is small. It's most easily seen when flying time accelerated.

If you did it all then, move along

[AndyJWest]

The control impact is small. It's most easily seen when flying time accelerated.

Though I'm sure you are talking about a real effect, I can't help wondering if it reallly matters that much. Real-world aircraft wouldn't be expected to fly hands-off for long, and being perfectly trimmed for a shot is a rarity, so how does this affect anything of consequence? And come to that, I don't think any real-world contol system can have been totally error-free either: cable-operated systems are always prone to slackening, and even pushrod systems will have a degree of 'float' around neutral loading, unless they are artificially stiff.

[MikkOwl]

It matters enough for me not to ever subject myself to it, certainly. It is annoying when the plane moves in a direction opposite to control inputs, for example, especially during gunnery. Others do possibly not suffer from it either, which is a concern in multiplayer.

When flying hands off, in a plane that does has the required trims, it is a non-issue, since one can just trim it away when flying hands-off. In planes that don't have trims, it can be a real pain in the ass during cruising as the only option is either to fly at a much lower (or higher) RPM on the engine to counter the left-roll input, or to constantly hold the stick and apply tension on it to the side. I've tried it and could not deal with the strain on the wrists.

I just use external programs for it instead now, so for me the impact is very small: only a loss of some tweaking ability.

EDIT: Do tell more about how the systems work and should behave like, it is something I have not heard much about. I love learning about aircraft all across the past 25 years

[julian265]

Originally Posted by MikkOwl

Did you try it without deadband in the cockpit? Especially using the view I suggested in the Me 262.

I'm not quite sure of what you mean regarding 'zero sensitivities' and zero dead-band. A zeroed sensitivity slider will give a dead band, is that what you want?

[MikkOwl]

Look at the image I posted to show the exact settings.

Zero sensitivity as in the sliders set to 0 for several of the leftmost ones in the hardware > input screen, but also deadband set to zero.

Although they should be the same (we know this), they do not act the same in the game. That is why I revised my instructions on how to reproduce the bug in the best way to use sensitivity tweaking instead of deadband.

Using deadband makes it go off-set in the game, but it doesn't return to center when the joystick is not centered. But when only using sensitivity instead, it does return to center, making the movement much more observable.

[julian265]

I repeated the test using no "dead band", but the first sliders set to 0%, and saw the incorrect stick movement in both the setup screen and in-game. I can see this as being quite annoying for people who use a dead zone, though I am making the assumption that this occurs when the dead zone is smaller.

For your viewing pleasure:

a video (xvid AVI)
http://www.jpfiles.com/misc/dead_zone_test/262.avi

In the video, I am moving the real joystick slightly left and right, and up and down, over the centre point whilst staying completely inside the dead zone set by the sliders - the in-game stick should not be moving at all.

[MikkOwl]

It does not only affect having sensitivity to zero, but anything less than 100 for the leftmost one!

Now try all these things, but with default settings (which is a curve set approx 10, 20, 30, 40 etc, just hit the DEFAULT button in the input screen). The same shit happens. When centered, it goes offset. When moving away from center, it moves into center first, then moves towards where the actual joystick is moving. Also feel free to try it in mid flight and see how the aircraft actually does respond completely accordingly to this bugged movement.

None of this should be happening, and it does affect things. I am going to link to this from the bug report thread that is stickied. I do hope they can throw in a fix.