Controller Questions

[Tomahawko]

I'll be making a custom throttle quadrant among other panels. Will there be independent prop pitch? One for each engine?

Will there be an option to open bay doors on bombers?

Are there going to be other major control differences between IL2 and the new IL2:CoD that I should know about?

Sorry if this stuff has already been covered. I'd appreciate any links if it has. This is the first time I'll be jumping into the more technical side of flight sims.

Tomahawk

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by Tomahawko

I'll be making a custom throttle quadrant among other panels. Will there be independent prop pitch? One for each engine?

Will there be an option to open bay doors on bombers?

Are there going to be other major control differences between IL2 and the new IL2:CoD that I should know about?

Sorry if this stuff has already been covered. I'd appreciate any links if it has. This is the first time I'll be jumping into the more technical side of flight sims.

Tomahawk

Separate engine controls on a slider are already supported in IL2 if you install the team daidalos patches, so i wouldn't expect differently from CoD. I don't have any concrete information mind you, just making a reasonable guess that "if it's in the old game, it probably will be in the new game too".

As for other control options, you might want to include radiator/oil cooler/intercooler controls and what not, since the new complex engine management model is much more refined than IL2 and will make use of such things.

We also know from translations of Russian forums (from people who tried it out in the Moscow gaming expo) that a continuous keypress is needed in many aircraft to simulate manual landing gear operation, or the fact that most aircraft didn't have predetermined flap positions. What happened was that the pilot would set the flap motor working in a certain direction (up or down) and then set the switch back to neutral as the flaps reached the angle he wanted, so i guess that's what the game is also trying to simulate: as long as you keep pressing the key the motor is running, when you release the key the motor switches to neutral. In that sense, it would probably be realistic if you wanted to make a 3-position lever for such things, with up-neutral-down positions.


Cheers

[tintifaxl]

I advice you to wait until the game is released, before you start your project.

[*Buzzsaw*]

Salute

Said this in another thread, but here it is again:

With complex engine management, CoD is going to require quite a few more control axis. By my understanding of the promo info released, the axis required would be as follows:

1) Throttle

2) Mixture

3) Supercharger boost level (players will need to be careful in their settings, too high boost with lean mixture will cause detonation and destruction of the engine. Low boost with too rich mixture will consume too much fuel as well as bogging the engine, and players who run high boost/rich mix all the time will find they will run out of fuel in very little time. Combat power should consume 4 times the fuel of of cruise settings.)

4) Prop pitch (for early Spit and Hurri, this will be a two speed setting, activated by a button, either coarse or fine pitch. Pilots will need to ride their throttles to make sure they don't overrev their engine. Later Spits will be constant speed, with the player setting the engine RPM level, and the auto pitch adjusting to maintain that engine speed. For 109, this will either be completely manual, with the requirement for the pilot to ride the controls constantly to prevent overrevving, or if Oleg allows for the late BoB 109 to be modelled, which were very rare, there will be an auto pitch version of the 109)

5) Radiator

6) Flaps (only for 109's, Spit and Hurri flaps are either up or down, and would be activated by buttons. If 109 flaps are correctly modelled, they will take 30 seconds to fully deploy)

7) Elevator trim

8b) Rudder trim (Spit and Hurri only)

[Tomahawko]

Thank you for the replies. They were all informative and helpful.

I do intend to wait until release but I'm already starting to think about what equipment I'm going to need and how it will effect the general layout. I would be happy to have a running start when this game is released.

A lot of that depends on what new controls will be added, and which controls will utilize an axis. This get's into what you guys are talking about and is part of what my poorly written question was asking for.

Furthermore I'm attempting to prepare for multi engine fighters/bombers, such as the p38, which starts multiplying certain controls. It's looking like I'm going to need a substantial number of axes! (Axis plural of course. Not an Axe.)

Leading into the other comments, It also seems like each plane will be so realistically different, I'm wondering how they will manage the integration of such a variety. (i.e. prop pitch) And more to the point, how I will cope in my "generalized simpit." I'll be able to manage some of these differences with three position levers, as you suggest. Some momentary levers. But it seems to complicate when we get in to prop pitch. An axis may be appropriate for some planes where a button would be "required" in others.

These are exactly the kinds of points I was hoping to find and tackle. Undoubtedly I'll need to be flexible. I was crossing my fingers that some of this information was "officially" available and tentatively certain.

[Blackdog_kt]

The first thing you can certainly do is start on the design of it all. Assume you are building a complete real-life cockpit and make a list of the controls required. Then decide which ones you really need and which you don't, subtract the amount of axes covered by your stick/HOTAS set and you can have a rough estimate of the amount of axes you will need.


After that you will still need to wait for the game and see how it implements things (if it does implement everything), but it will be much easier to subtract controls from an already designed layout than add extras to one.

While i do suggest only working on the design while waiting for the game before you buy anything, there is one thing you can buy right from the start and that is the interface board. I haven't made any custom controllers myself but a friend of mine i recently got back into flight simming has modified his old saitek X35 from gameport to USB by rewiring it through a Bodnar BU0836 chip, plus he added an improvised trim wheel as well. There are other boards on the market with which i am not familiar, the BU0836 just seems to be the most popular probably due to the large amount of controls it can support (8 axes, 32 buttons and a POV hat).

As to the question of prop pitch controls, if flying aircraft with either a constant speed propeller (rotol or dehavilland equipped Spits/Hurris) or a manual variable pitch control (early 109s) you can use a single control in both cases. The only difference is that when flying a CSP equipped aircraft you will be able to set RPM by moving the lever until the RPM gauge is where you want it and let the prop governor maintain that on its own, while in the case of a variable pitch non-CSP aircraft you will need to constantly adjust it to maintain it yourself: the same control slider will in the first case work as an RPM-to-maintain selector, in the second as a direct manipulator of prop pith. That's exactly how it works in real life as well, so you will also have a realistic simulation of it all.

For fixed pitch propellers (tiger moth) you won't need it at all. For two-stage props (early Spits/Hurris) you might be able to use a workaround instead of having to map a separate toggle switch. In IL version 4.10 the Italian SM79 bomber was introduced, which uses two-stage props. The way they modeled it is that anything from 0% to 50% pitch corresponds to the cruise (lower RPM) setting, while 51% to 100% corresponds to the take-off/max power (high RPM) setting. I'm guessing here but i would imagine a similar capability will exist in CoD, especially if we can manually select zones of the slider's movement for discreet commands.

In such a case, you would be able to just use the same axis for prop pitch control even in aircraft with two-stage props: moving the lever below half travel would switch to the low RPM setting, moving it above the halfway mark would switch to the high RPM setting. Also, such a function could come in handy for people who use throttles with detents, as they could set the exact zone for WEP and so on.

All in all, a lot will depend on how the game interface is laid out. However, i wouldn't expect to see separate control bindings for each propeller type. Since each aircraft type only has one type of props fitted (eg, you won't see a multi-engined bird having half the engines on CSP props and the other half on manually variable pitch props, they will all use the same system), the same physical control could be used for all, that is, the lever would be mapped to prop control but how that control is effected in the game would depend on the kind of prop the aircraft has.

Finally, it's not uncommon for modern flight sims to have multiple control profiles, so we may be able to have customized controls on "a per aircraft type" basis.

[JAMF]

Just have a look at the images from November 19th. You can see all the available axes listed and much more details:

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=17383

In theory, you could start building a Hughes "Spruce Goose" or Tupolev ANT-20 throttle console for 8 engines.

[Tomahawko]

Thank you, thank you!
Let the designing commence!