SimShaker for DCS World and Falcon BMS support thread
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Did you download an older version? The bumps interval in relation to speed was just added in the last couple of versions (Andre has constantly been tweaking it to users requests).
FWIW, there are a lot more effects that make things much more immersive and actually help your situational awareness.
I don’t think it’s possible to download an old version oсcasionally, Matt.
I will check ground bumps at my end this week. -
Hi Andre. I see my order for the JetSeat has already cleared customs, so I am eagerly looking forward to receiving it. As I am in the process of building a G Seat like the one Bergisson made (
), I’m pretty interested in making sure that effects are synchronized - I think SimShaker will be an excellent compliment to what I’m building. But it would be a bit weird to feel bumps in the taxiway at one frequency through the motors in the G Seat and in a completely different way via SimShaker.It sounds like you’re using aircraft speed to simulate taxiway bumps. I’m developing using a different approach you might consider (this is for BMS only, which is all I fly). I monitor weight-on-wheels and yaw. BMS actually dips the nose of the aircraft slightly when going over a taxiway seam. You can see this in the FPM bobbing up and down. So watching something like the second derivative of pitch might be a good control input.
Anyway, as a software developer I know how useful most advice about programming is, (“Why don’t you just do X? It should be easy!”) so if there are good reasons this approach is impractical, please ignore me. I just offer it on the off chance you haven’t thought of it, and that it’s helpful.
Thanks again for your help with the order, and for SimShaker!
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@candera:
Hi Andre. I see my order for the JetSeat has already cleared customs, so I am eagerly looking forward to receiving it. As I am in the process of building a G Seat like the one Bergisson made (
), I’m pretty interested in making sure that effects are synchronized - I think SimShaker will be an excellent compliment to what I’m building. But it would be a bit weird to feel bumps in the taxiway at one frequency through the motors in the G Seat and in a completely different way via SimShaker.It sounds like you’re using aircraft speed to simulate taxiway bumps. I’m developing using a different approach you might consider (this is for BMS only, which is all I fly). I monitor weight-on-wheels and yaw. BMS actually dips the nose of the aircraft slightly when going over a taxiway seam. You can see this in the FPM bobbing up and down. So watching something like the second derivative of pitch might be a good control input.
Anyway, as a software developer I know how useful most advice about programming is, (“Why don’t you just do X? It should be easy!”) so if there are good reasons this approach is impractical, please ignore me. I just offer it on the off chance you haven’t thought of it, and that it’s helpful.
Thanks again for your help with the order, and for SimShaker!
Hi Craig,
that’s a good idea. But, you probably had in mind to monitor Pitch, not Yaw?
Would you please, as a software developer, share your ground bumps method with me? -
@candera:
Hi Andre. I see my order for the JetSeat has already cleared customs, so I am eagerly looking forward to receiving it. As I am in the process of building a G Seat like the one Bergisson made (
), I’m pretty interested in making sure that effects are synchronized - I think SimShaker will be an excellent compliment to what I’m building. But it would be a bit weird to feel bumps in the taxiway at one frequency through the motors in the G Seat and in a completely different way via SimShaker.It sounds like you’re using aircraft speed to simulate taxiway bumps. I’m developing using a different approach you might consider (this is for BMS only, which is all I fly). I monitor weight-on-wheels and yaw. BMS actually dips the nose of the aircraft slightly when going over a taxiway seam. You can see this in the FPM bobbing up and down. So watching something like the second derivative of pitch might be a good control input.
Anyway, as a software developer I know how useful most advice about programming is, (“Why don’t you just do X? It should be easy!”) so if there are good reasons this approach is impractical, please ignore me. I just offer it on the off chance you haven’t thought of it, and that it’s helpful.
Thanks again for your help with the order, and for SimShaker!
Mine is on it’s way too but it is traveling a longer distance!
Please keep me posted on your Bergison G Seat project! I’ve wanted to build one for a long time but while the hardware part to me seems pretty straight forward, the trying to get the software side of things to work was more my problem. Actually, getting a KW-908 has been my instead of a G Seat of solution, but if you can get the shared memory extraction for the G Seat done I think the two would work quite well together!
Interesting tip about the yaw swing on the ground! How can you then dampen out the pilot yaw inputs or does it not matter since the plane was going to move either way?
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Yes, sorry: pitch, not yaw.
You’re welcome to look at all the code I have here, https://github.com/candera/g-seat/blob/master/driver/Program.cs, in particular these lines, but I don’t think it’s going to be super helpful to you. Since I’m moving the motors in response to the orientation of the aircraft, the bumps happen automatically just by the fact that the pitch is changing. I’m guessing you’d need to do some additional processing to derive the signal you’d output. Probably something along the lines of monitoring the second derivative of pitch and sending a bump signal when it goes above a certain threshold, with memory around how long since the last bump, so you don’t trigger too often.
Sorry I don’t have anything more useful than that - I’m still in the middle of development, and at the moment I have the back actuators of my G Seat going, not the ones underneath me, so no good way to see how well this algorithm might work in practice. But monitoring the data, it seems promising. Like I said: typical software development “advice”.
I might be able to throw together some code later this week that would act as a proof of concept if that would be helpful. Happy to continue to discuss here as well if the idea isn’t clear.
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Mine is on it’s way too but it is traveling a longer distance!
Please keep me posted on your Bergison G Seat project! I’ve wanted to build one for a long time but while the hardware part to me seems pretty straight forward, the trying to get the software side of things to work was more my problem. Actually, getting a KW-908 has been my instead of a G Seat of solution, but if you can get the shared memory extraction for the G Seat done I think the two would work quite well together!
Interesting tip about the yaw swing on the ground! How can you then dampen out the pilot yaw inputs or does it not matter since the plane was going to move either way?
I misspoke - it’s pitch, not yaw. Which makes more sense, of course. And like I told Andre, the idea is slightly theoretical, as I haven’t actually got it working yet. But watching the pitch data coming out of Falcon, it sure looks like it should work. And actually, it looks like zDot is even better.
If you want to follow the G Seat project, I’m Tyrant over at the 1st VFW (I should really switch my handle here), and I’ve got a forum thread where I’m reporting my (slow) progress. All the software/firmware is open source, and Bergisson posted everything he did, too.
Anyway, I should stop hijacking this thread - feel free to ask questions over on the 1st forum, though.
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Hi Craig,
that’s a good idea. But, you probably had in mind to monitor Pitch, not Yaw?
Would you please, as a software developer, share your ground bumps method with me?I got interested in this idea, so I whipped up a quick prototype. It beeps when it detects a runway bump, which is a simple threshold on zDot in the shared data. It seems to match up well for me to what I see the FPM doing as I taxi. The code is here:
https://github.com/candera/g-seat/blob/master/experiments/runway-bump/Program.cs#L603-L637
Hope you find it helpful! It’s in C#, but even if that’s not what you’re using the algorithm is really straightforward. You might need to play with it a bit to get it to be really nice - I only went for “barely working”, although it actually seems fairly robust.
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@candera:
I got interested in this idea, so I whipped up a quick prototype. It beeps when it detects a runway bump, which is a simple threshold on zDot in the shared data. It seems to match up well for me to what I see the FPM doing as I taxi. The code is here:
https://github.com/candera/g-seat/blob/master/experiments/runway-bump/Program.cs#L603-L637
Hope you find it helpful! It’s in C#, but even if that’s not what you’re using the algorithm is really straightforward. You might need to play with it a bit to get it to be really nice - I only went for “barely working”, although it actually seems fairly robust.
Thanks a lot for sharing that, Craig.
Tell me please what FPM stands for? -
Flight path marker. The symbol in the HUD that shows where the aircraft is going. Looks like a circle with lines coming out the sides and top.
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@candera:
Flight path marker. The symbol in the HUD that shows where the aircraft is going. Looks like a circle with lines coming out the sides and top.
Cheers!
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Hi,
I’m interested in purchasing one of these.
Can anyone in the UK tell me what happens when it gets to the UK customs? Does it get held until I pay the bill?
And what would be the amount of tax on that around £20? -
Hi,
I’m interested in purchasing one of these.
Can anyone in the UK tell me what happens when it gets to the UK customs? Does it get held until I pay the bill?
And what would be the amount of tax on that around £20?Can’t help much since mine is still enroute to the U.S. but it looks like if I have to pay US duties it should be around $35 so £20 sounds about right.
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Mine stopped working all together. Buttkicker is working, but all of a sudden nothing at all coming from Simshaker today.
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Mine stopped working all together. Buttkicker is working, but all of a sudden nothing at all coming from Simshaker today.
Check the place where you put in your authorization string key and see if it switched back to demo. I had to email Andre for a new one because of some error that lost it. Other thing is make sure the sound output is going to the right item, I’ve had that change around after I rearranged some sound ouputs.
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Mine says authorization keys are not ready
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Mine says authorization keys are not ready
Please see at Sound Module window, not SimShaker window.
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Thanks. For some reason it changed my audio output device in sound module. Working now.
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Thanks. For some reason it changed my audio output device in sound module. Working now.
Sound Module remembers a sound device position number, not the device itself. When you change number of sound output devices (e.g. plug in or unplug USB headset) Sound Module can change selected device and you need to adjust it.
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Hmmmm, don’t think I plugged or unplugged anything (don’t have a USB headset), must have been Windows then (or maybe nVidia audio driver install with video drivers). Oh well, it is ok anyway.
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Thanks for the reply. I tested it out in demo mode and I could feel the runway and landing bump. The only problem is the rate of the taxiway bumps is constant, no matter if I’m going 1 mph or 100 mph
Hi pilots,
I’ve re-cheked ground bumps effect at my end.
With Buttkicker Gamer 2 it works fine. But, the effect is complex and consits of- rolling vibe (hp_4_0_4.wav sample is used)
- bumps (hp_4_0_1.wav sample is used)
- touchdown (hp_4_0_2.wav sample is used)
- belly landing (hp_4_0_3.wav sample is used)
Rolling part is constant and doesn’t depend on speed. I suppose you feel this part in your chair.
Bumps part depends on speed. I suggest that you don’t feel it for some reason.
Transducers may be pretty vary and, if other than Buttkicker Gamer 2 is used, I’d recommend to try adjusting correspondent .wav sample(s) as described here in Advanced setup. How to fine tune sound samples to fit your simulation rig section.