Helios buttons not working while in-flight
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Odd Helios behavior here.
I’ve been running Helios to display MFDs on an external touchscreen and have mapped all the buttons and extracted displays. This worked well up until recently.
Not sure if it is a BMS 4.37 U1 issue or if it is a change to my system somehow. But now the Helios buttons no longer function after I launch to a flight. It is as if the touchscreen is not recognized after I’m in the pit.
I’ve tested the buttons in Alternative Launcher and in the Setup screen in the sim. The buttons register correctly but stop working after I launch to the pit.System specs:
BMS v. 4.37 U1
BMS config - set g_bExportRTTTextures 1
spacedesk display extraction v. 1.0.57
Helios v. 1.6.5900.0001
Windows 11 Home v.22H2 22621.1265
AMD Ryzen 9 795000X
64GB RAMAgain, the touch screen works great until I launch to the pit. I appreciate any ideas!
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I recently have seen something similar, when running BMS at 4k with Helios, but only when in a campaign and at the very beginning of the campaign.
I have a RTX 4070ti and AMD ryzen 5 5600x with 32Gb of DDR4 and SSD. So I expected to be able to render at 4k without issue to a 43" 4K TV with great FPS.
Running just a TE I didn’t exhibit the odd freezing or very long delay of Helios button presses. My assumption was that the campaign added lots of work for the CPU and where Helios also is CPU dependent this seems to have been my issue. I resolved my issue by lowering my resolution in BMS to 1440p thus lowering the requirement on the CPU. I’m not sure if this was a fluke as I haven’t tried it again with 4k BMS res.
In the past I’ve noticed an update to windows has forced me to recalibrate my touchscreen but it sounds like yours is working ok.
I would try lowering your BMS resolution to see if this helps. If it does then you know you are CPU bound.
Some other issues I’ve seen had to do with a conflict of screen refresh rates not all being the same if you have multiple screens.
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@Todd1215 Thank you for pointing me in the right direction. The problem did stem from a resolution issue.
I’d set my in-sim resolution to 3440x1440p 164.90 Hz, and that is where I noticed the button failure. At your suggestion, I set my resolution to a random lower one, and the buttons worked again.
To try and replicate the issue, I set the resolution back to the original 3440x1440p and… the buttons still worked.
Not sure what the original problem was, but just changing the resolution and putting back seems to fixed it.
Thanks for the suggestion! You solved my problem. -
@Growler4135 mine was seemingly running fine, 1st time in multiplayer and Helios screen displayed but seemed totally unresponsive to input touch or mouse. anyone encounter this?
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@Jim_H i’ve never experienced a non-responsive Helios profile based on Single vs. Multi-player. Rather my experiences have been based on whether I use the Alternate Launcher. Are you starting BMS is the Alt Launcher? Or did you create a shortcut of the “Launcher.exe”??
And, are you running BMS as Administrator? I’ve found that that may give Helios issues.
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@JollyFE I start alt launcher from a desktop shortcut
the user acct is admin and was loaded as admin as i recall,
Immediately after MP ended closed and reloaded both bms and profile in single everything was normal. was 1st mp so don;t know did i fu or miss something?all seemed ok untill trying to raise the gear then nothing would take an input it was displying i think hard to say… things got a sporting quickly and was disorentated
I though i over sped them but acmi i never went above 300
but dosn;t explain the unresponsive profile?i got pulled in over my head truthfully, 1st night flight, first MP different area and then controls not functional . told was supposed to be a training flight for formation next i know their stacking BBs for oca
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@Jim_H I have recently experienced the same issue, when running BMS in 4k. All my gauges stutter when moving. This doesn’t seem to be the case when using Helios with DCS at the same resolution. if I run BMS at a lower resolution like 1440p and reconfigure my desktop for 1440p also then everything seems to work ok. I’m not sure where the issue is at the moment.
UPDATE: I also just did another test because I am interested in resolving this. I bought a 4070ti so I wouldn’t have to deal with these kinds of issue. I know BMS is not fully optimized and CPU usage is heavy especially in a Campaign but I shouldn’t have these issues in a simple TE like the AAR TE.
Here are my testing cases and results.
Test Case 1:
BMS Running at 4k 3840x2160@60hz
Helios Ice Profile running on 2nd screen 1920x1080Results: Helios gauges / and MFD extractions are jerky.
Test Case 2:
BMS Running at 4k 3840x2160@60hz
Helios Ice Profile running on 2nd screen 1920x1080BMS is not in focus
Results: Helios gauges / and MFD extractions are smooth.
I tried to capture this behavior using OBS so that I had some proof of the issue but … When I ran OBS and hit record something odd occurred. This is defined as Test Case 3.
Test Case 3:
BMS Running at 4k 3840x2160@60hz
Helios Ice Profile running on 2nd screen 1920x1080
OBS recording both Helios screen and Main BMS screenResults: Helios gauges / and MFD extractions are smooth even with BMS in or out of focus.
So the question is, what is happening with BMS when it is in focus or when OBS is recording? I bought this is a BMS issue and more of a system issue but none the less it is an issue and it seems I am not the only one who experiences it.
If someone could take a moment and valid this maybe we could figure this out.
@Jim_H @JollyFE So here is an UPDATE to my UPDATE
I found over on this thread that HDR possibly might be causing some issues. I checked my config and sure enough I had HDR checked. As soon as I unchecked it the jerky MFD and Helios gauges disappeared. I did this test a few times (unchecking and rechecking the option) just to make sure it wasn’t some annomoly. This bears further investigation for sure.
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@Jim_H Try without the Alt Launcher. I havent had much luck with Helios & the current version of Alt Launcher. Go old school for now by navigating to the BMS Folder and make a shortcut of the Launcher.exe.
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@Todd1215 In short, don’t run BMS in 4K. It’s not quite there yet. I found running Falcon at 2K @ 60 Hz and the Helios monitor at 1920 x 1080 is a decent balance. Any higher differences in resolution between the 2 monitors and the extracted images will become “jumpy”.
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@Todd1215 fwiw I fly BMS at 4k 60hz on a 3060 Ti without any problem… doesn’t even max out GPU
there’s a lot going on here… need more info before I could offer any theory.
- exactly what OS version are you running
- BMS in fullscreen-exclusive or borderless-window mode?
- fixed refresh rate, or g-sync / adaptive refresh?
- what is the refresh rate of the 1080 secondary mon?
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win10 pro, 3060ti, 5848 x1080 @120hz surround, 22 touch 1920x1080 @60hz
HDR is off was adaptive turned it off the moment monitors are free sync not g syncsdidn;t know if i was having some issue MP bing the ist crack at it .,had tot ask
Don;t strain to much putting in a g9 (5,120 x 1,440 @ 240 AND G-SYNC) tonight (according to AMAZON) in a the next day or so the surround is a PITA and many less cables too
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in general I’m no expert in multi-mon gaming … but it’s a whole dimension of complexity, especially when monitors have differing refresh-rates… and/or one is g-sync the other is fixed, etc
anyway, I realize this is of little help, but for troubleshooting things like this… first thing I’d do, is make sure g-sync is off (use NVidia console to set both mons to fixed) and set their refresh rate to the same, lowest common denominator hz
I mean, in theory, it should all “just work” but historically this is an aspect of Windows that has had a lot of bugs.
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OS is: Edition Windows 10 Home
Version 21H2
OS build 19044.2728
BMS is in borderless window mode
fixed refresh of 60z for both monitorsIf I enable HDR in BMS config my GPU runs at around 98% 3D utilization during AAR TE, with HDR OFF the GPU is around 56% 3D utilization.
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@Todd1215 Anything else unusual? Do you have Windows HDR enabled? (I don’t think the BMS graphics features labeled “HDR” actually require or make use of actual HDR10 monitor/graphics… but I could be wrong about that?)
For comparison sake, single-mon 4k 60hz on my 3060 Ti, the GPU utilization with/without is about 48% to 44%. The wattage, frequency and temps are within a few % of each other. msPresentToRender is about +2ms (NVidia FrameView).
Hmm… I think Windows 21H2 has the fix for the multi-mon gaming perf bugs. But not sure. Did a quick google, but it wasn’t clear. It was clearly still a problem, around that time… summer of 2021. Something to look into, or consider if it’s time to update to 22H2.
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@airtex2019 So I was also wondering the same about HDR in Windows 10 and what BMS HDR is enabling. I looked a bit deeper into it and also realized that my HMDI connection to the monitor was defaulted to 1.0 and not 2.0. I have since switch it and also changed some settings on the monitor side (I say monitor but its really an 43" 4k TV), but I still can’t have HDR enabled when the monitor is 4k, it spikes the GPU close to 100% - very odd.
I also was wondering if there are any Nvidia driver settings that might cause issue with HDR but wasn’t sure where those might be. I decided to employ the use of ChatGPT to assist. Surprisingly it did give me some advice about Nvidia and HDR settings
Here is my transcript session with ChatGPT
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@Todd1215 cables also seem to come into play. For awhile I was running a 3x55" 4k TV setup for BMS on a 3090 FE. I could enable HDR if there was only one TV connected and with the latest version HDMI cables. But also as soon as I connected more than one TV, HDR support was no longer available in Windows settings. I never exactly hunted down why that was since it was only my setup for a few months until we needed one of the TVs in the family room
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@Snake122 ah…I never though of that. Thanks for the info
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@airtex2019 can the helios run a regular HD monitor /mouse and dump the buggy touch with the G9 and one of the 25" hd I can sync the refresh rates both display-port dump hdmi too
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@Todd1215 UPDATE to my high GPU usage when in 4k
This post is to close the loop on my high GPU % when using 4K and BMS. The fix was to delete the d3d11.dsp file in User/Config folder. Once I did that it regenerated upon launch of BMS and my GPU usage was down to 25-35% with HDR lighting enabled.