Touchscreen issues
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Is there anyone here working with two touchscreens and Helios?
I’ve finally set up my pit and was configuring Helios and I couldn’t understand why one button press was registering as two presses. For example, if I were to press 1, then press 2 on the ICP, I won’t get 12, I would get 1122. At first, I thought it simply was an issue over the network and the tools I was using was not calibrated, but when running Helios by itself on the slave PC, it was indeed registering two presses for each time I touched a button. After much experimentation and hair pulling, I changed the input from “pushed” into “closed” and that sorted it. Or so I thought.
The issue still persists and now, and I cannot use 3-way switches (AP, Master Arm, etc.) because one swipe or one touch counts as two so I can only go up or down, I can’t get the switch to go to the middle. I’ve tried everything I can think of, recalibrating the touch screen, changing the mouse from right-handed to left-handed, changing the double-click speed settings, and so on. No go. It seems that Helios detects when I press on the switch, and then detects again when I let go, resulting in two “presses.” Annoyingly, this only happens with Helios. I open up Notepad and use the touchscreen keyboard and one touch = one press.
I even made a totally new profile, nothing but a panel with buttons marked 1 and 2. Press button 1 and it should send “1”, press button 2 and it should send “2”. Open up Notepad to try it, press 1, then 2, and I get “1122”… so definitely something with how Helios works… My online searches have not turned up anything useful either.
Any suggestions and help appreciated!
EDIT: I probably should’ve mentioned that my touchscreens are on a networked PC while BMS is on my main simming PC.
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Is anyone using Helios with Windows 10??
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No amount of fiddling around fixed it for me in Win10. Even tried running the program in Win7/8/8.1 compatibility mode, no joy.
Dual-booted into Win7, which was what my main PC was using before updating to Win10, and Helios works first time, every time without me having to change a thing! I guess Helios isn’t compatible with Win8.1 or Win10 Pity Gadroc has stopped working on this program. I’ve reverted my slave PC to Win7 and can only hope and pray someone makes a similar program to Helios that we can continue using into the future.
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I have never used Helios but sounds like it could be you have both press down & release linked to a callback, therefor sending 2 inputs each time?
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Hey Focal, you on Skype? check PM
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Hi Ice,
I am using Helios with Windows 10 and 5 touch screens laid out in the same formation as the F16 cockpit, UFC, Left Aux, Right Aux, Left and Right + 3x27" eye line monitors + 4 independent tablets MAIP, Knee map, RAMP start doc and flight info document.
Works great using your profile ;0)
Ironman.
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I’ve seen issues like this and it seems it might be related to that particular monitor because it defies all other logic.
Sent from my XT1080 using Tapatalk
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Did you have to do any other special setup for Win10, Ironman? I kept fiddling with settings to no avail, then when I start it up on Win7, it just works. In Win10, it goes berserk!
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Hi Ice,
Is it Helios or MFDE that goes berserk?
If its MFDE, I had that and went back to an earlier version - no problems with Helios and W10.
That reminds me are you going to re do the ICP buttons 2468 to include NSEW ?
Ironman.
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It’s Helios going berserk. I’m not using MFDE now… I’m using Helios on a networked PC and using a combination of GPT and YAME to get stuff ported over.
How exactly do you connect all screens to your PC, Ironman? Just one PC or are you networking 2 or more PCs? I suspect Helios does not like to play nice over the network. After fiddling with some settings again, I’ve connected my touchscreens to my laptop that is on Win10; note that this was my initial setup. Running my Helios profile and going to the SETUP menu of BMS, I can confirm that pressing 1, 2, 3 and the other numbers on the ICP results in the proper callback being shown: T-ILS/ALOW/etc. When I actually go in the 3D pit, however, these same buttons do not trigger the in-game ICP at all. Pressing 2 will make the pilot look down, pressing 3 will make the pilot look towards the right, pressing 4 on the ICP and the pilot looks towards the left!!
So not only is it NOT working, it’s also giving two different sets of results! :x
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One PC - TWO Graphics cards one of which is a Titan, that runs the 3x27" eye line screens and the UFC 23" touch screen, the other 2x22" and 2x10" touch screen are run from the 980 as its not so graphic intensive.
Works great - that hard part was spreading your profile over 5 different screens ;0)
Full RAMP can be done now from touch screens - Lovely !!!
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Yeah, I suspected as much. My next move is to put all my screens onto my main PC’s GPU and if Helios works (Win10 PC), then it’s the networking that’s messing it up.
I’m going for 5 screens as well, but I prefer the widescreen view of a 3-screen display. I can still do ramp starts (even with the old profile), I just have to turn the side console displays on/off as needed. It was just a bit tight cramming all info on one screen though so at least with two screens dedicated to cockpit instruments, I can have the front console and left aux console always in easy reach… without having to cram everything in a single screen.
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I’ve made a few posts trying to get more eyes on the topic but I think I’ve found the culprit now so I’ll try to consolidate information into this thread.
Hello guys!
I’ve been using Helios with BMS for a long time now and have really enjoyed flying Falcon with this game aid. Last year, I thought about adding a 2nd touchscreen to my setup which meant using a 2nd PC… and over the last few weeks, I was bringing that project into completion. However, my project has been under a lot of obstacles and this most recent one is really baffling:
In my Helios profile, I have the ICP. Going into BMS -> SETUP -> CONTROLLERS page, I could press the ICP number buttons and it will show that the controls are mapped correctly. Button 1 is T-ILS, 2 is ALOW, etc. This is correct whether I press the button with my finger on the touchscreen or click it with the mouse pointer. Launching a TE (I usually use the Landing TE), these buttons now work differently! Button 1 does nothing, Button 2 makes the pilot look down, Button 3 makes the pilot look up and right, 4 looks left, and so on. Without using TrackIR, it’s like I’m panning the view. Using TrackIR, I can see the view “flicker” out then back to where TrackIR says I am looking. Exiting the mission, going back to the SETUP -> CONTROLLERS page and pressing the ICP buttons still confirms they are mapped to the ICP callbacks.
What makes this even more confusing is the fact that a few days ago, the behavior was not this way. The ICP buttons would work as intended except that each press counted as two presses.
As I said earlier, I have two PCs running. My main PC is running BMS and the slave PC (laptop) is running Helios. Both PCs are on Win10, and the above behavior is present whether using Livrot’s LAN Keyboard program or GiGurra’s GPT. [This section of the post I am writing using my slave PC keyboard via GiGurra’s GPT] –- [This section I am writing using my slave PC keyboard via Livrot’s LAN Keyboard] –- [The following is a result of me pressing buttons 1, 2, 3, then 4 on a test profile: 11223344 as you can see, each button press is “sent” twice] –- [This is me clicking 1, 2, 3, then 4 on that same test profile: 1234 as you can see, no duplication]
Swapping the slave PC (laptop) to a different PC on Win7, my issue seems to be that GPT does not want to transmit over the network.
Initially, I thought it was a network transmitter issue (GPT or LAN) or a Windows setting I needed to change, but the “duplicate” issue does not exist in Win7 and as you can see, the network transmitter works fine in Win10. I then thought it was a Win10 issue as my setup worked fine under Win7 so I reformatted one of my PCs and rolled it back to Win7, but a lot of other touchscreen users have reported no problems in Win10 and that’s for BMS and DCS. Maybe it’s a network issue, but I’m not really keen on plugging 5 screens on my 980Ti. It has 3 DPs, 1 DVI, and 1 HDMI output but I don’t think it supports having all 5 output in use.
I’d really like to ask for advice or ideas regarding what’s going on here. The touchscreens work fine, there is no single click = double click issue when using it outside of Helios; heck, I can type using the touchscreen keyboard and there’s no problems at all!
Tonight, I’ve tested out Helios on my main PC. I connected all 5 screens to my main PC, copied my Helios profile over, “reset” the monitors, and ran it and BMS. Boom! Done. Working. No double-click issue. No missing callbacks and different button behaviors. It. Just. Works. Now I’m not sure why programs like GPT, LAN, and YAME can send data over a network and I can’t understand why Helios goes berserk over a network; this will require more testing and I’m not sure I have the sufficient time and skills at this moment. I’ve been really looking forward to getting to fly again so that’ll be priority, then get my new Helios profile working. Once I know BMS is set up properly and my Helios profile is 100% working, I can then go and test out various configs in another PC with less frustration and hair pulling.
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ICE let me know when you are up and running - we can do a flight and do some input testing if you like - see what works and what doesn’t.
Ironman
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I think I’ve sorted out the Helios problem, although the solution isn’t what I want it to be.
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As a noob to cockpit building, is Helios still available? Does it replace or work with MFD Extraction? I’m on my way to a touchscreen for main instruments & MFDs, and a beamer to 180 Degree external view. (in fact, just bought the trampoline frame to start building the screen - £20 well spent already).
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Helios is still available from the creator’s website.
Also, check out my profile or Weepop’s version of my profile to see what you can do with Helios.
As a direct answer to your question, yes, it directly complements MFDE although I would recommend YAME64 based on my testing.