HSI Course and Heading Commands for VAC

[-Vandal-]

For some of the cockpits the HSI Course and Heading knobs do not work yet.

And the “increase by 5 degrees” keybinds only increase by 1 degree (as I understand it this was changed some time ago so to accommodate mouse-wheel enabled 3D knobs and dials).

So for those of us that fly some of these less completed pits and use VAC I went ahead – as a temporary measure – made a set of voice commands to rotate the HSI Course and Heading knobs.

You can get the commands here and add it to your VAC profile.

As a more semi-permanent solution I would suggest to BMS that if you just added a DED page for entering the Course, Heading, and even the Barometric pressure setting that would hopefully be easy to do and be available to all aircraft. Of course the best option is to have all the pits have useable knobs and dials for this. Anyway, until then I think this VAC solution very handy if I do say so myself.

The only other thing I could think of was to convert a HOTAS axis into a virtual keybind which I think would have been nicer but I didn’t have any axis available on my setup.

[Stevie]

There is a shift-layer command what will allow you to toggle back and forth between 1 and 5 degree increment/decrement for CRS and HDG knobs….don’t ask me what the callbacks are, I haven’t gotten that far yet. But I know I can setup my EHSI replica from Pegasus to use the push button function of the two knobs to toggle between 1 and 5 degree command.

In any case, you need to find/use the correct keybinds for each and verify.

[Guest]

@-Vandal-:

Anyway, until then I think this VAC solution very handy if I do say so myself.

Or Helios. I have HSI, CRS, and Altimeter settings that can be changed by +/-5 or +/-1.

[-Vandal-]

Hi Stevie:

Yah I think I got that bit of info about the mousewheel change from @Frederf.

I am using the default keybinds (i.e. Ctrl + ’ for 5 degrees and Alt + ’ for 1 degree increase on the HSI Course for F15E) (the Ctrl + ; and Alt + ; keys are for decrease)). I have verified (no changes by me) that the callbacks respectively are SimHsiCourseInc and SimHsiCrsBy1 and both only increase HSI by 1.

@Frederf also said he thought there was a way to multiply the mouse effect. I have looked in Falcon bms.cfg and there is a mouse sensitivity multiplier (set g_fMouseSensivity 1.0). I didn’t mess with it because I don’t want the mouse to increase by 5 per click of the mouse wheel when flying in a pit. Plus I worried it also might apply to other knobs like the air pressure knob as well (which I like 1 unit per mousewheel click as well). So I haven’t tested it but if you upped that g_fMouseSensivity by 5 I think maybe then SimHsiCourseInc (and other mousewheeled knobs and dials) will jump 5 degrees per mousewheel click (or SimHsiCourseInc keybind callback) and and SimHsiCrsBy1 would only go 1 per click. Maybe that’s what you have to do for your setup?

But yeah otherwise I don’t know what you could mean by “shift-layer command”?

[Stevie]

Using a HOTS you can press an alternate key/switch in conjunction with a command callback to get an alternative command - I like to use CMS->dwn on the WH stick, since it isn’t assigned for an actual Viper HOTAS function, but a lot of folk use the pinky or paddle switch.

In this way you can assign multiple/alternate functions using a key combination like using a Shift key for upper/lower case on a keyboard - hence “shifted” layer. So using VAC I would assume you could assign the 1 deg callback to the direct voice command, and if you hold the pinky and give the same voice command you could assign that to get the 5 degree callback, forex. I only know that it can be done…I haven’t gotten along far enough in my pit build to actually set this sort of thing up yet - but I’m going to have to learn and be able to do it one day.

[-Vandal-]

Stevie:

I see – I think! I do have shifted layers on my HOTAS. In fact, Upper, Middle, and Lower layers for my Thrustmaster TWCS. So I could assign it say TBTN1 to Ctrl + ’ in the upper layer and that same button to Alt + ’ in the middle layer if I wanted to. But that, in and of itself, shouldn’t solve the problem because both keybind/callbacks only move 1 degree when using the keyboard. I guess, theoretically at least, BMS could respond differently depending on whether the callback is called by a DirectX button or the keyboard. I haven’t tried that, but I didn’t want to press a button 10 times to move the needle 50 degrees either.

So alternatively, on my throttle I suppose I could have disabled the TANT slider axis and this would allow me to have the middle layer be the radar tilt knob, the upper layer be the HSI-Course knob, and the lower layer be the HSI-Heading knob. But unfortunately I can only get 30 positions this way (not the 360 needed).

So the VAC commands work the best out of all the options I could think of at this time. But I am 100% with you. I am not building a complete pit, but I am going to build some serious button boxes using Leonardo card(s) and I’ll hook up a knob that goes round and round like the real thing and that will solve all of this quite nicely!

[Guest]

Have you edited your falcon bms.cfg file?

For the Altimeter and HSI functions to work, the falcon bms.cfg file must be edited and this entry added at the first space at the top:
set g_nKnobAccelerationDelta 300

[-Vandal-]

Hey Ice that works pretty slick for the F115E anyway. Even though it’s not a knob and you just right or left click on CMFD OSB5, if you click rapidly it starts accelerating but if you slow down you can increment by 1s. Really cool. Where did you find that bit of glorious information?

Anyway, I’ll post if I find that setting isn’t working for other pits or goofs up something else. But for now that looks like just what the doctor ordered. I wonder why that isn’t in there by default?

[Guest]

It was added in later in 4.32 IIRC.