Rotary encoder mapping

[ciderworm]

Cunning plan for my new throttle (Virpil CM3) is to designate E1 and E2 as Engine #1 and Engine #2. Anticlockwise selects "Switch Engine Control ON/OFF, clockwise selects "Engine START/STOP" The press function is "Feather Propeller" and "Engine Igniter", i.e a shared function since no plane requires both.

The theory is sound (i think) but may be catastrophic in use due to fumbling pilot.

[Jade_Monkey]

9 minutes ago, ciderworm said:

Cunning plan for my new throttle (Virpil CM3) is to designate E1 and E2 as Engine #1 and Engine #2. Anticlockwise selects "Switch Engine Control ON/OFF, clockwise selects "Engine START/STOP" The press function is "Feather Propeller" and "Engine Igniter", i.e a shared function since no plane requires both.

The theory is sound (i think) but may be catastrophic in use due to fumbling pilot.

 

I think you might also encounter challenges by having the encoder fire both buttons on the same turn. Make sure you add buffer in the virpil software.

[ciderworm]

Thanks JM, I'll check. 

 

Just ran a quick mission in a 110. It works without having to adjust virpil software settings?

Edited October 1, 2021 by ciderworm

[[Warship]MidnightLightnin]

Having read a lot about encoders today I am totally confused. I am interested in the Virpil controllers that include rotary encoders and I understand that using them in IL2 is problematic. But, I'm not sure whether they are problematic for some things and not others? 

 

So, I was thinking of trying to use the "mouse-wheel" on the Virpil Alpha grip for throttle - I now think this would be difficult to set up, maybe not impossible but more effort than I am willing to put into assigning a button.

 

But are these encoders just not useable at all in IL2 through standard in game Key Mapping, or is it that they can be mapped but only for certain types of usage. 

 

Can anyone clarify, and if they are usable for some functions how can they be usefully used?

[dburne]

6 minutes ago, [THORN]MidnightLightnin said:

Having read a lot about encoders today I am totally confused. I am interested in the Virpil controllers that include rotary encoders and I understand that using them in IL2 is problematic. But, I'm not sure whether they are problematic for some things and not others? 

 

So, I was thinking of trying to use the "mouse-wheel" on the Virpil Alpha grip for throttle - I now think this would be difficult to set up, maybe not impossible but more effort than I am willing to put into assigning a button.

 

But are these encoders just not useable at all in IL2 through standard in game Key Mapping, or is it that they can be mapped but only for certain types of usage. 

 

Can anyone clarify, and if they are usable for some functions how can they be usefully used?

 

They can be mapped to button presses. Turning right generates one button, turning left generates another button.

You can view in the Virpil Joystick Tester what buttons they generate. Pay no attention to what it shows generating in the Virpil configuration tool, that is internal only.

Edited October 5, 2021 by dburne

[[Warship]MidnightLightnin]

3 minutes ago, dburne said:

 

They can be mapped to button presses. Turning right generates one button, turning left generates another button.

Is that done through in game key mapping or 3rd party software?

 

So, if I mapped CCW to Eject it wouldn't matter what the starting position was, turning CCW would eject?

If I mapped Boost to CW would this toggle Boost each time I turned it CW?

 

Could you give a few examples of what would work?

[dburne]

23 minutes ago, [THORN]MidnightLightnin said:

Is that done through in game key mapping or 3rd party software?

 

So, if I mapped CCW to Eject it wouldn't matter what the starting position was, turning CCW would eject?

If I mapped Boost to CW would this toggle Boost each time I turned it CW?

 

Could you give a few examples of what would work?

 

It is exactly like a button press/release. Turn it one click and a button presses/releases. It generates two different buttons, one in one direction, one in the other as previously mentioned.

If you keep turning it, the button keeps pressing/releasing.

Not sure I myself would want eject assigned to such a simple thing, I prefer eject to be assigned to something I have to really think about to make it happen - to help prevent accidental ejection.

You can be creative though in what buttons you want to assign to those rotary dials.

 

Edited October 5, 2021 by dburne

[JG1_Vonrd]

1 hour ago, [THORN]MidnightLightnin said:

If I mapped Boost to CW would this toggle Boost each time I turned it CW?

This is the issue that I have been complaining about in relation to the encoders vs potentiometers. I have finally been able to make the scrollwheel work for prop RPM after much fiddling using the Virtual axis feature in the Virpil software. The issue is that you have to compromise between having sufficient movement that you're not spending minutes moving the scrollwheel to get full travel (100%) of the RPM (there is no fine adjustment of RPM when set-up for this) or adjusting your settings to have fine adjustment but... keep spinning the wheel.

 

Potentiometers have none of these issues in my experience.

 

So, the scrollwheels and dial knobs are really just useful as on / off buttons. Honestly, if I had known this I wouldn't have purchased this throttle and am considering selling it.  

Edited October 5, 2021 by JG1_Vonrd

[Jade_Monkey]

I give up. I decided to make a custom controller with just three rotaries:

 

I contacted the creator of this sigle rotary to see if he could make a version with three of them, to use as a supplement to my Virpil Throttle.

 

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1015427540/s1-rotary-controller-usb-or-midi?ref=hp_rv-2

 

It was super easy working with him and i placed the order today. I'll keep you posted once i receive it and see how it works.

[no_brain]

On 8/18/2021 at 6:54 PM, Charon said:

I agree that this is something which should work out of the box. Encoders are so common and better support would make so much hardware more functional.

 

Personally, though, I've managed to fix this for myself with Joystick Gremlin and this plugin.

 

The steps are basically as follows:

• Install vjoy, Joystick Gremlin (JG), and configure a virtual device that you will use. Make sure this virtual device is recognized by Il-2 (i.e., in `Il-2 Sturmovik Battle of Stalingrad/data/input/devices.txt`)
• Save `encoder-axis.py` somewhere convenient. In Joystick Gremlin, go to the plugins page, load a plugin, and select `encoder-axis.py`. Select a free vjoy axis on your device. Set 'Up' and 'Down' by clicking them, one at a time, and turning the encoder in the appropriate direction. Then select the number of steps you want your virtual axis to have.
• Finally, open up `Il-2 Sturmovik Battle of Stalingrad/data/input/current.actions`, find the line for the command you want to set, and insert `joy{N}_axis_{M}`, where N is the number of your virtual devices (i.e. in devices.txt) and M is the axis code. IIRC the eight codes Il-2 uses are x, y, z, w, s, t, p, q in order. Save and launch with JG active, and your axis should now work.

 

Thanks for posting this. It let me set up the rest of my encoders as axes, since the virpil config tool only had 2 available axes to set up as virtual.

 

Also want to point out that if you set the logical buttons for the encoder in the virpil config as buffered inputs you dont lose inputs when you move the encoder quickly.

Edited November 5, 2021 by minivan

[bsones]

 

On 10/5/2021 at 2:16 PM, JG1_Vonrd said:

So, the scrollwheels and dial knobs are really just useful as on / off buttons. Honestly, if I had known this I wouldn't have purchased this throttle and am considering selling it.  

 

Encoders are designed for cycling--not for inputting "on" and "off," but more for moving forward or backward through a list of options. They are great for cycling through radio channels (the radio 1 and 2 dials in a lot of modern jets are encoders), for example. In DCS, I use the big encoder on the side of my Virpil CM3 to cycle forward and backward through kneeboard pages (pressing the knob shows/hides the kneeboard). That sort of thing. 

 

I think where people get frustrated is when they try to use encoders for functions they weren't intended to handle. Just remember that every time the encoder passes a detent, it inputs a momentary button tap, and you get different taps for turning clockwise vs. counterclockwise. 

 

You can't, for example, use an encoder as an axis, because it isn't one. You also can't use it for functions that expect you to press and hold a button, because the input is very brief. If you try to use an encoder as a raise/lower flaps input in IL-2, for example, you'd need to spin it about a thousand times around the get the flaps to full extension, because it's only moving them a microscopic amount each time it passes a detent. 

 

In general, they are more useful on modern aircraft than in warbirds. 

 

 

[paul_leonard]

There are lots of uses in any sim.  As bsones notes, you just have to find the right uses.  I have the Gear-Falcon Quick-Trim 3 with 3 trim wheels and 4 encoders.  I use one encoder to increase/decrease IPD (worldscale), another for Zoom increase/decrease (push the encoder for reset to default), another for quick movement between crew positions (push again for cockpit)... lots of options.    Don't always need to be flight controls.

[LukeFF]

4 hours ago, paul_leonard said:

There are lots of uses in any sim.  As bsones notes, you just have to find the right uses.  I have the Gear-Falcon Quick-Trim 3 with 3 trim wheels and 4 encoders.  I use one encoder to increase/decrease IPD (worldscale), another for Zoom increase/decrease (push the encoder for reset to default), another for quick movement between crew positions (push again for cockpit)... lots of options.    Don't always need to be flight controls.

 

I use one of the encoders on my GVL224 panel to increase and decrease time compression. Another one I use for adjusting the contact altimeter, though I have to use Joy2Key to get it to work properly, because of that short response time inherent with encoders. 

Edited May 25, 2022 by LukeFF

[dburne]

6 hours ago, LukeFF said:

 

I use one of the encoders on my GVL224 panel to increase and decrease time compression. Another one I use for adjusting the contact altimeter, though I have to use Joy2Key to get it to work properly, because of that short response time inherent with encoders. 

 

Yep I use one of my encoders on my Virpil CM3 Throttle for time compression as well. 

[Dallas88B]

52 minutes ago, dburne said:

encoders on my Virpil CM3 Throttle for time compression

 

6 hours ago, LukeFF said:

I use one of the encoders on my GVL224 panel to increase and decrease time compression

Well thats a good idea ! Never thought of that....thank you. 

[1Sascha]

In IL-2 some functions work fine with my Gladiator Evo's encoder wheel. Some don't. I think those that don't work are the ones where the game expects two different button presses in a single mapping "session". Then it'll just keep mapping the direction I push the wheel in first (up/button xx). Letting go of the wheel in order to map the wheel down/button yy bit results in another instance of wheel up/button xx read by the game. So you end up with "open/close radiator: button 10/button 10", which doesn't work of course.

 

If it's a function with two separate mappings for up and down or open/close, where the game just expects a single button press for each mapping "session", the encoder-wheel will work.

 

S.

[Sokol1]

Looks like that in this NXT profiles created by Alex_Oz (VKB software engineer) after their release encoders are set as individual buttons.

 

https://forum.il2sturmovik.ru/topic/13834-gladiator-nxt-профили/

 

But, the fact that VKB reduce the encoders in NXT EVO suggest that this don't work as expected. They claimed it was for lack of support in games.

 

The encoders can be set too as an virtual analog axis.

 

https://forum.il2sturmovik.ru/topic/13834-gladiator-nxt-профили/?do=findComment&comment=797994

 

What can be set too though Joystick Gremlin: 

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/hotas/comments/se0apw/vkb_nxt_encoder_as_a_virtual_axis/

 

 

 

 

[1Sascha]

5 hours ago, Sokol1 said:

They claimed it was for lack of support in games.

At least in the case of IL-2 (not sure about other games), I suspect this could be fixed and the encoder's usefulness could be vastly improved by an overhaul of the key-mapper (which would be much needed anyway and AFAIK is in the works already).

 

Although I have to admit that I don't quite get the advantage of the wheel over a self-centering toggle that will read as, say, "button 1" when you push it up and "button 2" when you pull it down. Like what the Evo has on the left of the throttle. From what I can see, the encoder already kinda seems to function in that way, but it will also "auto-repeat" the button press for as long as you hold it up or down.

 

But I'm probably missing something here...

 

S.