Virpil CM3 encoder wheels in IL-2

[1Sascha]

I haven't spent much time with this thing in IL-2 yet, but here's what happened the other night while I was mapping stuff:

 

I tried to use the thumb and pinky rotaries for water- / oil-rads and for the 190's outlet shutters. Mapping those wasn't a problem, and I did double-check that I had all of them mapped correctly (God, that key-mapper needs an overhaul! ? ). But when I tried them out in a 190 A-5, the lever in the cockpit didn't spin and the cowl-flaps weren't moving. I went back out of the plane and jumped into a 110. There, strangely enough, the water and oil rads did work now. Haven't tried the 190 again, but I seem to remember that when I mapped new devices in the past in IL-2, the mappings wouldn't work straight away once I jumped into a plane and tried it out. It was usually only if I either re-spawned a plane or re-started the game (not sure which it was TBH) that the new mappings would actually work in-cockpit. Has anyone else experienced this?

 

The rotaries eventually working also seems to contradict what some folks have said about those two rotaries and IL-2, but perhaps I'm missing something here? Anyone on a CM3 care to share their experiences with those rotaries?

 

I'd also be grateful for an IL-2 mapping diagram of the throttle if anyone has one of those for their setup/config.

 

 

S.

[Charon]

Encoders present to the game effectively as two buttons that flicker on and off rapidly as they're rotated.

 

This works fine for the 110, Spitfire, and a few others because these have discrete steps for their radiators, and each button press moves them one step.

 

The 190 uses an analog axis, so encoders are problematic: the game expects you to press and hold a button, but your CM3 just flickers it on and off too quickly for it to move noticeably.

 

The usual solutions are 1) adjust the encoder delay timer in your vendor's configuration software so that the button is held longer; 2) use your vendor's software to create a virtual axis associated with that encoder (I don't recall if Virpil support this), or 3) use a tool like Joystick Gremlin to create a virtual axis (a very bare-bones plugin to do so is here)

[1Sascha]

11 hours ago, Charon said:

The usual solutions are 1) adjust the encoder delay timer in your vendor's configuration software so that the button is held longer; 2) use your vendor's software to create a virtual axis associated with that encoder (I don't recall if Virpil support this), or 3) use a tool like Joystick Gremlin to create a virtual axis (a very bare-bones plugin to do so is here)

 

Yeah, I've looked at how the encoder registers in joystick-testing apps and I think you're 100% right. So far, I've only found one other option to setup the encoders (in VPC's software) called "Encoder Scroll" - default setting is "Encoder Dial". I *think* this would turn the thing into something akin to a mouse-wheel so this might do the trick (eliminating the "flickering" between two buttons and only sending a single button-press every time the wheel is moved a notch). But I haven't tested that yet.

Another option might be to set the two logical buttons associated with the wheel to a different behavior (there's a ton of those in the SW), but I'm not sure this can be done for those wheels. Haven't tested that one yet, either...

 

 

Seems to me that not a lot of games take advantage of encoder wheels at the moment. I seem to remember VKB commenting that lack of support for encoder-wheels was one of the reasons why they replaced one of the two encoder wheels on the older Gladiators' bases with a two-way wheel/switch on the Gladiator Evo.

 

 

S.

Edited February 22, 2023 by 1Sascha

[Youtch]

13 hours ago, Charon said:

Encoders present to the game effectively as two buttons that flicker on and off rapidly as they're rotated.

 

This works fine for the 110, Spitfire, and a few others because these have discrete steps for their radiators, and each button press moves them one step.

 

The 190 uses an analog axis, so encoders are problematic: the game expects you to press and hold a button, but your CM3 just flickers it on and off too quickly for it to move noticeably.

 

The usual solutions are 1) adjust the encoder delay timer in your vendor's configuration software so that the button is held longer; 2) use your vendor's software to create a virtual axis associated with that encoder (I don't recall if Virpil support this), or 3) use a tool like Joystick Gremlin to create a virtual axis (a very bare-bones plugin to do so is here)

Out of curiosity, concretely, as of today, what are you using the 2 encoders for?

[JG7_X-Man]

1 hour ago, Youtch said:

Out of curiosity, concretely, as of today, what are you using the 2 encoders for?

 In more immersive games like P3D, DCS and MSFS you can use those as radio knobs.

[Charon]

14 hours ago, Youtch said:

Out of curiosity, concretely, as of today, what are you using the 2 encoders for?

E1 and E2 I use for channel selection in SRS. I'm not actually taking advantage of the fact that they're encoders, instead I'm basically just treating them as a cluster of 6 buttons.

 

The pinky encoder on the throttle itself I use to cycle cockpit lights, and the thumb encoder is currently unbound. I also have a few encoders on my button boxes mostly for fuel selection in CloD.

 

I wrote the plugin long ago and never really used it much.

Edited February 23, 2023 by Charon

[Youtch]

I am considering using the slider on the throttle with an indent in the middle to control for radiator, to perceive where you are in terms of %.

 

First combining both water and oil, and maybe evolving it in a 2nd phase through a configuration in Gremlin or with a shift to be able to select Water or Oil before moving the slider.

 

Has anyone experimented with this?

 

[Charon]

@Youtch You will run into problems with planes like the 110s, 111, Spitfire, etc which have a discrete number of positions and can only be adjusted with buttons.

 

I have a plugin for this as well, see this thread

[1Sascha]

On 2/23/2023 at 10:56 AM, Youtch said:

I am considering using the slider on the throttle with an indent in the middle to control for radiator, to perceive where you are in terms of %.

 

YMMV of course, but I find that thing way too fiddly to be of any real use. Plus it's too easy to move around and the center notch isn't pronounced enough so I'd be worried about unwanted/accidental input.

 

In the 110 at least, the two knobs on the grip seem to work fine. As mentioned earlier, there are also settings in the VPC software that *might* do the trick, but I haven't played around with them yet.

 

 

First option: There seems to be a way to alter the logical buttons' (that are associated with the two wheels) behavior here:

I've use this method to alter the behavior of one of the red toggle switches, but can't be sure whether or not they're the preferred method to customize those wheels.

 

Second option:

Under "Encoders decoding" there's also this alternate mode you can set the encoders to

 

 

"Encoder Dial" is the default setting. Not sure what "Encoder Scroll" does, since I haven't played around with it yet, either - but I think it's worth a shot.

 

Playing around with the "Delay Timer" might also be beneficial - perhaps some games have a hard time "seeing" those button presses if they expect regular old buttons (not encoder wheels)... ?

 

All of which makes me wish there was some sort of comprehensive manual for the throttle and what different settings in the software do. I've been looking over the VPC website and their forums, but I think I'll still have to either piece things together myself or keep asking direct questions whenever I run into a problem ... ?

 

 

 

S.

Edited February 25, 2023 by 1Sascha

[dburne]

I use that slider with the small notch in the middle for two levels of VR zoom. All I use it for and it really does not get used all that much.